G
THE FOX
IN
THE ATTIC
by RICHARD HUGHES
Hero, after many years, is the new
novel by the author of that acknowl-
edged modern classic, A High Wind in
Jamaica (which some remember as The
Innocent Voyage). The secret mind of
childhood, revealed so brilliantly in the
earlier novel, has in this book become the
secret mind of humanity at large.
It is 1923. A tragic accident has forced
23-year-old Augustine to leave his agree-
able English manor and shelter among
cousins at their home near Munich. It is
Augustine's obsession to refrain from the
slightest exercise of power over anyone.
In England, thankfully at peace after the
monstrous blood-letting of a world war,
such high-minded conduct can be in-
dulged in. But in Germany, riding the
nightmare of defeat and inflation, Au-
gustine's fine fastidiousness is out of
place. There everyone — not even except-
ing the lovely Mitzi — is deep in various
fanatic schemes to reshape events
through desperate action. One such en-
thusiast, Adolf Hitler, his beer-hall
putsch aborted, cowers in a country attic,
awaiting arrest.
All Hughes' remembered virtues and
subtleties are here: the startling vivid-
ness of scene, the march of narrative,
often violently exciting, and a delicacy
and depth of human insight. No human
being, young or old, lunatic or sane, lies
outside his uncanny awareness. And, in
The Fox in the Attic, these powers are
employed in a work of enormous scope
and significance — a re-creation of the
inner life of an entire generation.
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THE FOX IN THE ATTIC
THE FOX IN THE ATTIC
Copyright © 1961 by Richard Hughes
Printed in the United States of America
All rights reserved.
No part of this book may be
used or reproduced in any man-
ner whatsoever without written
permission except in the case of
brief quotations embodied in
critical articles and reviews. For
information address Harper &
Brothers, 49 East 33rd Street,
New York 16, N. Y.
Library of Congress catalog card number: 61-12232
NOTE
The Fox in the Attic is the first of a group of novels,
The Human Predicament, which is conceived as a
long historical novel of my own times culminating
in the Second World War. The fictitious characters
in the foreground are wholly fictitious. The historical
characters and events are as accurately historical as I
can make them: I may have made mistakes but in no
case have I deliberately falsified the record once I
could worry it out.
R. H.
TO MY WIFE
and also my children
(especially Penelope)
in affectionate gratitude
for their help
CONTENTS
Polly and Rachel
BOOK TWO
The White Crow
BOOK THREE
The Fox in the Attic
BOOK ONE
Polly and Rachel
Chapter i
Only the steady creaking of a flight of swans disturbed
the silence, labouring low overhead with outstretched
necks towards the sea.
It was a warm, wet, windless afternoon with a soft
feathery feeling in the air: rain, yet so fine it could scarcely
fall but rather floated. It clung to everything it touched;
the rushes in the deep choked ditches of the sea-marsh
were bowed down with it, the small black cattle looked
cobwebbed with it, their horns were jewelled with it.
Curiously stumpy too these cattle looked, the whole herd
sunk nearly to the knees in a soft patch.
This sea-marsh stretched for miles. Seaward, a greyness
merging into sky had altogether rubbed out the line of
dunes which bounded it that way: inland, another and
darker blurred greyness was all you could see of the solid
Welsh hills. But near by loomed a solitary gate, where the
path crossed a footbridge and humped over the big dyke;
and here in a sodden tangle of brambles the scent of a fox
hung, too heavy today to rise or dissipate.
The gate clicked sharply and shed its cascade as two
men passed through. Both were heavily loaded in oilskins.
The elder and more tattered one carried two shotguns,
negligently, and a brace of golden plover were tied to the
bit of old rope he wore knotted round his middle: glimpses
of a sharp-featured weather-beaten face showed from
within his bonneted sou'-wester, but mouth and even chin
were hidden in a long weeping moustache. The younger
man was springy and tall and well-built and carried over
his shoulder the body of a dead child. Her thin muddy
legs dangled against his chest, her head and arms hung
13
14 THE FOX IN THE ATTIC
down his back; and at his heels walked a black dog —
disciplined, saturated, and eager.
Suddenly the older man blew through the curtain of his
moustache as if to clear it of water before speaking, but
he thought better of it after a quick glance round at his
companion. There was no personal grief in the young
man's face but it was awe-struck.
An hour later the two men had left the sea-marsh behind
them: they had reached higher ground where a lofty but
tangled and neglected wood traversed a steep hillside. So
soft was this south-western Welsh climate, and so thick
the shelter of all that towering timber round, that here a
glade of very old azaleas planted in a clearing had them-
selves grown almost into gangling trees and dripping
rhododendron-scrub had spread half across what had once
been a broad gravelled carriage-drive. Deep black ruts
showed where in the war years the steel tires of heavy
farm-wagons had broken through the crust of this long-
derelict drive; but nowadays in places the roadway was
blocked altogether with newly-fallen trunks and branches
that nothing could pass.
Soon however the two men turned off by a short-cut, a
steep footpath squeezed between a ferny rock the size of
a cottage and a watery plantation of twenty-foot bamboos.
Beyond the bamboos their path tunnelled under a
seemingly endless ancient growth of rhododendrons and
they had to duck, for though the huge congested limbs
of this dark thicket had once been propped on crutches
to give the path full headroom many of these were now
rotten and had collapsed. At the very centre of this grove
the tunnel passed by a small stone temple; but here too
the brute force of vegetation was at work, for the clearing
had closed in, the weather-pocked marble faun lay face
down in the tangle of ivy which had fallen with him, the
little shrine itself now wore its cupola awry. Thus it was
not till the two men had travelled the whole length of this
POLLY AND RACHEL 15
dark and dripping tunnel and finally reached the further
border of all this abandoned woodland that they really
came right out again at last under the open whitish sky.
Here, a flight of vast garden terraces had been cut in
the hillside like giant stairs. Downwards, these terraces led
to a vista of winding waterlily lakes and distant park with
a far silver curl of river: upwards, they mounted to a house.
The walking figures of the two men and the dog, ascend-
ing, and presently turning right-handed along the topmost
of these terraces, looked surprisingly small against that
house — almost like toys, for this ancient pile was far larger
than you had taken it for at first. Nevertheless there was
no hum from this huge house, no sign of life even: not one
open window, nor a single curl of smoke from any of its
hundred chimneys. The men's sodden boots on the stone
paving made little sound, but there was none other.
This topmost terrace ended at a tall hexagonal Victorian
orangery projecting rather incongruously from the older
building, the clear lights in its Gothic cast-iron traceries
deep-damasked here and there with dark panes of red and
blue Bristol. In the angle this projection made with the
main structure a modest half-glazed door was set in the
house's ancient stone-work, and here at last the two men
halted: the young man with the small body over his
shoulder took charge of the guns as well and sent the
furtive, feral-looking older man away. Then the young
man with the burden and the wet dog went in by them-
selves, and the door closed with a hollow sound.
Chapter 2
Augustine was the young man's name (the dog's name
J forget).
Augustine had the thick white skin which often goes
with such sandy red hair as his, the snub lightly-freckled
nose, the broad intelligent forehead. Normally this young
face was serene; but now it was beginning to show the first
effects of shock and for a full minute he stood stockstill in
his dewy oilskins, staring round the familiar walls of this
warm and cosy room with new and seemingly astonished
eyes. Then Augustine's dilated pupils focused — fascinated,
as if seeing it for the first time — on his great-grandfather's
gun. This stood in the place of honour in the tall glass-
fronted case which was the room's chief furnishing: a
beautiful double-barrelled hammer-gun damascened with
silver, its blue-black barrels worn paper-thin with firing.
Pinned to the wooden back of the case behind it there was
an old photograph of someone short and bushy standing
with this very gun over his arm; and with him two bowler-
hatted keepers, equally bushy. The print was faded to a
browny-yellow, but now as Augustine's abnormal gaze lit
on it the faint figures seemed to him to clarify and grow —
to take on for him an advisory look. At that his gaze
widened to include the whole family of these beloved guns
racked in that great glass gunroom case there: guns of all
calibres from rook-rifles and a boy's 20-bore by Purdey to
a huge 4-bore punt-gun: grouped round the veteran, they
too now seemed veritable councillors.
Then his eyes shifted. In a corner of the room stood the
collection of his fishing-rods. Their solid butts were set in
a cracked Ming vase like arrows in a quiver; but he felt
now as if their wispy twitching ends were tingling, like
antennae — his antennae. Above them the mounted otters'-
masks on the peeling walls grinned. The tiny wisp of steam
16
POLLY AND RACHEL 17
from the ever-simmering kettle on the round coke-stove
seemed to be actively inviting the brown teapot that stood
on the shelf above — the loaf, and the knife, and the pot of
jam. In short, these guns and rods of his, and even the
furniture, the kettle and the loaf had suddenly become
living tentacles of 'him'. It was as if he and this long-loved
gunroom were now one living continuous flesh. It was as
if for the time being 'he' was no longer cooped up entirely
within his own skin: he had expanded, and these four walls
had become now his final envelope. Only outside these
walls did the hostile, alien 'world' begin.
All this passed in a matter of seconds: then mentally
Augustine shook himself, aware that his state was more
than a little abnormal and reminded at the same time of
that dead mite of alien world he had brought in here and
carried on his shoulder still.
An old lancet window suggested this had been a
domestic chapel once; all the same, not even for a moment
could he put her down in here.
In the middle of the room a round oak table stood nowa-
days; but under the morning's crumbs, under the oil-
stains where for years guns had been cleaned on it and
under the bloodstains where game had been rested on it
there were still discernible faded inkstains and blurred
inscriptions and knife-cuts from its earlier days in the
schoolroom. As Augustine moved towards it to lay the
guns down his own initials, 'A.L.P.-H.', suddenly leapt
out at him from the dark wood, pricked there with his
compass-points and coloured (he recalled) one drowsy
morning in the schoolroom long ago — in imitation of
Henry, his godlike elder cousin. For though this house had
not been actually his childhood home, much of Augus-
tine's childhood had in fact been spent here: from his
earliest age his two old great-uncles used to invite him on
prolonged visits, as company for Henry chiefly. , . ah,
18 THE FOX IN THE ATTIC
now Henry's 'H.P.-H.' had leaped out of the smudges too
(ten times more elegantly tattooed than his, of course).
That little Purdey 20-bore behind the glass (momentarily
it stood out from the background of its fellows as the figure
in a painted portrait does) had been Henry's first gun.
When Henry quite grew out of it, it had descended to
teach Augustine too to shoot. That of course was before
191 4: in the halcyon days before the war when the two
old men were still living and Henry was the heir.
Augustine, still humping the little body, moved towards
the telephone bracketed to the wall behind the door. This
was a peculiar apparatus, evidently built to order. It had
two hinged ear-pieces, installed one on each side in case
one ear or the other should be deaf; and it was ancient
enough to have a handle to wind. Augustine wound the
handle and asked for the police, addressing the instrument
in the toneless but very articulate manner habitual to
someone a solitary by his own act and choice who prefers
to use his voice as seldom and as briefly as he can.
Then the machine answered him. The upshot was that
the sergeant would come out this evening on his bicycle
to view, but doubted he could get an ambulance to fetch it
till the morning. For tonight it must just stay where it was.
When at last (in a remote and half-darkened formal
place of elegance, a room he never used) Augustine did
lift the morsel off his shoulder, he found that it had stif-
fened. This had ceased to be 'child' at all: it was total
cadaver now. It had taken into its soft contours the exact
mould of the shoulder over which it had been doubled and
it had set like that — into a matrix of him. If (which God
forbid) he had put it on again it would have fitted.
Augustine was absolutely alone with it in all this huge,
empty house. He left it dumped there on the big dust-
sheeted drawing-room sofa and hurried across the silent
stone hall to wash his creeping hands.
Chapter j
For a while, cleaning the two guns and towelling the
dog took all Augustine's attention; but then he was at
a loss till the sergeant should come. He craved for and
gulped a spoonful of sugar but otherwise could not eat
because he had become aware of his hands again: they
felt large, and as if he had not washed them enough. Indeed
he was loth to taint with them even the pages of a book.
In this dilemma he wandered from the gunroom almost
without knowing it into the billiardroom. This smelt of old
carpeting and perished leather; it was a place he seldom
went these days, but unlike most of the rest of the house
it was unshuttered and now there was still enough of the
failing daylight in here to see by.
Billiardrooms are never small. In childhood this one used
to seem to Augustine as interminable as the vaults of
heaven: it had always been a room of wonder, moreover,
for what might not happen in a room where a rhinoceros
— lurking in an Africa that must have been just behind
the plaster — had thrust head and horn clean through the
wall? (Often as a small thing he had peeped in fearfully
before breakfast to find if during the night that rhinoceros
in his wooden collar had inched any further through.)
This had been a man's room, which no woman except
housemaids ever entered. So, traditionally, it had given
asylum to everything in the house no woman of taste or
delicacy could stand; and Augustine himself had altered
nothing. The paint was a sour chocolate brown. The chairs
and settees were uniformly covered in leather. This faded
purple leather covered even the top of a kind of stool made
from a huge elephant's-trotter (Great-uncle William had
ridden the beast in battle or shot it in the chase, Augustine
could never remember which).
19
20 THE FOX IN THE ATTIC
In a tall china-cabinet here there were some lovely
pieces of porcelain — Sevres, Wedgwood, Dresden, Wor-
cester— and other exquisite objects too: a large conch in
silver-gilt, engraved with the royal arms of the Wittels-
bachs and held out invitingly by a nymph: again, a deli-
cate tureen-like receptacle in Pacific tortoiseshell which
had stood (so the printed card stated) in the cabin of Cap-
tain Cook. You wondered, perhaps, to see such beauties
banished here — till you realised that this was Uncle
William's unique collection of rare spittoons.
But there was even worse here than leather and brown
paint and china of equivocal uses. The engravings on the
walls for instance: if you looked at them closely and with
not too innocent an eye you found they tended to be
coarse — or even French.
Those two good old Tory bachelors, those noble Vic-
torian figures — Great-uncle Arthur! Great-uncle William!
Indeed what a powder-magazine of schoolboy naughtiness
it had pleased them to sit on, in here! Hardly anything in
this room was quite what it seemed at first sight. That
ribbed-glass picture looked at first just an innocent rustic
scene, but as you walked past you saw from the tail of
your eye the billy-goat going incessantly in and out, in
and out. Again, the top of that elephant-foot stool was
hinged, and lifted. Absently, Augustine lifted it now: it
housed a commode of course, and there was a dead spider
in it; but until this very moment he had never noticed
that under the spider and the dust you could just descry,
printed in green under the glaze on the bottom of the
china pot, the famous — the execrated face of Gladstone.
That had been typical of the fanatical way those two
Tory old children felt about Liberals. Their treatment of
Augustine's own father was a case in point. Though a
Conservative himself he had married the daughter of a
house traditionally W'hig and for this he had never been
forgiven, never asked here again. Thus Augustine's own
POLLY AND RACHEL 21
childhood visits here had always been paid either alone
or with a nurse. As if the taint was one clinging to the
female line, even his elder sister Mary had never once
been asked here to Newton Llantony (in fairness for this
deprivation, Mary had been sent alone to spend one whole
summer holidays in Germany, where they had cousins.
That must have been 1913: she was to have gone again,
only next year the Kaiser invaded Belgium and the war
came).
In addition to improper pictures, many of the lesser
family portraits were hung here in this billiardroom —
'lesser' in the sense that either the sitter or the painter was
better forgotten: black sheep and frail ladies; and the
pseudo-Lely, the Academy rejects. But as soon as Augus-
tine's father had married a Liberal, even the lovely draw-
ing Rossetti had done of him as an infant angel with a
tabor could no longer be hung anywhere at all at Newton
Llantony — not even in here! Augustine had lately found
this drawing hidden away upstairs in his grandmother's
bedroom drawer: whereas Henry's portrait, posthumously
painted by a limited company from photographs— that
vast act of worship in oil-paint hung over the fireplace in
the largest drawing-room.
Henry even while he lived had been the apple of every
eye. The uncles had built him his own squash-court: when
he was killed at Ypres in permanent mourning for him the
court was not played in any more: it became where the
larger stuffed animals were housed, including a giraffe.
So much bitter fanaticism in those two old Tories: yet
in practice so much actual kindness to many, including
Augustine himself — the "Liberal Woman's" child! The two
things seemed hard to reconcile. Over the carved autumnal
marbles of the empty fireplace there hung a huge presen-
tation portrait of Uncle Arthur as Master, his otterhounds
grouped around him; so Augustine fell to studying the
face now, in the gloaming, in the hope of discovering its
secret. But all it showed was that years of concentration
22 THE FOX IN THE ATTIC
on the animal had made the Master himself grow so like
an otter it was a wonder his own hounds had not rent him,
Actaeon-wise. And Uncle William? The only portrait of
him here was a small lady-like watercolour in full uniform
painted by an artistic colour-sergeant at Hongkong. It
showed the General's eye large and liquid as a Reynolds
cherub's, the rounded cheek as innocent (there can have
been no Liberals in Hongkong for Uncle William to look
so much at peace).
The sky was darkening, but the mist seemed to have
cleared now: through the tall uncurtained window what
seemed like a single low star suddenly winked out, blurred
only by the runnels on the glass.
Augustine raised the sash. That 'star' must be the lamps
in distant Flemton being lit (Flemton was a little mediaeval
rock-citadel eight miles away guarding the river mouth:
a kind of Welsh Mont-St. -Michel, or miniature Gibraltar).
For a minute or two he stood watching, his solid height
silhouetted against the window, what little daylight re-
mained illumining his freckled, sensitive, sensible young
face. But although his thoughts were distracted now, his
features still wore the imprint of the shock he had had —
like yesterday's footprints still discernible on dewy grass.
Chapter 4
Uncle Arthur the otter and Uncle William the faded
general. . . Augustine had been fond of both old men
when he was a child, and he warmed to their memory now
— but fond of them as objects rather than as people, for
what grotesques they were! Too old even for billiards in
the end, they had sat here day-in day-out winter and
summer one each side of a roaring fire while dust settled
on the cover of the ever-shrouded table. Uncle Arthur
was stone deaf in the left ear, hard of hearing in the
right: Uncle William stone deaf in the right ear, hard
of hearing in the left (hence that peculiar custom-built
telephone). Both used enormous ear-trumpets: Uncle
William was nearly blind too, so used a powerful monocle
as well.
Suddenly it struck Augustine with force: how was it so
great a gulf divided his own from every previous genera-
tion, so that they seemed like different species?
The kind of Time called 'History' ended at the Battle of
Waterloo: after that, Time had gone into a long dark
tunnel or chrysalis called the Victorian Age. It had come
out into daylight again at the Present Day, but as some-
thing quite different: it was as impossible to imagine one-
self born a Victorian or born in 'History' as. . . as born
a puma.
But wherein did the difference demonstrably lie? For
the moment he could not get beyond his starting-point
that all previous generations had been objects, whereas his
were people: that is, what mattered were their insides —
what they thought, what they felt. Not their outsides at
all: the natural face in the shaving-glass was not him, only
the invisible mind and the erupting ego within it ranked
as him. Whereas those. . . those ancient objects his uncles
23
84 THE FOX IN THE ATTIC
and their generation were outsides only: hollow bundles
of behaviourist gestures, of stylised reactions to stimuli like
Pavlov's dogs. Their only 'reality' was the grotesques they
looked, the grotesqueries they did. — Take Uncle William's
story of old Sir Rhydderch Prydderch, a neighbour said
to have torn out his staircase at the age of seventy and
thereafter swarmed up a rope every night to go to bed:
had such a grotesque any reality except as an imagined
spectacle halfway up a rope?
Or take the story of that disastrous fox-hunt (it had
been Uncle Arthur speaking this time, sitting on Augus-
tine's little bed one evening and feeding him with bread-
and-milk). Wolves, imported by a noble Polish exile to
make his new Pembrokeshire home more homelike, were
alleged to have crossed with the local foxes and brought
forth monstrous hybrid young: hence, ultimately, Uncle
Arthur's bedtime story of those little terrified figures in
Pink clinging in trees with a pack of huge red ravening
foxes howling underneath (the story had been told with
relish, for the Master of Otterhounds had despised fox-
hunters "sitting dry-arse on their horses all day" almost as
he had despised Liberals).
These particular grotesques were only hearsay, and per-
haps even fabulous. But as well as his uncles there were
plenty of other notable 'outsides' Augustine had seen
among his elders with his own eyes. There was Dr. Brinley,
for instance: who was legendary, but living still. Dr. Brinley
was an aged adored fox-hunting coroner never even
half sober even when on a horse. Once Augustine as a
schoolboy had pulled off his cap in the High Street at
Penrys Cross out of respect for the dead; but it proved
to be the coroner not the corpse they were carrying into
Court.
Another notable grotesque here had been the late
rector: parson not person, a mere clerical keeper of pigs
that used to get loose during Service. From his pulpit he
could see into his rectory garden, and Sunday after
POLLY AND RACHEL 25
Sunday what he saw there made him falter and repeat
himself and then suddenly explode into a cry of'PigsF that
startled strangers no end. At that cry the rectory children
(they had left the sty open deliberately of course) would
rise and sidle out of their pew, bow to the altar before
turning their backs on it, mince down the aisle with their
muffs and prayer-books and Sunday hats. . . and the
moment they were through the church door burst into
loud whoops as they scampered off.
The late bishop (who had a beard like old Kruger's)
came to luncheon here at Newton one day: it was 1916,
and Henry was home on embarkation leave. The rector
was there, but the reverend wits had now begun notice-
ably to fail and so Uncle Arthur asked the bishop himself
to say Grace. The rector protested — etiquette was for him
to say Grace, and he struggled to his feet. But after 'For
what we are about to receive. . .' the usual form of words
must have escaped him, for he stumbled on ex tempore:
"The plump chicken, the three excellent vegetables. . ."
Then he sat down, seething with indignation and mutter-
ing what sounded like "May the Lord in His mercy blast
and braise us all!"
Next Sunday he announced from the pulpit a momen-
tous discovery: Johns the Baptist and Evangelist were one
and the same person! He was stuttering with excitement,
but Augustine heard no more because Uncle William,
startled at the news, dropped his eyeglass in his ear-
trumpet and began fishing for it with a bunch of keys.
Uncle Arthur in his senior corner of the family box-pew
kept commenting "Damn' young fool!" (he was unaware
of the loudness of his own voice, of course) "Oh the silly
damn' fool!" then snatched the ear-trumpet from his
brother's hand and dislodged the eyeglass by putting the
trumpet to his lips and blowing a blast like the horn of
Roland.
As the scene came back to him now Augustine burst
out laughing in the echoing, comfortable room those two
a6 THE FOX IN THE ATTIC
old men had made: which should have been Henry's: but
which instead was his.
A breath of wind came through the opened window.
In the dusk something white fluttered off the marble fire-
place shelf where it had been propped and Augustine
struck a match to look at it. It was an engraved and
emblazoned invitation-card:
The High Steward and Worshipful Court
of
FLEMTOM
Request
— and then his name, and so on.
At the sight of that card his conscience pricked him;
for the annual Banquet was tonight and he had not even
remembered to answer. His two old uncles, of course, had
attended the High Steward's Banquet yearly to the last;
but wild horses could not drag Augustine to any function
of that kind and surely the sooner people ceased even
inviting him, the better! Bucolic banquets, flower-shows,
the magistrate's bench, audit-days, hunt balls — the young
squire of Newton was absolutely determined not to get
'involved'; and surely the neighbourhood ought to be only
too thankful— nobody wants a Heavy Squire these days!
In 1923 it's quite out of date. At the very least he wouldn't
be missed: there are plenty of noisome little creatures who
like doing that sort of thing. Thus he could feel his lip curl
a little in derision — though quite involuntarily — as he
turned himself in the dusk to contemplate once more that
low fixed star which was all the lights of distant. . . of
gregarious, festive Flemton.
For the moment he had clean forgotten what had just
happened on the Marsh; and yet in his face that look of
yesterday's footmarks had still persisted even while he
laughed.
Chapter 5
Flemton, the object of Augustine's mild involuntary
derision. . .
That long line of dunes dividing the seven-mile stretch
of sea-marsh from the sea ended in a single precipitous
peninsular outcrop of rock, and this was washed by the
mouth of a small smelly tidal river which served as creek
still for a few coasting smacks (though the trade was already
dying) . The tiny, unique self-governing township of Flem-
ton was crowded right on top of this rock, the peeling
yellow stucco of its Regency houses bulging out over its
mediaeval walls like ice-cream from a cornet.
This was Flemton's great night — the night of the ban-
quet— and now the rain had stopped. Princes Street was
decorated: Chinese lanterns hung in the pollarded limes:
signal-flags and other bunting, coloured tablecloths, tanned
sails, even gay petticoats and Sunday trousers streamed
from some of the poorer windows. The roadway milled
with happy citizenry hoping for a fight presently but not
yet: little Jimmy- the-pistol was bicycling up and down
among them letting off rockets from his handlebars, the
pocket of his jacket on fire.
Moreover the aged, famous Dr. Brinley had driven
himself over early from Penrys Cross along the sands in
his pony- trap. Dr. Brinley knew Flemton of old: each
elegant, rotting, fungusy house and the men, women and
children who swarmed in them. He saw all these people
as he tended to see the whole world — and indeed, as the
world too saw him — with a heightening, Hogarthian eye;
but he loved them and needed them none the less. The
scene tonight was meat and drink to Dr. Brinley and he
paused to enjoy it.
A group of women in the middle of Princes Street had
27
28 THE FOX IN THE ATTIC
their heads together: "Can't think where that Dai of mine
has got to," Mrs. Dai Roberts was saying.
She seemed to speak with difficulty. 'That woman has
mislaid her false teeth and the ones she has borrowed are
a poor fit,' thought Dr. Brinley in the shadows, chuckling.
"Down on the Marsh, shooting with Mr. Augustine he
was very usual," said a yellow-haired young man with a
hare-lip: "Happen they've stopped on for the evening
flight."
"My Dai'll never give the Banquet a miss, I know that!"
said Mrs. Roberts.
"Will Mr. Augustine be attending this year, Mrs.
Roberts, do you know?" a woman asked her diffidently.
Mrs. Roberts spat like a man and returned no other
answer; but the quivering of her goitre made her look like
an angry turkey and the others took their cue:
"It's a crying shame," said someone.
"Shut away in that great house all alone — it's not
natural," said another.
"Clean mental, to my way of thinking," said someone
else. Then she lowered her voice a little: "There's men-
tality in the blood, they say."
"Mentality!" exclaimed Mrs. Roberts contemptuously:
"Wickedness you mean!" Then she too lowered her voice
to a sinister tone: "Why for should he shut hisself away
like that if his life was fit to be seen?"
A knowing and a scandalised look descended on them all:
"Flying in the face of Almighty God!"
"Enough to bring his uncles back from the grave."
There was a brief pause. Then:
"Poor young Mr. Henry. . . Pity he got hisself killed in
that old war."
"The little duck! I seen him guv his bath once, the little
angel! Loviest little bit of meat. . ."
"Aye, it's always that way: while them as could be
spared. . ."
"Rotten old Kayser!"
POLLY AND RACHEL 29
"Still: if most days he's out shooting with your Dai. . ."
" 'Days'! But what about the nights, Mrs. Pritchard?
Answer me that!"
Mrs. Pritchard evidently couldn't.
Dr. Brinley strolled on, but now another early arrival
had paused for breath after the steep ascent. This was the
new bishop, whose first visit to Flemton it was. Meanwhile
the talk had been continuing:
' ''All alone there with no one to see — it just don' t bear thinking on! ' '
"/ wouldn't go near the place — not if you paid me."
"Quite right, Mrs. Locarno! Nor I wouldn't neither!"
"Mot even by daylight I wouldn't!"
The bishop sighed, closing his fine eyes. These unhappy
women! So palpably striving to warm their own several
loneliness and unlikeability at the fires of some common
hatred. . . They were closing in like a scrum now —
huddling over the little hellish warmth they had kindled,
and hissing their words. But why this anathema against
solitariness? 'Women who have failed to achieve com-
panionship in their homes, in their marriages: women with
loneliness thrust upon them, I suppose they're bound to
be outraged by anyone who deliberately chooses loneliness.'
A man of orderly mind, the bishop liked to get things
generalised and taped like that. Now, his generalisation
achieved, the tension in his dark face relaxed a little.
Meanwhile Dr. Brinley had poked in his nose at the
'Wreckers' Arms' (as he always called the place). Here,
and in the Assembly Room behind, preparation of the
banquet was going ahead with equal enjoyment whether
their rich neighbour Augustine was going to honour them
with his presence or not.
All that morning, while the tide was out, farm carts
from the mainland had driven down the river bank to
where the track ended at a wide bight of smooth hard
tidal sand. This divided the last stretch of low-water
3o THE FOX IN THE ATTIC
river-channel from the saltings of the Marsh; traversing the
length of it, they had reached the final sickle of the dunes
and the way up into Flemton. These carts had carried
chickens, geese, turkeys, even whole sheep; or at least a
sack of flour or a crock of butter, for the High Steward's
Banquet was something of a Dutch treat and few of the
guests came quite empty-handed.
But that was over, now. Now, the evening tide had
welled in through the river mouth and round behind the
rock, flooding the sandy bight and turning it from Flem-
ton's only highway into a vast shallow lagoon. In the dark
the shining water was dotted with little boats nodding at
anchor and the slanting poles of fish-traps. Flemton was
now cut off, except for an isthmus of hummocky sand
leading only to the dunes. But already ducks, chickens,
geese, turkeys, legs and shoulders of mutton, loins of pork,
sirloins of beef, sucking-pigs — there was far more prov-
ender than the Wreckers ever could have cooked alone,
and according to custom it had been farmed out among
all the private ovens in the place.
Now, with all these and with huge home-cured hams
boiled in cider as well, with pans of sausages, apple-pies,
shuddering jellies in purple and yellow, castellated blanc-
manges, bedroom jugs of congealed Bird's custard, buckets
of boiled potatoes, basins of cabbage — every matron of
Flemton was gathered in the Wreckers' big kitchen and full
of jollity. Even a happy plumber and his mate had man-
aged to choose this day to install the new sink, and were
doggishly threatening the ladies' ankles with their hissing
blowlamp.
Barrels of beer were discharging into every shape of jug
and ewer.
When the female kitchen company caught sight of Dr.
Brinley they all hilariously shrieked together. He raised
an arm in acknowledgement, then slipped quietly into the
deserted bar from behind.
Chapter 6
Ostensibly Flemton banquet was an occasion for
men only. Only men were invited, sat down at table,
delivered speeches and sang songs. But the women cooked
and waited, teased and scolded the banqueters, heckled the
speeches and encored the songs if they felt like it; and the
women certainly enjoyed it all quite as much as the men.
To tell the truth, the men were inclined to be a bit
portentous and solemn. Indeed the only really happy and
carefree male in the whole Assembly Room seemed to be
that fabulous Dr. Brinley the Coroner — who was eighty-
five, and already very drunk, and knew that everybody
loved him.
They had tried to steer Dr. Brinley away from sitting
next to the bishop, who was new to the mitre and fifty and
cold teetotal: "That seat's Mr. Augustine's, Doctor bach:
come you along this way. . ." But the old man looked round
in astonishment: "What! Is the boy actually coming, then?"
It was no good: he read the answer in their faces and
sat down without more ado.
Presently the doctor nudged the bishop with his elbow,
at the same time pointing dramatically across the table at a
certain Alderman Teller. Alderman Teller was trying in vain
to settle his huge chins into his unaccustomed high collar.
"Do you keep fowls, my lad?" the doctor asked: "My
Lordl should say: forgive an old man, laddie, tongue's taken
to slipping."
"Yes, yes," said the bishop: "That is. . . no: not now,
but as a boy. . ."
Leaving his outstretched arm at the point as if he had
forgotten it Dr. Brinley turned even more confidentially
towards the bishop, breathing at him a blast of whiskey
and old age: "Then you're familiar with the spectacle of
3i
32 THE FOX IN THE ATTIC
a very big broody hen trying to get down to work on a
clutch of eggs in a bucket that's too narrow for her?" At
this the bishop turned on him a face like a politely enquir-
ing hatchet; but the doctor seemed to think he had made
his point quite clearly enough.
Opposite, Alderman Teller — hearing, but also not
catching the allusion — pushed an obstinate fold of jowl
into his collar with his finger, then opened his little pink
mouth and rolled his eyes solemnly. "Perfect!" shouted
Dr. Brinley with a whoop of laughter. "Your health,
Alderman Teller dear lad!"
As they clinked glasses the alderman's face broke into
a delighted smile as sweet as a child's: "Rhode Islands,
Doctor! That's what you ought to have, same as me. But
you're right, they do tend to lay away."
However the doctor was no longer listening. He had
turned in his seat and was now pointing along the table
at the High Steward himself. The High Steward, bashful
in his seat of honour, was giving nervous little tugs at the
gold chain of office hung round his neck. "Penalty Five
Pounds for Improper Use, Tom !" the doctor cried suddenly.
"And I doubt the banquet will stop for you, at that!"
This time the bishop's lip did twitch.
"Shut up, Doc," muttered the High Steward, amiably
but just a little nettled: "You're bottled." Then he turned
round to look at the old man with a wonder not quite
free of envy: "Why — and we haven't even drunk 'The
King' yet!"
That was true. The bishop began counting the twenty
or more toasts on the toast-list in front of him — a toast
and a song alternately: with such a start, could Dr. Brinley
possibly last the course? 'The King'. . . 'The Immortal
Memory of the Founder'. . . 'The Fallen in the Great War\ . .
Dr. Brinley was down to sing 'Clementine' immediately
after 'The Fallen\ he saw. And then he noticed further
down it was Dr. Brinley who was to propose 'The Lord
Bishop' ! In his missionary days in Africa he had attended
POLLY AND RACHEL 33
some curious gatherings, but this bid fair. . . indeed he
began to wonder if it had been prudent to accept.
"Glad you came," said the old man suddenly — apropos
of nothing, as if reading his thoughts — and patted him on
the shoulder: "Good lad!. . . Good Lord" he corrected
himself under his breath, and chuckled.
Meanwhile, the banquet continued. The banqueters ate
fast and in almost total silence: only Dr. Brinley's sallies
kept ringing out in quick succession. "A kind of licensed
jester, I suppose," the bishop ruminated. "But really!
At his age!"
"My Lord," said Dr. Brinley, breathing whiskey and
bad teeth in his face again: "I wonder would you help an
old man in his difficulties, eh?" He pushed his face even
closer, and waited for an answer open-mouthed.
"If I can. . ."
"Then tell me something very naughty you did as a
little nipper."
The bishop's indrawn breath was almost a gasp — for
memory had taken him quite unawares. 'A blow below
the apron,' the doctor thought, reading his gasp, and
chuckled: "No, laddie — not that one," he said aloud:
"Nothing really shaming. . . just something for a good
laugh when I come to speak to your health."
"You must give me time to think," the bishop said
evenly. That sudden ancient recollection of real wrong-
doing unexpiated had shaken him, and he was too sincere
a man to force a smile about it. — But was 'a good laugh'
quite. . .?
"They'll like you all the better for it," the old man
cajoled, as if yet again reading his thoughts.
But there the matter rested, for someone was forcing his
way through the crowd of women serving — the coroner
was wanted on the phone. The police at Penrys Cross, it
was; and they wouldn't take no for an answer, he was
told. Dr. Brinley sighed and left the table.
34 THE FOX IN THE ATTIC
The telephone was in the stillroom, but even above the
clatter of the banquet his voice could be heard every-
where: "Eh? — No, not tomorrow: not possible, hounds
meeting at Nant Eifion. . . No, nor Wednesday neither:
they're meeting at the Bridge. . . Tell ye what, I'll hold
the inquest Thursday. . . Eh? You ought to be thankful,
laddie: gives you longer to find out who she was. . . Not
local: you're sure of that?"
A screech of laughter from the kitchen drowned the
next few words, but everyone heard what followed: "Mr.
Augustine did you say? — Then that's that! Mr. Augustine
will have to be summoned."
Dr. Brinley seemed quite unaware of the general hush
as he made his way back to the table. He sat down,
grumbling. But at his elbow, arrested in the very act of
draining a whiskey-bottle into his glass, stood Mrs. Dai
Roberts — and her triumphant eyes were now on stalks:
"Summonsed? What's he been caught doing, Sir?"
"Who?"
"Why that Mr. Augustine, of course!"
The coroner turned and looked at her judicially: "Hasn't
your Dai told you anything yet?"
"He's not come home. Missing the banquet and all, I
just can't understand. . ."
So, Dai had gone to earth again! Just like him, rather
than face the witness-box. Shy as a wild thing. . . ordin-
arily Dr. Brinley sympathised with Dai's disappearances,
married to that woman; but it was awkward now, just
when his evidence would be badly wanted at the inquest.
"No Dai, eh?" he murmured to himself.
"Tell me, Doctor bachV she wheedled. But he fixed his
eye indignantly on his half-filled glass:
"Woman! Is that how you pour a drink?"
"Means opening another bottle," she answered impati-
ently: "Mr. Augustine, you were just saying. . .?"
"Then fetch one and open it," he replied implacably.
Chapter J
Dr. brinley was happy. The room had begun to rock
gently but only like — like a cradle: the motion was not
unpleasant yet.
It was good to see old customs kept up. Flemton
Banquet claimed to be as old as Flemton's Norman
charter — old as the titular High Stewardship itself and
the little mediaeval garrison of Flemish mercenaries out
of which the place had grown (to this day no Welsh was
spoken within Flemton, though all the mainland talked
it). It had been well worth the long pony-drive from the
Gross! Eh? It was good — good to be here among all these
good fellows. Laddies, and lassies too: they all liked him.
They liked his jokes. . . That was the point: he was among
them and they all loved him so now he was on top of
things. . .
He surveyed the room. It was time now to think up a
new joke, else they'd forget him and start talking among
themselves. A good one . . . well then a bad one, any-
thing. . .
But his cudgelled brains went suddenly as obstinate as a
cudgelled ass.
Perhaps another glass? — A-a-a-ah! Thank God for His
good gift of whiskey! Drinking. . . Yes, drinking and
hunting: those were the only two times he really felt 'We3
were all one, felt he truly belonged.
Whiskey. . . yes, and hunting too — in the past, but now
you were old, now you could do no more than jog to the
Meet and back. . .
This motion, now: was it a cradle, or was it a galloping
horse titty-tup titty-tup. . . ?
"Hup! And over!" he suddenly exclaimed aloud.
The room faded and he was away: hounds in full cry,
35
36 THE FOX IN THE ATTIC
Black Bess (or was it Dandy?) between his thighs, leading
the field. Hup! Black Bess it was: how beautifully she
changed feet on top of the bank and then the downward
plunge, the miraculous recovery and away. — Aren't you
afraid? — Yes of course he was afraid. Broken neck, crushed
ribs . . . but damn it!
That gap to the right looks a trifle easier. . . Well, perhaps,
but. . . Curse her she's going for the highest place of
a-a-a-all! Hup!— Oh, thank God!
"Gentlemen, The King!"
Dr. Brinley was on his feet before any of them, and
added a fervent "God bless him!" when he had emptied his
glass. — Good lad, George Five! But that boy of his (the
Prince) would break his neck one of these days if they let
him go on riding.
Yes, hunting was the thing . . . of course no doctor could
practise and hunt three days a week as well! Be damned to
private practice, then! They could go on their bended
knees. . .
Was that the real reason, or just you were a rotten bad doctor? —
Eh? — Did you leave your practice? Or did your practice leave you?
An angry tear rolled slowly down his nose.
A drunken doctor, a sot? — Well, they'd made him Coroner,
hadn't they? That showed they respected him, didn't it? —
Maybe they'd rather trust you with the dead than with the living. . .
"Gentlemen, The Memory of the Fallen!"
A bugle sounded— shatteringly, in that enclosed space.
Again the whole room rose stiffly to attention. Most had
their memories (for that 1914 war had been a holocaust):
all wore faces as if they had.
Briefly and gravely the bishop said his piece. As he did
so he tried to keep staring at the Legion banner on the
wall opposite, but his gaze was drawn down willy-nilly to
a young man under it with ribands on his chest. All that
young man's face except mouth and chin was hidden in a
POLLY AND RACHEL 37
black mask which had no holes for eyes . . . and suddenly
the whole room reeked overpoweringly of beer.
The Fallen ... as Dr. Brinley drank the melancholy
toast his hand trembled, and his heart was torn anew at
the tragedy that he himself should have been too young to
serve. For what bond can equal the bond which unites for
ever those who have once been heroes together, however
long ago? 'I was at the Alma, I was at Inkermann. . .' Oh
to have been able to say today 'I charged with the Light
Brigade'! But they wouldn't have him; for alas, in 1853 he
was only aged fifteen.
The Fallen ... at one with them, perhaps, in their ever-
lasting blank sleep: or conscious only at this annual
moment of the raised glasses that he too was one of the
forever-unforgotten. But now he must die in any case, and
die alone. . .
For Dr. Brinley believed he was at least doctor enough
to know that in a very few months he himself would have
to take to his bed. For a while the invaluable Blodwen —
the fat, white, smiling Blodwen — would look after him.
But only for a while. Blodwen was a wonderful nurse, so
long as she thought you might recover: but not for 'the
dying part'. She couldn't do with that. A village woman of
fifty, drawn to sick beds like a moth to a candle and never
yet had she seen a body dead! No, at a given stage and
with nothing said Blodwen disappeared and her sister
Eirwen took her place. For Eirwen was wonderful with
'the dying part', kind Eirwen had closed more eyes than
any woman at the Cross. They always knew what it
meant when Blodwen left them and Eirwen took her place.
Meanwhile? — Meanwhile, he drained another glass.
He felt now he was set on a pinnacle: he supposed it
must be the pinnacle of his own approaching death. Any-
way, from his pinnacle how remote tney all suddenly
began to seem, this crowd he had courted all his life! This
crowd here jabbering and eating . . . hoping . . . young.
38 THE FOX IN THE ATTIC
From his pinnacle (it swayed a little as in the wind,
from all the whiskey he had drunk) he now saw all the
hearts of all the kingdoms of the world outspread, on offer
— such as all his life he had coveted. But a change seemed
somehow lately to have seeped into his soul from the very
bottom: he found now he did not desire them any more.
Suddenly his pinnacle shot up to a towering height from
which these people looked no more than minute gesticulat-
ing emmets. Moreover his pinnacle was swinging violendy
to and fro, now, in a full gale: he had to set his whole
mind to clinging on.
He hoped the motion would not make him sea-sick.
The bishop, covertly watching him, saw that grey look,
the sagging and trembling jaw: "This man has at last
begun to die," he said to himself. But then he saw also the
transparent empty eyes, and recalled looking in through
other eyes like them — younger eyes, but opening onto the
same unbottomed vacant pit within: "Also he is very,
very drunk," he told himself understandingly.
Maybe — reckoning from the bottom up — the old
doctor was indeed three parts dead already: for already
there was so much nothing in him down there where once
the deeper emotions had been. But at the still-living trivial
brink of his mind there was something stirring even now:
something which teased and foxed him, for he could not
quite recognise what it was. . .
"Thursday!" that something said.
Moreover his eyes had begun to prick with tears! Was
there something wrong about 'Thursday', then? lThurs-
dayV 'THURSDAY!' The word was booming insistently in
his head like any bell. He took another sip of whiskey to
recall his wandering memory. A-a-a-ah! Now it had come
back to him. The telephone call, the little body ... he had
to hold an inquest. . .
At that the lately too-penetrable eyes clouded over, the
jaw closed, the drooping cheeks tautened to expression of
POLLY AND RACHEL 39
a kind. He turned and gripped the bishop's arm with his
bridle hand and his face was all puckered to suit his
words: "My Lord!" he gulped, "It's a mere little maid!"
The bishop turned towards him, attentive but mystified.
"A green child," Dr. Brinley went on. "Yet here's me still,
andjow/"
The bishop still looked mystified; and the doctor was
mildly shocked to find how littie his own pathetic words
moved even himself. So he tried again — and at least his
old voice now quavered dramatically enough: "A wee
maid scarce six years of age, they said. Dead! Tell me the
meaning of it, you man of God!"
Then he hiccuped, burst altogether into tears and upset
his glass. They all turned kindly faces on him.
"Come on, Doc," he heard the High Steward saying:
"Give us 'Clementine'."
Chapter 8
Midnight, back now at Newton Llantony. . .
As the clouds broke and the bright moon at last
came out, the single point of light to which distance
diminished the lamps of all roystering Flemton paled.
In the big Newton drawing-room the shutters did not
quite reach to the semi-circular tops of the windows, and
through these high openings the moon sent bars of light
into the black gloom within. It shone on the shapeless
holland bag which enclosed the great central chandelier:
threw criss-cross shadows on the dust-sheets covering the
furniture and covering the old mirrors on the walls. It
shone on the new gilt frame of the life-size khaki portrait
above the fireplace: glinted on the word 'Ypres', and the
date and the name, inscribed on brass.
It glinted on the painted highlights in the dead young
man's eyes.
It shone on the small shapeless dark shape in the middle
of the big sofa opposite, the outstretched arms. Glinted on
the little slits of eyeball between the half-open lids.
Augustine, in his white attic bedroom under the roof,
woke with the moon staring straight in his eyes.
Round him the house was silent. In all its hundred
rooms he knew there was no living being that night but him.
Downstairs a door banged without reason. His scalp
pricked momentarily, and the yawn he was beginning
went off at half-cock.
He who so loved to be alone felt now a sudden un-
mitigated longing for living human company.
His sister Mary. . .
Her child Polly, that little niece he loved. . .
For a moment, being but half-awake, he thought Polly
40
POLLY AND RACHEL 41
had crept into his bed and was sleeping there, tiny and
warm and humid, her feet planted firmly against his
chest. But when he stirred she vanished: the bed was
empty and cold.
Where would they be now, Polly and her mother? He
had an idea they were away from home, there had been
something in Mary's last letter. . .
Instinctively Augustine knew that this eremitical phase
of his life was now over, had finally served its turn: indeed
he was tempted to get out his Bentley that very minute
and drive to London, drive right through the night as if
he meant never to come back to Newton. 'London/' He re-
called it now: that was where Mary was taking Polly for a
day or two, she had written; and he could be with them
there by breakfast.
But he decided after all to wait till morning. He must
at least be still here when the ambulance arrived, he
remembered. . .
Meanwhile he lay where he was, neither awake nor
asleep, in his familiar boyhood bed, cold and sweating.
Something in the room creaked.
Chapter g
A ugustine waited till the morning before starting; but
./~\the belt of rainy weather travelled eastward ahead of
him across Carmarthen and Brecon. Clearing even the
eastern counties of Wales about midnight, long before
dawn it had arrived in London (where Polly was). There
it poured heavily and steadily all day. All that wet Tuesday
it felt in London as if thunder was about, though none was
heard.
On the opposite side of Eaton Square from Polly's there
was a certain tall house which Polly always passed slowly
and with evident respect. It belonged to Lady Sylvia
Davenant, but Polly called it 'Janey's house'. Seen from
a window of the upstairs drawing-room of this house, the
umbrellas in the street below, that Tuesday, looked like
mushrooms on the run (thought Sylvia Davenant), and
the tops of the cars like special sleek slugs — also very much
on the run, as they cleft a passage through the mushrooms.
'A good simile,' thought Lady Sylvia, 'because mush-
rooms and slugs both are creatures of the rain, the very
thought of them evokes wetness — but no, a bad simile
because mushrooms never move at all and even slugs
are. . . sluggish. But, "run. . ."? What does run in the rain?
— Only colours I suppose,' she concluded rather wildly.
With an effort she recalled her attention to Janey at her
side. For this was litde Janey's 'Hour': her drawing-room
hour with her aunt between tea and bedtime. Janey had
flattened her nose against the pane, thus clouding it with
her breath so that she could hardly see out at all.
"Darling," said Lady Sylvia brightly, "what do you
think those umbrellas look like?"
"Like umbrellas," said Janey perfunctorily. "Auntie,
why does rain?"
42
POLLY AND RACHEL 43
"Darling!" said Lady Sylvia, "You know I don't like
being called 'Auntie', it sounds like someone old. Why
can't you just call me 'Sylvia'? Don't you think that's a
pretty name?"
"You are old," said Janey. "Anyway, Sylvia's a girl in
the Gardens already. . . 'Saliva', / call her."
"Darling!"
Janey withdrew her face an inch or two from the misted
glass, put out her tongue and licked herself a neat round
peephole.
"Look!" she cried, pointing through the trees at a
sudden light which appeared in a top window on the far
side of the Square: "There's Polly- wolly going to bed
HOURS BEFORE ME— YAH!" she yelled: "Polly-
wolly-doodle ! Pollyollywollyollydoodle-O O D L E - O O -
OOO!"
The yell could not possibly have carried across the wide
Square but it nearly split her aunt's eardrum: extra-
ordinary it could come from so very small a body!
"Darling pleasel Not quite so loud! And who is this
'Polly'?"
"Oh, just a person in the Gardens sometimes. . . soppy
litde kid." Janey paused, glanced at the clock, considered,
and added with a perceptible effort: "I bet she wets her
bed."
Janey looked sidelong at her aunt. The 'Hour' had still
twenty minutes to go, but now already Her Ladyship was
crossing the room to ring for Janey's gouvernante. 'Goody!'
thought Janey, with a chapter to finish upstairs.
Janey was an only child (and the result of a mechanical
accident at that). She had been parked on her Aunt
Sylvia for a couple of months interminable to both of
them while her parents were getting their divorce.
Chapter w
Janey was quite right about the light opposite. Polly
was going to bed, and going to bed rather earlier than
usual.
Nanny had lit the gas, although it was not really dark
yet, to combat all that wet and gloom outside. Now she
sat in front of an enormous blaze of coal mending her
stockings (which were of black cotton with white toes and
heels). The heat of the fire, and the steam rising from the
round zinc bath on the middle of the carpet, made the
room with its tight-shut window like a hothouse; and
Polly's face was shiny with perspiration. Nanny had lit the
light against the gloom but Polly wanted to look out: she
was feeling sad, and the rain and gloom outside and all
those wet hurrying people suited her mood.
Polly had a slight cold — it always happened when she
came to London! This was the reason she was to have her
bath in the nursery tonight instead of going down the
draughty stairs to the big mahogany bathroom two floors
below. Moreover, Polly had been today to the dentist.
That also seemed always to happen whenever she came to
London. He seldom hurt her, but he did indignities to the
secret places of her mouth — shrivelling its sensitive wet
membranes with a squirt of hot wind, plastering a dry
cloth onto her wet tongue, poking wads of dry cotton wool
into her cheek, hooking over her bottom teeth a bubbling
sucking thing which plucked at the roots of her tongue. . .
by the end she had felt as if her dried-up mouth had died
of drought and would never be able to wet itself again.
Nor could she quite breathe through her nose because of
her cold. . . almost she had wished he would hurt, to take
her mind off that horrible dryness and off the thought that
any moment her nose might run and she not able to get at it.
44
POLLY AND RACHEL 45
But most of all Polly was sad because she was lonely —
and that happened only when she came to London! She
never felt lonely at home in Dorset; for at Mellton Chase
there were animals to play with, but in London there were
only children.
Kensington Gardens, you would have thought, were full
of 'suitable' playmates for Polly. But all those children
were Londoners — or virtually Londoners. Already they
had formed their own packs, and nothing their nannies
could say — Polly's Nanny was high in their hierarchy, so
the nannies tried their best — would make them treat the
little country child as one of themselves. Under orders,
they would take her kindly by the hand and lead her away;
but once out of sight they turned her upside down, or
stood round her in a ring jeering her ignorance of their
private shibboleths.
They would call her derisively "Little Polly-wolly-
doodle", or even worse names such as "Baby-dolly-lulu".
Any name with 'baby' in it was hard to bear, for Polly's
age was just five and her struggle out of the slough of
babyhood so recent a memory that the very word 'baby'
seemed still to have power to drag her back into it.
Of all these groups in the Gardens, the most exclusive
and the most desirable was 'Janey's Gang'. This gang had
a rule: no one could join it who had not 'Knocked down a
Man'. This was not impossible even for quite small
children, for nothing in the rule required that he should be
looking; and if you had made him fall into water you were
an Officer straight away.
Janey herself was huge: she was turned seven. Janey
claimed three Men to her credit, two of them in water and
the third in a garden frame. She had done it so skilfully (or
her curls were so golden, her blue eyes so wide) that not
one of the three had suspected the push was intentional.
No wonder the gang was titularly 'Janey's Gang' !
Grown-ups were ex officio Enemy to all these children,
46 THE FOX IN THE ATTIC
to be out-smarted on every occasion: so, their scores rose.
But even if" Polly had been old enough and clever enough
properly to understand the Rule (she was not, in fact,
particularly intelligent), she could never even have made
a beginning. For Polly's own grown-ups were not 'Enemy',
that was the rub: they were infinitely kind, they made
little pretence of not adoring Polly and it never occurred
to Polly to make any pretence at all of not loving them
back. Loving, indeed, was the one thing she was really
good at: how then could she ever bring herself to 'knock
a Man down'?
Mr. Corbett, for example: the head gardener at
Mellton Chase, and indeed the greatest potentate on
earth: the massive sloping buttress of his front — his gold
watch-chain marked the halfway line of the ascent — held
him upright like a tower, and nowadays his hands never
deigned to touch fork or spade except to weed Miss
Polly's little garden for her; or to pick fruit, except when
he saw Miss Polly coming. . .
It was unthinkable to inflict on Mr. Corbett the in-
dignity of falling!
Or even on dear Gusting (her uncle Augustine, that
was). Of course he was a lesser dignitary in the world's
eyes than Mr. Corbett; but she loved him even more.
Admired and loved him with every burning cockle of her
heart!
There was magic in Gusting's very smell, his voice.
Chapter u
"r-piiME you got undressed, Miss Polly," said Nanny.
JL Slowly Polly wandered across to have her jersey
peeled off.
"Skin-a-rabbit," said Nanny, mechanically, as she
always did.
"Ow!" said Polly, as she always did (for the neck of her
jersey was too tight), and wandered off again nursing her
damaged ears. Nanny just had time to undo the three
large bone buttons on her back before she was out of reach,
and as she walked away the blue serge kilt with its white
cotton 'top' fell off around her feet.
The rest of her undressing Polly could do herself, given
time and her whole attention. It was chiefly button work:
she wore a 'liberty bodice', a White-Knight sort of under-
garment to which everything nether was buttoned or other-
wise attached (constricting elastic being bad for you). But
tonight her fingers fumbled feebly and uselessly, fainting at
the very first button; for her attention was all elsewhere.
Gusting had a game which only he played, the Jeremy
Fisher Game. A little mat was a waterlily leaf and Gusting
sat on it cross-legged, fishing with a long carriage-whip,
while Polly swam round him on the polished floor on her
stomach, being a fish. . . Polly began now to make em-
bryonic swimming movements with her hands.
"Stop dawdling," said Nanny, but without much hope.
Polly made a brief effort: something else fell off her, and
she stepped out of it where it lay. "Pick it up, dear," said
Nanny, again without much hope.
"Ninjun!" said Polly indignantly (Augustine had once
said her wandering manner of undressing and scattering
her clothes was like a Red Indian blazing his trail, and
that had hallowed it).
Minutes passed. . .
47
48 THE FOX 1\ 1 HE ATTIC
"Wake up, Miss Polly: stop dawdling," said Nanny.
Another brief effort, and so it went on till at last Polly
had on nothing but a clinging woollen vest as she stood
at the window, her chin reaching just above the sill, look-
ing out through the watery glass.
In the street far below people were still scurrying past.
There seemed no end to them. That was what was wrong
with London: "If only there were fewer people in the
world how much nicer it would be for we animals," Polly
told herself. . .
'We animals'! — Polly could think a rabbit's kind of
thoughts much easier than a grown-up's kind, for her
'thinking' like an animal's was still more than nine parts
emotion. Except for Augustine it was only with animals
she could form friendships on at all equal terms; for she
had no child-friends of her own age, and her love for most
grown-ups was necessarily more like a dog's for a man
than something between members of the same species. All
the most interesting hours of the day still tended to be
spent on all fours, and even in bodily size she was nearer
to her father's spaniel than she was to her father. The dog
weighed more than the child, as the see-saw had shown. . .
"Wake up!" said Nanny — still without much hope.
"Vest!" A final effort and the vest too lay on the floor.
Nanny made stirring sounds in the bath: "Gome on," said
Nanny, "or the water'll be half cold."
"I'm busy!" said Polly indignantly. She had found a
cake-currant on the floor and was trying to fix it in her
navel, but it wouldn't stay there. "If only I had some
honey," she thought. . . but at that moment felt herself
lifted in the air, carried — her feet weakly kicking — and
plumped down in the middle of the large shallow bath.
Nanny's patience was exhausted.
Polly seized her celluloid frog Jeremy, and once more
her thoughts were away: so far this time they were not
even fully recalled when Nanny dragged off her hands and
soaped her protesting ears.
POLLY AND RACHEL 49
"Now!" said Nanny, holding up the huge turkey towel
she had been warming on the fender: "Or I'll have to
count Three!"
But Polly was loth to move.
"One. . ."
"Two. . ."
Then the nursery door opened and in walked Augustine.
Dropping into a chair, Augustine just had time to
snatch the towel from Nanny to cover himself as Polly
sprang squealing straight from the water into his lap —
with half the bath following her, it seemed.
Well! Bursting in like that without knocking! Nanny
pursed her lips, for she didn't at all approve. Nanny was a
Catholic and believed it is never too young to start teach-
ing little girls Shame. They ought to mind men — even
uncles — seeing them in their baths, not go bouncing onto
their laps without a stitch. But she knew it was as much as
her place was worth to breathe a word to the child, for
Mrs. Wadamy was Modern, Mrs. Wadamy had Views.
Meanwhile Polly, lonely no longer, was in the seventh
heaven of delight. She tore open Augustine's waistcoat to
nuzzle her damp head inside it against his shirt, where she
could breathe nothing but his magic smell, listen to the
thumping of his heart.
Reluctant at first to let his still-tainted hands themselves
even touch the sacred child, he dabbed with a bunch of
towel tenderly at the steaming, flower-petal skin. But
with her head inside his waistcoat she grabbed his hand
tyrannically to her and pressed its hard hollow palm tight
over her outside cheek and temple and little curly ear, so
that her lucky head should be quite entirely squeezed
between him and him. But that very moment he heard
Mary's voice from the stairs, calling him: he must come at
once.
Augustine was wanted on the telephone: it was a trunk
call.
Chapter 12
This was the dead child asserting precedence over the
living one; for the untimely call was from the police at
Penrys Cross. But it was only to say the inquest was put
off till Friday as the coroner was indisposed.
Flemton Banquet had ended as usual— in a fight. This
year the occasion had been the final torchlight procession:
it had fired some of the street decorations, and Danny
George declared the burning of his best trousers had been
deliberate. Flemton had been happy to divide on the point,
and in the fracas Dr. Brinley's old pony took fright and
galloped him off home in the rocking trap, splashing
across the sands through the skim of ebb that still glistened
there in the moonlight. He had been properly scared and
shaken. Thus he had missed the Tuesday and Wednesday
Meets after all, taking to his bed with a bottle instead.
The experienced Blodwen had been firm with them:
Friday was the earliest the Coroner could be fit for duty.
The next day, Wednesday, Mary was taking Polly back
to Dorset. The extra day just gave Augustine time to go
with them and spend one night there before having to be
back in Wales.
The weather had cleared, and Augustine and Polly
wanted to travel together, in the Bentley; but Nanny
objected. She said it was crazy in any weather to let a
child with a cold travel in a thing like that; for Augustine's
3-litre Bentley was an open two-seater — very open indeed,
with a small draughty windscreen and with even the hand-
brake outside. Mary Wadamy, on the other hand, was
rather in favour. A big wind, she argued, must blow germs
away. And it would soon be over; whereas in the stuffy
family Daimler, with the luggage and Nanny and Mary's
50
POLLY AND RACHEL 51
maid Fitton and Mary herself, the journey would take the
best part of the day.
Trivett, their old chauffeur, was carriage-trained and
had no liking for speed. But even at twenty miles an hour
he drove dangerously enough for the most exacting:
"Best anyway not put all your eggs in one basket when the
basket is driven by Trivett!" said Augustine grimly.
As for Polly, speech was so inadequate to express her
longing that she was silently dancing it, her tongue stuck
out as if in exile for its uselessness. That decided Mar/:
"Being happy's the only cold-cure worth a farthing," she
said to herself, and gave her consent.
So Nanny, her face full of omens, wrapped the child
into a woollen ball where only the eyes showed, and set
it on the leather seat beside Augustine.
Augustine was a brilliant driver of the youthful passion-
ate kind which wholly identifies itself with the car. Thus
once his hands were on the wheel this morning he forgot
Polly entirely. Yet this didn't matter to Polly. She too
knew how to merge herself utterly in dear Bentley
(another of her loves): the moment the engine broke into
its purring, organ-like roar she uncovered her mouth and
began singing treble to Bentley's bass, and for two hours
Bentley and she did not for a moment stop singing,
through Staines and Basingstoke, Stockbridge, Salisbury,
out on the bare downs.
On the tops of those empty high downs, above the
hanging woods of ancient yews clinging to their chalky
sides, there was only a thin skin of rabbit-nibbled turf that
was more thyme than grass and a sky full of larks. Polly had
got her arms free now and waved to the larks, inviting
their descant to make a trio of it.
Mellton lay in a deep river-valley folded into these bare
chalk downs. In the flat bottom land as they neared the
house there were noble woods of beech and sweet-chestnut,
green pasture, deep lanes that Bentley almost filled, little
52 THE FOX IN THE ATTIC
hidden hamlets of mingled flint and brick with steep
thatched roofs. Bentley and Polly sang together for them
as they passed.
As Bentley rounded through the ever-open wrought-iron
gates and purred his careful way on the last lap through
the park, Polly was now entirely free of her cocoon and
standing bolt upright against the dashboard, using both
arms to conduct the whole chorus of nature. "Home!" she
was chanting on every note she could compass, "Home!
Home! Home!" And to Polly's ears everything round her
intoned the answer "i/om^/"
Then at the front door of Mellton Chase Augustine
switched off the engine and Polly and Bentley both fell
silent together.
Augustine wiped her nose and lifted her out.
Mellton was large, nearly as large as Augustine's
lonely hermitage Newton Llantony. It was all an Eliza-
bethan house, entirely faced and mullioned with stone and
with a little half-naive classical ornament. It had originally
been built as a hollow square on the four sides of a central
quadrangle, like a college. In the middle of the facade
there was still a great vaulted archway like a college gate:
once, you could have ridden on horseback under it right
into the quadrangle without dismounting, but now the
arch was blocked and a modern front door had been
constructed in it.
The well-known music of Augustine's Bentley could be
heard afar, and the butler was standing waiting for them
outside this front door when they arrived. Wantage was
his name.
Wantage was a thin man, prematurely grey: his eyes
stood out rather, for he had thyroid trouble.
Chapter 13
Polly greeted Mr. Wantage warmly but politely (he
was Mr. Wantage to her, by her mother's fiat). Once
inside the door she sat herself expectantly on the end of a
certain long Bokhara rug: for as usual on first getting home
she wanted to set out at once for the North Pole drawn on
her sledge by a yelping team of Mr. Wantage across the
frozen wastes of ballroom parquet.
For no longer was there any open quadrangle here at
Mellton that all the business of the house had to criss-
cross, wet or fine. A Victorian Wadamy had arisen who
disliked so draughty a way of living. Fired by the example
of the new London railway-stations and of Paxton's Crystal
Palace, he had roofed the entire thing over with a dome
of steel and glass. So now in the middle of the house there
was nearly an acre of parquet dotted with eastern rugs,
instead of the former lawn and flagged paths. What now
stood waiting at the far side by the old mounting-block
with its tethering-ring, at the foot of the stone steps leading
up to the State Rooms and the Solar, was a grand piano.
The quadrangle was now called the Ballroom. Few
mansions in the county had ballrooms half its size: tradi-
tion said that on one Victorian occasion two thousand
couples had danced there, watched by the Prince and
Princess of Wales. But this vast 'room' was still lit by the
glazed sky above. Its walls of weathered stone were still
unplastered. Windows and even balconies still looked
down into it. Yet alternating with these windows and
balconies steel armoured fore-arms now projected from
the walls gripping outsize electric light bulbs in their
gauntletted fists; for this had been one of the very first
houses in Britain to adopt the new fighting, with current
generated by its own watermill.
53
54 THE FOX IN THE ATTIC
Polly and Wantage may have been looking for the North
Pole, but what they found at the far side of all this was
Minta the under-nurse. She carried Polly off at once, and
Polly went with her readily enough because Polly was
always docile when she was happy and at the moment she
was full of happiness — full as an egg.
As soon as Polly was gone with Minta and Augustine
was washing his hands, Wantage vanished rather nervously
into the dining-room. He wanted to assure himself that
the cold sideboard carried everything it should for Mr.
Augustine's solitary luncheon. Wantage knew of old that
Mr. Augustine preferred not to be waited on yet objected
strongly to having to ring for something which had been
forgotten. If he was like this by twenty-three, Wantage
often wondered, what would he be like at fifty- three? "A
holy terror and no mistake!" was Mrs. Winter's forecast —
unless he got married, of course.
WTantage straightened a fork that was slightly out of
plumb: nothing else seemed amiss.
By rights Wantage was 'off' now, and ought to be able
to put up his feet in peace. But there was still Mr. Augus-
tine's bag! Passing out through the serving-pantry he
ordered a rather bucolic boot-and-knife boy, in tones of
concentrated venom, to fetch the luggage out of the car
and carry it up the back way.
That venomous tone of voice meant nothing: it was
merely the correct way for Upper Servants to speak to
Boys (indeed Wantage had rather a soft spot for Jimmy —
hoped one day to make quite a proper Indoor of him). It
meant no more than the tones of deferential benevolence
he always used to all Gentry — who were stupid sods, most
of them, in his experience. True, their word was their
bond; but they acted spoilt, like babbies. . .
Not that all babbies were spoilt — not his little Miss
Polly-oily she wasn't! It was her Nanny was the spoilt one
— that Mrs. Halloran the blooming nuisance. . . and
POLLY AND RACHEL 55
Minta the Under aiming to take after her: a little bitch
hardly turned eighteen, I ask you! A slipper to her back-
side would do her a power.
Mrs. Winter agreed with him about those two, but
constitutionally Nursery was a self-governing province
where even a Housekeeper's writ did not run.
Wantage's back was giving him gyp; but he'd got that
bag to unpack before he could look to a proper sit-down.
'Off-duty' didn't mean a thing nowadays, not since the
War with everywhere understaffed. Time was, he had
known four footmen here at the Chase: but now — just
fancy Mellton and the butler having to valet visiting
gentlemen himself! How was he to keep his end up with
Mrs. Winter — her with all those girls under, and him with
no one under his sole command but Jimmy?
All those girls. . . Mrs. Winter, with her black silk and
her keys, was hard put to it to count them all. But that's
what the Gentry (the old ones: war profiteers weren't
Gentry) were come down to nowadays indoors : girls. Why,
some houses and quite good ones too nowadays they even
let women clean the silver! 'Parlourmaids'. . . Mellton
hadn't fallen as low as that yet, thank God.
But where was the satisfaction, rising to the top in
Service and still no men under you? That was the sting.
Outdoors, two keepers and a water-bailiff: an estate
carpenter: six men in the Gardens still — and three (even
not counting the exiled Trivett) in Stables! Only Indoors
was so depleted, that's what was so unfair.
Mean! The Master ought to bear in mind what was due
from a Wadamy of Mellton Chase. . .
As Wantage fitted the links into Augustine's white shirt
ready for the evening he heaved a deep sigh that turned to
a hiccup and left a nasty taste of heartburn in his mouth.
Dead Sea Fruit! That's all his promotions had amounted
to ever since he entered Service, from first to last.
Chapter 14
When at last Wantage was free to relax it was the
Housekeeper's Room he went to that afternoon, not
his own Pantry; and he slumped into a comfortable basket
chair there as near as possible to a breezy window.
Mrs. Winter was sitting bolt upright before the fire on
a straight-backed hard chair loose-covered in a flowered
chintz. Her hands were folded in her lap. Mrs. Winter
never slumped — never appeared to wish to, even if her
whalebone would have let her. Wantage studied her.
Nowadays she looked like something poured into a mould:
just brimming over the rim a little but not enough to slop.
She didn't seem to possess a Shape of her own any more.
It was hard to believe that once 'Mrs. Winter' had been
Maggie the lithe, long-legged young under-housemaid
game as any for a spot of slap-and-tickle.
That was at Stumfort Castle, when he himself was a
half-grown young footman — years before they had met
again at Mellton Chase. Wantage licked his lips at certain
recollections. Jimminey! He'd gone a bit too far with her
that one time! Might both have lost their places only they
were lucky and she didn't have it after all. . .
He'd happened on her sudden, up the Tower — in the
Feather-room, sitting on the floor refilling a featherbed
and herself half drowned in feathers. . . with her ankles
showing. Her ankles — and the sight of her Shape sunk in
all that sea of soft feathers — had been too much for him.
Too much for both of them, seemingly.
But afterl Picking hundreds of downy little feathers off
his livery against time before going on duty in the Front
Hall, sweating he'd miss some and they'd find him out. . .
"A penny for your thoughts, Mr. Wantage," said Mrs.
Winter sweetly.
56
POLLY AND RACHEL 57
"Dead Sea Fruit, Maggie," he answered hollowly.
He hadn't called her "Maggie" for years! Mrs. Winter
lifted both white plump hands slightly from her lap,
fitting the tips of the fingers together and contemplating
them in silence. Then:
"Times have certainly changed," she said.
Mr. Wantage closed his eyes.
Suddenly he opened them again: Polly was climbing
into his lap. Polly was the only person in the whole house
Front Stairs as well as Back who dared wander informally
into the sacred 'Room' like that. "I've come!" she said
unnecessarily, and added: "That Jimmy's got a crown!"
"Careful, Duck," said Mr. Wantage: "Mind my poor
leg."
"What's the matter with it?" she asked.
"Got a bone in it!" he answered dramatically. "Minta'll
be looking for you," he went on, with quite a wicked look
in his bulging eyes.
"Yes she will!" said Polly, equally delighted: "Looking
everywhere!"
"Hunting all over!" echoed Mr. Wantage: "You won't
half cop it if she finds you here!"
But he knew, and she knew, that this was a sanctuary
where even Minta'd never dare.
Mrs. Winter's thoughts were browsing very gently on
the visitor, Mr. Augustine. For a brother and sister, how
unlike in their ways he and the Mistress were ! And yet, so
fond. A pity to see him wilfully living so strange: no good
could come of it, you can't cut loose from your Station, no
one can. . . yet he had proved the soul of kindness about
Nellie's Gwilym's old mother — took endless pains to find
her somewhere on his own property, now that the birth-
place she'd hankered back to was become a waterworks.
Mr. Augustine was better than he'd let himself be, there
were some like that. . .
58 THE FOX IN THE ATTIC
Then Mrs. Winter's stomach rumbled, and she looked
at the clock. But that very moment came the expected
knock and the door opened, briefly releasing into the
'Room' a distant merry burst of young west-country voices
and wild laughter with even a snapshot through it of 'that
Jimmy', ham-frill for crown and sceptred with toasting-
fork, prancing in the midst of a veritable bevy of 'all those
girls'.
It was Lily, the fifteen-year-old scullery-maid, who had
just come in, with her cheeks flushed and her eyes still
flashing. Lily had brought their tea, of course, with
hot buttered scones straight from the oven, and cherry-
cake:
"Like a nice slice of cake, Love?" Mrs. Winter asked
Polly. Even the glace cherries in it were Mellton-grown
and of her own candying. But Polly shook her head. Her
cold had spoiled her appetite. Instead she begun plunging
her hand in each of Mr. Wantage's pockets in turn to see
what she could find. Gently he began to prise open her
fingers to rescue his spectacles; but she insisted on placing
them on his nose.
Mrs. Winter also was putting on her spectacles, for the
tea-tray bore her usual weekly letter from her younger
sister Nellie. . . Poor Nellie! The clever one of the family —
and the one Life had treated hardest. — Still, Nellie had
Little Rachel to comfort her. . .
'Mrs.' Winter's own title only marked professional
status, like 'Dr.' or 'Rev.'; but Nellie had married, and
married young. She had married a budding minister, a
Welsh boy out of the mines. Clever as paint — but not
strong, though, ever. Nellie was wed as soon as the young
man got his first Call, to a chapel in the Rhondda Valley.
When the War came, being a minister of religion he
didn't have to go — and how thankful Nellie had been!
But her Portion of Trouble was coming to her just the
same. 1915 — three years married, the first baby at last
POLLY AND RACHEL 59
and born big-headed! Water, of course. . . Six months he
died, the second already on the way.
Wasn't it anxiety enough for Nellie, wondering after
that how the new one would turn out? Yet Gwilym (that
was the father's outlandish name) must needs add to it. He
took on now in a crazy fashion. He reckoned some sin of
his had made the first one born that way: he must expiate
his sin or the second would be the same.
Not to sit comfortable preaching the word in the
Valleys to the ticking Chapel clock while other men died!
That's how the notion took him. But the Army wouldn't
have him for a chaplain: so he said he'd go for a stretcher-
bearer, in the Medical Corps. It was for the unborn baby's
sake he'd got to go, so he couldn't even wait for little
Rachel-to-be to be born. Nellie couldn't hold him.
Nor could his angry deacons either: they were of a
very pacifist turn, and counted stretchering nearly as bad
as downright shooting — they'd never have him back
after, not once he'd put on any kind or shape of army
uniform! When he still went, they turned Nellie out of the
Chapel house; for they'd have no soldier's brat born there.
Once Rachel was weaned, Nellie got a war-job teaching
infant school in Gloucester.
As for Rachel — the sweetest little maid she grew and
clever as a little monkey! A proper little fairy. No wonder
her mother was all wrapped up in her! Her Aunt Maggie
was downright fearful sometimes of the mother's doting, it
was so greedy: yet even a mere aunt couldn't help
marvelling at the little thing, and doting a bit likewise.
Chapter 15
Thus Mrs. Winter had never quite succeeded in setting
Polly on a pedestal as the rest of the household at the
Chase all did: for she couldn't help comparing Polly with
Nellie's Little Rachel. Polly was a nice little thing, but
nothing to write home about.
Rachel was a year older than Polly, true; but anyway
she was twice as clever, twice as pretty, twice as good. A
little angel on earth. And what a Fancy! The things she
said\ Nellie's letters were always full of Rachel's Sayings
and her aunt used to read them aloud to Mr. Wantage:
she couldn't help it.
Polly never said wonderful Sayings like that you could
put in a book! Yet it was Polly who would grow up with
all the advantages. . . This made Mrs. Winter bitterly
jealous at times: but she tried to curb her jealousy. It
wasn't Polly's fault, being born with the silver spoon:
there was no sense or fairness taking it out on her.
When Gwilym came back from the war his deacons
kept their word: they wouldn't even see him. So he took
on a tin mission church in Gloucester, down by the docks.
But then their troubles began afresh. For now, six years
after Rachel's birth, Nellie was expecting again. She
hadn't looked for it or intended it and somehow she sort
of couldn't get used to the idea at all.
The fact was, by now Nellie had got so wrapped up in
Little Rachel she just couldn't bear the thought of having
another! She positively blamed the intruder in her womb
for pretending to any place in the heart that by rights was
wholly Rachel's.
Moreover she had a good open reason too for thinking
this child ought never to be born. Everyone knows that
60
POLLY AND RACHEL 61
whatever doctors say the Consumption is hereditary, and
six months ago Gwilym had started spitting blood.
Gwilym was away in a sanatorium now; so once more
Nellie was left to face childbirth alone, but this time hating
the baby to come and with a conviction it would be born
infected — if not a downright monster like the first.
Thus it was with rather a troubled face that Mrs.
Winter opened the envelope and took out the carefully-
written sheet of ruled paper. But the news on the whole
was good. Gwilym had written to say he felt ever so much
better, they'd be bound to let him home soon. Nellie
herself was in good health considering, though the birth
might begin any hour now at the time of writing. No
'Sayings', for once, of Little Rachel's. . . But of course!
Rachel was away visiting with her Grandma. The doctor
had insisted on hospital when Nellie's time should come —
ill though they could afford it; so the child had been sent
off a week ago.
Mrs. Winter put the letter down and began to muse.
She was troubled — not by the letter but in her own mind,
at herself. Why had she allowed Little Rachel to be sent
to a grandmother none too anxious to have her, instead of
asking Mrs. Wadamy to let the child come here for a week
or two? Mrs. Wadamy would have been willing, no doubt
of it: quite apart from her natural kindness of heart she'd
have been glad of a nice little playmate for Polly. No, Mrs.
Winter's reluctance had come from somewhere in her own
self.
"Proper Pride," she tried to tell herself: a not wanting
to be "Beholden". But she knew in her own heart that
wasn't the real reason. . . Mrs. Winter couldn't bear the
thought of seeing those two children together, that was the fact!
Miss Polly with all the world open to her: Rachel. . .
Rachel, probably working in a shop by fourteen years of
age and her ankles swelling with the standing.
But once she had tracked down the reason in her
6a THE FOX IN THE ATTIC
own mind Mrs. Winter characteristically decided that it
wasn't good enough — sheer selfishness! It wo\ild be lovely
for Rachel here, do her all the good in the world; and it
would be good for lonely little Polly too, having a real
child to play with instead of just dumb animals. The
children themselves wouldn't worry about their unequal
futures: they'd be happy enough together, love each other
kindly! At that age, Rachel the little leader no doubt and
Polly the devoted little slave.
So Mrs. Winter made up her mind. It wasn't too late,
thank goodness, even now: Gwilym's old mother would be
glad not to have the child longer than could be helped —
she didn't find it too easy getting about these days, Nellie
had said, yet the longer (Mrs. Winter felt) the poor little
new baby had a clear field, the better its chances of
arousing the mother-love so strangely withheld.
She would ask Mrs. Wadamy this very evening if
Rachel couldn't come here after the grandmother was
done with her. For a week, say, till they saw how things
went. Tonight as ever was she'd write to Nellie. . .
"A penny for your thoughts, Mrs. Winter," said Mr.
Wantage, pretending to topple Polly off his knee.
Mrs. Winter rose in silence and gave Polly so unusually
loud and loving a kiss that they both looked at her
wonderingly.
Chapter 16
Presently evening closed in on Mellton Chase: all
over the house the sound of curtains being drawn,
everywhere the lights going on — front stairs as well as
back.
In spite of Trivett Mary had got home in time to ask
Jeremy Dibden (an Oxford friend of Augustine's, and a
Mellton neighbour) over to dine with them. A party of
three; for Parliament was sitting and Gilbert (Mary's
husband) was detained in London, though probably he
might be coming later.
Jeremy was tall and very thin, with narrow shoulders.
'He must have been very difficult to fit,' thought Mary
(noting how well his dinner-jacket in fact did fit him):
'especially with that arm.' Polio in childhood had wilted
his right arm: when he remembered he lifted it with the
other hand into appropriate attitudes, but otherwise it
hung from him like a loose tail of rope.
Mary's own face resembled her brother's: it was broad,
intelligent, honest, sunburned to a golden russet colour
that toned with her curly reddish hair, and lightly freckled.
It was almost a boy's face, except for the soft and sensitive
lips. Jeremy's face on the other hand had much more of a
girl's traditional pink-and- white briar-rose delicacy of
colouring: and yet the cast of Jeremy's features was not
effeminate — it would be fairer to say they had the regular
perfection of the classical Greek. In spite of his faulty
body Jeremy reminded Mary a little of the Hermes of
Praxiteles: his lips tended to part in that same half-smile.
'Yes, and he's aware of the likeness,' she thought; for his
exquisite pale hair was allowed to curl so perfectly about
his forehead it might well be carved marble.
63
G4 THE FOX IN THE ATTIC
'Somehow, though, his face isn't at all insipid because
of the life in it: just very, very young.'
Now, dinner was ended. The white cloth had been
taken away, Waterford glass gleamed on the dark
mahogany by candlelight.
Undoubtedly the proper time had come to leave the two
young men to their port (or rather, their old Madeira — port
being out of fashion). But as Mary rose the talk had just
reached the theme of the meaning of human existence.
"Don't get up and go," said Jeremy, disappointed, "just
when we've started discussing something sensible at last."
Mary glanced hesitantly from her brother to his friend.
"Very well," she said slowly, sitting down again a little
reluctantly (was she perhaps become lately a shade less
interested than she used to be in these abstract discus-
sions?): "But only for a minute or two: Mrs. Winter has
asked to see me about something."
"And so you've got to go! — That's typical," exclaimed
her brother. "Admit I'm dead right, cutting loose from
the whole thing."
"It's known as Service," said Jeremy to Augustine re-
provingly, his light tongue flicking more meanings than
one out of the single word. Then he turned to Mary: "But
tell me; there's one thing I've always wanted to know:
what is it makes you continue to jeopardise your life being
driven by Trivett?" Augustine snorted. "Trivett," de-
clared Jeremy, "can't even change down with the Daimler
in motion: he stops dead at the foot of every rise while
he struggles into bottom! Trivett — the sound of whose
horn. . ." he pursued, lilting, "makes old women climb
trees. He only accelerates round corners and at crossroads.
I believe the sole time he has ever consistently stuck to the
left side of the road was that time you took the car to
France."
Augustine gave a delighted chuckle.
"Surely in Gilbert's bachelor days he used to be head
POLLY AND RACHEL 65
groom? Whatever possessed you, then, to make him
chauffeur?"
The question sounded candid enough; but Mary
glanced at Jeremy with a flicker of distrust, for wasn't the
reason obvious? The bride had wanted to bring her hunters
to Mellton and if the old duffer refused to retire volun-
tarily on pension what else could one do? For with Mary's
upbringing one never entrusted a horse to the tender
mercies of a Trivett. True, whenever he drove the car her
heart was in her mouth and one day he'd surely kill them
all; but similarly, one doesn'tgive way tofear. — But neither
for that matter does one discuss one's servants with one's
friends! Momentarily her eyes took on quite an angry look.
"Touchee?" Jeremy murmured a little wickedly: "Be
there or be there no some method in Augustine's madness?"
Augustine snorted again. These relics of feudalism!
Such relationships were so wholly false; equally ruinous
to the servant and the served: he was well quit of such.
Augustine had grown up from childhood with a rooted
dislike of ever giving orders. Any relationship which
involved one human being constraining another repelled
him. But now Jeremy executed a volte-face and attacked
him on this very point: the most ominous harbinger and
indeed prime cause of bloody revolution is not the man
who refuses to obey orders (said Jeremy), "it's the man
like you who refuses to give them."
"What harm do I do?" Augustine grumbled.
"You expect to be allowed to let other people alone!"
blazed Jeremy indignantly. "Can't you see it's intolerable
for the ruled themselves when the ruling class abdicates?
You mark my words, you tyrant too bored to tyrannise!
Long ere the tumbrils roll here to Mellton your head will
have fallen in the laps of Flemton's tricoteuses."
Augustine snorted, and then cracked a walnut and
examined its shrivelled kernel with distaste. Funny you
could never tell by the shells. . .
Chapter iy
"T A That do you suppose would happen," Jeremy con-
VV tinued, "if there were more people like you? Man-
kind would be left exposed naked to the icy glare of
Liberty: betrayed into the hands of Freedom, that eternal
threat before which the Spirit of Man flees in an ever-
lasting flight! Post equitem sedet atra — Libertas! Has
there ever been a revolution which didn't end in less
freedom? Because, has there ever been a revolution which
wasn't essentially just one more desperate wriggle by
mankind to escape from freedom?"
'A flight from freedom? What poppycock,' thought
Augustine.
As was his wont, Jeremy was working out even the
direction of his argument while he talked, leaping grass-
hopper-like from point to point. His voice was pontifical
and assured (except just occasionally for an excited
squeak), but his face all the time was childishly excited
by the sheer pleasures of the verbal chase. Augustine,
watching rather than really heeding the friend he so
admired, smiled tolerantly. Poor old Jeremy! It was a
pity he could only think with his mouth open, because he
was an able chap. . .
'Poor old Augustine!' Jeremy was feeling at the same
time, even while he talked: 'He isn't believing a word I
say! A prophet is not without honour. . . ah well, never
mind. . . I'm really on to something this time — the flight
from freedom. . .' If he had read the signs of the times
aright this was only too true. . .
Mary began to tap the floor rhythmically with her foot.
Jeremy's oratory quite drowned the impatient little noise,
but she too was scarcely listening any more. Once on a
66
POLLY AND RACHEL 67
time she had thought Jeremy absolutely brilliant: she still
did in a way, but somehow nowadays she seemed to be
losing the power of Ustening when he talked. One goes on
growing up (she realised suddenly) even long after one is
grown-up.
Jeremy had the tiresome knack of making even sound
sense appear fantastic nonsense, and moreover didn't
seem himself to know which was when: yet any moment
he might reveal some real fragment of new truth, in a
sudden phrase like a flashlight going off — something the
plodders wouldn't have got to in a month-of-Sundays.
Tonight, though, that 'flight from freedom' idea was
surely going too far. True, some people don't like pursuing
freedom as fast as others but it's only a question of relative
speed: surely men never turn their backs on their own
freedom, it's tyrants who wrest it from them. . . Liberalism
and democracy after all isn't just a fashion, it's the per-
manent trend, it's human nature. . . progress.
How profoundly Gilbert distrusted brilliance of this
sort: Jeremy — Douglas Moss — all that Oxford kidney!
"They're hounds who can find a scent but not follow it,"
he had said: "They're babblers, they run riot. . ." Gilbert
didn't really share her passion for hunting (or he could
never have tolerated a Trivett in his stables) but he liked
its language: he used it in the House, to tease the Tories.
Augustine seemed to prize independence and solitude
above everything. But surely (thought Mary) the pattern
of man's relationships with man is the one thing specifi-
cally human in humanity? And so, to the humanist, dis-
believing in God, that pattern is the supremely sacred
thing? You can't just contract out of. . . out of Mankind, as
Augustine seemed to think.
Then Mary found herself wondering what it could be
that Mrs. Winter was so anxious to see her about. She
must go in a minute — the very first time Jeremy paused
for breath. — Where had he got to?
"You anarchists. . ." she heard him saying to Augustine.
68 THE FOX IN THE ATTIC
But (thought Mary) to do away with all government like
anarchists you'd have to cut the Imperative mood right
out of human grammar; for 'government' isn't just some-
thing tucked away on a high shelf labelled POLITICS
— governing goes on in every human relationship, every
moment of the day. One's always governing and being
governed. The Imperative mood is the very warp on
which that sacred pattern of humanity is woven: tamper
with those strong Imperative threads and the whole web
must ravel. . .
"No!" cried Augustine giving the table such a thump
the glasses rang {Heavens! How much of all this nonsense
could she have been saying out loud?) "Your web can't ravel,
because. . . Emperor's New Clothes! There is no web!
There's no thread, even, joining man to man — nothing!"
"I see," broke in Jeremy, delighted. "You mean, train-
bearers and train-wearers alike human society is but a
procession of separate, naked men pretending? 'Whom
God hath put asunder, let no man. . .' "
One of the wine glasses was still singing and Mary
hushed its tiny voice with her finger. "I really must go
now," she said: "I told Mrs. Winter 'Nine'. If Gilbert and
his friends arrive. . ."
"Don't go!" said Augustine. "You never know with
these Parliament boys: maybe they won't turn up at all!"
"But how are they getting here?" asked Jeremy, "Is
dear Trivett meeting their train at Templecombe?"
His voice was innocent but his eye unholy, and Mary
was secretly smiling as she left the room. The incompati-
bility of Jeremy and Gilbert really was more comfortable
displayed like this than hidden.
Chapter 18
A ugustine closed the door he had held for his sister
jL~\.and sat down again.
"The voice is the voice of Gilbert!" said Jeremy sadly.
"She never used to talk like that."
"Logically it's not many steps from Mary's 'web' to
horrors like the Divine Right of Kings," said Augustine,
"once you start valuing mankind above each separate
man."
"Only one step — in History's seven-league boots," said
Jeremy. "One glissade, rather. . . Hegel! Br-r-r! — Then
Fichte! Treitschke! Von Savigny! Ugh-gh!"
Augustine forebore to ask him why he wasted his time
reading such forgotten German metaphysicians — knowing
that probably he didn't. They refilled their glasses.
"Politicians!" said Jeremy: "They wholly identify their
own with their country's interests." He allowed himself a
quick sardonic smile at his own quip. "These upright
Gilberts — so guiltless of favouritism they'll sacrifice a
friend as readily as an enemy. . . if their career's at stake.
Poor Mary!"
At Oxford (that intense white incandescence of young
minds) everyone had been agreed that only inferior
people feel an itch for power, or even consent to have it
thrust upon them. "Qualities of leadership" — as Douglas
Moss once put it — "reveal the Untermensch." "Ambition
is the first infirmity of ignoble minds." And so on. That
might not be the kind of language Augustine used himself
but it was doctrine to which the very marrow of his bones
responded. To Augustine, even honest statesmen and
politicians seemed at best a kind of low-grade communal
servant — like sewer-cleaners, doing a beastly job decent
69
70 THE FOX IN THE ATTIC
men arc thankful not to have to do themselves. And indeed
the ordinary citizen does only need to become aware of
his system of government if it goes wrong and stinks. . .
And Gilbert was an M.P.! Augustine had hated his own
sister marrying beneath her like this — into that despised
'Sweeper' caste. Now inevitably she herself was begin-
ning to think 'Sweeper' thoughts.
"Poor Mary!" said Jeremy again. But then a comforting
thought struck him: "Perhaps in her case though it's only
old age?" he suggested charitably: "How old is she, by the
by?"
Augustine had to admit his sister was now twenty-six
and Jeremy nodded sagely. After all — as both these young
men recognised — no intellect can hope to retain its keenest
edge after twenty-four or -five.
"Eheu fugaces!" said twenty-two-year-old Jeremy, sigh-
ing. "Give the decanter a gentle push, dear boy."
Silence for a while.
Sipping her solitary coffee in the drawing-room after
Mrs. Winter had left her, Mary began to muse. It was
time Augustine grew out of friends like Jeremy — unless
Jeremy himself was capable of growing up, which she
rather doubted.
Dear Augustine! That queer isolated life he chose to
lead. . . Now, of course, he was going to be dragged back
into society by the short hairs — inquests, newspapers and
all that: was this possibly a blessing in disguise? She was
sure he had great talents, if only he would apply them to
something.
Mary sighed. Nature is as wasteful of promising young
men as she is of fish-spawn. It's not just getting them
killed in wars: mere middle age snuffs out ten times more
young talent than ever wars and sudden death do. Then
who was she, that she dared to hope her young brother
POLLY AND RACHEL 71
whom she had so cherished and so admired was going to
prove that one little fish-egg out of millions destined to
survive and grow?
Mary set down her cup half drunk: the coffee seemed
too bitter. . . She might be going to have another baby! It was
high time, for Polly's sake. She'd know in a day or two. . .
If it was a boy it would begin all over again, the cherish-
ing and the sisterly admiring — but this time, in little
Polly.
In the dining-room the long silence was broken at last.
"Was it. . ." Jeremy began to ask a little hesitantly:
"was it. . . well, an upper-class child do you think?"
Augustine started, and suddenly paled. "Hard to tell,"
he said at last, slowly. "N-n-no, I wouldn't say it was."
"Good!" said Jeremy, relieved. "That's something to
be thankful for."
The blood came back into Augustine's face with a rush:
"Jeremy!" he said, very gently, "what a beastly thing to
say!"
Now Jeremy blushed too — hotly, horrified at himself.
"God it was!" he blurted out honestly. Then he recovered
himself a little and went on: "But you know what I mean:
not your own. . . tribe, you don't feel it quite the same.
Makes it less near home, somehow." Whereon instantly
the same thought sprang into both minds: Suppose it had
been Polly?
Augustine jumped to his feet and ground the stopper
into the neck of the decanter: "Shall we join the lady?" he
said roughly, already making a beeline for the door.
Chapter ig
They found Mary in the drawing-room reading Lytton
Strachey's 'Eminent Victorians' while she waited to
pour their cooling coffee for them.
"But the only really eminent Victorians were Marx,
Freud and Einstein!" said Jeremy. "People poor dear
Lytton has probably never heard of. And the greatest of
these is Freud."
"I suppose there can't have been three such figures alive
at the same time since Confucius, Buddha and Pythagoras,"
said Mary, interested.
"An apt parallel," said Jeremy: "Society, the individual
soul, mathematics. . ."
"Sugar," said Mary.
"Marx is certainly the least of them," said Augustine,
stirring his cup absently, "partly because the one most
eminently Victorian. . ." He began to explain — with that
sudden excessive rush of words to which the solitary is
liable now and then — that all 'Victorian' science had been
dogmatic: its aim, systems of valid answers. Now, when
Einstein had lifted modern science onto the altogether
higher level of systems of valid questions. . .
"Fair enough!" put in Jeremy: "You can make machines
to answer questions but you can't make a machine to ask
them."
"... Marxism is a science still fossilised at the Victorian,
dogmatic level of mere answers," Augustine continued.
"And therefore," Jeremy nipped in, spooning the sugar
out of the bottom of his cup with relish, "rapidly degenera-
ting into a religion! No wonder only a backward, religious
people like the Russians take Marxism seriously nowa-
days."
"Whereas Freud. . ." Augustine was resuming, but then
72
POLLY AND RACHEL 73
stopped thunderstruck. The great revelation which was Freud!
He had been right, then, in the billiardroom: his own
generation really was a new creation, a new kind of
human being, because of Freud! For theirs was the first
generation in the whole cave-to-cathedral history of the
human race completely to disbelieve in sin. Actions nowa-
days weren't thought of as 'right' or 'wrong' any more:
they were merely judged social or anti-social, personal
fulfilment or frustration. . .
"But that lands us with two dichotomies instead of one,"
said Jeremy, "and sometimes they clash. . ."
Soon they were at it again, hammer and tongs. But on
one thing Augustine and Jeremy were agreed: theirs was a
generation relieved of the necessity even of active evangel-
istic atheism because the whole 'God' idea had now sub-
sided below the level of belief or disbelief. 'God' and 'Sin'
had ceased to be problems because Freudian analysis had
explained how such notions arise historically: i.e., that
they are merely a primitive psychological blemish which,
once explained, mankind can outgrow. . .
"Conscience is an operable cancer. . ."
In the age of illimitable human progress and fulfilment
now dawning the very words 'God' and 'guilt' must
atrophy and ultimately drop off the language. People
would still be born with a propensity for being what used
to be called 'good'; but even goodness would become
innocent once its name was forgotten.
Meanwhile Mary busied herself with her quilting: a
simple, peasant little coverlet for Polly's bed. Suddenly
she frowned. Suppose that child she had invited (Mrs.
Winter's little niece) turned out to be religious? Wasn't
her father some sort of dissenting minister? She ought to
have thought of that before accepting her as a fit com-
panion for Polly.
Children talk so! — Of course children should talk freely
about sex, and about excreta and so on; but there are still
74 THE FOX IN THE ATTIC
w< nds and ideas that tender childish ears like Polly's ought
to be shielded from, at least till they are old enough to
resist or succumb of their own free will: such words as
'God' and 'Jesus'. In Mary's own case and Augustine's
those words had been knotted in their very navel-
strings. . .
Wantage must be made to go to bed but she must
remind him to leave the whiskey out in case Gilbert and
his friends were very late. Some sandwiches too: railway
food was practically uneatable. And Gilbert had said
these guests might be important. There was a movement
on foot for reuniting the liberal party, with much coming
and going in the inner councils. Gilbert wasn't perhaps
quite 'in' those councils yet, but he was a rising young man
with his foot in the door at any rate: he could be a Go-
between even if he wasn't yet quite a Gone-between.
Gilbert hoped to be bringing someone important down
to Mellton that night — Mond, perhaps, or Simon, or
Samuel. If a significant step towards Liberal reunion was
taken at a Mellton houseparty it would be a feather in
Gilbert's cap worth wearing. . .
Gilbert had told her the Little Man (Lloyd George)
seemed ready enough to be reconciled: it was Asquith who
was being rather wary and uncordial. "He acts as if he has
something on his chest!" So L.G. — surprised at it, ap-
parently— had confided to someone who had confided it
to Gilbert. Said L.G., "The old boy is different to me, he
just doesn't know when to forget."
In private life (she continued musing) it would be
looked on as rather despicable if an Asquith did 'forget' —
if he ever spoke to a Lloyd George again, the nasty little
goat. But now, even his own friends were blaming him.
For in public life you aren't free to act on your inclinations
or even your principles: in order to acquire power you
have to forfeit free-will, which seems rather paradoxical.
And how much more so must it be in a dictatorship!
A man like Lenin must have about as much choice and
POLLY AND RACHEL 75
freedom of action as the topmost acrobat in a human
pyramid. . .
Mary opened her ears for a moment: but the boys'
discussion had reached the late-evening stage of merely
going round and round. "It's eleven o'clock," said Mary:
"I think I'm going to bed, but don't you. . ." Whereon
Jeremy sprang to his feet, full of apologies for outstaying
his welcome.
Augustine saw Jeremy to the front door and helped him
light his bicycle lamp. For Jeremy's father was a country
parson and far from well-off (Jeremy might even have to
go into the Civil Service).
"Well I have enjoyed myself!" Jeremy exclaimed, with
an enthusiasm bordering almost on surprise: "I don't
know when!" He flung his leg over the saddle and pedalled
off one-handed down the drive.
Augustine set off for bed. He was just crossing the
ballroom when he heard that distant, desolate scream.
Chapter 20
For Polly was having a nightmare — Polly, the child so
cushioned on love!
Often, when Polly was just dropping asleep, the air
would suddenly be full of hands. Not threatening hands:
just hands. Hands coming out of the floor, reaching down
from the ceiling, coming out of the air — small as she was,
there was hardly room to wriggle between them. That
wasn't exactly frightening; but tonight she was having a
proper nightmare — the worst she had ever had.
It began in Mr. Wantage's serving pantry, where Mrs.
Winter was sitting in Sunday bonnet and cape. But this
wasn't quite Mrs. Winter. . . actually, it was more a lion
dressed in Mrs. Winter's clothes and it said to Polly in
quite a pleasant voice: "We're going to have you for our
supper."
Shrinking back, she now saw many of the other grown-
ups who best loved her ranged stiffly round the wall, sur-
rounding her. All were principally turned to beasts of
prey, even if they didn't entirely look it.
That was the moment she caught sight of Gusting,
standing idly by the baize swing-door which led to the
kitchen passage. . .
This surely was entirely Gusting, for he could never turn!
She dashed to him for protection.
But even as she flung herself into his arms she saw what
a big mistake she had made: for this was in fact a huge
gorilla in disguise, stretching its arms across the door of
escape and smiling down cruelly at her with exactly
Gusting's face.
A trap, baited with Gusting's convincing image! At this
moment of panic and betrayal she began to wake. She
still saw him there, but now realised with a flood of relief
76
POLLY AND RACHEL 77
she was dreaming — this monster wasn't real. So she hit him
in the stomach with her fist and cried triumphantly: "I'm
not afraid of you! I know you're only a dream!" Then
she opened her mouth to scream herself entirely awake,
only. . . only to find she was not as near waking as she had
thought, and the scream wouldn't come. She had only
'woken' from one level of sleep to the level next above —
and now she was slipping back. . . the figure was growing
solid again.
"Oho, so I'm only a dream, am I?" he said sardonically,
and his dreadful hands began to close on her murder-
ously. . . Gusting's hard hands which she always so much
loved.
In this extreme of terror her strangled voice just came
back: she managed at last to scream, and woke herself in
floods of tears — with the Gusting-Gorilla still shadowy
against the billowing darkness of her room (where no
night-light was kept burning, for modern atheist children
have no need to fear the dark).
When Augustine on his way to bed heard that scream
he raced up the stairs three at a time, but Nanny had
reached the night-nursery before him and was already
rocking the sobbing, nightgowned little figure in her arms.
Polly was quieter already; but now at the sight of
Gusting really standing in her bedroom doorway she
began to scream again so wildly and in a voice so strangled
with fear it was more a hysterical coughing than a proper
scream, and she was arching her spine backwards like a
baby in a fit.
Nanny signed to him so imperiously to be gone that he
obeyed her; but only with feelings of violent jealousy and
distrust. "That woman ought to be sacked!" he muttered
loudly (half hoping she would hear), as he retreated down
the nursery passage. For of course it was all her fault — she
must have been frightening the child. . . goblins. . . tales
of black men coming down the chimbley if you aren't
78 THE FOX IN THE ATTIC
good. . . What on earth was the use of Mary trying to
bring the child up free of complexes in the new way while
confiding her to an uneducated woman like Nanny? "You
can never trust that class!" Augustine added bitterly.
-—There is no hell of course but surely there ought to
be one for such a woman, who could deliberately teach a
child to be afraid! Augustine's anger with that horrible
woman gnawed so he would have liked to have it out with
Mary there and then: but alas, she had gone to bed.
He knew there'd be a fight, for Mary seemed almost
hypnotised by Nanny Halloran: which was surprising,
seeing how often and how deeply they disagreed. . .
There's no need nowadays for any child even to know
what Fear is — nor Guilt! Not since the great revelation
which was Freud. .
Halfway down the long drive, Jeremy on his way home
was dazzled by the lights of an approaching car. He jumped
off and dragged his machine right into the bushes.
But it wasn't Trivett driving at all. This was a big
limousine with brass and mahogany upperworks like a
yacht, and lit up inside: the hire-car from the Mellton
Arms, which the Wadamys sometimes bespoke on these
occasions.
It seemed full to bursting with young men with sleekly
brushed hair and black overcoats, and they were all
turned inwards — like bees just beginning to swarm on a
new queen — towards the central figure wrapped in a
tartan rug in the middle of the back seat: the elongated
figure and well-known hawklike face of Sir John Simon.
Chapter 21
Wantage had been shocked at the idea he should go
to bed before the Master got home, and was there to
attend to his needs. But Mary was already asleep when
Gilbert and his guests arrived, and it must have been an
hour or two later that she woke abruptly. Something was
worrying her — what someone had said earlier about
religion subsiding "below the level of belief or disbelief".
Surely that wasn't quite right? 'Below the level of argu-
ment' he ought to have said. We have learned to distin-
guish these days between concepts which are verifiable
and those by nature unverifiable — and which therefore
can't be argued about: so really we now need two words
for 'belief and two for 'truth', since we don't mean the
same things by 'belief' and 'truth' in both cases.
After all, even Aquinas spoke of faith as an act involving
the will: that distinguishes it entirely from verifiable truth
— which is the only real truth, of course, she hastened to
assure herself.
Through the dressing-room door Mary could hear
Gilbert snoring: so he had arrived all right. She hoped
they would pull off Liberal Reunion this time. . . it was
bound to come sooner or later, of course — it takes more
than a rift of personalities to dissipate so mighty a force
as Liberalism. In fact, Gilbert had said this Asquith v.
Lloyd George split was just a repetition of the Rosebery-
Harcourt split at the turn of the century; and that had
been prelude to the solidest victory the Liberals had ever
achieved, the general election of 1906.
Mary could still remember being driven to the village,
that sunny January polling-day, in the governess-cart with
little Augustine: everyone wore coloured rosettes and even
79
80 THE FOX IN THE ATTIC
the politest gentry children put out their tongues at
children of a different colour.
At this rate (she forecast) the Liberals should be back in
power by 1930 or so; and by that time Gilbert. . .
Having tidied in her mind these two incongruous loose
ends, Mary sighed and went to sleep again.
But now she dreamed — the first time for many years —
of her German cousin, Otto von Kessen.
It was in 19 13 — ten years ago — that Mary had gone
on her visit to Schloss Lorienburg. Walther, the eldest von
Kessen brother and owner of Lorienburg, was already
married then of course — he had at least two sweet
children, ten-year-old tow-haired Franz and the wide-
eyed little Mitzi. But Otto was "married to his regiment",
they said. Handsome in uniform as some Ouida hero, in
white flannels Otto played tennis with the beauty and
vigour of a leaping white tiger. . . Mary had been sixteen
at Lorienburg, that last summer before the war, and the
magnificent Otto thirty. Mary had fallen blindly, hope-
lessly in love; and had developed a boil on her unhappy
chin.
Augustine that night was a long time getting to sleep at
all, for the moment he was alone his mind reverted un-
controllably and quite fruitlessly from the living to the
dead child. He was still racked with pity, and he thought
of the coming inquest with foreboding.
Pictured on the darkness he kept seeing again the deep
black pool, the sixpenny boat floating just out of reach,
then the whitish something in the water. . . He had had no
choice, when they found she was quite dead, but to carry
her home; for on the Marsh a duck shot at dusk, if the
dog failed, was no more than a scatter of feathers by the
time daylight came. Thus when Augustine fell asleep at
POLLY AND RACHEL 81
last he dreamed horribly of those hungry rats that the
whole Marsh teemed with.
Mrs. Winter also stayed awake late, but deliberately.
She was sitting up in bed, wearing the little bed-jacket
Mrs. Wadamy had given her last Christmas over a white
linen nightgown with a high frilled collar, and writing a
letter — by candlelight, for there was no electricity in the
servants' rooms.
Mrs. Winter's 'shape' looked natural now, comfortably
buxom: her whalebone stays were neatly rolled on a chair.
But her greying hair looked unusually skimpy; for it owed
its daytime bulk to certain brown pads, and these now
lay on the dressing-table. Her cheeks too looked sunken,
for her pearly teeth also were on the dressing-table. They
stood in a tumbler of water between two photographs in
velvet frames: one was her late father, the other showed
Nellie holding the baby Rachel.
"Dear Nellie," she wrote, "I spoke to Madam about
you and Gwilym and darling Rachel and she was kindness
itself. She said at once. . ." Mrs. Winter wrote slowly,
weighing every word. For now she had made up her mind
she had come to want more than anything else in the world
that Nellie should consent.
It would be lovely having Rachel here. Pausing, she
tried to picture dear little Rachel now as she must be that
very moment, asleep in bed somewhere. But that was
difficult, for she had never visited the parts where
Gwilym's mother was living these days.
Augustine was woken at six in the morning by the jack-
daws arguing in his wide bedroom chimney. He lay awake
listening to them, for he was interested in birds' minds
82 THE FOX IN THE ATTIC
and would have liked to be able to make out what all the
palaver was about. Jackdaws are notoriously social birds,
and it sounded very much as if they were holding some
sort of court of justice: certainly someone was getting
generally pecked. . .
'Getting generally pecked'! — Yes (he thought), that's
about all Social Co-operation ever seems to amount to in
practice. Then surely it's high time we humans gave up
behaving like birds?
But just then the door clicked. It was Polly, and she
climbed quickly onto his bed in expectation of a story.
At eight that same chilly morning, when the postman
arrived, Mrs. Winter had already licked and stamped her
letter for him to take. But he had a telegram for her,
from Gloucester: it was a boy, and mother and child both
doing well.
Nellie's pains had begun the previous evening and the
doctor had carried her off to hospital in his car himself.
The birth was quite normal: it was the baby's safety after
birth the doctor had been anxious about in the mother's
unnatural mood; but in fact Nellie gave her breast quite
readily when they brought the infant to her, because in
her drowsy state she believed it was somehow Baby
Rachel come again.
Mrs. Winter added a few words on the back of the
envelope, then re-addressed her letter to the hospital; for
the sooner now it was fixed about Rachel coming here the
better.
Another telegram to the sanatorium told Gwilym, even
this little buff envelope bringing an unmistakably 'out-
side' smell into the faint odour of illness which tainted
everything round him there. The news excited him wildly
and brought on a fearful fit of coughing.
POLLY AND RACHEL 83
A son\ Then his name should be called Sylvanus. . .
How pleased little Rachel would be! How he longed to
be watching her face the first time they let her hold her
baby brother! Surely the doctors must let him go home
now (indeed they probably soon would — but because they
needed his bed for some less hopeless case).
Little Rachel. . . how long would it be before she got
the news, he wondered? Wales must be a nice change for
her after Gloucester Docks but the place was terribly cut-
off. For his mother's new home had been a lonely sluice-
keeper's cottage once — in the piping days of farming,
when the sluices were still kept on Llantony Marsh.
None of these people knew yet that Rachel lay under an
official rubber sheet in the mortuary at Penrys Cross.
Gwilym's old mother lived alone, and on Tuesday had
somehow walked alone the whole nine miles to the Cross
to report the child missing. She knew already that what-
ever his letters said her son was dying; she knew that
Nellie was about to be brought to bed at any hour: they
showed her the body on the slab and she collapsed. She
recovered, but for the time being had lost the power of
speech.
Thus Augustine had already left for the inquest at
Penrys Cross by the time the news reached Mellton.
Chapter 22
The cold had come early to the Continent that fall:
in the next few days it crossed over, driving Dorset's
late mellow muggy autumn away before it.
Mary's mind at Mellton these days was full of the
tragedy: she was cudgelling her brains how best Nellie
behind the barrier that was Mrs. Winter could be helped;
but now the cold had come and her brains refused to
respond. Dorset never got quite so cold as central Europe
of course; but at Mellton she had not those gigantic porce-
lain stoves she had once laughed at in Schloss Lorienburg,
nor the double windows, nor even central heating: houses
in Britain were nowadays no warmer than before the war
— yet, as if they had been, women had ceased wearing
wool next to the skin, ankle-length drawers and long thick
petticoats. Thus in a large and draughty place like Mell-
ton Mary always found it difficult in winter to think: her
blood kept being called away to do battle in her ex-
tremities, leaving her brain on terribly short commons.
Thus Mary in winter had to do most of her thinking in
her bath, where her brain responded to the hot water like
a tortoise in the sun: she saved up most of the day's knot-
tier problems for the bath she took each evening before
dressing for dinner: and it was in her evening bath that
Mary now had her brainwave about the Hermitage as
somewhere for Nellie with her baby and her diseased
husband to live.
That morning Mrs. Winter had told her the doctors
were going to send Gwilym home. There had been a
pleading look in Mary's eye as she offered to help, for she
was deeply moved and longed to be allowed-to. Nellie
must be desperately hard-up: naturally there was no
84
POLLY AND RACHEL 85
question of Gwilym working 'yet' (that 'yet' which
deceived no one except Gwilym himself!) : with a husband
to nurse and a new baby Nellie couldn't go out to work,
even if she could find work now there were millions
unemployed. . .
But Mrs. Winter had shaken her head. Not money: in a
life-time of domestic service she herself had saved nearly
three hundred pounds, and that should at least last out
Gwilym's brief time: it was her own privilege to support
her sister, not an outsider's. Yet Mrs. Winter felt quite
sorry for her mistress, for Mrs. Wadamy looked so sad at
being shut out.
Moreover there was one kind of help they could surely
properly accept. If Gwilym was 'to get well' they had to
find somewhere to live right out in the country: some-
where high up and windswept, such as the chalk downs. . .
Mary's face had lightened at the 'chalk downs': she
would speak to the Master about it at once. But when she
did so, Gilbert had astonished her by being 'difficult': he
had practically ticked her off for even suggesting he
might let these people have a cottage! In the end she
hadn't dared confess to him she had virtually promised
Mrs. Winter.
Now, while Mary lay long in the hot water thinking
about the Hermitage as a solution, Gilbert was already
tying his evening tie and also thinking. His brisk game of
squash with the doctor's son ought to have left him enjoy-
ing unalloyed that virtuous feeling which is the chief
reward of exercise when you are sedentary and thirty; but
thoughts of the morning's argument with Mary were
troubling him.
A most pathetic case. . . yes, but a question of Principle
was involved. Yet he doubted if Mary even in the end had
hoisted in fully how right he had been to refuse — and the
doubt pained him, for he loved Mary. The point was that
these people were strangers. His first duty was to his own
86 THE FOX IN THE ATTIC
people, he had tried to show Mary; and cottages were
scarce: at the moment even his own new carpenter was
having to live in lodgings till a cottage fell vacant for him.
But Mary had seemed unimpressed (her picture of the
dying Gwilym refusing to be ousted from her mind). The
bachelor carpenter was quite comfortable at the Tucketts,
she had urged: couldn't he wait?
Couldn't Mary see it would be morally wrong to give
strangers a Mellton cottage over Mellton heads? If you
don't draw the line somewhere (Gilbert argued), you
soon cease being able to do your duty by your own people,
the people to whom it is owed. One's duty to mankind at
large isn't in that same way a personal, man-to-man
relationship: it's a collective duty, and one's services to
Liberalism rather are its proper discharge — not random
little drop-in-a-bucket acts of kindness. Surely no one
supposed he ought to rush off to Turkey personally to
rescue a massacred Armenian or two? But he'd certainly
make time to address that Armenian Atrocities Protest
Meeting next month; and similarly his correct Liberal
response to these strangers' plight was to campaign for
improved National Insurance, more Houses for the Poor:
not try to take these particular poor under his own personal
wing. . .
As Gilbert stood there tying his tie the lean face which
looked back at him from the glass ought to have been re-
assuring: with its firm jaw and permanently indignant
grey eyes it was so palpably the face of a Man of Principle.
But was Mary truly a woman of Principle? That was the
trouble. Alas, Mary yielded all too easily to irrational
instinct! There were times lately you almost sensed a dis-
taste in her for all a-priori reasoning, however clearly it
was put. . .
Gilbert loved Mary; but was he perhaps a little afraid
of her always in any ethical context?
Gilbert was silent and distrait at dinner that night — not
POLLY AND RACHEL 87
on Nellie's account however, or because of the Poor: no,
it was something of vital importance. For as he left his
dressing-room he had been called to the telephone and
what he had heard was disturbing. The speaker knew
someone very close to L.G. (with him now, on his
American tour). It had been noised widely abroad that
lately the Litde Man seemed bent on concocting his own
little economic ideas unaided, and from what this chap
said might not be quite sound even about Free Trade any
more! Then the cat was among the Liberal pigeons
indeed.
In short, Liberalism just then had problems on its plate
more immediate than slaughtered Armenians and the
Poor. . . imprimis, there was the split in the party itself
to heal — or to exploit; and Gilbert was involved in all that
up to the neck.
Thus at dinner Gilbert hardly understood Mary at first
when she mentioned the Hermitage: his mind flew first to
St. Petersburg, then to his wine-cellar.
"No — up on the downs! In the chase. As somewhere for
Mrs. Winter's sister."
That place — for her to live in? — Lumme. . . but after all,
why not? Certainly no one else would want it.
This lonely Hermitage was a little romantic folly in
18th-century gothic: an architect's freak, built of the
biggest and knobbiest flints they could find and designed
to look like a toothy fragment of ruined abbey (the largest
window was a lancet, the rest more like arrow-slits). But
it had been built for a habitable hermitage: indeed a pro-
fessional hermit had originally been persuaded by a good
salary to live there, groaning and beating his breast duti-
fully when visitors were brought to inspect him. Once
hermits went out of fashion however it had mostly stood
empty: it was too remote, as well as too uncomfortable. . .
the well even was a hundred feet deep, which is a long
way to wind a bucket up.
Aesthetically in Gilbert's opinion so arrant a sham
88 THE FOX IN THE ATTIC
deserved dynamite. However, it still stood; and at least
you could be sure the woman wouldn't roost there long!
Moreover his consent would stop Mary. . .
'Stop Mary' doing what? — 'Nagging him' was the dire
meaning he expunged before it could even form in his
mind. (Jeremy had once remarked unkindly that Gilbert
didn't know how to be insincere: "He believes every word
he says — as soon as he has said it!" Thus Gilbert had to be
most careful what thoughts he allowed into the reality of
words even in the privacy of his own head.)
"By all means — an inspiration, my dear!" he answered.
"But now, if you'll excuse me. . ."
He had much to think over. Whether or not this was
true about L.G. and Free Trade the Tories would soon
get wind of the rumour — and what then?
Mary had never been inside that hermitage: only seen
it in the distance. But the site though remote seemed so
exactly what was wanted; and actually it was only about
four miles from the house, an easy bicycle-ride for Mrs.
Winter on her afternoons-off. She was so elated she told
Mrs. Winter about it that same evening.
Mrs. Winter was very pleased. She too had never seen
the place; but how lovely to have her Nellie at last so near,
and be able to share her grief!
Chapter 23
Discovery that the dead child had been Mrs. Winter's
famous little niece was not the only shock the inquest
had had in store for Augustine. Apparently the deceased
had not died of drowning, the police-surgeon said in
evidence as soon as the proceedings opened: he had
found hardly any water in the lungs and the skull was
cracked.
He went on to testify he had found no medical signs
whatever pointing to violence: the child's skull was ab-
normally thin: perhaps her head had hit something as she
tumbled in, reaching after her toy boat — even a floating
branch could have done it. But this ghoulish sawbones had
already had an effect on the court that nothing he said
later could alter or undo.
Moreover as it turned out Augustine had found himself
sole witness to the finding of the body: his companion Dai
Roberts was still untraced.
In the front row of the public seats sat Mrs. Dai
Roberts with her Flemton coven: as he told his story their
glittering eyes never for a moment left his face. But the
jury seemed unwilling to look at him at all: so long as he
was in the box they averted their eyes to the well of the
court where the public sat, and their faces were wooden
and uneasy.
The police for their part said they also had found
nothing on the spot either that suggested foul play —
nothing at all. But when the police-witness protested
perhaps over-much how satisfied they were, Mrs. Roberts
under the eyes of the jury took out her purse and looked
inside it. The sergeant at the door reddened with anger;
but there was nothing he could do. Then a juryman asked
for Augustine to be recalled, and put a suspicious question
89
go THE FOX IN THE ATTIC
to him, in a suspicious voice: "Whyever did you move it,
mun?"
Throughout the still court the questing breathing of
those Flemton women could be heard. . .
A scatter of torn frock and a bloody bone half-gnawed
. . . Augustine's mind's-eye flash of the reason he'd had to
bring the body away at once was so beastly he just stood
there in the box tongue-tied and at last Dr. Brinley the
coroner himself had blurted it out: "Rats, laddie!" he said
to the juryman reprovingly. The juryman of course mis-
understood Dr. Brinley's meaning and flushed with morti-
fication; but the old man never noticed.
Meanwhile a fly had settled on Dr. Brinley's bald head
and polished its dirty legs while the aged voice under it
continued: "A very natural, decent thing to do!" But on
this the juryman set his jaw and looked more obstinate
still.
Dr. Brinley was troubled. The whole neighbourhood
had got it in for that boy. . . but why? Notoriously wrong-
headed, certainly. . . tactless. .. a bit of a recluse. . . With
that inadequate eggshell of a skull the wonder was the
child had lived so long! The very first fall from her pony. . .
but she wouldn't have had a pony, of course. . . Why, too
— Dai had been with the boy when he found her! — Damn
Dai for his eternal Law-shy elusiveness: his presence today
could have made all the difference. . .
But at that point Dr. Brinley was distracted by the
appearance of something lying on the desk before him. It
was a hand; and a very old hand — the loose skin was
blotched with brown under the white hairs, and wrinkled:
the joints were knobbly, the ribbed nails horny and mis-
shapen. The withered object was so redolent of old age it
was seconds before he realised that this aged hand was his
own. — Now, when he had never felt younger or better,
when even those pains a week ago he had thought mortal
were quite gone! But if all over he looked like that, all these
POLLY AND RACHEL 91
idiots here must regard him as. . . how dare they, puking
puppies the whole sort of them!
Thrusting the offending hand out of sight he glared at
his middle-aged jury as if he would like to slipper the lot;
and they wriggled resentfully. . . the old fool!
When the evidence was all taken the coroner strongly
suggested a verdict of accidental death; but the verdict
the jury obstinately returned was an 'open' one.
The Flemton women looked gleeful: Dr. Brinley looked
worried.
Meanwhile the police had found the Bentley in the
street outside with its windscreen smashed, and belatedly
had set a guard on it. After adjourning his court Dr.
Brinley took one look at the damaged Bentley and then
surprised Augustine by asking him for a lift home in it. He
ignored someone else's offer and insisted he wouldn't
mind the draught from the broken windscreen; but in fact
his old eyes watered painfully the whole way back to his
house.
The pavements in the High Street as they passed were
unnaturally deserted — but not the windows.
At Newton that night two of those unshuttered billiard-
room windows got smashed and late flowers in the garden
were deliberately fouled. But of that Augustine knew
nothing, for straight after dropping Dr. Brinley he had
started for the north. He was embarked on what was
presently to prove a none-too-satisfactory visit to Douglas
Moss — the former Oxford luminary and leading philo-
sophic wit. This was their first meeting since both went
down. But Douglas was a native (surprisingly) of Leeds
and already, alas, beginning to revert to native ways: he
was out all day at the 'Works', leaving Augustine to his
own devices — and then Augustine couldn't get that in-
quest out of his mind, his thoughts kept returning to it.
92 THE FOX IN THE ATTIC
The Mosses' home was a vast and almost bookless man-
sion in grimy crimson brick, built on the outskirts of the
city. The old people made him as welcome as they could,
but still the inquest continued to rankle. That accusing
question: Why had he moved the body? That juryman's
suspicious voice, asking him "Why ever did you move it>
muri?"
The whole thing was indeed an intractable cud to
chew. . .
What was that phrase Jeremy had once used? —
"Flemton's tricoteuses."
Chapter 24
Waking next morning Mary did wonder a moment
if she had been rash, telling Mrs. Winter without
having even seen the place: but it was all settled now, so
she put the thought from her. After breakfast, though, she
would ride that way. . . there might be repairs needed.
There might even be no sink!
It was a golden mid-October morning when Mary
started out: sun above, and in the hollows mist. There was
a smell of frost in the air but none properly in the ground
yet, and the oaks in the park still held their yellow leaves.
Polly was out exercising her pony there, under a
groom's surveillance: a tiny, narrow piebald pony off the
Prescelly hills Augustine had given her like a miniature
Arab, and perfectly schooled. Polly had a remarkable
natural seat for so young a child, and the beauty of their
effortless performance together under the trees that
autumn morning plucked at Mary's heart. Should she
take Polly with her for company, then? But no, it might
be too far (or was the real reason a fear Polly might not
like the Hermitage?) — Anyway, Mary rode on alone, col-
lecting her mare to take the low wall from the park into
the stubble (no wire was allowed anywhere on Mellton
land, however much the farmers grumbled).
The soil in the valley was still soggy with autumn water
though today the tufts were frosted; but once on the high
downs where lay the chase (a misnomer nowadays, with
its ten-mile circuit of high wall) the going was crisp and
solid, and the air was sharp.
As she entered the chase at last by the crumbhng
castellated gateway even the green unrutted track she had
followed came to an end, and Mary realised fully for the
93
94 THE FOX IN THE ATTIC
first time how ungetatable this hermitage was. Once more
she felt a twinge of anxiety; but again drove it from her,
for Mrs. Winter would be bitterly disappointed by adverse
reporting now.
Moreover as Mary neared the Hermitage all practical
thoughts were banished by the beauty of its setting. This
chase, this tract of land preserved unchanged by man for
a thousand years or more, was a piece of Ancient Britain
itself. In the middle distance red-deer grazed warily: this
was where they had always grazed since the dawn of time,
for this turf under the wide sky had never known the
plough — not since ploughs were invented. These thickets
had never known the axe, these huge hollow yews and
holly and random natural timber all tangled in old-man's-
beard and bryony.
This was the very Britain King Arthur knew! In this
setting, even the romantic fragment of the Hermitage
looked almost true. In this setting, Mistress Mary Wadamy
felt quite mediaeval herself. . . she hitched her palfrey to
a thornbush and let herself in.
The kitchen was smaller even than most town kitchens.
It was darker and gloomier too because of that ruby-tinted
lancet which provided the only light. Mary's heart sank
. . . still, it would probably just take a table for two. . .
the stained-glass in the lancet could be replaced with clear
(and perhaps even made to open) : white walls would work
wonders, and in any case whitewash is far healthier than
wallpaper when there are germs about.
The reason the kitchen was so cramped was that two-
thirds of the space in the Hermitage was occupied by the
grandiose beginnings of an ascent of corkscrew stone stairs.
This stairway had been concocted so wide and ornate as
proof of the fabulous dignity and wealth of this abbey-
which-never-had-been: seen from outside, the stairs ex-
tended several feet even above the facade of the building,
then the corkscrew broke off dramatically against the open
POLLY AND RACHEL 95
sky (effectively masking from sight the kitchen chimney
but perhaps rather spoiling its draught) .
Off these stairs, just before they emerged through a trap
into the open, a low door led into the hermitage's only
room other than the kitchen: an attic bedroom, contrived
in the small space available under the sloping, hidden roof.
It had no window — but surely a skylight is adequate venti-
lation for quite so tiny a room? The slightly-slanting floor
was triangular, and so were the only two walls (on the
third side the roof itself sloped to floor-level). Presumably,
though, it was here the hermit had set his truckle-bed. . .
and indeed there would just be room here for a single bed
for the mother if she didn't sit up too suddenly, and even
for the child's cot too.
As for the invalid, Mary had made up her mind before
starting out: an opensided wooden shed out-of-doors
should be built for him such as she had seen in Swiss
sanatoria. She was thankful there was no possible room
for Gwilym here in the house: it saved argument. In times
past, when the warm sweet breath of cows was thought
sovereign for consumption, folk would have contrived him
a little dark loft in some crowded cowhouse close over the
cows and there they'd have been shut up all winter, he
and his raging tubercles and the milking-cows together.
A more scientific age now realised the danger to the cows)
so they prescribed chalk downs, and the warm sweet
breath of a loving wife and child. . . Mary had little
patience with doctors who sent infectious cases home to
their families like this: they seemed too much like farmers
doing a grim seeding for next year's crops.
As her eyes got more used to the half-dark in the kitchen
she saw now there was moss growing on some of the beams.
The place could certainly do with a good drying out, and
Gilbert must provide a sink (there was no piped water or
drainage, but a sink can be served with buckets). Work-
men must be sent up at once, so that the woman could move
in and have it ready for her husband when he arrived.
96 THE FOX IN THE ATTIC
As her eyes grew still more used to the ruby-tinted
gloom she saw that the open grate was nearly solid with
wet ashes. The chimney-throat was plugged with a wet
sack: Mary poked it with her crop and it collapsed, dis-
charging a barrow-load of sodden soot and jackdaw nests.
Under this weight the front of the grate fell out too.
As Mary rode home she wondered how best to describe
the place to Mrs. Winter. It was indeed a fairy-tale little
place; but its charms were not altogether too easy to put
into simple words.
However, when Mary got home she found a new prob-
lem awaiting her to consider in her bath that night. A
letter from Augustine in Leeds: he told her he thought of
travelling in China for a bit.
Chapter 23
Even before the inquest Augustine had known the
Hermit-of-Newton phase of his life was ended. His
obsession that every man is an island remained, but his
craving for physical solitude had been transitory and was
now gone. It had been succeeded by a similar compulsive
craving to 'see the world'.
Because of the war, Augustine had come to manhood
without ever setting foot even on the further shores of the
Channel. Even Calais would have been strange to him.
But his temperament was not one ever to do things by
halves, and hence his letter to Mary that he thought of
going to China. He had 'once met a chap who had
actually set out to walk to China and had got as far as
Teheran when the war broke out and stopped him. Per-
haps. . .'
Mary's answer suggested: 'Fine, but first why not go to
Germany?' She could write to Lorienburg. . . And now
Douglas had commented: "After all, why not? — If you
don't mind remoteness; for Germany of course is so much
remoter than China."
The friends were alone together, after dinner, in the
huge but darkling and unventilated pillared pannelled
'lounge'. Tonight Douglas seemed a little more like his old
self: business forgotten for once, he lay on his back in a
deep armchair with his long legs higher than his head and
his suede-shod feet tinkling the bric-a-brac beside them on
the top shelf of the chiffonier, while he purported to
be composing a love-letter in modern Greek. Augustine
looked at him hopefully. There was sound truth in
what he had said: Germany was indeed singularly 're-
mote', in the sense that Germany was somewhere utterly
different.
97
98 THE FOX IN THE ATTIC
On Augustine's wartime mind of course had once been
deeply impressed the concept of Germans as quintessential
'they' — as Evil Absolute, the very soil of Germany being
poisoned. Since then, victory had somehow set all one's
wartime 'we-they' axes in a flat spin. However, that hadn't
made Germany 'ordinary' soil again: the evil magic eman-
ating from it had not been dis-spelled, it had become good
magic. Today it was rather one's own country and one's
own wartime allies that tended to look black in young
English eyes like Augustine's, while Darkest Germany was
bathed in a mysterious, a holy light. . .
"The new Germany? Hm. . . I see what you mean. . ."
"Yes-s-s-s!" Douglas almost whistled, with all his old
Oxford sibilance: "The new Germany!"
Except for those hissing sounds his voice was always
quiet, and he had learned to make this sort of speech with-
out the least betraying tinge of irony in his tone as he
continued: "For it is indeed utterly new, isn't it? The
Kaiser being gone, the power of the Prussian Army forever
broken, out of the shattering of that hard and horny
chrysalis has emerged the new German s-s-soul. . . a tender
and shimmering angel, helpless among the cynical guilty
victors and yet with so much to teach them! Yes-s-s —
well worth a visit! A Weimar Germany — all Werfels,
Thomas Manns, Einsteins, Ernst Tollers — all nesting
swallows, democracy and peace!"
"Shut up!" said Augustine, stirring uneasily. "All the
same, I think I'll go."
"Do, dear boy, do. . ." said Douglas absently, appear-
ing to bury himself again in his Demotic. But in fact he
was silently wondering what accounted for these fantastic
notions about Germany 'everybody' now held. It could
hardly be just that little bit of eloquence from Keynes
. . . nor even just the blessed word 'Weimar' brightening
Ebert's aura with a few rays from Goethe's and Schiller's
. . . then too there had been the shock of victory, coming
just when the pendulum had reached the other furthest
POLLY AND RACHEL 99
teetering-point of the absurd. . . 'Perhaps any picture so
garishly coloured as our wartime one of Germany must
inevitably reverse its colours if stared-at till suddenly the
eye tires.' Moreover the concrete British imagination tends
always to project its fictive Utopias onto some map — and
it was still at Germany that the atlas lay open.
— But in any case, this dear naif was better among new
scenes for a bit, after that beastly business. . . though not
quite so far off as China!
Chapter 26
Th 1 s was the post-war generation — Augustine and
Douglas and the like. Unconsciously, and from below,
those four war years would condition their thinking and
feeling all their lives through.
Five years had now passed since the war's ending, and
already it was difficult for an Augustine consciously to
remember that so short a while ago unnatural death had
been a public institution; that there had indeed been a
time when the tiny thud of such a falling farthing spar-
row as Little Rachel would have gone quite unheard
in all the general bereavement (except by the ears of
God). Even the impression of the Armistice was growing
dim. It had come like waking with a jolt out of a bad
dream, that sudden victorious ending of the 'Great War'
in 1 9 18: one moment in the grip of nameless incubi, the
next — sweating, but awake and incredulously safe between
the crumpled sheets. "Everyone suddenly burst out sing-
ing"— so wrote Sassoon at Armistice-time: "O, but every-
one was a bird, and the song was wordless, and the singing
will never be done!" But now, even that brief singing
aftermath seemed to be forgotten too: at least, by the
young. It had quickly subsided, together with the bad
dream it ended, below the threshold of recollection — as
dreams do.
But buried beneath that threshold the war years per-
sisted in these young men indestructible — as dreams do.
Thus it is imperative for us to draw for our own eyes some
sort of picture, however partial — some parable of the
impact of this war upon them, and of the reasons.
That impact had been from the first on British minds
something unique in history; for in 19 14 Britain had
POLLY AND RACHEL 101
known no major war for ninety-nine years — a unique con-
dition; and most folk in Britain had come to believe in
their bones such wars were something Western man had
quite outgrown. Thus its coming again in 19 14 had been
over the head of a bottommost belief it couldn't. So
people's reactions tended to be 'as if' they were now at
war rather than 'that' they were at war: almost more
appropriate to make-believe than to belief.
Yet there is reason to talk as we have done of their state
rather on the analogy of 'dream' than of 'make-believe' :
for this was no voluntary make-believe, they were soon to
discover — this was true dreaming: compulsory, compul-
sive, like Polly's nightmare. If their state, then, was dream-
like, was this war 'dream' at least in part a projection
of some deep emotional upheaval such as compulsive
Freudian dreams like Polly's are born of — an upheaval by
which familiar things and people were all changed, just as
in dreams? An upheaval from the very roots of being, like
earth's queasy belly abruptly gurgling up hot lava onto
the green grass?
That could be, if modern man had been trying to
ignore (as perhaps he had been) what seems to be one of
the abiding terms of the human predicament.
Primitive man is conscious that the true boundary of his
self is no tight little stockade round one lonely perceiving
'I', detached wholly from its setting: he knows there is
always some overspill of self into penumbral regions — the
perceiver's footing in the perceived. He accepts as naturally
as the birds and beasts do his union with a part of his
environment, and scarcely distinguishes that from his
central 'I' at all. But he knows also his self is not infinitely
extensible either: on the contrary, his very identity with
one part of his environment opposes him to the rest of it,
the very friendliness of 'this' implies a balancing measure
of hostility in — and towards — 'all that'. Yet the whole
io2 THE FOX IN THE ATTIC
tale of civilised man's long and toilsome progress from the
taboos of Eden to the psychiatrist's clinic could be read as
a talc of his efforts, in the name of emergent Reason, to
confine his concept of self wholly within Descartes' incon-
testable cogitating T; or alternatively, recoiling rebuffed
off that adamantine pinpoint, to extend 'self outwards in-
finitely— to pretend to awareness of every one as universal
'we', leaving no 'they' anywhere at all.
Selfhood is not wholly curtailed within the T: every
modern language still witnesses the perpetuity of that
primitive truth. For what else but affirmations of two
forms of that limited overspill of '/'-ness are the two words
'we' and 'my' (the most potent words we have: the most
ancient meanings)? These are in the full sense 'personal'
pronouns for they bring others right inside our own 'per-
son'. Moreover the very meaning of 'we' predicates a
'they' in our vocabulary, 'meum' and 'alienum'.
That primitive truth about selfhood we battle against at
our peril. For the absolute solipsist — the self contained
wholly within the ring-fence of his own minimal innermost
*F and for whom 'we' and 'my' are words quite without
meaning — the asylum doors gape. It is the we-they and
meum-alienum divisions which draw the sane man's true
ultimate boundary on either side of which lie quantities
of opposite sign, regions of opposite emotional charge: an
electric fence (as it were) of enormous potential. Yet
emergent Reason had attempted to deny absolutely the
validity of any such line at all! It denied it by posing the
unanswerable question: Where, in the objective world, can
such a line ever reasonably be drawn? But surely it is that
question itself which is invalid. By definition the whole
system of 'self lies within the observer: at the most, its
shadow falls across the objective observed. Personality is
a. felt concept: the only truth ever relevant about selfhood
must be emotional, not intellectual truth. We must answer
then that objectively the we-they dividing line 'reasonably'
lies. . . wherever in a given context the opposing emotional
POLLY AND RACHEL 103
charges for the moment place it: wherever it brings into
balance the feelings of owning and disowning, the feelings
of loving and hating, trusting and fearing. . . 'right' and
'wrong'. For normally (at least up to now) each of these
feelings seems to predicate its opposite, and any stimulus to
the one seems to stimulate the other in unregenerate man.
In short, it is as if it were the locus of this emotional balance
that circumscribes and describes the whole self, almost
as the balance of opposite electrical forces describes the
atom.
Perhaps in the neighbourhood of death or under the
shadow of heaven man, in a dissolution as potent as the
splitting atom his analogue, can experience love only. . .
or, in the shadow of madness and hell, conceivably hate
only. But normal man seems not to be able to, normally,
unaided; and even the all-loving Christ still kept one
counterbalancing 'they' outside for utter hatred and
spurning: Sin.
In terms of our picture of the 'self, then — of this our
parable of a system contained within the observer, its
shadow (only) shifting like the shadow of a cloud across
the landscape — 'objectively' old we-they dichotomies will
appear to be continually replaced by new. On the scale of
history, old oppositions such as Christian and Paynim will
in time give way to Papist and Protestant: these in turn
to distinctions of colour and race, local habitation, social
class, opposite political systems: but whatever the changing
content of the opposing categories, the love-hate balances
of kinship and alienation inherent in man would, un-
affected, continue.
But suppose that in the name of emergent Reason the
very we-they line itself within us had been deliberately so
blurred and denied that the huge countervailing charges
it once carried were themselves dissipated or suppressed?
The normal penumbra of the self would then become a
no-man's-land: the whole self-conscious being is rendered
unstable — it has lost its 'footing': the perceiver is left
io4 THE FOX IN THE ATTIC
without emotional adhesion anywhere to the perceived,
like a sea-anemone which has let go its rock.
Then surely, in this entropy of the whole self, the
depleted voltages must cry out for a re-charge and dicho-
tomies new! In comparison with that psychic need
material security will suddenly seem valueless. Reasonable
motive-constructs such as 'Economic Man' and the like
will be revealed as constructs, their motivation being quite
overthrown or adapted as conduits for much deeper
springs. In such a state the solipsist-malgre-lui may well
turn to mad remedies, to pathological dreaming; for his
struggles to regain his 'footing' would indeed be an up-
heaval from being's very roots. . . gurgling up hot lava
suddenly onto the green grass.
Chapter 2J
ESPECiALLYin modern England had it been held to be the
measure of man's civilisation, how much they strove to
kick against these particular pricks. Elsewhere, nationalism
or the class-struggle were in the comforting ascendant; but
here, Liberal 'Reason' had done its utmost to keep both
emotionally weak. Thus here there had been no adequate
replacement for the once-unbridgeable hereditary castes
and trades which had now so long been melting: now, too,
that derided nigger-line at Calais was growing shamefast,
weakening: so was the old damnation-line between Chris-
tian and heathen; and even (since Darwin) the once-
absolute division between man and beast.
Moreover in the last century the once-dominant Liberal
mystique of Laissez-faire had called on man to renounce
even his natural tendency to love his neighbour — the
workless starving craftsman, stunted women sweating in
the mills, naked child-Jezebels dying in the mines and the
sore chimney-boys. Ignoring what an unnatural and
dangerous exercise this is for ordinary men (this trying
not to love even mildly even such neighbours as those),
the earliest English 'Liberals' had loudly denounced that
strong implanted urge: not only as a Tory obstacle to
economic progress, but worse — as a blasphemy against
their rational doctrine of total separation of persons, a
trespass on the inalienable right of the helpless to be
helped by no one but himself.
Now, coming full circle, you were called on to love all
mankind at large, coupled for good measure with all
created nature! The Humanist 'we' of infinite extension.
Yes, but how? For 'Sin' nowadays evoked nothing stronger
than a mild distaste — the lifted eyebrow, not the lifted
rod; and they had found no substitute for Sin.
105
io6 THE FOX IN THE ATTIC
In 19 1 4, then, there was something of an emotional void
in England: and into it war-patriotism poured like Noah's
Flood. For the invasion of Belgium seemed once again to
present an issue in the almost-forgotten terms of right and
wrong — always incomparably the most powerful motive of
human conduct that history has to show. Thus the day
Belgium was invaded every caged Ego in England could
at last burst its false Cartesian bonds and go mafficking
off into its long-abandoned penumbral regions towards
boundaries new-drawn.
The effect was immediate. The boy Jeremy, lying on
his sickbed paralysed throughout that hot 19 14 summer,
had seen with the clear and detached eye of the child who
has nearly died just such an extraordinary change over-
take his elders when 'war' was declared — so he told Augus-
tine afterwards, wondering: he had seen his father that
gentle clergyman suddenly lift up his nose and begin
baying for blood as naturally as any foxhound.
The dim world had come out for them all in clear con-
trasting colours again, like a landscape after rain: every-
thing, taking sides at last, looked nobler or more villainous.
And thus in simple minds and minds not-so-simple too had
quickly been conjured all that whole new potent 'we-they'
dream-phantasmagoria typical of 19 14 (thought Jeremy):
Martyred Belgium. . . our brave Utile Servia, with the big benignant
Russian Bear lumbering to his rescue; and against them,
Decrepit, tyrannical Austria, with chiefest 'they' of al.1 GER-
MANY, Belgium's Ravisher, who now unmasked features of
wickedest quintessential they!
Their 'we' too had been re-born; for the two-ended com-
pass needle, ceasing to dither, cannot point to the north
without faithfully pointing to the south as well. If war (and
lesser crime too, for that matter) pointed to hate alone,
would man find the difficulty he palpably does find in
renouncing them both — war, and crime? Surely the love,
rather, is the lode: it is the love two-ended war points to
which will always suck us into it if deprived of enough
POLLY AND RACHEL 107
natural loving to do in the ways of peace. Certainly the
enthralment over Britons in 19 14 of this their war-dream
was not hate but that it enabled Britons to love Britons
again. Officers found themselves now able to love the
Regiment, soldiers their officers: the non-combatant loved
both — every uniform designated a Hero and a gallant
grave among the nodding poppies of Flanders was to be
their guerdon, so
So sing with joyful breath:
For why, you are going to death. . . .
The public dream was now in full pelt: moreover as the
dream deepened everything grew even more symbolical.
Grey hordes of 'THEY' raven on the lovely virginal flesh of La
Belle France: the Russian Bear turned into a Steamroller,
but was thrown back on his haunches in an agonising
halt: indeed, now tridented Britannia herself stands with her
back to the wall; but
Loudly over the distant seas
The Empire's call rang across the breeze:
"Children of mine! Tour liberties
Are threatened now by might!"
Then Britain's bronzed sons overseas lay down the sheep-shears
and the reaping-hook, hastening at the Mother's call, and
Tramp, tramp, tramp, the boys are coming. . .
After the war, in a 'waking' state, it was just such potent
love-fantasies as these which came most particularly to be
derided: the most implausible materialist motives were
invented to account for the Empire's whole-hearted entry
into the war (as for Britain's too). Yet surely all this had
been true dreaming! Why need there have been anything
faked, anything despicable, an) thing wrong or ridiculous
about these love-fantasies? Surely for the most part they
were noble and quite true — come through the Gate of Horn.
After the war, war-emotion was assumed ex hypothesi
io8 THE FOX IN THE ATTIC
to be all hatred because men then wished to believe war-
making something easy to slough off; and hatred is akin
to suffering. . . so what sane man ever positively wishes
to hate?
They deliberately forgot the love war stimulates too.
The public dream was now in full pelt: but not yet the
public nightmare it was presently to become.
A private nightmare too can begin nobly, pleasurably.
Silver ponies skimming summer meadows. . . a soaring on
wings among restless star-fronted towers, over alabaster
domes mirrored in shining lakes. . . but then suddenly the
dream changes phase, the wings shrink to a tight winding-
sheet and the dreamer plummets, the topless towers turn
to dizzy unbanistered stairways climbing to nowhere up
nothing.
Then the translucent lakes become the rocking oceans
paved with accusing faces: then come the staring idiot
monkeys and the hollow derisive parakeets, the stone
coffin at the heart of the pyramid, the 'cancerous kisses of
crocodiles' the slimy things and the Nilotic mud. . .
The Flanders mud, the slime of putrefying bodies. The
accusing sunken eyesockets trodden in the trench floor.
The gargled pink froth, and an all-pervading smell.
Chapter 28
There had never been so much death in any earlier
war: nothing comparable.
In the one battle of Passchendaele alone the British
alone lost nearly half a million men. But mostly it was war
hardly separable into battles — a killing going on all the
time: without apparent military object, although in fact
a deliberate military policy called 'attrition'. For while so
many men on both sides were still alive between the Alps
and the Narrow Seas the generals on both sides had no
room for manoeuvre; and in manoeuvre alone (they both
thought) lay any hope of a decision.
But so prolific had civilised western man become it
proved no easy task, this killing enough in the enemy ranks
and your own to make room to move. Even after some
four years, when some fourteen million men all told had
been killed or maimed or broken in nerve, it had scarcely
been achieved. Always there seemed to be new boys in
every country growing to manhood to fill the gaps;
whereon the gaps had to be made all over again.
Boys of Augustine's age had been children when the war
began and as children do they accepted the world into
which they had been born, knowing no other: it was normal
because it was normal. After a while they could hardly
remember back before it began; and it hardly entered
their comprehension that one day the war could end.
Merely they knew they were unlikely to live much
beyond the age of nineteen; and they accepted this as the
natural order of things, just as mankind in general accepts
the unlikelihood of living much beyond eighty or so. It
was one of those natural differences between boys and
girls: girls such as Mary would live out their lives, but not
their brothers. So, generation after generation of boys grew
109
mo THE FOX IN THE ATTIC
big, won their colours, and a few terms later were. . .
mere names, read aloud in chapel once. As list succeeded
list the time of other littler boys for the slaughterhouse was
drawing nearer; but they scarcely gave it a thought as they
in turn grew into big boys, won their football colours.
After all, it is only grown men ever who think of school
as a microcosm, a preparation for adult life: to most boys
at any time school is life, is itself the cosmos: a rope in
the air you will climb, higher and higher, and — then,
quite vanish into somewhere incomprehensible anyhow.
Thus in general they seemed quite indifferent. Yet some-
times the death of someone very close — a brother, or a
father perhaps — would bring home to them momentarily
that being killed is radically different from that mere
normal disappearing into the grown-up shado w- world :
is being no more even a shadow on the earth.
When Augustine's cousin Henry was killed — the heir to
Newton Llantony — the change in Augustine's 'prospects'
had meant nothing to him at all; for his real prospects
were still unchanged: to tread the universal path that
Henry had just trodden. But Henry's death did make a
deep impression on him of this other kind, a sudden
blinding intimation of mortality.
Augustine at this time had been seventeen, a sergeant
in the school Officers' Training Corps. That afternoon
with his mother's opened letter in his pocket he was taking
a squad of little boys in bayonet-practice. Scowling as
savagely as he could he jerked out the staccato commands
"In! — Out! — On guard!" while the little boys struggled
with their heavy rifles and bayonets to jab the swinging
sacks of straw called 'Germans', piping as they did so the
officially-taught obscenities supposed to arouse blood-lust
in them.
Suddenly the moment of self- revelation came to Augus-
tine, more vividly than he had ever felt it since the first
time in childhood — the realisation that within his 'we' and
POLLY AND RACHEL in
distinct from it there was too one irreplaceable T. But
this time there came with it the awful corollary: it is the
'I' which dies. . . '/ shall die. . .' and at the same moment
he felt the tender flesh of his belly and the very guts
within shrinking back as from a stabbing bayonet-point.
For a moment his face went grey with fear.
Just then a pretty four-foot choirboy shrilled: "Knock
his b ... s out of the back of his bloody neck!" — The child
took a flying punt-kick at the swinging sack and landed
on his behind in the mud, the rifle clattering from his hand.
Some bigger boys laughed. But Augustine angrily
reproved their frivolity and the solemn bayonet-practice
went on.
Augustine had left school and was on the last lap of all
— at a training camp for young officers — when the guns
stopped.
The war had ended. He was eighteen. The shock was
stupendous.
No one had warned him he might after all find himself
with his life to live out: with sixty years still to spend,
perhaps, instead of the bare six months he thought was all
he had in his pocket. Peace was a condition unknown to
him and scarcely imaginable. The whole real-seeming
world in which he had grown to manhood had melted
round him. It was not till Oxford he had even begun to
build a new world — he, and his whole generation — from
the foundations up.
Perhaps then the key to much that seems strange
about that generation is just this: their nightmare had been
so vivid! They might think they had now forgotten it, but
the harmless originals of many of its worst metamorphoses
were still charged for them with a nameless horror. . .
Just as Polly that night, when after waking she saw Augus-
tine's harmless real figure standing in her bedroom door-
way, had screamed at it so. Just as next morning, her
dream ostensibly forgotten, she had yet lain away from
lis THE FOX IN THE ATTIC
him on the mattress's extreme edge — as companionable as
a three-foot plank of wood.
Oxford is always luminous; but at first in those post-war
days Oxford had been an older and more hysterical society
than in normal times. Colonels and even a brigadier or
two twisted commoners' gowns round grizzled necks:
young ex-captains were countless. But between the Augus-
tines who had never seen the trenches and these, the
remnant who for years had killed yet somehow had not
been killed back, an invisible gulf was fixed. Friendship
could never quite bridge it. Secretly and regretfully and
even enviously the men yet felt something lacking in these
unblooded boys, like being eunuchs; and the boys, deeply
respecting and pitying them, agreed. But the older men
understood each other and cherished each other charitably.
They knew they sweated sometimes for no reason, and the
sweat smelt of fear. Their tears came easily, making the
boys ashamed: they had moments of violence. They tended
to find knowledge difficult to memorise.
That was in the first twelve months or so, before they
hardened over; and in two years most of them were gone.
The young ex-captains and the uncrowned kings like
Lawrence departed, their places were taken by freshmen
younger than Augustine still — the Jeremies, milk-fresh
from school. But one belief had been shared absolutely on
both sides of the gulf, and in England continued for a long
time to be held by those who came thereafter: it was built
into the very structure of Augustine's new world: never till
the end of Time could there be another war.
Life in the years so unexpectedly to come might hold
many hazards for this and for succeeding generations; but
that hazard could be discounted.
Any government which ever again anywhere even talked
of war would next minute be winkled out of Whitehall
or the Wilhelmstrasse or wherever by its own unanimous
citizens and hanged like stoats.
BOOK TWO
The White Crow
Chapter i
In his little office in Lorienburg, the castle Mary had
visited in her girlhood before the war, sat the mag-
nificent Otto von Kessen she had so lately dreamed of. He
was rubbing his chin, which felt pleasingly rough to the
touch after the papers he had been fingering all afternoon.
'Thursday November the Eighth' said the calendar on
the wall. The cold had come early to Bavaria this autumn,
with ten degrees of frost outside. But this office was in the
thickness of the castle's most ancient part: it was a tiny
twilight room with a sealed double window, and it was like
an oven. There were beads of sweat on Baron Otto's fore-
head, and the hot air over the huge blue porcelain stove
quivered visibly: it kept a loose strip of wallpaper on the
wall in constant agitation like a pennon.
This monumental stove was too big: with its stack of
wood it more than half filled the room and the space left
only just housed the safe and the little kneehole desk Otto
was sitting at. On the desk stood a huge ancient type-
writer of British make, built like an ironclad and with two
complete banks of keys (being pre-shiftlock), and that
incubus also took up far too much space: the files and
ledgers piled high beside it leaned, like Pisa. In such a
cubbyhole there was no possible place to put the big wire
wastepaper basket other than under the desk, yet that left
a man nowhere to stretch his artificial leg in comfort and
now the socket was chafing: a nerve in the mutilated hip
had begun to throb neuralgically against the metal of the
heavy revolver in Otto's pocket.
Otto tried hard to concentrate on the sheets of accounts
in front of him (he acted as factotum for his half-brother
Walther these crippled days). These were the last and
craziest weeks of the Great Inflation when a retired
115
n6 THE FOX IN THE ATTIC
colonel's whole year's pension wouldn't cobble him one
pair of shoes: Walther's cheques however vast were still
honoured, but only because he was able to keep his bank
account nowadays in terms of the corn he grew and a
cheque drawn for trillions of marks would be debited as
so many bushels according to the price that actual hour.
This galloping calculus of the currency, this hourly
acceleration in the rise of all prices and the fall of all real
values, made endless difficulties for Otto; and now the
shooting pains in the leg which wasn't there were getting
worse. . .
'November the Eighth' said the calendar: almost five
years to the day since the old world ended.
The sound of wind. . . the bitter Munich wind which
had swept down the wide spaces of the Ludwigstrasse that
scudding winter day nearly five years ago, alternating
with moments of unearthly calm: whipping the muffling
rags of the uncertain crowd, wildly flapping the revolu-
tionary red banners on the public buildings and then
leaving them pendulous and despondent.
The sound of marching feet. . . it was in one of the lulls
of the wind that Otto had first heard that dead thudding
sound, and a sudden stirring and a murmur had passed
through the crowd for this could be none of Eisner's 'Red
Guard' rabble, only trained Imperial troops marched
with such absolute precision. But to Otto's professional
ear, keen as a musician's, from the first there was some-
thing wrong in the sound of that marching. A hollowness
and a deadness. No spring in the step — it sounded. . .
wrong: like the knocking of an engine, which is also a
precise and regular sound yet presages a breakdown.
Then, through the front ranks of the crowd, a blur of
field-grey and steel helmets as the first men began to pass.
Many were without packs: some even without rifles: their
uniforms were still caked with French mud. Someone in
THE WHITE CROW 117
the crowd tried to cheer — for this was their menfolk's
homecoming, home from the war, home to be demobil-
ised; but the solitary cheer ended in a fit of coughing and
nobody took it up.
The men marched in close formation, in small parties
that were token platoons, detachment after detachment,
with wide spaces between, so that the dead sound of
marching came in waves, rising and falling regularly, like
sea-waves on shingle — only varied by the sullen rumbling
of a baggage-wagon like boulders rolling.
A small child, pushed forward a little in front of the
crowd, stood motionless, a bunch of wilting flowers held
out in front of her in a chubby fist; but no soldier accepted
it, no one even looked at her, not one smiled: they did not
even seem to see the crowd. They marched like machines
dreaming.
Even the officers — the first these five chaotic weeks to
appear on the Munich streets in uniform — wore that
empty basilisk look, marching with men they hardly
seemed to see; but at this sight of officers there rose from
the onlookers here and there a faint and almost dis-
embodied growl. . . someone behind Otto on his new
crutches jostled him aside and pressed right forward out of
the crowd, right past the child too: a big elderly woman
with a massive bosom and a huge protruding stomach,
upright as a ramrod from carrying all that weight in
front: a flaunting hag with a lupus-ridden face and hang-
ing dewlaps, wisps of grey hair under a railwayman's
peaked cap. Deliberately she spat on the ground just
where a young major was about to tread. But he seemed
to see nothing, not even that. For a moment it looked as
if she was going to attack him; but then, as if appalled,
she didn't.
If there was any expression at all on any of these wooden
military faces it was a potential hatred : a hatred that had
found no real object yet to fasten on, but only because
nothing in the somersaulted world around seemed real.
u8 THE FOX IN THE ATTIC
God! That German soldiers should ever have to look
like that, marching through a German crowd!
Why had God chosen to do this thing to His German
Army — the very salt of His else-unsavoury earth?
Otto bundled his papers into the safe and locked it, for
that obsessive dead sound of marching made work im-
possible : then hoisted himself to his feet, facing the window.
Chapter 2
In England the ending of the war had come like waking
from a bad dream: in defeated Germany, as the signal
for deeper levels of nightmare. The symbols and the
occasion had changed but in Germany it was still that
same kind of compulsive dreaming. The ex-soldier, ex-
pelled from the crumbled Gemeinschaft of army life, had
stepped out into a void. The old order had shattered: even
money was rapidly ebbing away from between men,
leaving them desperately incommunicado like men ren-
dered voiceless by an intervening vacuum: millions, still
heaped on top of each other in human cities yet forced
to live separate, each like some solitary predatory beast.
Now in 1923 prices were already a billion times the
pre-war figure and still rocketing. These were the days
spoken of by Haggai the prophet, when 'he that earneth
wages, earneth wages to put it into a bag with holes' : by
Monday a workman's whole last-week's wages might not
pay his tramfare back to work. The smallest sum in any
foreign currency was hoarded for it would buy almost
anything; but nobody held German money five minutes.
Even beer was an investment for presently you got more
for the empty bottle than you had paid for it full.
The salaried and rentier classes were becoming sub-
merged below the proletariat. Wages could rise (even if
always too little and too late); but interest and pensions
and the like, and even salaries, were fixed. Retired senior
officials swept the streets. The government official still in
office had to learn to temper his integrity to his necessities:
had he tried to stay strictly honest a little too long, he
would have died.
When the solid ground drops utterly away from under
a man's feet like that he is left in a state of free fall: he is
"9
lao i HI POX IN THE ATTIC
in a bottomless pit —a hell. Moreover this was a hell
where all were not equitably tailing equally together. Some
fell slower than others: even peasants could resort to
barter (you went marketing with your poultry, not your
purse); and many rich men had found means of hardly
falling at all. There they were still, those Walther von
Kessens and the like, tramping about solidly up there like
Dantes in full view of all the anguished others who were
falling. People who could buy things for marks and sell
them for pounds or dollars even rose.
A hell where justice was not being done, and seen not
being done.
Consumption has always to be paid for. Their war had
been very conspicuous consumption but in Germany
there had been virtually no war-taxation to pay for it on
the nail. Thus there was nothing really mysterious about
this present exhaustion into outer space of every last
penn'orth of new value as fast as it was created: this was
a kind of natural, belated capital-cum-income levy —
though levied now not equitably by any human govern-
ment but blindly, by Dis himself. Of this rationale how-
ever the sufferers had no inkling. They could not under-
stand their suffering, and inexplicable suffering turns to
hatred. But hatred cannot remain objectless: such hatred
precipitates its own they, its own someone-to-be-hated.
In a hell devoid of real ministering devils the damned
invent them rather than accept that their only tormentors
are themselves and soon these suffering people saw every-
where such 'devils', consciously tormenting them: Jews,
Communists, Capitalists, Catholics, Cabbalists — even
their own elected government, the 'November Criminals'.
Millions of horsepower of hatred had been generated,
more hatred than the real situation could consume:
inevitably it conjured its own Enemy out of thin air.
On the heels of that hatred came also the inevitable
reacting love. All those egos violently dislodged from their
THE WHITE CROW 121
old penumbral settings were now groping desperately in
the face of that dark enveloping phantasmal they to
establish a new 'footing', new tenable penumbral frontiers
of the Self: inevitably they secreted millions of horsepower
of love that the actual situation also couldn't consume,
and therefore precipitating its own Active we — its myths
of Soil and Race, its Heroes, its kaleidoscope of Brother-
hoods each grappling its own members with hoops of
steel.
Its Freikorps, its communist cells: its Kampfbund, with
all its component organisms: its Nazi movement.
After the official cease-fire in 1 9 1 8 fighting still went on
for a time in the lost Baltic provinces that the Armistice
had raped. These freelance wars were a more amateur and
even obscener carnage for they were an ill-armed and
merciless Kilkenny-cats all-against-all, where fanatical
bands of Germans in a state of bestial heroism fought with
Latvians, Lithuanians, Poles, Bolsheviks, British — even
Germans of the wrong kidney. It was one way of staving
off this generation's Nemesis of Teace'.
Otto's young nephew, Franz (the 'ten-year-old tow-
haired Franz' of Mary's pre-war memories), had a best
schoolfriend called Wolff; and in 19 18 Wolff had enlisted
in those wars when not quite sixteen.
There Wolff had vanished; but these were wars fought
without benefit of war-office and published no casualty
lists. Even now no one could say for certain that Wolff had
been killed.
Wolff's younger brother Lothar (for one) would never
believe it. Before the debacle this Lothar had been sent to
the same fashionable cadet-school as Wolff and Franz
(their father the gaunt old Geheimrat Scheidemann was a
retired colonial governor, an ex-colleague in Africa of
Goering pere). But come the inflation the Scheidemanns
had not the same solid resources as the von Kessens, nor
foreign investments like the Goerings. The old widower
122 THE FOX IN THE ATTIC
was too arthritic now to work: he let lodgings in his big
flat near the 'English Garden' in Munich, but there was
not much left nowadays under any of those lofty ornate
ceilings of his except hard-lying lodgers, several to a room.
Eighteen-year-old Lothar who was supposed to be
studying law thought himself lucky to have landed a part-
time desk-clerk job at the Bayrischer-Hof hotel in Munich
where most of the clerks and waiters were sons of just such
middle-class families as his, and were nowadays virtually
their families' sole support. At the Bayrischer-Hof, too,
some at least of Lothar's meals were provided. But no one
could expect so good a job all to himself, and Lothar
shared his turn-about with a fellow student. On his off-
days he lived chiefly on memories of his hotel meals,
dining in retrospect. One night when he was supperless
like this he dreamed he had been sacked, and woke
screaming: other times he dreamed of his brother Wolff —
the wild one who had vanished — and woke in tears.
This morning at the hotel Lothar had had a windfall: a
young Englishman who had spent the night there asked
him to change an English ten-shilling note.
Lothar had changed it out of his own pocket: no one
would be such a fool as to put good English money in the
till. He buckled it safely inside his shirt. He had changed it
into marks for Augustine quite fairly at the rate current
that morning; but even by midday it was worth ten times
as much.
Chapter 3
So Augustine with his pocket full of marks caught the
mainline train for Kammstadt where he had to change,
and soon after his departure Lothar came off duty.
Habitually Lothar spent most of his time off duty at a
certain gymnasium near the Southern Station. The neigh-
bourhood was a bit medical, but convenient for the
Teresienwiese Sportsground with its running-tracks. He
went there for physical training and to meet his friends as
in Sparta of old; for the company he met here was indeed
a noble sodality, the very flower of German youth; and
Lothar was proud and humble to be accepted as one of
them.
He found here that decent, modest, manly kind of
idealism as necessary to youth everywhere as desert
watersprings. 'True', thought Lothar, 'we are come here
to exercise only our brute bodies; but in fact how inno-
cently do Body and Spirit walk hand in hand! How much
more often the Eye of Horns' — their private name for that
rare hawklike eye that pierces to the spiritual behind every
material veil — 'is found in the faces of simple athletes than
of philosophers or priests!' Lothar himself was intelligent
enough but had found it only a hindrance in this company;
and he had the more need for friends now that his brother
the noble Wolff was gone.
So Lothar with Augustine's half-Bradbury still safe
inside his shirt betook himself to his gymnasium; and at
the first whiff of all the delicious manliness within its
echoing portals he snorted like a horse. The abiding smell
of men's gymnasiums is a cold composite one, compounded
of the sweet strawberry-smell of fresh male sweat, the
reek of thumped leather and the dust trampled into the
grain of the floor and confirmed there by the soapy mops
123
124 THE FOX IN THE ATTIC
of cleaners; but to eighteen-year-old Lothar this tang
meant everything that the wind on the heath meant to
Petulengro and he snorted at it now like a horse let out
to spring grass.
Today Lothar began with a few loosening-excrcises,
starting with neck and shoulders, then the fingers, and
ending with ankles and insteps. After that he hung from
the wall-bars, raising and lowering his legs to strengthen
the abdomen; for that muscular wall is of the greatest
importance, since not only does it control the body's
hinge on which everything else depends but it also pro-
tects the solar plexus with its sacred emotions.
At the far end of this bare hall filled with the echoes of
young men's staccato voices the wall was painted a light
green with a broad off-white band at the height of a
tennis-net, for solo practice. Lothar was fond of tennis,
but alas in May 19 19 when von Epp was 'cleansing'
Munich someone had stood Reds against it so now the
brickwork (particularly in and close to that white band)
was too badly bullet-pocked for a tennis-ball ever again to
return off it true. Thus if the arms and shoulders of some
quill-driver like Lothar needed building up he had really
nothing more interesting to turn to than dumb-bells and
Indian clubs. Today moreover when he came down off
the wall Lothar found the vaulting-horse crowded and
also the parallel bars; so he went straight to the mat of the
small pug-nosed world war sergeant who taught them all
jiu-jitsu.
Jiu-jitsu (or Judo), being the art of using unbearable
pain for the conquest of brute force, has an irresistible
attraction for young imaginations, boys' almost as much
as girls'. Lothar was obsessed by it these days. Since it is
the technique of unarmed self-defence the instructor
taught you how to take your enemy unawares and break
arm or leg before he can even begin his treacherous assault
on you : how to fling spinning out of a window a man big
enough to be your father, and so on. Lothar was slightly,
THE WHITE CROW 125
almost girlishly built but he had a quite exceptional
natural quickness of movement, and lately at political
meetings or the like he had sometimes had occasion to use
that natural quickness and these acquired skills outside
and in earnest. At grips with some older and angrier and
stronger but helplessly-fumbling human body he had then
been astonished to find how deeply his aesthetic emotions
could be stirred by his own impeccable performance. The
aesthetic satisfaction of that culminating moment could
be almost epileptically intense: Lothar was not uncul-
tured, but surely no poem nor even music had ever
offered him one tenth part of this.
O happy, happy youths — hungry and happy!
'Isn't life wonderful!' thought Lothar, towelling his lean
body in the changing-room that afternoon: 'What a dis-
pensation of Providence that we, the German Remnant,
should have found each other in this predestined way and
grappled ourselves so tight with our comradely love!' For
with the secret enemies of Germany ever ceaselessly at
work tension these last few weeks was everywhere mount-
ing: surely any minute now the storm must break. . .
But then suddenly Lothar remembered that this was a
Thursday, and at that his heart leapt. At weekends most
of this same sodality went out from Munich, drawn by the
silence and the purity of the ancient German forests, to
sing ancient German songs together as they marched down
the rides between the echoing tree-trunks: to meet in
secret deer-haunted glades to perfect their formation-drill:
to practise in that pine-sweet air such quasi-military
pastimes as 'the naming of parts'.
Such times as Captain Goering himself was coming the
whole band of brothers wore death's-heads in their caps,
and carried arms.
Chapter 4
Schloss lorienburg was built on a precipitous tree-
clad mound in a bend of the stripling Danube. Under
the small window of Otto's office, in its deep embrasure,
there was a nearly sheer drop of a hundred and fifty feet
or so into tree-tops, so that everything nearby was hidden
from where he stood. All he could ever see from here was
the far distance dimmed and diminished by its remoteness
— today, a horizonless pattern of small dark patches that
were forest a little darker than the canopy of cloud, and
small patches a little lighter and yellower than the cloud
that were rolling withered winter fields under a thin
scumble of rime: the high Bavarian plateau, stretching
away into purple immensities under a purplish slate sky.
Otto could not see the river for it was almost directly
beneath him. He could not see the village, crowded
between the river and the hill's foot. He could not even see
the valley, but he could hear — though faintly, through the
two thicknesses of glass — the melancholy mooing of the
little daily train as it wound its way down the branch line
from Kammstadt; and that recalled him. The unknown
English cousin was arriving on that train — cause of all his
unease.
Bavarian Otto had served in Bavarian Crown-Prince
Rupprecht's Sixth Army during the war, being posted to
the 1 6th Reserve Regiment of Foot. It was at Bapaume
he had lost his leg, to an English mortar-shell. Nearly all
the time it had been the English he was fighting — Ypres,
Neuve-Chapelle, the Somme. So what was it going to feel
like, meeting an Englishman again for the first time since
the Western Front?
Relatives of course are in a special category: indubitable
bonds transcending frontiers connect them. Not that this
126
THE WHITE CROW 127
was a close kinship, it was merely the kind that old ladies
like to keep alive by a lifetime of letter-writing. In fact,
these Penry-Herberts were really the Arcos' relatives
rather than their own. It was some niece of someone in the
Arco tribe who had married a Penry-Herbert, generations
ago: but the Kessens and the Arcos were themselves
related many times over, so it came to the same thing in
the end — and even the remotest relationships ought to
count.
Moreover, this was the younger brother of that little
English Backfisch — he had forgotten her name, but she
came to stay at Lorienburg the summer before the War,
and rode in the bullock-race.
Somebody had told him, too, this boy was quite a
promising young shot. His grandfather of course had been
the world famous shot — even in his eighties still one of the
finest in Europe: Otto's own father had felt it a great
honour when invited to Newton Llantony for the snipe. . .
or would that have been this boy's gra2£-grandfather? It
was getting difficult to remember how quickly the genera-
tions pass. Indeed what Otto found hardest of all to
envisage as he faced the wintry prospect beyond the
window was that the little brother that girl had so prattled
about in 19 13 was now a grown man — the master of
Newton Llantony — and yet had been too young to serve
in the War.
Beneath his clipped correctness of manner Otto was a
devout Catholic with tinges of mysticism.
Most Imperial German officers those days were avowed
Christians. Perhaps they found in the code of their
Officers' Corps the closest earthly simulacrum possible
(in their eyes) to the selfless ethics of the Sermon on the
Mount, and in 'Germany' an identical name under which
to worship God. Be that as it may, Man, among all God's
vertebrate creatures is in fact the only species which wages
war — man alone, in whom alone His image is reflected —
128 THE FOX IN THE ATTIC
and how could that awful monopoly mean nothing? War,
surely, is a pale human emblem of that Absolute of Force;
and human power, a portion of His attribute incarnate in
us His earthly mirror-images: fighting, His refiner's
furnace to brighten the gold and burn away the material
dross.
Otto's present deep conviction that all this is the true
teaching about war had come to him more slowly, perhaps,
than to many; for he had seen the 'dross' burn (some of it)
with so very lurid a light. But in the end it had come even
to him ineluctably, for it seemed to derive honestly from
his own experience of himself and those around him in
four years of war. For instance, at Bapaume when his leg
was shattered three willing volunteers in turn had carried
him from the front line, succeeding each other instantly
as each was shot: a thing no man could easily forget, or
ignore.
Because of his pride in his calling Otto was personally
humble but he was not one whose convictions once formed
were easily shaken or complicated. He had not argued all
this out with himself step by step but had reached much
the same frame of mind as if he had: he believed that for
every man war is the essential means of Grace.
Whatever a cripple could do, working secretly, towards
the rebuilding of the proscribed German Army, Otto was
doing. But hostilities were suspended now, Germany so
shattered and the civil crowd so rotten that it might be
many years before war could be resumed; and suddenly
he was moved by a deep pity for this young English cousin
such as he felt for his own German nephew Franz. He
must needs pity that whole generation everywhere whose
loss it was that the last war had ended just too soon: for
the next might come too late.
Presently one-legged Otto left his office and made his
way with difficulty (the stone treads being sloping and
uneven) down the stairs. Reaching the courtyard, he
THE WHITE CROW 129
caught sight of his brother Walther who was crossing it
towards the Great Gate. In spite of Walther's abnormal
size and massive strength he walked lightly and springily
like a cat; it was all on the ball of the foot, his was a
hunter's gait rather than a soldier's. . .
It was typical of Walther's courtesy (Otto thought with
affection) to feel he must go to the station himself to meet
even so young a guest.
Chapter j
Meanwhile in the crowded one-class branch-line
train from Kammstadt Augustine was agog with
interest. These peaceful fenceless fields! These forests, that
looked cared-for as chrysanthemums — so utterly unlike
wild natural English woods! These pretty pastel-coloured
villages with pantile roofs, onion-top churches. . . all this,
rolling past the half-frosted windows — all this was
Germany! Moreover these friendly people in the compart-
ment with him. . . they looked almost ordinarily human
but were they not in fact all 'Germans' — even the quite
small children?
The old peasant opposite Augustine had the kind of
belly which made him sit with knees wide apart, and he
was smoking a decorative hooked pipe which smelled like
fusty hay. His face was brimming over with curiosity:
earlier he had tried to talk to Augustine but Augustine's
Swiss-taught school German could alas make little of this
slurry dialect even with the words tapped out for him on
his knee. The old man's wife, too, had a kindly wrinkled
face with intensely wild humorous eyes. . .
How happily Augustine could spend the rest of his days
among such simple, friendly people! He had no feeling
here of being in enemy country. But for want of a better
vehicle he could only project his love on a broad and
beaming smile.
The little train, raised high on trestles above a stretch
of frozen flood, hooted a warning to itself as it neared a
bend. With a warm forefinger Augustine melted himself a
further peephole in the window-ice.
From under the voluminous black skirts of the old
peasant-woman opposite there came the faint, drugged
crooning of a half-suffocated hen. A moment later the
130
THE WHITE CROW 131
woman's whole nether person began to heave with unseen
poultry. She leaned forward and slapped at her skirts
violently to reduce them to silence and stillness, but at that
the vocal hen only woke up completely and answered the
more indignantly; and then others began to join in. She
glanced anxiously towards the Inspector — but luckily his
back was turned. . .
What lovely people! Augustine began to laugh out loud,,
whereon the old woman's eyes flashed back at him with
pleasure and merriment.
Last night Augustine's express from the frontier had
reached Munich after dark: that was how it happened
that his first night on German soil had been spent at the
old Bayrischer-Hof hotel. Since then it has been rebuilt,
but Augustine had found it a majestic yet rather worn and
despondent hostelry those days. As he had stood signing
himself in that evening it had struck him that all the
clerks and waiters there seemed distraits — as if they had
something rather more important on their minds than
running hotels. This surprised and rather charmed him:
he sympathised with them, for — coming of a class which
practically never used hotels — Augustine disliked and
despised them all. No wonder the characteristic stale
hotel-foyer smells here seemed to irk their clean young
noses: these diluted, doctored alcohols, the coffee-sodden
cigar-ends: the almost incessant rich eating which must go
on somewhere just upwind of this foyer where he stood so
that even its portieres smelt permanently of food; and the
nearer, transient smells of brand-new pigskin suitcases and
dead fur, of rich Jews, of indigestion and peppermint, of
perfumes unsuccessfully overlaid on careless womanhood.
Later on it had greatly surprised this novice traveller,
too, to find on his machine-carved bed a huge eiderdown
in a white cotton cover but no ordinary top-sheet or
blanket to tuck round him. And it had surprised him yet
further to find, half-hidden by the washstand, such
132 THE FOX IN THE ATTIC
mysterious scribbles on the bedroom wall. . . for there,
among mere lists of names, he thought he had made out
this:
A.D. igig February 2j
With six others, innocent
hostages. . .
(then something
undecipherable, and then:)
ADELIE! FAREWELL!!!
Authentic dungeon-scribbles — in a hotel bedroom? —
But then Augustine had taken more particular notice of
the date. '19 19'? Since the war? '1919'? — Why, that was
surely the Golden Age when the young poet Ernst Toller
and his friends had ruled Munich! The thing was im-
possible.
The message was scrawled in a difficult Gothic hand. . .
he must have read it wrong — or else it was a hoax.
In the morning Augustine had perforce to pay his bill
with English money. He had only tendered a ten-shilling
note but the German change he was given appeared to be
noughted in billions! What a joke! That pleasant-looking,
dark-eyed young desk-clerk with the speed and dexterity
almost of a conjurer had whipped billions loose out of his
pocket, flipping them like postage-stamps. . . 'Lothar
Scheidemann' the desk-card named him; and the name
as well as the face somehow fixed itself in Augustine's
memory.
Augustine would have liked to talk to him, for he
looked certainly educated; but on a second glance
decided — N-n-no: perhaps rather too formal and de-
tached a chap for any such casual approach.
Now, in the train, Augustine took out his new German
money to count those incredible noughts yet once more.
It was quite true: today he was indeed a billionaire! It
made his head swim a little. But then through his peep-
THE WHITE CROW 133
hole in the frosted window he sighted a familiar flight of
mallard: these at least were in normal non-astronomical
numbers even in Germany, and his brow cleared. In-
voluntarily he crooked his trigger-finger, and smiled. . .
'Lothar Scheidemann, Lothar Scheid. . .' the train wheels
repeated; and Augustine's smile faded. For there had been
something in the eyes of that attractive young clerk he
couldn't quite get out of his mind. Then suddenly the
train passed off its trestles onto solid earth again with a
changed sound.
Chapter 6
at Lorienburg station the engine of Augustine's train
XJLhalted on the very brink of the swift unfrozen Danube
and stood there hissing. Augustine climbed happily down
and followed the other passengers across the tracks.
On the low station 'platform' — so low it hardly de-
served the name of one — a tall truculent young Jew was
chaffing with a group of farmers, gesticulating with the
duck he held by its fettered feet. These farmers, like the
ones on the train, all seemed to wear a kind of civilian
uniform: thick grey cloth trimmed with green, and huge
fur collars. One was affectionately nursing a hairy piglet
in his arms: another, a murmuring accordion.
But now a burly, almost gigantic figure was making a
beeline for Augustine. His little corded and feathered
'Tyrolean' hat bobbed high above the crowd. He wore the
same kind of uniform the peasants wore but newer and
better cut: strong as it looked — that acreage of heavy
close-woven cloth — the muscles of his massive shoulders
seemed almost bursting it. He walked with the gait of
someone who likes to be out-of-doors walking all of every
day. . .
Behind him followed a small dark man with a monkey
face, some sort of servant who seized Augustine's luggage.
So this must be Cousin Walther — the Freiherr von Kessen
come in person to meet his guest!
It must be. . . and yet it surprised Augustine to find his
host wearing such obviously German clothes. Somehow he
hadn't thought of the Kessens as being Germans, the way
those peasants were. Surely gentlemen were much the
same everywhere: a sort of little international nation,
based more or less on the English model. However, he
soon found that the Baron talked excellent informal
i34
THE WHITE CROW 135
upper-class English, except that his slang was ten years
out of date.
Walther shook Augustine warmly by the hand, then
captured his arm and whisked him through the tidy
village, enquiring the while after English relations most of
whom neither of them had ever met and at the same time
answering jovially the soft, respectful greetings on every
hand: "Griiss Gott, Herr Baron. . ."
"Griiss Gott, £usammen!"
" 'ss Gott z'sammen!" It sounded almost like 'Scotch
salmon!' the abbreviated way this Bavarian baron said it,
Augustine thought — and smiled. How spick-and-span
everything was here, he noticed. The butcher's window
did not look very well stocked by English standards, but it
was orderly as a shrine : in comparison, what slatterns the
English were!
Augustine wished his boisterous cousin would give him
time to look about him at all these wonders — he was
almost having to trot. Indeed it was a mystery how
the man managed to keep his own footing so securely on
this icy ground, for rounding a sudden corner in the
village by a chemist's Augustine himself skidded al-
together and cannoned into an old Jew peddling laces, so
that both of them nearly fell. Just then, too, descending
the side-street and missing the pair of them by a hair's-
breadth, something shot by like an arrow. This was a
youth on skis. The skis — to their detriment — rattled and
sparked, almost uncontrollable on the iron-hard surface
(for there was no proper snow at all) , and it was only by a
miracle of sheer balance that the skier managed to swerve
just clear of an ox-cart in the middle of the cross-roads.
Then he shot away down a steep bye-road towards the
frozen water-meadows.
Walther was just beginning to explain "Ahah! The
eldest of my young devils, Fr. . ." when something else
followed, but this time something more like a low ricochet-
ting cannon-ball than like an arrow. It was a small
136 THE FOX IN THE ATTIC
toboggan with two little girls on it rounded out to pack-
ages with extra clothing, the two pairs of pigtails standing
straight out behind them with the acceleration of their
transit. They too just managed to skid past the slow-
moving ox-cart. But they failed to make the counter-
swerve: the toboggan hit a pile of gravel icebound into
concrete and somersaulted.
The two children rose into the air and landed on their
heads. The wonder was they weren't clean stunned, or even
kiiled. But no — for they got up; though slowly, dazed.
They were obviously quite a lot hurt and Augustine's
tender heart went out to them. The knees of both were
wavering under them. Then one began lifting her fist un-
certainly towards her eyes. . . but at that Walther in a
brutal voice shouted something mocking, and instantly
both stiffened.
They hadn't seen their father was there watching them
till then; but now they didn't even stop to rub their
bruises. They managed to right their toboggan — giddily,
though without quite toppling over again — and dragged
it away (though still moving as if half-drunk) after their
brother and out of sight.
"Little milk-sops: they make me ashamed," said
Walther; but he sounded quite proud and pleased, as if
expecting to be contradicted.
Augustine said nothing: he was too deeply shocked. He
had omitted to take stock of his cousin's face when they
first met and now needed all his eyes for the going; but
from that voice, that behaviour, that massive bulk, he
assumed now it must be very like an ogre's, or some
gigantic stony troll's.
Chapter y
That icy sunk lane leading up from the village, the
lane the skis and the toboggans had just traversed, was
very steep; but Walther took it still at the same breathless
speed. Augustine began to suspect his cousin (who must
have been more than twice his age) of trying to walk him
off his legs; but Augustine had got his second wind now
and could hold his own.
Ultimately the castle on its mound was approached from
the high ground behind it along a raised causeway lined
with linden-trees, ending in a wooden bridge. Just where
you reached this bridge there stood on one side of the way
a little closed summer beerhouse shanty — rather decrepit,
and with a deserted skittle-alley full of dead leaves. But
on the other side stood a life-size crucifix, skilfully carved
and realistically painted; and this crucifix looked as if it
was brand new — its newness astonished Augustine more
than anything else he had seen here yet.
The heavy ironbound gates in the massive gatehouse
stood open. Times were quieter now and they were only
closed at sunset, Walther explained: all the same, some
of the iron sheathing on them also looked brand new and
this was surely almost as odd an anachronism as the new
crucifix. In the porter's cubbyhole a lynx-eyed old woman
sat permanently knitting. She rose and curtseyed to them,
but her dropped hands did not even cease their knitting
while she curtseyed.
The first court of the castle they now entered had long
byres built against its high crenellated walls and from the
nearest of them there came a gentle lowing, the slow clank
of headchains. The cobbled yard itself was as clean as a
drawing-room floor, the dung stacked tidily in masonry
tanks that steamed in the frosty air: 'Still, what a queer
i37
138 THE FOX IN THE ATTIC
approach to one's front door!' thought Augustine. He was
used of course to lawns and wide carriage-sweeps leading
to gentlemen's houses: to rhododendrons and begonia-
beds, with the facts of country life tucked well out of sight.
In the second court there did seem to be some attempt
at a garden but now all the beds were covered with spruce-
boughs against the frost. . . but surely it could never get
much sun in here even in summer, for nowhere was the
court surrounded by less than fifty-foot lowering walls. . .
" HerunterV Walther suddenly bellowed against Augus-
tine's ear: "The little imps of Satan! — Rudi! Heinz!"
Augustine looked up. High overhead against the sky,
almost like tight-rope performers there on the narrow un-
protected cat-walk of the battlemented wall which formed
the castle enceinte, two six-year-old boys were riding little
green bicycles. At their father's shout they wobbled wildly,
and Augustine gasped; but somehow they dismounted
safely. Walther called out again in rapid German and they
scuttled into a turret doorway.
Then Walther turned to Augustine: "That is something
forbidden. They shall be punished." The bull-like voice
sounded calm; but the iron hand which still gripped
Augustine's upper arm was actually trembling; and the
face. . . surprisingly, Walther proved to have just an
ordinary, anxious, human parent's face — not at all a stony
troll's. The features were small and fine and by no means
commanding. The brows beetled a bit but the brown eyes
under them peeped down at Augustine almost timidly:
"Don't you agree? I mean, would not even an English
father also forbid?" When Augustine non-plussed said
nothing he added rapidly: "Not that /'m a fusspot — but
if their mother knew. . ."
The main house itself now towered in front of them.
There were four storeys of stuccoed stone and then four
more of steep pantiled roof with rows of dormers in it all
boarded up. On the topmost roofridge was fixed a wagon-
THE WHITE CROW 139
wheel, supporting a tattered old stork's nest. Augustine
took this all in at a glance, for today he was still absorbing
everything with the unnaturally observant eye of first
arrival somewhere totally strange: not till tomorrow would
he even begin to notice less.
Now Walther opened a wicket in an imposing, church-
size door (remarking lugubriously: "Twins/ It is fated that
they will die together!") and Augustine found himself
ushered into a darkling, stone-vaulted space. This seemed
to be a kind of above-ground cellarage or crypt, for it had
no windows and immensely stout squat pillars upheld the
weight of the castle overhead. Between these in the half-
dark were parked a Victoria and a wagonette, together with
two horse-sleighs and various other vehicles. Right at the
back there was a pre-war vintage Benz — as cobwebby as a
bin of port, and evidently long out of use.
Again, what a curious front-entrance for a gentleman's
house! But it was indeed from here, apparently, that the
main staircase led.
This narrow, twisting stairway too proved to be merely
massive and defensible between its whitewashed stone
walls: the stairs themselves were treaded with solid tree-
trunks roughly squared with the adze.
At the first floor a heavy, wormy door opened straight
off these stairs. It offered none of the flattering perspec-
tives for entrances and exits social architects use — yet
how magnificent the hall that hulking door opened into!
Augustine caught his breath, for the sight was so unex-
pected. Not only was this hall quite vast in size: its length
stretched nearly the whole width of the house: its propor-
tions seemed to Augustine quite perfect — a most civilised
room!
The floor was flagged with squares of some pale yellow-
ish stone so shiny they reflected the chalky blues and
faded crimsons of the primitive unvarnished portraits
hung on the white walls — reflected even the dove-grey that
the many doors opening off it were painted, and their
i4o THE FOX IN THE ATTIC
delicate fillets picked out in gold leaf. Some of these stone
floor-tiles were cracked and loose, clinking under them as
they walked. . .
"Adele!" roared Walther so that the painted rafters
echoed: "Here is our guest and cousin!"
Walther Hung open the double doors at the far end of
the hall, and stood aside in the outrush of hot air for
Augustine to pass. A rather faded lady in her forties rose
from an escritoire. She had very bright blue eyes, an
aquiline nose, and a slightly pursed mouth which only just
knew how to smile; but in general her pale sandy face
seemed to Augustine of a rather unmemorable kind. She
thrust her hand firmly into Augustine's, English fashion;
for she guessed he would be embarrassed if he thought he
ought to kiss it.
Once the greetings were over, and the introductions (for
there was a girl there too, and some middle-aged brother
of Cousin Walther's who seemed to be lame), Augustine
began looking about him again. It seemed to him sadly
incongruous with the room's simple hexagonal shape and
the delicate Adamsy traceries of its high coved ceiling that
the place should be quite so crowded with furniture and
knicknackery.
The walls were thick with pictures: amateur water-
colours, mostly, and photographs. Most of these photo-
graphs were inclined to be old and faded; but there was
one big enlargement in a bright gilt frame surmounted by
a big gilt crown and this frame looked new, while the
photograph itself looked also pretty recent — at anyrate
post-war. It showed an outdoor group centred on a rather
dishevelled old gentleman in baggy trousers, with a grey
beard and steel spectacles. . . certainly not the Kaiser, even
in retirement; and yet the frame looked unequivocally
regal. . . the background was some mammoth forest picnic:
there were some forty or fifty children in their Sunday
best — but also a bit dishevelled, the thing must have ended
in a most un-regal romp!
THE WHITE CROW 141
In a firm but old man's hand it was signed: 'Ludwig'.
But of course — 'Ludwig of Bavaria'! Thinking of 'Ger-
many' one tended to forget that Bavaria had remained a
sovereign state-within-a-state, with her own king (down
to the revolution five years ago), and her own government
and even army. Moreover Augustine remembered hearing
that this peaceable-looking old gentleman had carried to
his recent grave a Prussian bullet in his body: a bullet
from the war of '66, before there was any 'Germany' — a
war when Prussia and Bavaria had been two sovereign
countries fighting on opposite sides. To an Englishman,
used to long perspectives and slow changes, this was indeed
History telescoped: as if King George V had been wounded
at Bannockburn.
'Germanf: that formidable empire which had lately so
shaken the whole world — its entire lifetime then had lasted
less than a normal man's, a bare forty-eight years from
its cradle to its present grave! Even the still adolescent
U.S.A. was three times 'Germany's' age. Everything here
confused one's sense of time! There was something Vic-
torian about Augustine's hostess, Cousin Adele, with her
lace and her chatelaine; but equally something of an
earlier, sterner century too. . .
There was something at least pre-war even about the
young girl standing behind her. That cold and serious
white face, with its very large grey thoughtful eyes. The
carefully-brushed straight fair hair reaching nearly to her
waist, tied back in a bunch with a big black bow behind
her neck. The long straight skirt with its shiny black belt,
the white blouse with its high starched collar. . .
But he mustn't stare/ Augustine lowered his gaze deliber-
ately; and behold, curled on the sofa in an attitude of
sleep but with his bright eyes wide open, lay a fox.
Chapter 8
They dined that night off wild-boar steak, grilled (it
tasted more like young beef than any kind of pork),
with a cream sauce and cranberry jam. There was spag-
lutti, and a smoky-flavoured cheese. They drank a
tawny Tyrolean wine that was light on the palate but
powerful in action. Augustine found it all delicious: there
wasn't much 'starving Germany' here, he thought.
Franz (the young skier) had shot the boar, he learned,
marauding in their forests — though Heaven knows where
it had come from, for they were supposed to be extinct
hereabouts. Baron Franz — Lothar's former schoolfellow,
Mary's 'ten-year-old, tow-haired little Franz' — was now a
lad of twenty. He was very fair, and smaller than his father
but with all his father's energy of movement. His manner
towards Augustine was perhaps a little over-formal and
polite as coming from one young man to another, but in
repose his face wore permanently a slightly contemptuous
expression. This the father's face totally lacked and it made
Augustine's hackles rise a little in the face of somebody
quite so young, quite so inexperienced in the world as this
Franz — his own junior by three years at least.
The only other male person present was that rather dim
ex-officer with a game leg, Walther's brother. He swal-
lowed his food quickly, then shook hands all round mur-
muring something about "work to do" and vanished.
Augustine ticketed him 'Cheltenham' and thought no
more about him; thus he missed the quick glance of
intelligence that uncle and nephew exchanged, Franz's
almost imperceptible shrug and shake of the head.
At dinner the conversation was almost entirely a mono-
logue by Walther. The mother and that eldest daughter
(the younger children were in bed, presumably) hardly
142
THE WHITE CROW 143
spoke at all. Augustine had failed to catch the girl's name
on introduction and no one had addressed her by it since,
so he didn't know what name to think of her by; but he
found himself peeping at her more and more. It never
entered his head to think her 'beautiful' but her face had
a serenity which promised interesting depths. Her eyes
hardly roamed at all: he never saw her glance even once
his way; but already he surmised she might be going to
prove rather more sympathique than that cocky brother,
once she opened out a little.
She looked always as if she were just going to speak:
her curving upper-lip was always slightly lifted and indeed
once he saw her lips actually begin to move; but it proved
to be only a silent conversation, with herself or perhaps
some absent friend. In fact, she 'wasn't there': she seemed
to have shut her ears entirely to what was going on around
her. Perhaps she had heard them all before too often,
these stories her father was interminably telling?
Walther had begun his harangue with the soup, asking
Augustine how many seats the Socialists held in the new
British parliament elected last winter. From stopping his
ears inadequately when at Mellton Augustine had a vague
idea the Socialists had temporarily outstripped the
Liberals who had suckled them, but that was the most he
knew. He tried to convey without downright rudeness that
he neither knew nor cared; such things were none of his
business.
Walther looked incredulous. "Ah!" he said earnestly:
"Their leader, that Macdonald: he's a gaol-bird, isn't he?
How can you trust him? England ought to take warning
by what happened herel"
And so the tale began.
Five years ago, on the night of November 7th, 19 18 —
almost the actual eve of the war's ending — Walther and
some fellow-members of the Bavarian parliament had met
in the blacked-out Park Hotel. Bavaria had reluctantly to
make certain constitutional changes (such as instituting
144 THE FOX IN THE ATTIC
the formal responsibility of the royal ministry to parlia-
ment) as a gesture to the American, Wilson: so these legis-
lators had met to discuss the next day's necessary measures.
Most of the Centre Party deputies were there, except those
away with the army or stricken by 'flu.
Another problem they had discussed was the coming
demobilisation. But everything was already taped, it
seemed: the plans were ready and the men would go
straight into jobs, so his friend Heinrich von Aretin assured
the company. Industry would need all the labour it could
get, in the switch to peace-production. But then someone
(said Walther) casually mentioned a socialist mass-meeting
happening out on the Teresienwiese Sportsground that
very hour. . . Eisner, the demagogue from Berlin, was
addressing them. . . and Gansdorfer, the blind farmer. . .
'Hetzpropaganda'. But it seemed that too was taped: the
police were confident, and Auer (one of the Socialists' own
leaders) was assuring everybody there'd be no sort of
rumpus. Indeed only Aretin had seemed even faintly
anxious: "How little even we knew then of the unscrupu-
lous Socialist mentality!" said Walther pointedly. "You
are aware what happened, of course?"
"What?" asked Augustine, half polite, half curious. To
Augustine, who elected to ignore public events anyway,
the events of 19 18 already seemed centuries ago — lost in
the mists of time; but even now Walther could hardly
pronounce Eisner's name in a normal voice — the rabble-
rousing animal Eisner, from Berlin, with his straggling
beard and floppy black hat like a seedy professor of piano-
forte. . . marching into the city that night with lorry-loads
of all the hooligans of Munich at his heels! It was red
revolution, of course. . .
"They tore off my uniform in the Odeonsplatz," said
Walther. "I was lucky to get home safely in borrowed
mufti, I can tell you! And the dear old King chased from
his bed: Bavaria is to be a republic, forsooth, after a
thousand years of Wittelsbach rule! And Ei. . . that Kurt
THE WHITE CROW 145
Ei. . . Ei. . . Eisner, with a gang of Galician Jews like him-
self for his cabinet — lunatics, lamp-lighters, gaol-birds,
Judases. . ."
Having reached this surprising (but in fact literally
truthful) peroration Walther had to pause for the moment
for breath and for his blood to cool; and Franz at once
slipped into the breach, speaking suavely and rapidly,
hoping to head him off: "The careful demobilisation-plans
— torn up, of course. No one any more did what he was
told. Even years afterwards. . . Papa, do you remember
how we found a gang of deserters still living in the forest
years afterwards, when we were out with the Bristows?
You were shooting particularly well that day," he added
cunningly.
As the conversation seemed now to be taking a turn
towards sport Augustine pricked up his ears. But it all
sounded very un-English. Indeed he soon jumped to the
conclusion that here in Germany people shot wild-boar,
roe-deer, foxes and wandering cats indiscriminately, from
platforms built high among the trees like an Indian tiger-
shoot.
Augustine in turn tried to describe the hides which at
home he used, to dig in the half-frozen tidelands: water-
logged mudholes where he was happy to crouch for hours
waiting for the honking of the wild geese in the dawning
half-light.
Chapter g
But the dinner-table talk of gentlemen ought to be on
serious subjects, not sport! Walthcr was itching to get
back to politics. The bolshevik danger was after all world-
wide and Augustine's indifference truly alarming.
A few polite enquiries about Augustine's journey soon
gave Walther his cue, for he learned that Augustine had
spent last night at the Bayrischer-Hof. "I hope," said
Walther, "they made you more comfortable than they
made me, the last time / was a guest there?" An almost
audible sigh and a shifting in their chairs went round the
table. Franz's diversion had failed! Papa was off again.
"That of course was February 19 19 — the time when Toni
had just shot the animal Eisner; whereupon the Red
Guards. . ."
"You ought to meet our joint eminent kinsman, Count
Toni Arco- Valley," Franz told Augustine, desperately.
"He's been in prison of course for the last four years or
more, but I'm sure Papa could get you a pass. . ."
"The Red Guards arrested me," Walther swept on,
frowning at Franz. "They dragged me — your Bayrischer-
Hof Hotel was their headquarters in those days, four years
and nine months ago, and I was locked up there with the
others: six of us, innocent hostages. They told us we should
all be slaughtered at Eisner's funeral — a human sacrifice
on their hero's pyre!"
"Prison, did you say?" Augustine asked Franz: "The
chap who actually shot Thingummy only prison? How
didn't he get killed?"
"Toni was killed," Walther said coldly, resenting the
interruptions more and more: "Or so they thought: five
bullets instantly in his neck and mouth, kicked half across the
street. . . but to return to myself in the Bayrischer-Hof. . ."
But Cousin Adele was clearing her throat rather like a
146
THE WHITE CROW 147
clock that is going to strike, and now she spoke for the
first time: "Toni counted the bullets as they hit him," she
said, speaking English slowly and distinctly but without
expression, her eyes on Augustine: "They were using his
own revolver, and he tried to remember how many shots
were left in it."
"In the Bayrischer-Hof. . ."
"One bullet knocked over a wisdom-tooth," Adele per-
sisted. "His throat was full of blood. He was choking, and
they were kicking; but he dared not move because if they
knew he was not yet dead they would have tore him in
pieces and suddenly he very much wanted to live." She
was crumbling a piece of bread nervously as she went on:
"They dragged him into the courtyard of the Ministerium
and there left him as dead; but not before he heard some-
one say that Eisner was dead first, and he rejoice. After a
time a bandage was put round his neck but presently
again someone tore it off."
"Then the police picked him up," said Walther re-
signedly, "and Sauerbruch, the great throat-surgeon. . .
but that Toni of all people should have done it! A boy of
twenty nobody had ever looked at twice!"
Instantly memories of his own twentyishness at Oxford
flashed across Augustine's mind and he recalled touchy old
Asquith's visit to the Union. Shooting politicians! In Eng-
land it was inconceivable. "Was it a conspiracy?" he
asked: "Was he detailed for the job?"
"No conspiracy — just Toni," said Adele, her brow
puckered.
"There were people he told," said Walther, "but they
never dreamt of taking him seriously."
"Such as, he told the maid in his flat to run a specially
hot bath because he was going to kill Eisner that morning,"
said Adele. "Then, as he waited in the street for Eisner
to pass, a friend stopped and asked him to dinner. 'Sorry!*
say Toni, 'I shall be engaged — I'm going to shoot Eisner.'
His friend looked only a little startled."
148 THE FOX IN THE ATTIC
"Eisner left the ministry on his way to parliament and
passed Toni quite slowly, with a crowd following him,"
said Walther. "I understand that Toni carried a map to
hide his revolver."
"Eisner's staff were close all round that awful man!"
said Adele. Then her voice went suddenly gruff: "Toni
kept saying to himself 'I must be brave, I must not shoot
any innocent man — only Eisner!' Then at two metres'
range he shot him; and a second later comes the beginning
of to be shot himself."
To end the long ensuing pause Augustine asked Walther
how he had escaped "being slaughtered on Eisner's pyre".
He was told the police had somehow got hold of the
hostages and transferred them to Stadelheim Gaol: "There
we had quite a welcome — 'Prosit, Servus/' And lanky
Poehner — later he was Chief Commissioner of Police for
Munich, but then he was the prison governor at Stadel-
heim and he did his best for us, every privilege. As well
as myself there was General Fasbender, Fritz Pappenheim,
Lehmann the publisher, Buttman, Bissing and both the
Aretins — all the elite of Munich! We had most interesting
talks. It was far worse for our poor wives, without news
except rumours that we'd been shot already." The look
of love and reverence with which he now glanced at Adele
astonished Augustine on so middle-aged a face: "Ah, she
was the heroine then! — My Adelie, my Sunshine!"
At that the expression on Adele's faded sandy features
scarcely altered but a faint flush mounted halfway up her
neck. Even Walther had never known the lengths she went
to, that awful time, less than five years ago. The twins had
been babies then, scarcely weaned. . . and all — for what?
But already Walther had begun to laugh: "Ha! Heini
Aretin — that was very funny! Somehow his wife got news
of his danger sent to Haidenburg — smuggled a note to the
village priest in a prayerbook. Whereon the Haidenburg
innkeeper comes to Munich, barges his way with his big
shoulders into the so-called 'Central Council', bangs his
THE WHITE CROW 149
fist on the minister's desk and says he can't have his brewer
shot or where's he to get his beer? — Heini owns the Allers-
bach brewery, you know. After that they decided to let us
go. They saw that anyhow Poehner would never let them
kill us."
Chapter 10
Walther was drinking the Tyrolean wine copiously
(it came from his last bin, broached in Augustine's
honour) and his neck had begun to sweat.
Augustine's own head was getting a little dizzy. All this
— it was straight from the horse's mouth indubitably, but
it sounded so unreal! The sort of thing which happened
to people in 'history', not people today, not real people.
Anyway it was surely over now. . . well — if only those
crazy vindictive Frenchmen in the Ruhr. . .
Meanwhile Walther rambled on with great seriousness
and much emphasis. Eisner had seized power in November
1918: but his 'Red Guards' (Walther related) were sailors
from the Kiel mutiny, Russian ex-prisoners and such-like
riff-raff: their maraudings hardly endeared Eisner to the
peasants, and he had little following outside Munich itself
and industrial towns like Augsburg. Thus, after a few
months of office, in the January Bavarian elections he had
only won three seats! But he intended to cling to power.
For as long as he could he prevented the new parliament
from meeting; and then, for its opening session, prepared
a second coup-d'etat: he packed the public gallery with his
armed communists. He was on his way to that very session
when he was killed.
Proceedings began — but where was Eisner? Then the
news of his death reached the Chamber. Instantly a
fusillade from the gunmen planted in the gallery: two
members killed outright, Auer wounded, the blind
Gansdorfer escaping down a drainpipe.
The Munich mob went mad. Walther's own arrest. . .
the Red Reign of Terror: March, April. . .
Then May Day 1919 at last, the blessed Day of Libera-
tion! At long last General von Epp's valiant forces from
150
THE WHITE CROW 151
outside advanced on Munich to free it from Bolshevism.
At that point Walther turned a beaming gaze on his son:
"Our brave young Franz here. . ." But Franz at once
put on so glittering a frown that his father looked non-
plussed, and began to mumble: "Von Epp enters the city
. . . the dear white-and-blue flag again! Bavaria a republic
still, alas — but decent people in control: von Kahr,
Premier. . ."
Just then Augustine's brain having long stopped listen-
ing gave an unexpected and uncomfortable lurch. He
pushed his wine glass resolutely from him: this wine was
too potent, the people across the table were beginning to
slide past like a procession starting off. So he chose that
passing girl opposite for an experiment: fixed his eyes
resolutely on her and with a big effort willed her to a
halt.
That crystal and yet unfathomable face of hers was like
a still pool. . . Augustine found himself acutely wishing
his eyes could pierce its baffling surface, could discern the
silent thoughts that must all this while be gliding to and
fro in the lucid maiden mind beneath, like little fish. . .
but no, not the flick of a tail could he descry tonight, not
a freckled flank, not a fin!
Girls' minds. . . Of course, when they know you're
watching they'll deliberately send all the little tiddlers in
them dimpling to the surface, start fretted rings of ripples
which meet and cross and render everything opaque! But
in unsuspecting tranquillity like this they're transparent
... or so at least they should be.
Girls' clear minds. . . In tranquillity like this how lovely
they often are to watch! First, a whitish motion, deep in
the bottom-darkness: an irised shadow on the shining
gravel. . . then suddenly, poised beautiful and unwitting in
the lens-clear medium, that whole dappled finny back of
some big thought — as blue as lead. . .
But this girl's mind? Here surely it must be that the
thoughts swum altogether too deep: lurking in the dark-
i52 THE FOX IN THE ATTIC
ncss of some unnatural shadow, perhaps, hiding in some
deep pit.
While Walther's mind? Hoo-hoo! Just old dry bones
shaken endlessly under one's nose in a worn-out basket
that cried "Look! Look!"
Augustine just managed not to hiccup — but indubitably
he was now more than a little drunk.
Augustine was startled by a sudden silence. Walther's
voice had tailed off and stopped. Walther was looking
from face to face. That young Englishman with so much
to learn — conceited flushed young fool! Obviously his
attention had wandered. But then Walther looked at his
own wife as well, his two children: their attitudes also
were politely attentive and their faces blank.
Walther so much loved them! He had learned at his own
painful costs how the world wagged — and Gott in Himmel
wasn't it the very world they too would have to live in?
Yet whenever he tried to tell them they shut themselves
in their shells like this and stopped their ears. Their own
dear papa had suffered these perils and done these deeds —
not some stranger. . . Ah, if only he had been born a poet
with winged words hooded on his wrist ready for the
slipping! But Walther had been born instead proud heir
to the long line of Knights of Lorienburg — so damn all
snivelling low-born poets!
Walther took a deep breath and tried again: "The
Red rabble that faced von Epp that spring, four-and-a-half
years ago — -just imagine! It appointed for itself a self-
styled poet in command, the Jewish scribbler Toller."
"Toller. . ." In all Walther's rigmarole that name had
come to Augustine as the first tinkle of the Germany of
his supposings, the 'real' Germany he had come to see:
the Germany of Toller, Georg Kaiser, Thomas Mann,
Werfel, Einstein, the world-famous architect Mendelssohn.
Here at last, perhaps, was the moment for knowledgeable
comment: "Ernst Toller?" said the rather fuddled Augus-
THE WHITE CROW 153
tine helpfully: "Surely one of the greatest German drama-
tists of all time! — A feather," he added acutely, "in
Munich's crown."
There was a stilly pause. Franz's gasp was audible, while
Walther looked vastly startled — as if Augustine had sud-
denly used improper language in mixed company. "In-
deed? I have not had the privilege of reading the young
scoundrel's works," he said presently with cold distaste.
Augustine had not read them either: he was only
repeating Oxford tattle, where it was known that Romain
Rolland had praised them, and Bjorn Bjornsen.
Augustine hadn't of course had any intention of giving
offence. But now Adele rose. The girl rose too: she passed
quickly round the table, trailing her finger negligently
along the edge: then she held and kissed her father's
frowning forehead and vanished from the room behind
her mother.
On that, Augustine found himself actually wondering
for one brief moment what impression he might be making
on them. — Lord, he supposed he had better watch his
step. . . he must make things right with Walther, straight
away.
Suddenly though he realised that Walther also was
bidding him good-night.
Chapter n
Augustine's bedroom was a large low one opening off
Lthe stairs, with white walls and dark furniture. It
was heated by an iron stove standing out in the middle and
the wood was crackling so merrily when he went to bed
that a foot or more of the long iron flue-pipe glowed red-
hot. Augustine wrestled in vain with a window in the
hope of letting out some of all this heat. He was not used
to a heated bedroom and it made him somehow afraid to
go to sleep. Thus he lay awhile in his bed awake, watching
the flue-pipe glowing in the dark.
As the wine receded his mind began to race, rather like
an engine with a slipping clutch; but presently its chaotic
involuntary plungings began to take shape as a new poem:
Oft have I stood as at a river's brim
In girls' clear minds to watch the fishes swim:
Rise bubbling to their eyes, or dive into places
Deep, yet visible still through crystal faces. . .
He was rather pleased with that beginning, at first —
its detached attitude was so adult. But then he grew dis-
gruntled with its idiom. Why didn't his few poems, when
they came, arrive spontaneously in modern idiom — the
idiom of Eliot, or the Sitwells? They never did. . . 'Oft. . .'
This idiom was positively Victorian. Victorian idiom. . .?
"Idiom Makyth Man," Douglas Moss had once said; and
the recollection gave him now a most uneasy feeling.
In the night-silence he could hear someone in the far
distance somewhere playing a piano. It was too powerful
for a girl's playing, these swelling thunderous chords were
a very Niagara oilacrimae rerum. It must be Cousin Walther,
not in bed yet — or else unable to sleep.
Augustine began to wonder about people like Walther.
i54
THE WHITE CROW 155
Were they actually the way they talked — unreal creatures,
truly belonging to that queer fictive state of collective
being they seemed to think was 'Life' but which he thought
of as 'History'? Or were they what they looked — real
people, at bottom just as human and separate as English-
men are? Was Walther the freak he seemed? Were all the
others here — indeed, all Germans — like him? Perhaps he'd
be nearer the answer when he got to know the girl better
... or even Cousin Adele. For Women (he told himself
sagely and now very sleepily) are surely, surely always the
same, the whole world over,
In every time. . .
In every clime. . .
Every time. . .
Clime. . .
Climb. . .
Augustine found himself climbing a long, long rope to
get to his bedroom. He was at Mellton and very reasonably
he had had the staircase taken out — Gilbert was on it —
and put on the lawn. It was somewhere out there on the
lawn now, with Gilbert still mounting it.
Presently a queer, high-pitched howling mingled itself
with these dreams. It was shriller and more yappy than a
dog's and almost too heartless to sound sorrowful. It came
first from the big hall: then presently something passed
his half-open door and the howling began again, above.
Squatting in her thick dressing-gown high in the middle
of her hard huge bed of dark carved wood, by the shaded
bedside light of a focused reading-candle, the girl (this was
Mary's 'wide-eyed little Mitzi', of course, and she was
now seventeen) sat writing a letter. Her face looked very
different now in spectacles — much livelier than at dinner:
kinder, and cleverer too; and her head was cocked on one
156 THE FOX IN THE ATTIC
side with one cheek almost on the page, like an infant
child's. . .
She wrote to Tascha every night, in her big straggly
writing that she couldn't read herself. If she missed even
one night Tascha thought she had stopped loving her and
sent Mitzi a keepsake damp with reproachful tears (Prin-
cess Natascha was a Russian girl of her own age with a
deep contralto voice and lived in Munich).
Mitzi paused and laid the letter on the quilt beside her.
Then she hunched up her bare bony knees inside her
nightgown against her bare soft chest and hugged them
extravagantly, considering: what should she say this time?
Papa at dinner had been awful again, but that wasn't
news. . .
Usually the words came with a run, even when nothing
had happened. Nothing much ever did happen, at Lorien-
burg. . . but today there had surely been a real event —
the arrival of this young Englishman in a house where
visitors were rare.
It was difficult to guess what he was really like, inside
his outside; hard to know if he would turn out to be nice
inside or not. Hard enough to imagine what the mere
feeling of being any Englishman must be like, that un-
known breed, without distinguishing between them. As for
his 'outside*. . . he talked German haltingly and with a
rather unpleasing accent (rather like that Swiss tutor who
once looked after Franz). But when he talked his own
English his voice was quite different: she hadn't thought
of 'English' — that dour schoolroom task — as capable of
ever sounding like that! An honest, feeling voice: one you
could trust not to laugh. His clothes had an extraordinary
smell: a wistful smell, rather like wood-smoke — no, peat. . .
his shoes were curiously silent: they must have rubber soles.
The sudden howling in the hall just outside her door
sent momentarily a goose-shiver down her spine. She
jumped out of bed and went to investigate. As soon as
she opened her door the howling stopped abruptly. She
THE WHITE CROW 157
whistled, softly; but the little fox didn't come to her,
instead she heard his almost soundless stealthy padding
towards the stairs. For a moment she stood, hstening: he
went up, not down.
The night was turning colder still.
After she was back in bed and settled again wholly
within the warmed spot in it she faintly heard the howling
resumed; but now, high in one of the desolate uninhabited
storeys overhead where nobody ever went.
The obvious thing was to write to Tascha about him —
the unknown English cousin 'Augustin'. His coming was
important. But it was almost a heard voice within her that
kept warning her: "JVb, Mitzi: better not!"
When Otto left the table he went to his office and for
some hours worked on the papers he had abandoned
earlier. Then he looked at his watch: it was time to put
through his call to Munich.
It had begun to snow. Outside the pane a succession of
flakes like white moths fluttered through the beam of light.
But when he asked for his number they told him there
were "no lines to Munich". So he asked for his call to be
kept in hand; but they told him no calls for Munich were
being accepted tonight. — Were the lines down? — They
didn't know, but they could accept no calls. — But this is
to the Minister himself, Herr Doktor. . . There was a
pause, and then another voice answered, coldly, that
regrettably that made no difference — no calls were being
accepted.
Kahr's orders, presumably; or General Lossow's? Or
perhaps actually Colonel Seisser's (he was now police
chief). What were they up to, then, those Munich trium-
virs? Otto hung up the receiver, and his brow was wrinkled.
The snow was falling faster but clearly this wasn't a ques-
tion of faulty lines: something was happening in Munich
tonight!
158 THE FOX IN THE ATTIC
As he creaked along the dark passages on his way to his
room he wondered what it was, this time; there were so
many things it might be. The situation was so tense it
could only break, not bend; but there were half-a-dozen
places the fracture could occur. — Still, no use worrying.
He put his keys under the pillow, then oiled his revolver
and put it in a drawer. Then he undressed, unstrapped his
leg and laid it on a chest, and hopped to his bed.
But once in bed the pain began again: extraordinary
how difficult it is to lie comfortably in bed with only one
leg!
"JVo calls to Munich accepted. . ." On second thoughts he
got out of bed again, hopped to the drawer, fetched his
revolver and put it under the pillow with his keys.
When Otto heard the howling he wondered what ailed
Reineke; for surely the mating season was three months
off as yet?
Indeed there was only one person in the whole house-
hold seriously perturbed by that faint, high-pitched
howling when it sounded from the desolate upper regions.
This was Franz. As soon as he was sure where the sound
now came from he slipped a dark coat over his pyjamas, blew
out his light and quietly opened his door. The hall outside
was pitch-black. He listened: no one else was stirring. As
he stealthily felt his way up the stairs in the dark his bare
feet were even more noiseless than reynard's own had been.
Here, in the curving walls of the stair-pit, the howling
echoed eerily. On the first half-landing he passed Augus-
tine's room — the last room inhabited. The door must be
ajar; for he could hear Augustine muttering in his sleep.
So, as he passed it on his way up, Franz felt for the Eng-
lish cousin's door and quietly closed it; for least of all did
Franz want him rendered inquisitive about those floors
above.
Chapter 12
In Munich tension had risen all that day — to fever-level.
Everyone knew that von Kahr (who had lately been
appointed a dictator in the old Roman, caretaker sense)
was holding a meeting that evening at which fatal decisions
were expected. Kahr wanted Prince Rupprecht on the
throne of his fathers: an independent Bavaria, perhaps.
The meeting was private but all the bigwigs in Bavaria
had been invited and several from outside.
The situation was indeed so tense it could only break,
not bend: no wonder those young clerks and waiters at
the Bayrischer-Hof had seemed to Augustine that morning
to have something more important on their minds than
running hotels! At the gymnasium too all nerves had been
on edge today: even the pug-nosed instructor was so distrait
he nearly broke Lothar's pliant back in a new lock he was
teaching him.
Lothar himself was not consciously aware of nervous-
ness or foreboding, but he was moved by a sudden over-
weening upsurge of the love he felt for all these his
friends and for that incomparable brotherhood to which
they all belonged. Presently a gust of it almost swept
him off his feet as he stooped in the changing-room
tying his shoes.
On that the lace broke, and while he knotted it his
mind's eye contemplated this signal image: Germania, a
nymph chained white and naked to the cruel Rock of
Versailles. Her soft skin was ravened and slobbered by the
sated yet still gluttonous Entente Powers; but it was being
even more cruelly mauled and torn (he saw) by the talons
of her hungry secret enemies — the Bolsheviks, the Berlin
government, the Jews. . . the hooded Vatican and her
Bavarian separatist brood. But just then in the nick of
i59
160 THE FOX IN THE ATTIC
time Lothar's boyhood hero and present commander the
brave young Hermann Goering (that nonpareil among
Birdmen!) swooped down in shining armour to save her —
with Lothar at his side.
Before that picture Lothar's heart quite brimmed over
with love; and while the mood was still on him he slipped
his precious ten-shilling note almost surreptitiously into
the Party chest.
In the throng behind Lothar as he did this his comrade
the massive (though rather muscle-bound) Fritz nudged
young Willi, and pointed: "Watch out!" he whispered
hoarsely: "The artful little bourgeois scab — what's he
trying to pull?"
Fritz's indignant croak was meant to be confidential,
but it had come out louder than intended. At once his
suspicious eyes blinked and he glanced round anxiously
over his huge, humped shoulder: for Fritz was working-
class (his father being a skilled burglar), and he feared
that most of these bourgeois wet rags here already looked
on him as no better than a Red. Who knows? That
perishing little twister young Scheidemann! With his
foreign Valuta he might have wormed his way in with the
Top Ones here already. . . in which case poor clumsy Fritz
had put his foot in it proper. — Look! Even Willi the pariah
was edging away from Fritz now. . . or was it Lothar
Scheidemann Willi was giving the cold shoulder to? —
Which? — God's Mother, which?
(Willi was edging away from both, probably; for with
a 'Roman' nose like Willi's for sole birth-certificate it was
surely only prudent for a young Trooper to tread a bit
delicately.)
But this evening there was to be not much time for
prudent little manoeuvres like these. For while Lothar was
still dreaming about Germania and Willi was still debating
in his mind who to stand next to at roll-call it was an-
nounced that the troop had special orders tonight. They
were to cross the western sector of the city in twos and
THE WHITE CROW 161
threes by different routes and to rendezvous at the Drei
Katzen — an obscure but spacious beerhouse just off the
Nymphenburger Strasse past the Lowenbrau. There the
'Hundred' they were enrolled in would mobilise, with
certain other 'Hundreds', and be told what to do.
Nothing more was said to them now than just that: no
word about Kahr's meeting at the Biirgerbrau beyond the
river, on which all day all surmise had centred: yet there
was something electric in the air, and everyone knew that
at last this was no routine assignment. At once all prudent
little manoeuvres were forgotten quite, for at once all the
jealousies and suspicions which inspired them had van-
ished like smoke. You could almost hear the click as those
'hoops of steel' settled into place, binding all these ardent
young men together into one body like well-coopered
barrel-staves.
As dark fell they had set out: in twos and threes, as
ordered. Larger numbers might attract attention: to go
alone would be imprudent, for it was at any time none
too safe after dark in certain streets near here for these
known Galahads alone — even partly armed, as they were
tonight. The Reds had been driven underground — the
treacherous beasts. . .
Thus the uncouth but sterling Fritz lingered in the door-
way for his friend Lothar (who had a quick hand and a cool
head in a scrimmage, as Fritz well remembered), and the
two linked arms; whereon they both of them felt almost
frightened at the intensity of the comradeship each other's
touch engendered.
Arm-in-arm like that they had moved off, keeping well
to the middle of the roadway, well clear of doors and alley-
ways. Each had one hand on the bludgeon in his pocket,
each with his weather eye searched the shadows his side.
They were confident even without having to look round
that the trusty Willi was following a pace or two behind
and guarding their rear.
i6a THE FOX IN THE ATTIC
But there were no Reds on the streets this bitter evening:
only other young men like themselves moving purposefully
in twos and threes; and heavy covered lorries, which
roared along the streets in increasing numbers and skidded
round the icy corners with crashing gears.
Crossing the Stiglmaierplatz, however, our Lothar and
Fritz and Willi had several reminders that (Reds apart)
theirs was by no means the only 'patriotic' private army
in Munich those days. There were other — and potentially
hostile — loving 'German Brotherhoods'. The Lowen-
braukeller they saw was full to the gills with men of the
Reichskriegsflagge, with steins in their hands and their
danders up, roaring their heads off. . . well, these (as
Willi, who had an insatiable curiosity about such things,
pointed out to them) were Captain Roehm's own men
now, since the show-down — and Roehm seemed to be a
grand chap, it was he indeed who had put our own leaders
on the map! So, on Willi's instructions the three young
musketeers hailed Roehm's men in passing. But in that
uneasy alliance under old Ludendorff 's titular presidency
called the 'Kampfbund' these two were almost the only
component parts which could fully trust each other. Those
'Oberland' men outside the Arzbergerkeller — Weber's
crowd. . .? Well (said Willi) these. . . and perhaps
Rossbach's henchmen too. . . these might be trustworthy
up to a point, but there were others — the 'Vikings' for
example — who were an altogether different kettle-of-fish.
The 'Vikings' resembled Captain Goering's gymnasium
brotherhood only in their love for their country and hatred
of its government and of public order: they were too
Catholic and monarchist by half to stomach the blas-
phemies of a Ludendorff or a Rosenberg. These would be
Kahr's men and Prince Rupprecht's if brass-rags were
ever irrevocably parted with those two.
These 'Vikings' were Commander Ehrhardt's chickens.
Ehrhardt, of course, was already famous: a veteran of the
guerilla fighting that raged for two whole years after the
THE WHITE CROW 163
19 1 8 'armistice' in the lost Baltic provinces, it had been
he too who had led the Naval Division in the Kapp Putsch
on Berlin. And Rossbach as well was famous: he also was
one of those young veteran outlaws of the Baltic shambles
who had gone to ground in Bavaria when cowardly Berlin
disowned their private wars. Lone warrior-patriots of the
lost lands in the East, such as prove lodestones to angry
young men any time, anywhere! What a godsend, then,
it had been to an unknown unglamorous little H.Q. bell-
hop with his own splinter-party to build when at last he
had been able to counter the attractions of such heroes as
these with the prestige of his young Captain Goering! For
Hermann (the old African governor's handsome son) had
been the ace of Richthofen's famous wartime 'Flying
Circus', and now had all the panache on him of his Pour le
Merite (Germany's V.C.).
By the time they had reached the Drei Katzen and
reported, that too was filling up: older men, mostly —
ex-soldiers; but all their own men however, except for a
small and rather secluded, unwanted knot of 'Vikings'
(who seemed all eyes and ears).
Two hours later they were still at the Drei Katzen,
waiting — with steins in their hands now and their danders
up, roaring their heads off — when a car drew up outside
with a squeal of brakes. Hermann Esser was in it (Esser
the young journalist and scandal-buster). He looked wild-
eyed and feverish tonight. They crowded round him:
Esser had come straight from the Biirgerbrau and he gave
them the news: thirty-five minutes ago precisely the bal-
loon had gone up! They cheered till the building shook.
Then Esser gave them their orders: to march in parade
order right through the heart of the city to the Biirgerbrau.
It was 'action' at last!
As Lothar's company with banners flying and drums
beating swung down the Brienner Strasse by lamplight —
with guns in their hands now and their danders up, roaring
164 THE FOX IN THE ATTIC
their heads off — people poured everywhere out of the side-
streets: men women and children marched with them and
behind them and in front of them and all round them,
cheering wildly for the 'Revolution' — though just whose
revolution most of them scarcely knew. Was this the
Catholics' monarchist and separatist one, or. . . whatever
the Kampfbund themselves were after? — Cross or Haken-
kreuz? — Either meant mud-in-the-eye for Berlin: thus
both were almost equally attractive to Bavarians after
fifty years of Prussia calling the tune.
So they traversed the Konigsplatz in style, with one
proud little boy just in front of the marching column doing
handsprings, handsprings — handsprings all the way.
It was a cold night all night in Munich — that exciting
night of Thursday November the eighth — but still no
snow there; and bitter and windy was the 'Kahr-Freitag'
morning which followed.
Chapter 13
AT Lorienburg, when Augustine had gone to bed last
.x\night the room had been too hot; but by morning his
bedclothes had slipped off, the stove was dead and the
room down to freezing-point. There was ice in the jug on
his wash-stand.
Here at Lorienburg moreover there had been quite a
heavy fall of snow in the night. This morning the sky was
still as slaty-grey as before, but with all that whiteness out-
side indoors it was appreciably lighter than yesterday. As
Augustine on his way to breakfast entered the hall he
found the few touches of colour in it picked out by the
snowlight: the blue tablecloth on the little round table,
a green chair, the gold scroll-work on the big black settle.
The ancestral paintings looked brighter than yesterday,
and the pale cafe-au-lait stone floor-tiles glistened as if
they were wet.
Then came a brief flicker of shadow over everything as
a cloud of snow slipped silently off the steep roof: not in
one heavy lump as when it melts, but more like a slowly
falling cloud of smoke. Augustine turned, and through the
window saw it drifting away like smoke on the almost
imperceptible breeze. Someone (he noticed) had left a
bottle of beer on the sill overnight: it had frozen solid and
then burst, so that the beer still stood there — an erect bottle-
shape of cloudy amber ice among the shattered glass!
As he turned again from the window Augustine caught
sight of two little girls. They were half hidden in the
embrasure of a door; but he recognised them as the tobog-
ganers by the bumps on their foreheads, glistening like the
floor-tiles. He smiled at them; but they didn't smile back:
they were too intently watching something, with shocked
expressions.
165
166 THE FOX IN THE ATTIC
It was only by following their eyes that he caught sight
of the twins also, Rudi and Heinz. Those perilous trick-
cyclists were crouched now under a tall Gothic bread-
chest, withdrawn as far as possible from sight; but they
couldn't quite hide that they were wearing heavy brass-
studded dog-collars and were chained by them to the legs
of the chest with long dog-chains. Ashamed — not at all of
yesterday's crime but acutely of today's punishment —
they glared out at Augustine with unruly and unfriendly
eyes.
With her back to him, and squatting on her heels so
that the long fair tail of hair hanging down her back was
actually touching the ground, that older sister who had
so interested him last night was dipping hunks of bread
in a bowl of coffee and feeding them. Intent on scowling
at Augustine one of the boys got a crumb in his windpipe
and choked, coffee and other liquids pouring from nose
and eyes. In a paroxysm of embarrassment Augustine tip-
toed past with averted head, hoping against hope the girl
would not look round and see him.
At breakfast there was an atmosphere of suppressed
excitement mounting. It bewildered Augustine, who knew
nothing of the night's mysteries.
At six that morning Otto had got up and again tried to
telephone to Munich; but still 'no lines'. He had then
rung the railway-junction at Kammstadt and learned that
during the night no trains had arrived from Munich and
no news either. What could have happened? Services else-
where, they told him, were normal. This narrowed the
field somewhat; for if Berlin had marched on defiant
Munich — or Munich on Berlin, for that matter. . . or if
Kahr and Lossow had loosed the Freikorps mobilised on
the Thuringian border against Bavaria's leftist neigh-
bours. . .
No: this must be something confined — for the moment
— to Munich itself. And since Kahr was in control in
THE WHITE CROW 167
Munich, surely something Kahr himself had started: that
could only be one thing, the thing everybody expected
Kahr to start.
Walther thought so too, when he heard the meagre
facts: it could only mean. . . and now Walther was finding
the suspense unbearable, waiting for the expected news in
front of his untouched coffee dumb.
Franz also looked pre-occupied; but withdrawn, as if
his anxiety was his own and something neither his father
nor even his uncle shared (nor he theirs) . Yet it was Franz
alone who remembered to ask Augustine politely how he
had slept (had the little fox woke him? No?), and to pay
him the other small attentions of a host. Franz was heavy-
eyed, as if he himself had not slept at all, his expression
more contemptuous than ever.
'Heavens!' thought the simpleton Augustine, looking
from face to face: 'What hangovers they've all got!'
It was at that moment Mitzi entered the breakfast
room, followed by her two little sisters. She too seemed
curiously inattentive; for she would have collided with a
displaced chair if Franz, polite as ever, had not whisked
it out of her way.
'Dreaming again!' thought Augustine.
At breakfast Augustine found himself noticing how
strangely Mitzi spread her fingers — like antennae, like
feelers — when stretching out her hand for something small
such as a spoon, or a roll off the dish. Sometimes it would
be the little finger which touched it first, whereon the others
would instantly follow. But even at twenty-three he was
still at an age when, as in childhood, there are things
which can be deemed too bad to be true. Thus this bad
truth was bound to be slow in forcing an entry into so
young and happy a head as his — the truth that already,
at seventeen, those big grey eyes of Mitzi's were almost
completely blind.
"Listen!" said Otto.
168 THE FOX IN THE ATTIC
Churchbells — no doubt of it! Faint but wild, the church-
bells in the village below had begun ringing. Hard upon
the sound came Walther's foreman forester, his dark hair
powdered with fine snow off the trees, panting and jubi-
lant with the news he carried. It was the expected news of
course (the first news always is). Solemnly Walther filled
glasses and passed them round. "Gentlemen!" said
Walther (everyone had already risen to his feet): "I give
you — The King!"
"Rupprecht und Bayern! HochI" There was a tinkle of
broken glass.
'What fun!' thought Augustine, and drained his glass
to King Rupert with the rest and smashed it: 'What non-
sense— but what /ma!'
Neither Augustine nor anyone else noticed that Franz
smashed his glass with the drink in it untouched.
Chapter 14
The first wave of rumours which spread nearly every-
where across the Bavarian countryside that Friday
morning spoke, quite simply, of a Wittelsbach restoration.
No one quite knew whence the news came or exactly
what had happened: only that there had been 'a great
upheaval' last night in Munich and now Prince Rup-
precht the Field-Marshal was to be king of Bavaria (his
father, the ex-king Ludwig III with his Prussian bullet in
him, had died two years ago).
No one was surprised. Kahr was back at the helm these
days with special powers, and everyone knew Kahr was
an open royalist who was manoeuvring to declare the
Bavarian monarchy restored the first ripe moment. Pre-
sumably his recent deliberate defiances of the federal
authorities in Berlin were no more than moves in that
separatist game. Lately moreover there had been no lack
of know-alls to whisper, knowledgeably, that now it was
only a matter of days. Last Sunday at the big Totengedenk-
tag march-past in Munich it was Rupprecht who had
taken the salute, not Kahr and not the Minister-president!
Everyone had commented on that.
So now it was only the expected which had happened.
Mostly, people were jubilant. Ghurchbells rang and
villages were beflagged. In the past people had tended to
laugh a little unkindly at the late ex-king's concertina-
trousers and his passionate interest in dairies; but in
Bavaria fanatical republicans had always been few. Even
since the republic villages still used to be beflagged and
churchbells rung, children dressed in their holiday best
and fire-brigades paraded, for ex-king Ludwig's 'private'
visits. When Ludwig died two years ago Munich gave him
a state funeral. It turned into the warmest demonstration
169
i7o THE FOX IN THE ATTIC
of public affection you'd have found anywhen in all that
'thousand years of Wittelsbach rule'.
Thus today there were only a few who wore long faces:
but those were the very few who allowed themselves to
wonder What next? For surely this must make the present
open breach with Berlin final, must make wastepaper
of the Weimar constitution? An independent Bavarian
kingdom, then. . . but where do we go from there? Other
German states had their would-be separatists too; as well
as royalist Bavaria there was red Saxony; there were
rebellious reds in Hamburg; and at Aachen there were
those despicable paid stooges of the French who even
talked of an 'independent' Rhineland.
But Walther von Kessen was not among these long-
faced, long-sighted ones as in bubbling spirits he saw to
the hoisting of flags, ordered the firing of feux-de-joie,
plotted processions and ox-roastings, planned thanks-
giving Masses with the village priest, even bruited a
memorial obelisk on the Schwartzberg. Moreover Augustine
had caught the infection and was bubbling too: possibly
the drinking of toasts (no heel-taps) in plum-brandy at
breakfast contributed to his care-free attitude of 'Ruri-
tania, here we come. . .' Presently he waved his glass and
asked "M'Lord Baron" for a boon: surely so happy an
occasion should be celebrated by granting a pardon to all
poor prisoners in the castle, chained in durance vile?
For several seconds Walther gazed at him pop-eyed, as
if Augustine had gone stark mad: for Walther's mind had
been far away, and in any case he was somewhat unused
to fooling. But at last the light dawned — and then,
Walther was delighted. How very charming of Augustine!
What an appropriate sentiment and how wittily ex-
pressed! Walther indeed was quite astonished: for the
first time he felt for his young English cousin something
that was almost affection, and clapped him on the shoulder
till the dust flew. Then he commanded that the boys' dog-
collars should of course be undone ("That was your
THE WHITE CROW 171
meaning, wasn't it? I have divined rightly?") and sent the
two little sisters happily scurrying to see to it.
For the fact was that Walther was only too glad of this
excuse for an amnesty. It was forced upon him that in this
exemplary punishment he had let his sense of fitness run
away with him: the boys were taking it harder than he
had expected. There was nothing naturally cruel in
Walther — only a belief that in punishing children one
ought to be imaginative as well as stern: that the modern
parent doesn't go on just unintelligently beating his
children for ever.
Thereafter Walther had to go about his feudal festive
occasions with Otto: so the three young people, feeling
excited and pent-in, went down to the courtyard, Franz
and his sister arm-in-arm, out into the keen cold air. The
courtyard was deep in snow. The ramparts on its sur-
rounding walls where yesterday the boys had bicycled
were now covered in a slope of untrodden snow, the
crenellated twiddles of the parapet smoothed out by snow.
A snow-hush was on all the world this morning, in which
the distant sounds of loyal merriment — the churchbells
and the sleigh-bells and the gunshots and some far singing
— floated unaccompanied: the only near sound was the
tiny (indeed infinitesimal) shriek of the snow you trod.
They passed through the Great Gate. Below them,
white snow blanketed the treetops and the village roofs,
the church-tower rocking under its bells; and all the
forests and fields beyond were also a dead white under the
dun sky. In all that whiteness the tints of the painted
crucifix outside the castle gate took on a special brilliance:
the crimson gouts of blood that trickled from the snow-
covered crown of thorns and down the tired face: the
glistening pinks and ivories of the emaciated naked body
with its wisp of loin-cloth: the blood and blue-white snow
round the big iron spike driven through the twisted,
crossed, riven feet. Under the cross but quite unconscious
of it stood a group of small mites who had just toiled up
172 THE FOX IN THE ATTIC
there from the village with their toboggans: red caps and
yellow curls, shell-pink faces intoxicated with the snow,
they stood out against the background colourlessness as
rich as butterflies, they and the Christ together.
Here Franz halted the trio and they stood in contem-
plation. "Griiss Gott," the children whispered.
Augustine peered inquisitively down through the tree-
tops towards the half-hidden village celebrating beneath.
But Franz and Mitzi, their arms still linked, stood with
their two smooth yellow heads close against the crucified
knees. Franz's face was working with emotion. Instinc-
tively Mitzi at his side turned towards him and with her
free hand felt for and stroked his shoulder. As if that
released something he began speaking: his face was
averted from Augustine but his voice intended for him. . .
this English Augustin even though English was young
and so must understand him!
"Papa," said Franz (and each word was charged with its
peculiar tension), "is a monarchist: we are not, of course."
He paused. "You see, Papa is a Bavarian, but I am a
German." With a careful but unconscious finger he was
pushing the snow off the spike through Christ's feet. One
after another the children on their toboggans and bob-
sleighs dived head-foremost into the trees below, leaving
the three alone. "Papa lives in the Past! We live in the
future, I and Mitzi."
"... And Uncle Otto," Mitzi added quietly.
"Uncle Otto too? Yes, and no. . . not without reserva-
tion.
At that, Mitzi drew a sudden, startled breath.
As they passed in through the great gate and saw the
house again Augustine glanced up at the roof, for from
the tail of his eye he seemed to have caught a flicker of
movement there. That open dormer on the fifth floor:
yesterday surely it had been boarded up like all the rest?
Chapter 15
"all the same," Franz was saying as the trio re-
Xxentered the garden court, "to me, this morning's
news is good news. . . so I think. . . for now things will
begin to move." Just then the twins appeared in a door-
way, watching them. Augustine stooped to make a snow-
ball, but these little fellows looked so solemn they might
take it for a deadly affront. "Kahr — Rupprecht — they are
themselves of no importance," Franz was explaining.
"Gustav von Kahr is merely the Finger of Fate: 'Fate's
Little Finger,' if I may be permitted the trope. Supposing
it possible to harness too-great forces to too-small ends,
today he has released in Germany disruptive powers he
will not be able to control. And certainly no one in Berlin
will be able to control them now Walther Rathenau is
dead. — That was why the great Rathenau had to die," he
added in a curious husky parenthesis, his eyes suddenly
large and gloating and horribly human.
"But if things do get quite out of control. . . what is it
you're hoping to see happen?" asked Augustine, idly
amused.
"Chaos," said Franz, simply and sombrely. "Germany
must be re-born and it is only from the darkness of the hot
womb of chaos that such re-birth is possible. . . the blood-
red darkness of the hot womb, etc," he corrected himself,
sounding for the moment very young — a child who had
only imperfectly learned his lesson.
"Golly!" murmured Augustine under his breath. This
queer German cousin was proving a rather more entertain-
ing character than he had suspected.
But just then Augustine's attention was distracted from
Franz, for Mitzi stumbled over something in the snow.
Franz was still holding her by the arm but had ceased to
i73
174 THE FOX IN THE ATTIC
pa) much heed to her, so that now she almost fell. "Whoa
there, hold up!" cried Augustine blithely, and slipped
from his place to take her other arm.
Usually Augustine rather avoided touching people, if he
could: girls, especially. So that now he had deliberately
taken a girl's arm it was somewhat a strange experience to
him. True, it seemed quite devoid of any electrical dis-
charges; but it was embarrassing all the same. Thus at
first he found himself gripping the Limp, sleeved thing
much too hard. Then he would have liked to let go of it
again but found he didn't know how, gracefully, and so
had to keep hold of it willy-nilly. All the while he was
acutely anxious lest Mitzi should take him for one of the
pawing kind.
Whereon in a curiously emphatic — indeed almost
tragic, and yet unhurried voice, Mitzi ignoring him began
to talk to her brother about their uncle. Perhaps (she
admitted) Franz had been right in his 'reservations'; for
one had to admit that Uncle Otto did not, in his every
endeavour, show signs that he sought absolute chaos and
ensued it. Indeed, the work he was doing for the Army. . .
"I'm afraid that is in fact so," said Franz, frowning.
"Our uncle has not, I regret, so clearly understood the
philosophical pre-necessity of chaos before creation as we
have, you and I and. . . and certain others." Now that
his brain was active and his emotions engaged, Franz's
habitual conceited and contemptuous expression had
given place to something a good deal simpler and nobler:
"Hence arises our uncle's mistake — to be working too
soon for the re-birth of the German Army, when he ought
to be working first rather for the re-birth of the German
Soul. He sets too much store by cadres and hidden
arsenals and secret drilling: too little by the ghostly things.
He forgets that unless a nation has a living soul to dwell
in the Army as its body, even an Army is nothing! In
present-day Germany an 'Army' would be a mere soul-
less zombie. . ."
THE WHITE CROW 175
"Hear-hear!" Augustine interrupted: "Naturally! This
time the soul of the new Germany has to take unto itself a
civilian 'body' of course — and that can't be an easy pill for
soldiers like old Otto to swallow."
"The soul of Germany take a civilian body?" Franz
looked startled, and there was a prolonged pause while he
turned this strange idea over in his mind: "So! That is
interesting. . . you carry me further than I had yet
travelled. You think then that our classical Reichswehr,
with its encumbering moralistic traditions, will prove too
strait an outlet for so mighty an upsurge of spirit? So, that
the re-born Soul of Germany will need to build for itself
some new 'body' altogether — some 'body' wholly German,
wholly barbaric and of the people? Is that your thought?"
Now it was Augustine's turn to look startled. In some
way they had got at cross-purposes but just how? And
where?
But before he could gather himself to answer Franz had
begun again: "The ghostly things: those must indeed not
be lost sight of. Do you know what General Count
Haesler said even thirty years ago? — Not? I will tell you.
It was in an address to the Army: 'It is necessary that our
German civilisation shall build its temple upon a mountain of
corpses, upon an ocean of tears, upon the death-cries of men
without number. . .' — Prophetic words, profoundly meta-
physical and anti-materialist: an imperative to the whole
German race! But how to be fulfilled, please, Augustin,
excepting through the Army?"
So Franz continued, yet even while he was speaking his
words were growing faint in Augustine's ears — fading, as
at a departure, into silence. For suddenly and when least
expected the magic moment had come. That soft, living
arm in the thick insulating sleeve — Mitzi's arm, which his
fingers had almost forgotten that they held — had warmed
. . . had thrilled. Now it seemed to be rapidly dissolving
between his tingling fingers into a flowing essence: an
essence moreover that felt to him as if it hummed (for it
176 THE FOX IN THE ATTIC
was indeed more a feeling than a sound, this humming)
like a telegraph-wire on a still evening. Then all at once
his own trembling hand which did the holding began too
to dissolve away in this 'Essence', like a sandcastle in a
rising tide. Now there was direct access — a direct union
between the two of them through which great pulses of
Mitzi's soul seemed to be pumped up his arm, thence
gushing into his empty chest, his head, his singing
ears.
Augustine turned himself and stared down into Mitzi's
face, wild-eyed. What must she be thinking about this
extraordinary thing which was happening between them?
For it was surely happening to her arm and his hand alike
— it was happening to them both, to the very separateness
of their being. Her enormous soul was pouring every
moment more deafeningly in and out through the steam-
ing gates of his, while the whole world clanged about them.
Yet Mitzi's expression was cool and calm and unfathom-
able as ever: her incredibly beautiful face perhaps even
stiller. . .
'Beautiful'? — Why, this young face out of the whole
world was the sole incarnate meaning of that dumb word
'beauty'! In the whole world's history, the first true licence
for its use! Her inscrutable face under his gaze was so still
it hardly seemed to breathe. Her wide grey eyes neither
met his nor avoided them — seemed to ignore them,
rather.
'Her wide. . .' It was then at last that the truth about
those purblind eyes struck home to him! Struck him more-
over with a stab of panic — for pity as well as fear can
attain the mad intensity of panic.
Evidently Franz was expecting an answer. Augustine
had quite ceased hearing him talking yet now heard him
stop talking, sensed his expectancy. So Augustine hurriedly
searched his ears for any unnoticed words which might be
lingering there, like searching sea-caves for old echoes.
THE WHITE CROW 177
"Well: surely lately we've had enough of all that in all
conscience!" he said at last, half at random.
"Enough of all what?" asked Franz, puzzled.
"Of. . . well, corpses and tears and what's-it."
"How 'enough', when Germany is not yet victorious?"
Franz countered, now even more puzzled still by this
queer English cousin.
Chapter 16
Already by mid-morning more detailed rumours
^about what had happened last night in Munich were
reaching Lorienburg. But once these stories began to
contain even a scrap of truth they began to sound quite
incredible. For now the name of General LudendorfT
came into them — and what part had he in Rupprecht?
The legendary LudendorfT! For the last half of the late
war he had been supreme arbiter of a German realm that
stretched from the North Sea to the Persian Gulf. On the
collapse in 191 8 prudently he had withdrawn to Sweden
for a while (leaving it to Hindenburg to get the defeated
armies home unaided): but he had reappeared lately, and
had immured himself in a villa near Munich at Lud-
wigshohe, where he practised ancient pagan rites (it used
to be rumoured) and kept pretty queer company: suc-
couring conspirators, baiting the Jesuits from time to time,
and abusing the Bavaria he lived in. Yet now Rumour
was saying that today the great Feldherr had come out of
his retirement like an Achilles from his tent: that he had
thrown in his lot with Rupprecht: that the Bavarian
restoration had grown to a 'National' revolution.
Rupprecht (said Rumour) was to be not only Bavarian
king but German Kaiser, and LudendorfT and Rupprecht
were to march on Berlin shoulder to shoulder! Otto and
Walther looked at each other completely disbelieving, for
how could two such sworn enemies ever join forces? Was
it conceivable for His Most Catholic Majesty to begin his
reign by countenancing in any way the discredited Luden-
dorfT— a professed anti-Christian, an unblushing Prussian,
a parvenu moreover whose forbears were hardly any of
them even noble? It was inconceivable that Rupprecht
would accept an Imperial crown at LudendorfT's hands.
178
THE WHITE CROW 179
Yet Ludendorff's name persisted, even when the stories
grew more circumstantial. Other lesser names too began
to be added: Colonel Kriebel (Ludendorff's Kampfbund
leader) and Major Roehm of von Epp's staff, and even
some egregious pocket-demagogue of Roehm's who (it
appeared) also tagged in somehow with the Kampfbund:
all these were in some way involved. There seemed no
doubt that Ludendorff was indeed playing a big part:
rather, it was the part played in all this by Rupprecht
which seemed as time went on to grow more and yet more
nebulous. Indeed, was Rupprecht even in Munich? And
where was the Cardinal?
At last someone declared that since last Sunday's 'Un-
known Soldier' parade Prince Rupprecht had positively
never left his castle in Berchtesgaden. Had he been made
even King of Bavaria at all, then? Once that was doubted,
someone else was positive that the restoration wasn't even
scheduled to be triggered for three whole days yet.
These counter-rumours too flew fast. Down in the vil-
lage, whoever it was had been pealing the bells got tired
of it and stopped. Up in the castle, Walther put what was
left of his plum-brandy back in the cupboard and locked
it. There seemed to be reasonable doubt whether any-
thing had happened, or even was going to happen. At
least, anything fit to celebrate: Walther had no desire at
all to celebrate Ludendorff's pranks. He'd save his liquor for
Monday. . . if Rupprecht really was to be made king on
Monday (the 'emperor' idea he had dismissed wholly from
the start).
All this passed quite unheeded by Augustine: his mind
was too full of Mitzi. For Augustine had fallen in love,
of course. As a well-made kid glove will be so exactly filled
with hand that one can't even insert a bus-ticket between
them, so the membrane of Augustine's mind was now
exactly shaped and stretched to hold Mitzi's peerless
image and nothing more: it felt stretched to bursting by
180 THE FOX IN THE ATTIC
it and couldn't conceivably find a hair's-breadth room for
anything else.
Augustine navigated now whenever he crossed a room.
I mean, like the yachtsman working along the coast who
takes some point on his beam to steer by instead of looking
straight ahead — some bold headland, or rock-girt light-
house— and fills his mind with that cynosure: keeps taking
new bearings on it, and reckoning his changing distance
from it. This was very much the way Augustine now
shaped his course across any room that had Mitzi in it.
Even when his back was turned to her the very skin under
his clothes seemed aware of the direction Mitzi lay: just
as the body through its clothes can feel the direction of
the sun's rays falling on it.
Augustine was now twenty-three: but had he ever been
in love like this before? Certainly not. . . at least, not since
his kindergarten days.
Chapter 17
Presumably the whole party had luncheon presently,
but Augustine was too deeply besotted to be conscious
of such things any more. Afterwards however came some-
thing that he had to take cognizance of: Mitzi vanished,
and reappeared dressed all in furs. Franz too appeared,
looking handsome and mediaeval in a long sleeveless belted
sheepskin jerkin (he liked his arms free for driving, he
said). Then Walther insisted on lending Augustine his own
fur coat, a magnificent sable of dashing but antique cut —
and much too large for Augustine, which caused great
hilarity. Finally Adele produced a sealskin cap for him,
and as she fitted it to his head with her own hands her face
suddenly went young again: fleetingly it was almost as if
Mitzi herself peeped out of it.
Apparently it had been arranged a long time ahead that
this afternoon Augustine was to be shown to some neigh-
bours. These were the Steuckels, who lived very comfort-
ably in a large villa at Rottningen ten miles away.
Originally it had been planned for the whole Lorienburg
family to descend on Rottningen in force, but in view of
the dubious political situation surely Dr. Steuckel would
understand. . .
— Anyway, now it was to be just the three young people
alone.
The Steuckels (Augustine was informed) were not
nobility; but they were distinguished intellectuals (a class,
Walther explained carefully, which he considered deserv-
ing of every respect). Dr. Steuckel owned an old-estab-
lished Munich publishing firm of high repute, which —
like the even more famous Hanfstaengl outfit — specialised
in Fine Art; and he controlled an exhibition-gallery and
picture-business as well (pounds and dollars!) in a very
181
18a THE FOX IN THE ATTIC
good position on the Promenadestrasse. That was Ulrich
Steuckel of Rottningen, of course — 'Dr. Ulrich': his
brother Dr. Reinhold (the eminent Munich jurist) had
once been like Walther himself a Centrist member of the
Landtag but now (also like Walther) by his own wish kept
out of party politics. He still knew everybody, though.
Dr. Reinhold was particularly able. . . here Walther
digressed to describe one of the previous season's meetings
of 'Gaa' (a serious and distinguished circle whose pro-
ceedings began with an authoritative lecture on some
worth-while subject and continued with brilliant informal
discussions over veal sausage and free beer). Walther him-
self had been present on that occasion but had hardly
dared to speak, whereas Reinhold Steuckel had covered
himself with glory by totally confounding the lecturer over
some technicality of monetary theory — the lecturer being
no less a person than Dr. Schacht himself, the great Dr.
Hjalmar Schacht. "People are saying," Walther now
digressed, "that Schacht will shortly be called on to direct
the financial affairs of the nation. . ."
But at that point Mitzi started off down the stairs,
whereon Augustine (to whom in any case the name of
Schacht meant nothing) instantly closed his ears against
Walther and followed her hot-foot.
When they reached the courtyard Augustine realised
the reason for all these furs and this wrapping-up. They
were to travel perched high on a light one-horse sleigh,
sitting abreast there the three of them as open to the
weather as three birds on a branch.
Augustine's heart leapt; but Franz chose to sit in the
middle between them, alas, since he was driving.
As soon as the little monkey-faced man let go of the
horse's head and the sleigh moved off — even while still at
a walk — Augustine was assailed by a curious giddy, swim-
ming feeling; for the sleigh began slipping about, like a
car in an uncontrolled skid. Instinctively Augustine's
THE WHITE CROW 183
motoring foot felt gingerly for a brake, his motoring hands
clutched for a steering wheel. The sleigh was yawing about
behind the horse like a raft on tow. But horse-sleighs,
Augustine soon found, don't mind yawing and skidding:
they are not intended to behave like staid vehicles on
wheels: they don't even need to stick to the road. As soon
as they were free of the perils of the causeway Franz left
the road altogether. He turned aside into the fields at a
canter, his sleigh sliding and pitching on its squeaking
runners in the rushing clear cold air, taking his own beeline
across this open unfenced country like a hunt.
Once Augustine was able to persuade his muscles to
relax, and to acquiesce in this helpless-feeling motion as a
baby's would do, he found his mind also relaxing (in sym-
pathy) into a state that was almost infantile. He felt an
overwhelming desire to sing: not any proper song with a
regular tune, but just to warble aloud in Mitzi's honour
much as a bird sings when it is in love — much as Polly
had 'sung' that day they had driven down to Mellton.
Moreover, when he had slammed his ears tight shut in
Walther's face just now Walther's last meaningless syllables
had got caught inside: "Schacht! Schacht! Doktor. . . Hjalmar
. . . Schacht" Augustine began to carol. Then he stopped,
to comment in his ordinary speaking voice: " 'Hjalmar'!
What an in^ably ridiculous name! I bet he parts his hair
in the middle — eh, Franz?"
But Franz paid no attention: his mind was all elsewhere,
was in the past. . . von Epp's crusade of four years ago to
turn the Reds out of Munich. . .
Papa last night had wanted to make a great fuss over
coupling Franz's name with it all as if it wasn't a matter
of course that Franz had volunteered! Hadn't he been
already a trained cadet by then, and turned sixteen? — No
younger than his friend Wolff; and by then the dedicated
Wolff had already been away fighting in the Latvian
marshes for the past six months. There had been plenty
184 THE FOX IN THE ATTIC
of others from Franz's cadet-school too with von Epp.
Even Wolff's little brother Lothar — ex-Governor Scheide-
manii s other boy — had wanted to join, and they'd have
taken the lad if Lothar hadn't looked so obviously only a
child . . . Lothar's voice hadn't broken even.
Why then had Franz minded it so last night when Papa
blurted. . . after all, it was not true any more to say that
. . . that whatever-it-was had happened to 'him': it had
happened to a boy: the very sixteen-year-old boy as it
chanced that he used to be — but he wasn't that boy now.
Toller. . . last night those two had both spoken Toller's
name (the Reds' young commander); and that had
touched something on the quick.
There had been that day when the Reds counter-
attacked unexpectedly and for a few hours Franz had
found himself Toller's prisoner. . . The loathsome taste of
imminent death bitter on his lips whenever he licked them
(and he had kept on licking them as he stood there with
tied hands expecting it): was that the sensitive spot?
If not, what else?
After their Spring campaign — the gun-booms and the
bomb-bangs, the excitement and the fright — May Day
19 1 9 had been the final day of triumph for the White
forces, the day of victory and glory. There had been a
cock-a-hoop triumphal march into Munich under arms,
down the broad but battered and littered Ludwigstrasse,
across the Odeonsplatz — goose-stepping between the Resi-
denz and the stately Feldherrnhalle and down the narrow
canyon of the Residenzstrasse, past the Max-Josefs Platz to
the gothickated Marienplatz beyond. There had been a
Te Deum and an open-air Mass: the Red Flag has been
hauled down and the 'dear white-and-blue flag' of old
Bavaria had been hoisted over the city again.
That surely was the end: after May Day, volunteers
such as the schoolboy Franz had hoped to go straight
THE WHITE CROW 185
home. But there had been work still to do, it seemed:
Munich had not only to be freed it had to be cleansed. . .
That 'cleansing'. . . suddenly Franz's hands on the reins
trembled and the galloping horse threw up its head and
snorted: for suddenly twenty-year-old Franz was sixteen
and living that boyhood whatever-it-was over again.
Chapter 18
The triumphal May Day was over: Munich entirely
in 'white hands' but seething still. . .
Mechanically Franz's hands still guided the sleigh with
his sister and Augustine in it, but he was scarcely con-
scious of it for in his reverie he was transported backward
in time to an enormous hostile Munich tenement-building
on the far side of the river Isar right beyond the Burger-
braukeller: it was the grey small hours of the morning,
and Franz was quite alone there, and lost.
This young cadet had never been in such a place as this
before: he had scarcely in his life before even seen the
urban poor. But now he was left alone here, alone in this
dark would-be-clean but old and rotting and hence stink-
ing wet warren of endless decaying dark corridors and
broken stairs and stuffed-up windows: surrounded in the
darkness by innumerable woken waspish voices repeating
"Toller!" in different tones — and rude things about him
(little Franz) and fierce blood-curdling threats.
Franz had been sent here with a patrol which was
searching for Toller; for this was the sort of place Toller
might be expected to take refuge in. Most of the other
Red leaders had been caught and shot by now or clubbed
to death; but Toller had hidden himself, the dirty Jew!
The patrol had brought Franz along because he alone had
ever seen Toller face-to-face.
That of course was the day Franz had been Toller's
prisoner: the day the Reds had surprise-attacked in front
and then armed women from the local munitions- works
had suddenly taken the Whites in the rear as well, and
while most of the Whites had managed to escape to
Pfaffenhofen Franz had stuck loyally close to his com-
mandant, until. . . Hey, presto! The canny White com-
186
THE WHITE CROW 187
mandant himself had escaped from the little town solo on
a railway-engine and Franz and the few who had remained
with him were taken.
At last they had been brought before the bloodthirsty
Toller: a slim, small-bodied young student-ogre with big
brown dramatic eyes and wavy black hair. They thought
that now they would surely be shot. But instead Toller
had said something sentimental and a huge navvy had
untied the blond, childlike Franz and given him his own
hunk of sausage: whereon Franz had burst into tears under
Toller's very eyes and Toller had turned all his prisoners
scot-free loose — the dirty Jew!
So now, in the grey dawn that as yet had scarcely pene-
trated indoors, they were searching this place for Toller
the fugitive; and Franz was there to identify him, if he
were found.
"Open! Open!"1 The doors seldom opened quickly
enough, and again and again the sergeant had to kick
down these doors. Doors entering on rooms with sagging,
gravid ceilings and with lamps hastily lit. Entering on dark
rooms filled to the peeling walls with beds. Collapsing
rooms, filled with threadbare beds laden with whole bony
families — whole families which night after night had bred
on them those innumerable bone-thin children now smell-
ing, in the darkness, of urine and of hate.
All the same, they had not found Toller; and presently
for some reason Franz had been left alone like this in the
darkness to guard the stairs while the rest of the patrol
moved on elsewhere. . .
Just at that point in his recollections Franz turned the
horse's head towards the forest. All at once the sleigh
plunged in among the trees down a broad ride, and Augus-
tine in his snow-bound loving ecstasy gave loud utterance
to a hunting-cry. At that happy, wholly animal sound a
tremor passed across Franz's quailing, hunted face: for
now in the paling darkness countless shadowy figures in
188 THE FOX IN THE ATTIC
their ghostlike nightclothes were hustling him and again
hustling him, and the tide of them had begun to carry him
away — in a twinkling that woman had snatched at his
rifle and underfoot the child had writhed and bitten him
and his falling gun had gone off lethally right among
them, the women and the children — a deafening bang,
and then the howling. . .
Augustine failed to notice that tremor, for he was lean-
ing right forward so as to be able to see past good old
Franz and steal a glance at Mitzi. — Aha! At the happy,
noble, British animal sound he had just emitted her parted,
frost-pink lips had smiled.
Augustine leant back again in his place, content.
Mitzi had smiled. . . but surely the smile lingered on
her lips rather overlong? Indeed in the end it seemed
frozen to a mere physical configuration, no pleasure nor
humour remaining in it.
Once Mitzi's childhood cataracts had been removed the
only vision she ever had when without spectacles to give
things some semblance of shape (those spectacles which
might never be worn in public) was a sort of marbled
mingling of light and shade. But this morning she had
woken plagued with dark discs floating across things —
discs which even the spectacles could not dispel; and now
these swimming discs, or globules, had begun to coalesce
in a queerly solid black cloud, curtaining totally one part
of the field. Now too that black cloud had begun to emit
minute but brilliant blue flashes along its advancing edge
. . . for it was advancing, every now and then the cloud
jerked forward a little further and blocked out a little more
of the field (moreover, in such an absolute way!).
Six months ago without even this much warning one
eye had wholly collapsed, ceased to be a sense-organ at
all. "The retina had detached," they said. But that was
the eye which had always been the weaker, quite apart
THE WHITE CROW 189
from those cataracts in both of them; and the doctors were
so full of comforting assurances about the remaining,
stronger eye! Until now she had completely believed them;
but was after all the same thing now happening to her
'good' eye too? In a matter of hours or minutes — hastened
perhaps by the jolting of the sleigh — might she find herself
for ever afterwards stone blind?
That was the sudden premonition which had made
Mitzi so suddenly abandon that smile of hers and leave
it lying derelict on her lips, discarded and forgotten while
she prayed:
Mary, Mother. . . Oh Mary, Mother. . . Heart of Jesus. . .
So the sleigh glided on with them, and slid — all three
swaying together, these three separate identities bundled
up in one bundle: a trio, pressed flank to flank in such
close physical communion as almost to seem physically one
person. On and on through the whiteness and the black-
ness of the endless snow-burdened forest.
In the ears of all three of them similarly the silvery
music of their sleigh's sweet bells echoed off the endless
equidistant serried boles.
Chapter ig
It surprised Franz when at last they arrived at Rott-
ningen to find Dr. Reinhold there. The eminent jurist
was a busy man and seldom came to his brother's house;
but now Franz heard his unmistakable throbbing voice as
soon as they entered the hall.
It seemed to come through the open library door where
Dr. Ulrich had just appeared to greet them: "Two shots!"
the exciting voice thrilled in tones rich with pathos:
"Straight through the ceiling! Phut-phut! Surely a remark-
able way of catching the chairman's eye at a meeting. . .
and indeed he caught every eye, balancing there erect on
a little beer-table — all those grandees in full fig, and him
in a dirty mackintosh with his black tails showing under
its skirts — like a waiter on the way home. In one hand a
big turnip-watch, and a smoking pistol in the other. . ."
A subdued buzz of appreciation was audible from the
library. In the meanwhile Franz had been trying to mur-
mur his parents' excuses, but Dr. Ulrich seemed in a
towering hurry and wouldn't stop to listen to them — he
would scarcely let the Lorienburg party get their furs off
before he shepherded them in front of him into the already
crowded library and pushed them into chairs. "S-s-s-sh!"
he admonished them excitedly: "Reinhold was there, he
saw everything! He left Munich before dawn and has just
got here by way of Augsburg. They're all in it — Luden-
dorff, Kahr, Lossow, Seisser, Poehner. . ."
"You muddle everything, Uli! It's all that Hitler!" said
Reinhold plaintively, "I keep telling you!"
". . . and Otto Hitler too," Dr. Ulrich added hurriedly:
"One of Ludendorff's lot," he explained.
"Adolf. . . " his brother corrected him. "But not 'and
Adolf Hitler too'! As I'm trying to explain — only you will
190
THE WHITE CROW 191
keep running in and out — little second-fiddle Hitler
entirely stole the show! Ludendorff, today? Kahr?" he
continued with ironical disdain, and snapped his fingers:
"Pfui/ — For months those two have both been stringing this
Hitler along, each trying to use that empty brain and
hypnotic tongue for his own ends: now Hitler has turned
the tables!"
"It must all have been richly comic," someone remarked
comfortably.
"But on the contrary!" Dr. Reinhold was palpably
shocked. "How can I have conveyed to you any such idea?
— No, it was deeply impressive! — Macabre, if you like: a
mis-en-scene by Hieronymus Bosch: but in no way comic!"
Once more everybody settled down to listen. "The hall
was packed — by exclusive invitation only, for a pro-
nouncement of Great Importance. Everybody who was
anybody was there including our entire Bavarian cabinet
— and Hitler too of course, he'd somehow been invited. . ."
"When was this, and where?" Franz whispered to Ulrich,
aside.
"Last night. Munich."
"But WHERE?"
"S-s-s-shf The Biirgerbraukeller: Kahr had engaged their
biggest hall"
"We all knew what we'd been summoned for, of course
— more or less. It would be monarchy, or secession — or
perhaps both. . . federation with Austria, even. But Kahr
seemed in no hurry to come to brass-tacks. He droned on
and on. That tiny square head of his — for anthropo-
metrically he's a veritable text-book Alpine, that old boy,
and his little head sank lower and lower on the expanse of
his chest till I truly thought it would end up in his lap!
Nothing about him looked alive except those two little
brown eyes of his: from time to time they'd leave his notes
and take just one peep at us — like mice from the mouths of
their holes! Eight-fifteen — eight-twenty— on and on — eight-
twenty-five — still endlessly saying nothing — eight-twenty-
i92 THE FOX IN THE ATTIC
tight, turnty-nine, and then — you should have seen Kahr's
look of outrage at the interruption — that inexplicable
Phut! Phutr
Rrinhold paused dramatically, palpably waiting till
someone asked him, "What happened then?"
"Silence, at first — a moment of utter silence! But the
watch in Hitler's hand was fully as significant as his pistol.
On the very stroke of eight-thirty — at the very moment
he first pulled the trigger — the door burst open and in
tumbled young Hermann Goering with a machine-gun
squad! Steel helmets seemed to appear instantly out of
nowhere: at every door, every window, all over the hall
itself. And then Pandemonium broke loose! Shrieks and
shouts, crashing furniture and smashing beer-jugs. . .
punctuated by that short sharp ululation peculiar to
women in expensive furs. . .
"Hitler jumped off his table and began pushing to the
front, revolver still in hand. Two of Goering's strong-arm
boys half-lifted him onto the platform, and Kahr was
shoved aside. So there he stood, facing us. . . You know
those piercing, psychotic, popping eyes of his? You know
that long, comparatively legless body? ('Incidentally you're
another Alpine, dear boy,' I thought: 'You're certainly no
Nordic. . .') But oh the adoring gaze those brawny pin-
head gladiators of his kept turning on him from under their
tin skull-cups, those ant-soldiers of his (and there seemed
to be legions of them, let me tell you, there last night) !
"Now in a moment it was so quiet again you could hear
Hitler panting — like a dog circling a bitch! He was pro-
foundly excited. Indeed whenever he faces a crowd it
seems to arouse him to a veritable orgasm — he doesn't woo
a crowd, he rapes it. Suddenly he began to screech: 'On
to Berlin! The national revolution has begun — /announce
it! The Hakenkreuz is marching! The Army is marching!
The Police are marching! Everybody is marching!' " Dr.
Reinhold's voice rasped harsher and harsher: " 'This hall
is occupied! Munich is occupied! Germany is occupied!
THE WHITE CROW 193
Everywhere is occupied!' " In his mimicry Dr. Reinhold
glared round the room with quivering nostrils, as if daring
anyone to move in his seat. Then he continued: " 'The
Bavarian government is deposed! The Berlin government
is deposed! God Almighty is deposed — hail to the new
Holy Trinity Hitler-Ludendorff-Poehner! Hoch!' "
"Poehner?" said someone incredulously: "That. . . long,
stuttering policeman?"
"Once — Gaoler of Stadelheim! — Now, Bavaria's new
prime minister!" said Reinhold with ceremony: "Hoch!"
"And Ludendorff. . . so Ludendorff is behind it all,"
said someone else.
"Ye-es — in the sense that the tail is 'behind' the dog,"
said Reinhold: "Commander-in-chief of a thrice-glorious
(non-existent) National Army — Hoch! It's Lossow who's to
be minister of war. I tell you, when Ludendorff at last came
on the scene he was in a smoking rage: it was perfectly
obvious Hitler had bounced him — he'd known nothing
about the coup till they got him there. He spoke honeyed
words, but he looked like a prima donna who's just been
tripped into the wings."
"And Egon Hitler himself?"
" i Adolf," please. . . our modest Austrian Alpine? He
asks so little for himself! Only. . ." Reinhold stood exag-
geratedly at attention — "Only to be Supreme Dictator of
the Whole German Reich— Hoch! Hoch! HOCH!"
Someone in Reinhold's audience made a more farm-
yard noise.
"My friend — but you ought to have been there!" said
Reinhold, fixing him with his eyes: "I couldn't understand
it. . . frankly, I can't understand it now so perhaps you
clever people will explain it to me? Hitler retires to confer
in private with Kahr & Co. — at the pistol-point I've little
doubt, for Kahr and Lossow were flabbergasted and palp-
ably under arrest — while young Hermann Goering in all
his tinkling medals — all gongs and glamour — is left to keep
us amused! Back comes Hitler: he has shed his trench-coat
194 THE FOX IN THE ATTIC
now and there his godhead stands revealed — our Titan!
Our New Prometheus! — in a slop-shop tail-coat nearly
reaching to his ankles, das arme Kellnerlein! But then Hitler
begins to speak again: 'November criminals' and 'Glorious
Fatherland' and 'Victory or Death' and all that gup. Then
Ludendorff speaks: 'On to Berlin — there's no turning back
now. . .' 'That's spiked Kahr's separatist, royalist guns
pretty thoroughly,' I thought: 'and just in the nick of time!
Prince Rupprecht is right out of it from now on — he's
missed his cue. . .' But no! For then the notoriously anti-
royalist Hitler chokes out some intentionally only half-
audible laudatory reference to 'His Majesty': whereon
Kahr bursts into tears and falls into Hitler's arms, babbling
about 'Kaiser Rupprecht'! Ludendorff can't have heard
what Hitler said or Kahr said either — fortunately, for he'd
certainly have burst asunder. . . but as it is, everyone
shakes hands all round. . . then State-Commissioner Baron
von Kahr speaks, then Commanding-General von Lossow,
then Chief-of-Police Colonel von Seisser — all licking the
Austrian ex-corporal's boots! All pledging him their sup-
port! Not that I'd trust one of them a yard if I were Hitler
. . . any more than I'd trust Hitler's new-found reverence
for royalty if I were Rupprecht.
"So much for the stage and the professionals: in the
audience we're all jumping on our seats and cheering our-
selves silly. 'Reinhold Steuckel, you level-headed eminent
jurist!' I kept telling myself. 'This isn't politics, it's Opera.
Everyone's playing a part — but everyone!' "
"Grand Opera — or Opera-bouffe?" asked someone
behind the speaker.
Reinhold turned right round in his chair and looked at
his interrogator very seriously: "Ah, that's the question!
And it's early days really to know the answer," he added
slowly. "But I think it's what I hinted earlier: something
not quite human. — Wagner you say? You're thinking of
that early, immature thing of his, Rienzi? Perhaps. Yes,
the score is recognisably at least school of Wagner. . . ah,
THE WHITE CROW 195
but those ant-soldiers — all those sinister, animated insects
and those rabbits and weasels on their hind legs. . . and
above all, Hitler. . . Yes, it was Wagner, but Wagner
staged by Hieronymus Bosckl"
He said all this with such compelling earnestness,
enunciating those last words in so sibilant a whisper, that
a chill hush fell on the whole room. Dr. Reinhold had not
gained that courtroom reputation of his for nothing.
Chapter 20
DR. ulrich kept bees, and the little honey-cakes which
were being served (with liqueurs) were a speciality of
the house: "Famous!" his guests exclaimed: "Wonderful
— delicacies of the most surpassing excellence!" It quite
shocked English Augustine to hear men sitting around and
all talking so excitedly about food.
"Hitler would adore these cakes of yours, Uli," said
someone.
"But Herr Hitler adores anything sweet and sticky," said
someone else: "These little beauties would be wasted on
him." The speaker smacked his lips.
"That must be why he's got such a pasty complexion,"
(it was only Dr. Ulrich himself, it seemed, who had hardly
heard of Adolf).
"Does anybody know just when Hitler clipped his
moustache?" Franz asked his neighbour suddenly. But
nobody did. . . "Because, the first time I ever saw him it
was long and straggling."
"No!"
"He was standing on the kerb, haranguing. And nobody
in the street was listening: not one. They walked past him
as if he was empty air: I was quite embarrassed. . . I was
only a boy, then, really," Franz added apologetically.
"That must indeed have been most embarrassing for
you, Baron," put in Dr. Reinhold sympathetically. "What
did you do? Did you manage to walk by too? Or did you
stop and listen?"
"I . . . couldn't do either," Franz confessed: "It was all
too embarrassing. I thought he was someone mad, of
course: he looked quite mad. In the end, rather than pass
him I turned back and went by another street. He'd a
torn old mackintosh which looked as if he always slept in
196
THE WHITE CROW 197
it yet he wore a high stiff collar like a government clerk.
He'd got floppy hair and staring eyes and he looked half-
starved. . ."
"A stiff white collar?" interposed Dr. Reinhold: "Prob-
ably he slept in that too. What the title of 'Majesty' on
the lips of his pawnbroker means to an exiled monarch at
Biarritz, or the return of his sword to a vanquished general,
or his dinner-jacket to an English remittance-man on the
Papuan beaches — that clerkly collar! His inalienable birth-
right as a Hereditary Life-member of the Lower Middle
Classes — Hoch!"
"It can't have been my lucky day," Franz pursued,
smiling wryly. "There was another prophet in the next
street I turned along, too! And he was dressed only in a
fishing-net: the chap thought he was St. Peter."
Augustine liked Dr. Reinhold: intellectually he was
obviously in a different class altogether from Walther and
Franz (surely it was symptomatic how much Franz him-
self seemed to alter in Dr. Reinhold's company!). So now
Augustine slipped out of the seat he had been planted in,
made his way over to Dr. Reinhold and began talking to
him without more ado about a boy at his prep-school who
hadn't just thought he was God — he knew it. The boy (a
small and rather backward and inky specimen) knew it
beyond any shadow of doubt. But though he was Almighty
God in person he had been curiously unwilling to admit
it openly when questioned in public — even when taxed
with it by someone big and important, with a right to a
straight answer even from God (some prefect, say, or the
captain of cricket): "Leighton Minor! For the last time- —
Are you God or aren't you?" He'd stand on one leg and
blush uncomfortably but still not say Yes or No. . .
"Was he ashamed of His Godhead? Considering the
state He's let His universe get into. . ."
"I don't think it was that: n-n-no, it was more that if
you couldn't spot for yourself something which stood out
198 THE FOX IN THE ATTIC
a mile like that it was hardly for Him to make a song
about it — altogether too self-advertising. . ."
Dr. Reinhold was delighted: "But of course! Incarnate
in an English boy how else could God behave? It's how
you all do behave, in fact." Then he enquired of Augustine
in the meekest of voices: "Mr. Englishman, tell me please
because I should be so interested: are you God?"
Augustine's jaw dropped.
"You see!" cried Dr. Reinhold triumphantly. But then
he turned to Franz and said in tones of contrition: "Intro-
duce us, please." And thus — rather late in the day —
Reinhold and Augustine formally 'met'.
The German clicked his heels and murmured his own
name, but Augustine just went straight on talking: "Some-
times we had to twist his arm like anything to make him
own up to it."
"Himmel!" Dr. Reinhold regarded his new friend with
owlish anxiety: "Considering. . . who He was, wasn't that
just a tiny bit unsafe?" Then he clapped his hands:
"Listen, everybody! I want you to meet a young English-
man whose idea of a wet-afternoon's harmless amusement
for little boys is twisting the arm of. . . of Almighty God!"
"He'd better meet Hitler then," said a square woman
sourly.
"It isn't as if the Kampfbund themselves took Hitler
seriously," said someone. "He's not one of their big men."
"It's all Putzi's fault," someone else was saying, "for
bringing him to people's parties: it has given him ideas."
"He ruins any party. . ."
"Oh no! When he talks about babies he's really rather
sweet. . ."
"Putzi Hanfstaengl was with him last night looking like
Siegfried," Reinhold murmured: "Or rather, looking as
if he felt like Siegfried," he corrected himself.
"It isn't only under the Hanfstaengls' wing: nowadays
some people actually invite him. . ."
THE WHITE CROW 199
"Then they deserve what they get. I remember one
dinner-party at the Bruckmanns. . ."
"What — the famous occasion he tried to eat an arti-
choke whole?"
"Even two years ago in Berlin, at Helene Beckstein's. . ."
"At Putzi's own house — his country cottage at Uffing. . ."
"The formula is much the same everywhere these days,"
said a rather squat actor-type, rising and moving down
centre: "First: a portentous message that he'll be a bit
late — detained on most important business. Then, about
midnight — when he's quite sure that his entrance will be
the last — he marches in, bows so low to his hostess that
his sock-suspenders show and presents her with a wilting
bouquet of red roses. Then he refuses the proffered chair,
turns his back on her and stations himself at the buffet.
If anybody speaks to him he fills his mouth with cream puffs
and grunts. If they dare to speak a second time he only
fills his mouth with cream puffs. It isn't just that in the
company of his betters he can't converse himself — he aims
to be a kind of social upas, to kill conversation anywhere
within reach of his shadow. Soon the whole room is silent.
That's what he's waiting for: he stuffs the last cream puff
half-eaten into his pocket and begins to orate. Usually it's
against the Jews: sometimes it's the Bolshevik Menace:
sometimes it's the November Criminals — no matter, it's
always the same kind of speech, quiet and winning and
reasonable at first but before long in a voice that makes
the spoons dance on the plates. He goes on for half an
hour — an hour, maybe: then he breaks off suddenly,
smacks his sticky lips on his hostess's hand again, and. . .
and out into the night, what's left of it."
"How intolerable!" exclaimed a youngish woman,
angrily. She had an emancipated look rather beyond her
years,
"At least there's this about it," said Dr. Reinhold
thoughtfully: "No one who has once met Herrn Hitler at
a party is likely to forget it."
aoo THE FOX IN THE ATTIC
"But they'll remember him with loathing!"
"Dear lady," he answered sententiously, "there's one
thing even more important for a rising politician than
having friends; and that is — plenty of enemies!"
"That doesn't make sense."
"It does. For a politician rises on the backs of his
friends (that's probably all they're good for), but it's
through his enemies he'll have to govern afterwards."
"Poppycock!" said the sensible young woman — but too
sweetly, she calculated, for it to sound rude.
Suddenly Mitzi, forgotten in a corner, gave a startled,
poignant cry. But in that buzzing room almost nobody
heard it — not even Augustine, for Dr. Reinhold had just
offered to show him Munich and Augustine was just
saying with alacrity "When shall I come?"
"Tomorrow, if you like," Dr. Reinhold smiled. "But no
— I was forgetting the revolution. . . better give that a day
or two. . . say, early next week?"
Thus Augustine was one of the last to notice Mitzi's
curious behaviour. The room had dropped almost silent,
for after that cry she had stepped forward a pace or two
and was now standing with both groping hands held
straight out in front of her. The tears of final defeat were
running down her face.
"Is that child drunk?" asked the sensible young woman,
loudly and inquisitively.
But in almost no time the now stone-blind Mitzi had
got control of herself again. Hearing the question she
turned and laughed, good humouredly.
Chapter 21
There had surely been something a little brittle and
heartless about that party at the Steuckels all through
(or so it seemed to Augustine and even Franz too looking
back on it afterwards): the talk was all just a trifle noisier
than need be, the attitudes more striking: there was an
evident bravura and a bravado about all these people.
For these were in fact all people somehow, some way,
riding the Great Inflation. Thus in their manner they
reminded one rather of skaters caught far out too late in
a thaw, who know their only but desperate hope lies in
speed. The ice is steaming in the sun and there can be
no turning back. They hear anguished cries behind them
but they lower their heads with muffled ears, they flail
with their arms and thrust ever more desperately with
their legs in their efforts to skate even faster still on the
slushy, cracking, sinking ice.
Anything rather than get 'involved': whereas Lothar
and his lost like pursued 'involvement' as if that were in
itself salvation.
Franz felt he never wanted to see the Steuckels again —
he was done with all that sort.
They got back to Lorienburg soon after dusk, just as
the new moon was setting.
Naturally it was not till the first shock to them of Mitzi's
disaster had begun to wear off and they were alone
together late in the evening that Franz told his father and
uncle the story of the Beer-hall Putsch.
"What stupidity!" said Walther. "It almost passes
belief."
"So our 'White Crow' has managed to push his nose
into the big stuff at last," said Otto. "Well, well!"
201
202 THE FOX IN THE ATTIC
"You said once he had served under you during the
war," said Franz. "What on earth was he like as a
soldier?"
"As a lance-corporal?" Otto corrected him a trifle
pedantically: "He was a Regimental Messenger, which
rates as a one-stripe job. . ." Then he considered the ques-
tion conscientiously: "adequate, I suppose — by wartime
standards: he hasn't the stuff in him for a peacetime
Regular N.C.O. of course." Otto set his lips grimly.
"Who are you talking about?" asked Walther absently.
"After the war," Otto continued, "Roehm's intelligence
outfit at District Command found him a job as one of their
political stool-pigeons — spying on his old messmates for
pay, not to put too fine a point on it. That started him:
now, he seems to consider himself something of a politician
in his own right — in the beer-hall and street-corner world,
he and his fellow-rowdies. But it's Roehm still pulls the
strings, of course."
"Oh, that chap of Roehm's? — Yes, I've seen his name
on the placards," Walther remarked.
"But in the regiment?" Franz persisted.
"I can't really tell you much," said Otto a little
haughtily. "He did what he was told. He. . . he wasn't a
coward, that I'm aware of." Otto paused, and then con-
tinued a little unwillingly: "I never cottoned to him.
Damned unpopular with the men too: such a silent, kill-
joy sort of cove. No normal interests — he couldn't even
join the others in a good grumble! That's why they all
called him the 'white crow': in anything they all took part
in, Lance-corporal Hitler was always the odd man out."
"I don't much like your Captain Roehm either, what
I've heard of him," said Walther.
"Able fellow," said Otto: "A fine organiser! He's in-
valuable to the Army. — But it's that snort of his, chiefly:
though he can't help it — nose smashed in the war. But it
makes him seem a bit abrupt, and he's conscious of it. —
Don't call him 'my' Captain Roehm, though: he wasn't
THE WHITE CROW 203
in the regiment. — We had his young friend 'Gippy' Hess
for a time," Otto suddenly grimaced: "Frankly, in the
List Regiment we were a pretty scratch lot, all told."
No one commented: they both knew it had been
quixotic of Otto to accept that wartime infantry posting.
In the pause which followed Otto's mind must have
reverted to his 'white crow'; for ". . . half-baked little back-
street runt!" he muttered suddenly — and with surprising
feeling, for an officer, considering that Hitler had been
merely an 'other ranks'. Franz eyed him curiously. Clearly
there'd been some clash.
Meanwhile the telephone kept ringing. Munich was
still 'no lines' but all that day rumour had succeeded
rumour: rumours that the Revolution was marching on
Berlin, rumours that the Revolution had failed, and that
Ludendorff and Hitler were dead. Dr. Reinhold of course
had left Munich for Rottningen before dawn that morn-
ing: he had known no more than the next man what had
happened after that Bierkeller scene.
Lothar had been there, in Munich; but Lothar's excite-
ment that momentous night had reached such a pitch that
in his own memories afterwards of what had happened
there were inexplicable blanks. Scene succeeded scene: but
what had happened between them, just how one thing led
to another, seemed subject to total non-recall.
Years later Lothar could still vividly remember the
mounting elation and the rhythmic, stupefying effect of
the Nazi march down the Brienner Strasse, the crowd
growing like a snowball. . . that absurd tumbling urchin
. . . the woman smelling of carbolic soap who sprang for-
ward out of the crowd and kissed him. . . that other woman
who marched beside him and kept thrusting a crucifix
under his nose as if he was a condemned criminal bound
for the scaffold.
But the whole troop was bound for the Biirgerbrau,
204 Till- I OX IN THE ATTIC
surely (where the Revolution was), by way of the Ludwig
Bridge? How was it then that the next thing he could
remember he was somewhere different altogether and
quite alone?
Scene Two.
1 1 was dark. Lothar was in some enclosed place, and the
darkness was only relieved by the murky trailing flames
of torches held by hurrying hooded monks. It wasn't a gun
Lothar was carrying now, it seemed to be a pick. No
Fritz, no Willi — none of his friends were here with him;
but one of those hooded faceless figures was padding along
ahead of him, guiding him and hastening him on. The
air was warmer than the chill night air outside but close
and dank — a sort of earthy, cellar-warmth. The smoke of
his guide's torch made him cough, and his cough echoed —
these were vaults . . . there was a damp smell of mould, a
smell of bones. . . this was a place of tombs, they were
deep underground, these must be catacombs. . . they were
treading in a deep, down-soft dust that muffled sound —
it must be the dust of bones.
The small Nazi working-party they came to were older
men mostly — none of them ones Lothar knew. From a
different troop. They worked by the light of the monks'
torches in reliefs of sixes, for there was no room for more
to wield picks and shovels at one time and anyhow the
dust hung so heavy on this dead underground air that one
soon tired.
The thickness of the masonry they were digging through
seemed endless. Lothar found it hard to believe this was
just some bricked-up vault: for who would have bricked
up an entrance with masonry more than four feet thick?
When at last they did break through, however, the whole
thing was plain: for this they were entering was no ecclesi-
astical crypt any more, but the cellars under the barracks
next door. Efficiently sealed off and sound-proofed from
the barracks above, moreover: the reason being eight
THE WHITE CROW 205
thousand rifles hidden here from the Allied Disarmament
Commission — and theirs for the taking!
"Von Kahr himself signed our orders — the old fox!" — "Eh?
Surely not!" — "Yes indeed! Our officer had to show them to the
Prior. . ." — "But surely he'd have intended this backdoor
for royalist uses; and no doubt that's where these simple
monks think the rifles are going even now!" — "But Kahr
has joined us with Lossow and Seisser, hasn't he?" — "Ye-es. . .
or so Herr Esser said: but he's such a slippery cove, Dr.
Kahr. . ."—"The old fox! But he's trapped at last. . ."
Eight thousand rifles, well-greased, neatly racked —
what a sight for weapon-hungry eyes! Re-inforcements of
friendly Oberlanders arrived, and a living chain was
formed to pass the guns from hand to hand, along the
tunnels, up the torch-lit steps, along the corridors and
cloisters — all the long way through these dark and silent
sacred places out to where Goering's plain vans were
waiting in the street. . .
It went on for hours.
Scene Three.
Lothar was dripping wet and had lost his boots. It was
early morning. He was agued with cold so that he could
hardly speak. . .
Lothar must have swum the river, but he had little idea
why he should have had to swim: presumably the bridges
wTere closed — or he had thought they might be. . . or else,
perhaps someone had thrown him in.
But he had to reach Captain Goering, had to tell him. . .
In the gardens below the Burgerbraukeller brownshirts
were bivouacked, but it was perishing cold and no one
had slept. Dawn was breaking at last, still and grey with
an occasional lone flake of snow, as Lothar picked his way
among them. In the entrance-corridor of the Keller was
huddled a civilian brass band, the kind one hires for
occasions: they had just arrived, they were in topcoats still
and with shrouded instruments. They were arguing: they
2o6 THE FOX IN THE ATTIC
looked hungry and obstinate: their noses dripped. They
were being shepherded unwillingly into the hall where the
meeting had been, now full of brownshirts camped among
the wreckage; but the bandsmen were demanding break-
last before they'd play to them — and at that word Lothar's
saliva-glands stabbed so violently it hurt like toothache.
Then someone took pity on the shivering Lothar and
pushed him into the cloakroom, telling him to help him-
self. The place was still littered with many of last night's
top-hats, furs, opera-cloaks, uniform-coats, dress-swords. . .
"They were all in too much hurry to bother," said a
sardonic voice: "All the upper-crust of Bavaria — and when
we said 'Scat!' they were thankful to run like rabbits.
Take your choice, comrade."
The speaker was a portly little brownshirt with a kindly,
humorous face. In private life he was an atheist and a
tobacconist, without reverence for God or man; and now
he was drunker than he looked. It tickled him to wrap
Lothar in a fur-lined greatcoat with the insignia of a full
general on it. If Lothar had noticed those badges of rank,
as a good German the very thought would have burned
him to a cinder — like the Shirt of Nessus; but now his new
friend was pouring a hot mugful of would-be coffee into
him, and he noticed nothing. Lothar must see Captain
Goering — and at once — about those rifles. . . But no one
seemed to know whether Goering was even in the building.
However, some of the other high-ups had just got back
from a reconnaissance in the city, someone said: they were
in a room upstairs. . . Hitler, General LudendorfT. . .
So Lothar, warmed a little at last, wandered off upstairs
unhindered. The length of this vast greatcoat almost hid
his stockinged feet, but he was just as wet underneath as
ever and left wet footprints everywhere on all the carpets.
— He must find Captain Goering. . .
In the half-darkness of an upstairs corridor Lothar met
a hurrying orderly and stopped him imperiously: "Where
are they? I have to report!"
THE WHITE CROW 207
"This way, Excellency," the man said, saluting (but
Lothar was too pre-occupied to notice, for those rifles
might have reached God-knows-whose trusting hands by
now). Then the orderly led him through a little ante-
room where piano 'and music-stands had been shoved on
one side to make room for a chin-high pile of packages,
and opened a door:
". . . be hanging from the lamp-posts in the Ludwig-
strasse," a cracking, nervous voice was exclaiming within.
Chapter 22
ON the threshold, Lothar checked himself in dismay.
Goering wasn't there; and clearly this wasn't a
Council of War at all, for there were only two people in
the room and by their dress both seemed civilians. In a
thick and fragrant haze of tobacco-smoke a stout old
gentleman all puffy dewlaps and no neck sat stolidly
sipping red wine and pulling at his cigar alternately: he
was staring at Lothar — but only as if his gaze had already
been fixed on the door before it opened — with dull, stony,
heavy-lidded eyes. Under his scrabble of grey moustache
the open, drooping mouth was almost fishlike, and he had
dropped cigar-ash all down his old shooting-jacket.
Beyond him Lothar glimpsed some nondescript with his
back turned, gnawing his fingernails and violently twitch-
ing his shoulders as if some joker had slipped something
down his neck. . .
A waiting-room! But Lothar had no time to waste — he
must find Captain Goering at once and tell him those
monastery rifles were useless, they'd all had the firing-
pins removed.
Lothar retreated, leaving the door ajar. But in the ante-
room the orderly was already gone, and Lothar paused —
at a loss.
"Tonight we'll be hanging from the lamp-posts in the Ludwig-
strasse!'''' The interruption had been so brief that these
histrionic words seemed still suspended on the stale air.
"Nevertheless we march," the seated one replied flatly
and with distaste.
In the ante-room Lothar stood rooted — he knew that
voice (why hadn't he known the face?): it was General
Ludendorff. Then of course the other. . . this wasn't at all
his platform voice, but it must be. . .
208
THE WHITE CROW 209
Inside the room, Hitler turned: "But we'll be fired-on
if we do, and then it's all up — we can't fight the Army!
It's The End, I tell you!" Then, as if he had forgotten who
he was talking to, he added, ruminating: "If we appeal to
Rupprecht, perhaps he'd intercede?"
For their impromptu Revolution was already running
on the rocks. Hoodwinked by the 'earnest of good faith'
of those useless rifles, Hitler had let Kahr go; then Kahr,
Lossow and Seisser — the all-powerful triumvirate — once
safely out of his hands had turned against him. Prince
Rupprecht had unequivocally refused to rise to Hitler's
fly — not with LudendorfT's big shadow darkening the
water; and that had decided Kahr. Lossow had been
virtually arrested by his own city commandant till he
made clear his obedience to Berlin. Seisser too had duti-
fully bowed to the will of the police-force he commanded.
So now the Kampf bund was to be put down by force
unless it surrendered.
Government re-inforcements had been pouring into
Munich all night, and the 'Vikings' had already deserted
to them. The Nazis held the City Hall — for what that was
worth — while Roehm with his Reichskriegsflagge had
seized the local War Office and now couldn't get out of it
again; but all other public buildings were in the hands of
the Triumvirs. They held the railways, the telephones, the
radio station — indeed no one in the Nazi camp had even
thought of securing those vital points, there can seldom
have been a would-be coup-d'etat so naively impromptu
and unplanned.
Troops were reported to be massing now in the Odeon-
splatz, with field-guns. . .
Lothar peeped in again unseen. The general still sat his
chair as heavily as a stone statue sits its horse and his eyes
were still set in the same stare, though lowered now to the
carpet just inside the door.
aio THE FOX IN THE ATTIC
General Erich Ludendorff was only fifty-eight: not
quite the 'old gentleman' Lothar had taken him for, but
nevertheless his mind like his muscles was becoming a
little set. Nowadays pre-conceived ideas were not easily
shaken and if they were tumbled they left a jagged gap:
Ruhr's double-crossing Ludendorff could take, for the
man was a civilian and a catholic and from someone in
the Cardinal's pocket one could only expect the moral
standards of. . . of cardinals: but a world where a Lossow
— Commander-in-chief of the Bavarian Army — could
break his "word as a German Officer" was a new world
altogether for Ludendorff!
The old order was ended for the old war-lord, and he
knew it; but his puffy features were quite without ex-
pression, as if their soft surfaces had no organic connection
with nerve and muscle and bone and brain within, and
he sat staring without visible surprise at those wet foot-
marks on the carpet — the marks of two naked feet where
lately a German general in full-dress uniform had stood.
"Eh? — We march," said Ludendorff again. His voice
remained firm as a lion's, and this time it was unquestion-
ably a command.
But when Ludendorff had said "We march" (as he
presently explained) he hadn't meant it in the military
sense. No soldier would try to capture Munich — or even
to relieve Roehm beleaguered in the War Office — by doing
as Ludendorff now proposed: by marching three thousand
men through the narrow streets of the Old City in a kind
of schoolgirl crocodile sixteen abreast. But a clever (and
desperate) politician might.
A military operation would cross by the Max-Josef
Bridge in a flanking movement through the English
Garden — some tactic of that kind: but what would be the
use? That fellow Hitler (thought Ludendorff) was right:
they couldn't fight the Army. But suppose that instead, in
all seeming confidence and trust like friendly little puppy-
dogs, their whole companionage paraded peaceably right
THE WHITE CROW 211
onto the points of the Army's bayonets. . . would German
soldiers ever fire on inoffensive brother-Germans? And
once contact was made, once the officers saw their old
war-lord Ludendorff in front of their eyes and had to
choose, was it conceivable they would prefer to obey the
unspeakable Lossow who had turned his coat twice in one
night? Barely an hour ago the streets were still placarded
with Lossow's name linked with ours. . . "And once the
Army obeys my orders again, the road to Berlin lies
open!"
Lothar was so bewildered that he stood listening out-
side dumbfoundered and dripping among the bales of
bank-notes which half-filled the ante-room, and scarcely
noticed Captain Goering as the latter strode suddenly past
him and entered the room beyond.
Goering listened to Ludendorff's plan; but then his eye
met Hitler's. These two had rather less faith in the magic
of the 'old war-lord's' name and presence nowadays than
the 'old war-lord' had himself. Ludendorff had been
slipping — didn't the old boy realise how much he had
slipped these last few years? That flight to Sweden in '18,
and all those antics since. . .
Goering suggested instead a retreat on Rosenheim — to
"rally our forces" there, he hastened to add. But Luden-
dorff fixed this bravest-of-the-brave with his stony look:
Rosenheim was all too convenient for the Austrian
frontier! Hitler also turned his blue stare on Goering: for
reasons best kept to himself, escape into his native Austria
held no attractions for Hitler.
Goering dropped his eyes and did not press it. But the
suggestion all the same tipped the scales in Hitler's mind,
for any alternative was preferable to 'Rosenheim'; and
he turned to Ludendorff's plan after all. Hitler's own
'magic' at least was new; and if that called out anything
comparable with last night's cheering crowds they would
march behind such a screen of women and children that
no one could fire on them!
212 THE FOX IN THE ATTIC
A coup-d'etat by popular acclamation? Maybe it was a
forlorn hope. But at least it meant, for Hitler, sticking to
the one technique he was yet versed in — the technique of
the public meeting.
Blindly Lothar wandered away, not knowing whether
he was mad or sane, awake or dreaming. Goering. . . he
had a message for Captain Goering, something about some
guns.
Chapter 23
One thing, the arch-plotters agreed, was essential: if
this gigantic confidence-trick of LudendorfT's was to
work the marching men themselves must have no inkling
that Munich was in 'enemy' hands, for they must positively
radiate friendliness and trust. No one must know the real
state of affairs outside the innermost circle. So, shortly
before eleven, a briefing-parade for officers was held in the
fencing-school and there the supreme leaders, beaming,
put their next subordinates 'in the picture', assuring them
that everything in the city was going like clockwork under
the capable management of their obedient allies, Kahr,
Lossow and Seisser, and all ranks should be so informed.
Today the Kampfbund would parade ceremonially
through the city, merely to 'show the flag' and to thank
the citizens for the warmth of their support: they would
then take up a position for the night outside somewhere
to the north, and wait there for regular troops to join
them. . . and after that — Berlin!
Officers and men alike, that's what they were told.
Lothar never did get to Goering; and the Oberland
adjutant he at length reported to about the defective
rifles, being fresh from that 'enlightenment' in the fencing-
school, took it not at all tragically. He burst out laughing:
"Kahr — the old fox! He just can't change his habits, that's
all. . . I admit though I was surprised when he volunteered
those rifles!" But it didn't really matter, he explained to
Lothar, for everything was going swimmingly: they could
collect and fit the pins this evening at the latest, and mean-
while it was only a parade the arms were wanted for.
Lothar was thoroughly bewildered; and Hope that wiry-
young woman awoke anew. Could he have been quite
wrong about what he thought he had heard upstairs? For
213
2i4 THE FOX IN THE ATTIC
this was evidently the latest news, and this was 'official' —
straight from the horse's mouth. . . but yet. . .
The adjutant stole a doubtful look at Lothar's dumb-
foundered face. What ailed the boy? — As for all this about
the rifles, the men mustn't know they were armed with
guns which couldn't be fired: could this lad be trusted to
hold his tongue or had he better 'disappear' — be put
under arrest for something, perhaps?
But just then Putzi Hanfstaengl's giant frame began to
be made manifest — feet first, like a proper deus ex
machina; for he was coming downstairs from the council
room (something seemed to have wiped the grin off his
handsome great jaws for once — till he emerged into public
view). So the adjutant whispered to him; whereon
Hanfstaengl turned, and his powerful pianist's fingers
gripped Lothar by the arm: "You're coming to the city
with me, my lad!" he said.
Lothar hardly reached to his breastpocket, but Putzi
lowered his face almost level with the bedraggled, hollow-
eyed youth's to add confidentially: "I must have an escort
— to protect me!"
Dr. Hanfstaengl was such a famous tease! Lothar
blushed; and then, in spite of the turmoil in his head,
climbed into the car after his new master as proud as
Punch to be in such important company. There he tried
hard to sit upright in the back seat with proper military
stiffness; but before they had even reached the bridge he
was sound asleep. Thus Lothar's friends Fritz and Willi
both took part in the famous march but not Lothar, who
slept like a log for hours.
When Lothar woke at last he found himself on a floor
somewhere. It was the sound of two voices talking
urgently which woke him, one of them unmistakably
philosopher-editor Rosenberg's. Lothar's head was on a
bundle of galley-proofs, and his eyes opened with a start
only a few inches from the turn-ups of Rosenberg's bright
THE WHITE CROW 215
blue trousers and dirty orange socks with clocks. So he
must somehow be in the offices of the Volkischer Beob-
achter, he guessed.
But as the clouds of sleep began to clear Lothar realised
these people too were both talking and acting as if the
Revolution had failed. While he talked, Rosenberg was
cramming clothing into a broken briefcase on his desk as
if for a hurried departure (doubtless preferring brighter
and looser neckwear than that usually worn by politicos on
lamp-posts). For a second or two the stained tail of a
crumpled purple shirt trailed across Lothar's face; but he
shut his eyes and listened and lay still, his temples bursting
with sweat. For what he heard next was even more
incredible still. That whole briefing parade had been one
deliberate, colossal lie! Indeed, the men "had had the wool
pulled properly over their eyes", said Rosenberg's com-
panion approvingly. The march was on, and they were all
going like lambs to the slaughter! Rosenberg himself was
so certain it would end in a massacre that he for one wasn't
waiting to see it. Putzi Hanfstaengl too (one gathered) had
gone home to pack. . .
Even the leaders who were marching had made their
arrangements — or arrangements had been made for them,
whether or not they knew it. There would be a car waiting
for Hitler (Rosenberg's companion said) in the Max-
Josefs-Platz with engine running: he could nip down
Perusa Street to it — if he survived that far. Goering too
had sent someone home to fetch him his passport. . .
Now Rosenberg was choosing his own passport — choosing
it, he seemed to have a whole drawerful of them.
When the two men left at last Lothar was not far behind
them. He thought of Fritz and Willi and all his other noble
friends going unwittingly to their deaths and his bowels
yearned.
But then once again something black descended like a
blind over Lothar's power of reason. It was simply not
2i6 THE FOX IN THE ATTIC
possible (he told himself) that the Movement had been
lied to deliberately by its leaders like that. Hitler loved his
men, he would never knowingly lie to them this way and
lead them into danger; and as for the heroic, gallant
Goering. . . let alone General Ludendorff! — No, if these
leaders had indeed had evidence of the Triumvirs'
treachery they hadn't believed it because they were too
noble to believe; and it was just this noble incredulity the
beastly triumvirate had banked on, to lure the Army of
Light into the depths of the city so that when the jaws of
the trap closed the slaughter might be all the more
complete.
Devils! Lothar bounded down those office stairs four at a
time, as if every bound trod underfoot a triumvir. Some-
how he must find Fritz and Willi — somehow he must
warn them. . .
And warn Captain Goering. . .
But as he neared the route the city seemed solid with
police, and half the streets were closed.
Chapter 24
Five years ago almost to the day Kurt Eisner too had
marched into Munich — with flying beard and floppy
black hat like a seedy professor of pianoforte, having half
the hooligans of Munich at his heels — and so come to
power.
But November the Seventh 19 18 had been unseasonably
warm: perfect Putsch weather. Eisner had the advantage of
surprise too, for he marched first and announced his
revolution afterwards. There was little risk of organised
opposition since the troops were still at the front and the
whole city numbed by defeat.
On November the Ninth 1923 the prospects were chill
and grey. It was unseasonably cold — bitterly cold, with a
biting wind now and occasional flurries of snow. When the
march at last began the buglers with their chapped lips
found it difficult to blow. Fritz and Willi shivered in their
cotton shirts with no tunics and their chins were raw: the
moment they stopped singing their teeth chattered. The
'cheering crowds of spectators' could be counted in twos
and threes, and were chilled to the bone.
It had been past twelve when the march moved off
from the Biirgerbrau and a few yards down the hill it had
halted again. Peering over the heads in front, big Fritz
could see there was some sort of scuffle going on down at
the Ludwig Bridge. It was apparently the police-cordon
there making trouble — the wooden-heads! But then a
mixed bag of fifty or more leading Munich Jews padded
past the waiting column and on down to the bridge at the
double. A wave of laughter followed them; for whatever
their past dignities (and many were elderly, prominent
citizens), today they were all dressed only in underwear
217
2i8 THE FOX IN THE ATTIC
and socks: they'd been locked all night in a back room of
the Bilrgerbrau like that. Captain Goering himself, with
his elfin humour, must be taking the situation in hand.
Indeed Goering must have threatened to drop all these
hostages in the river to drown if the police didn't show
more sense; for almost at once the column began to move
forward again, and at last the river was crossed.
Four hundred yards into the Old City however they
halted a second time. This time it was their own leaders
who halted them, wanting to make quite sure everyone
was fully 'in the picture' in case of misunderstandings. Any
soldiers or armed police they might meet (they were told)
would be patrolling the city "on behalf of our revolution,
understand! In the Odeonsplatz maybe we'll find a de-
tachment of regulars drawn up apparently to face us: with
guns to their shoulders, even. . . but don't be nervous,
that's just to cow any hostile rowdies in the crowd lining
our route so sing 'em a rousing chorus, boys, and give them
a hearty cheer as we draw level with them. . . Oh, and
just in case of accidents in these crowded streets we'd
better not march with rifles loaded."
When the marching column reached the Marienplatz
they found the city hall festooned with swaztika flags, and
in the open square in front they were cheered by a small
but milling crowd. That crowd had just been whipped up
by Julius Streicher in his juiciest vein. Indeed that was why
Hitler had sent Streicher on down there ahead; for here,
potentially — if Streicher had really done his stuff — was
the human screen Hitler needed.
If only enough of these cheering citizens would tag along
with the marchers from now on, keeping between the
moving column and the guns. . . If only it hadn't been so
beastly cold today. . .
But the wind was indeed too bitter. Struggling to reach
the Marienplatz Lothar could make little progress against
the solid mass of citizenry hurrying away.
Chapter 25
As the procession moved off from the Marienplatz again
jflXudendorff took his place in the van, on foot, in front
of the standard-bearers even. On that, Hitler and one or
two other notables and would-be notables jostled their
way to his side: they had convinced themselves by now
that there would be no shooting, that the trick would work.
The Odeonsplatz was their objective, for that was
where the troops were said to be waiting for them: that
was the psychological point d'appui. From the Marien-
platz two routes converge on it, like the uprights of a
capital 'A' with the short length of Perusastrasse for a
cross-stroke, and that bit of pseudo-Florentine nonsense the
'Feldherrnhalle' loggia in its tip. The route they chose was
the left-hand one, the Wein-and-Theatinerstrasse; and the
leaders were already half way along it before seeing that
the far end was indeed blocked solid by a small detach-
ment of soldiery — with guns.
Here at last, then, straight ahead, were those bayonets
Ludendorff was to deflect with the magic of his presence!
Those triggers no German finger could pull. . .
We have only to march straight up to them, straight on. . .
(Was conviction weakening?)
How far have we got? Tramp, tramp. . . just ahead lies
the corner of Perusastrasse — the last side-turning, before. . .
"Look," said someone excitedly to Lothar in the thin-
ning crowd, "there's Ludendorff!" The fabulous, the
Army's idol, walking straight towards those Army guns
in his old shooting-jacket. . . "And that beside him's
Hitler, his faithful friend; and God-knows- who. . ."
Tramp, tramp, and flags waving and a band somewhere
tootling and the men singing, tramp, tramp. . .
219
220 THE FOX IN THE ATTIC
And most of the remaining spectators, cold and bored,
remembering their lunches and turning away to go home.
Thirty yards more. . .
In the throes of their fore-knowledge the leaders now
felt their feet going up and down like pistons, as if they
wire not really advancing at all, tramp, tramp. No, it was
the muzzles of the guns which were all the time moving
nearer.
Twenty yards more. . .
Hitler keeps his eyes fixed sternly ahead, yet out of their
corners can't but be acutely aware of the delicately-
nurtured schoolgirl wheeling her bicycle at his very
elbow. 'She's trying in vain to match her stride to my
stride. . .' Quite easily, though, she matches the men's
voices in song with her surprisingly deep contralto.
Fifteen yards. . . Ten. . . and now on the right the open-
ing of Perusastrasse is bearing irresistibly down upon us,
an open mouth. . .
lMy God I'll give up politics! J^ever again. . .'
It came like the sudden inexplicable unwilled lurch of a
planchette at a seance, that sudden unanimous swing of
the whole group of leaders into a right-wheel turn — away
from the guns, straight into the shelter of that side-street!
It was so sudden that the girl taken unaware fell over her
bicycle and tore her stockings, and that was the last they
saw of her.
The whole cheering follow-my-leader crocodile fol-
lowed, of course — without a thought, without a worry,
singing their heads off in the honour of the troops whose
guns at point-blank range were still trained on their
defenceless flank as they wheeled. They still hadn't an
inkling of what they were now right on the very edge of.
For the leaders the respite was brief: in a very few yards
this short cross-street would reach the open Max-Josefs-
Platz. To the left, then, would lie the narrow canyon of
Residenzstrasse — the other, perhaps less well-guarded
THE WHITE CROW 221
route to the Odeonsplatz. . . the route in any case they
now had to take. . . Ah, but had they? For also from this
Max-Josef Square a broad, broad boulevard led back
totally unmenaced straight to the river again: the prim-
rose way of retreat.
A primrose-yellow car was parked there, by the monu-
ment. As they neared the corner it was young von
Scheubner-Richter (Ludendorff's right-hand-man) who
recognised it as Hitler's — and he sucked in his cheeks.
Straightway he locked his arm very firmly in Hitler's.
He'd see to it the old general wasn't left in the lurch.
But now somebody had ordered another halt, another
rifle-inspection: officers were to make quite sure again
that every breech was empty.
That primrose-yellow car was trembling slightly — so its
engine was running, ready! Max Erwin von Scheubner-
Richter at Hitler's side stood still and tightened his com-
radely grip. Meanwhile, in the ranks behind, Willi was
yawning with the cold and his stiff fingers fumbled on the
bolt. Was there no end to inspections? He was getting
horribly bored. Fritz blew on his fingers, and cursed — he
had broken a nail. Were all revolutions as dull as this one?
It was a relief to them all when the march started again.
But the tense troop of police waiting among the statues
in the Feldherrnhalle had heard that echoing rattle of
bolts as hundreds of breeches at one time were flung open
for inspection, and drew their own conclusions. So the
rebels were loading: they meant with their vastly superior
numbers to rush it. And the police were so few. . . but that
last hundred yards of the Residenzstrasse was a Ther-
mopylae— fifty men could hold it against five thousand, if
they were resolute.
At the corner of the Square Willi had thought he caught
a glimpse of young Scheidemann near that purring yellow
aaa THE FOX IN THE ATTIC
car. He seemed to be trying to signal to them, and Willi
nudged Fritz — but this chap looked so doleful it surely
couldn't have been Lothar!
Funny, though, how empty the streets were, suddenly:
what had become of all those cheering spectators who had
filled the Marienplatz? As the troop in front wheeled left
there was not a single civilian who followed it into the
Residenzstrasse — only one funny little dog in a winter
waistcoat of Scotch plaid, looking important.
When Princess Natascha (for that girl with the bicycle
was Mitzi's Russian friend) had picked herself up, the
head of the procession was already out of sight and
Perusastrasse chock-a-block with them; but she guessed
they would turn left again up Residenzstrasse. She had
better get to the Odeonsplatz ahead of them if she wanted
to see the fun; and indeed she was determined to miss
nothing, for the lonely young exile was impervious to cold
and quite intoxicated with the singing and the marching
and the general community and exaltation of the thing.
She mounted her machine and bicycled up the few re-
maining yards of the Theatinerstrasse as if the troops in
front of her just didn't exist (and they were in fact very
few).
"Damn her!" muttered the officer in command. "She's
right in my line of fire!" So he let her through, and thus
Tascha found herself the only civilian in the whole empty
centre of the Odeonsplatz with every window looking at
her; but she wasn't embarrassed at all, it wasn't her nature
to be. Pedalling hard, she gave a wide berth to the one
armoured car stationed there, but it took no notice. Good!
The top of Residenzstrasse was open, she'd ride down and
meet them: she could hear already the tramp of the
approaching marchers, and as she got to the corner she
caught the gleam of their bayonets. But just then a troop
of armed police appeared out of the Feldherrnhalle and
stretched right across the street in front of her, right to the
THE WHITE CROW 223
Palace wall. An absurd thin line; but she had to jam her
brakes on, and dismounted close behind them. Tramp,
tramp. . . between the policemen she could see the pro-
cession coming now: Nazis with fixed bayonets and Ober-
landers without, side by side, sixteen abreast, a veritable
horde. This pitifully thin string of policemen could no
more halt them than the winning-tape halts a race, they'd
be trampled underfoot if they didn't skip jolly quick.
Tramp, tramp. . . she was dancing in time with it. What a
juggernaut!
No one was singing now, and she heard a voice among
the marching leaders suddenly cry out to the police:
"Don't shoot — it's Ludendorff !" and then a policeman
fired.
It had seemed a juggernaut; and yet when that ragged
unwilling volley at last rang out it melted clean away.
Chapter 26
At the sound of that first shot Hitler dropped so
Lviolently to the ground (accelerated moreover by the
stricken weight of Ulrich Graf on top of him) that the arm
locked in Scheubner-Richter's was dislocated at the
shoulder. This saved his life, however; for a second later
young Scheubner-Richter collapsed dead in his stead, his
chest wide open. Almost all the leaders, their nerves
already keyed to snapping-point, had flung themselves
down instantly like Hitler, performing the old soldier's
instinctive obeisance to the flying bullet: this briefly
exposed the dumbfoundered men behind them — till they
too collected their wits enough to fall flat as well: thus it
was they who chiefly suffered, not the leaders.
The reluctant police were mostly pointing their carbines
at the ground; but that saved no lives, for the flattened
bullets bouncing off the granite setts only made the uglier
wounds. After those few seconds of nervous gunfire there
were many wounded. Moreover there were sixteen men
stone dead or dying: the street darkening before their eyes,
their souls at their lips.
The whole world was flat, the living among the dead,
except for Ludendorff. For generals tend to lose the instinct
to lie down as well as the agility; and the old war-lord's
magic was worth just this much still, that no one did aim
at Ludendorff. He had stumbled and nearly fallen, but then
with his hands in his jacket pockets he continued his stroll
without one glance back at the dying and wounded and
frightened men behind him, straight through the green line
of police (which opened to let him pass). He seemed deep in
thought. As he passed Tascha she heard him murmuring,
"One, and nine, and two. . ." Then he was gone.
No one fired twice — but it was enough. As soon as the
224
THE WHITE CROW 225
noise ceased all who were able sprang to their feet and
vanished. They were headed by the little dog in the plaid
waistcoat at full speed, but Hitler — unhit, though stumb-
ling from the pain and awkwardness of his shoulder — lay
a good second in the race.
The sound of the firing had carried right to the rear of
the column, and the rest of the parade too instantly dis-
missed. The police stood aghast. At that moment a dozen
men could have rushed them; but there weren't a dozen.
Stretcher-bearers appeared.
In front of Tascha lay Ludendorff's young von
Scheubner-Richter: his lungs had burst from his chest.
Poor Max-Erwin! She'd met him at parties: he'd had so
much charm. . . and beside him lay someone else whose
brains spattered the roadway for ten yards round. Weber,
the Oberland leader, had staggered to his feet and stood
leaning against the palace wall, in tears. Young Hermann
Goering with two bullet-gashes in the groin was trying to
drag himself behind one of the stone lions in front of the
Residenz palace.
The street was bright with blood. As soon as the fumes
of the carbines cleared you could even smell it; and at that
something mad seized Tascha. She jerked into the saddle
and bicycled wildly down the street, wobbling her course
between the dead and dying. Tascha's one object was to
get plenty of splashes of blood on her bicycle-wheels
(Hitler's if possible: surely she had seen him fall?). But in
point of fact even before Tascha had mounted, Hitler,
legging it, had reached the Max-Josefs-Platz and been
hustled into that waiting yellow car and was gone. Lothar
caught a glimpse of him climbing into the car — he held
his arm queerly extended, as if carrying something. So
Tascha had to be content with quite anonymous blood: it
was mostly Willi's, as it happened.
Ludendorff continued his way unhindered across the
226 THE FOX IN THE ATTIC
empty square. As soon as he had added together the
digits of this fatal year 1-9-2-3 and registered that their
sum was 15 his mind went suddenly blank. He continued
to march straight forward like a mechanical toy — quite
without object, merely without impediment, plod, plod. . .
He had already turned into the Brienner Strasse like
that, plod, plod, when all at once he halted, thunderstruck
— his brain suddenly springing into action again. But of
course! Fifteen was the same total i-g-1-4 added up to! — Fifteen!
Ten and Five: applied to the alphabet these digits gave the
letters 'J' and 'E' — the first two letters in JEhovah. . . yes,
and in JEsus too! Thus both years were auspicious years for
both Germany's joint enemies — the JEws and the JEsuits!
1914. . . the 'JEhovah-JEsus' year when the noose of
International Jewry-cum- Papistry had first closed so
tight that Germany had been forced to strike back — in
vain. Now, 1923. . . No wonder we've failed!
But at that moment a policeman dared at last to
address him, politely requesting His Excellency's attend-
ance at the station. At the station however they were not
quite so polite. A one-eyed wooden-faced sergeant looked
up from his ledger and asked this distinguished client his
name and address and made him spell it. The constable
looked at his superior in surprise: why, surely Sergeant
knew that face — and knew how to spell Ludendorff? Hadn't
Sergeant lost his eye (he always told them) in the ill-fated
'Ludendorff offensive' of 19 18?
Chapter 2J
The little dog in the waistcoat at last found his master
again — an elderly, frock-coated, elegant citizen with
so neat a spade beard it deserved a prize (he slept with it
in a net); and they both rejoiced. Willi meanwhile sat on
the pavement outside the post-office in the Max-Josefs-
Platz, applying a tourniquet to his own copiously-bleeding
leg, his head in a whirl. Tascha had the misfortune to have
her bicycle stolen while she was being sick in a ladies'
lavatory, and hurried home on foot to write her letter (in
two-inch script) to Mitzi.
The public health department cleaned up the messy
Residenzstrasse with wonderful speed and thoroughness:
is was the sort of job they excelled at. The police put on
ferocious airs as if one and all they habitually ate Kampf-
bund kids for breakfast, and made numerous difficult and
dangerous arrests (such as Willi, who was too giddy to
stand up) . Then one by one the shops and restaurants on
the route of the march re-opened (the others elsewhere had
never closed) and all was as before. Lothar slipped quietly
home for a quick change and was back as his desk at the
Bayrischer-Hof, shaved and in a neat grey suit, without
anyone quite seeing him arrive (at the Bayrischer-Hof
few were even aware any disturbance had taken place) .
Meanwhile the police had already raided that gym-
nasium. There they found Augustine's ten-shilling note in
the till, and showed it to the Press. Once again that note
turned out a windfall; for wasn't it proof positive the
Nazis were in foreign pay?
Ludendorff was (rather unflatteringly) released on bail,
and carried his dudgeon home with him to Ludwigshohe.
Goering's brownshirt friends found Goering in a rather
bad way, behind a stone Hon outside the palace, groaning:
they took him to a Jewish doctor, who patched him up
227
Ba8 THE FOX IN THE ATTIC
with infinite kindness (a kindness Goering never forgot)
and hid him in his own house: so Goering did get in the end
to Rosenheim and thence into Austria as he had all the
time intended. There he found Putzi Hanfstacngl and
others who had arrived before him: not Rosenberg,
though, who after all was hiding in Munich. Nor Hitler,
of course: Hitler in a depressed state was driving about
Bavaria at top speed without the least idea where to go.
Finally he fetched up at Uffing of all places — at the
Hanfstaengl country cottage, which was bound to be
searched sooner or later — and was hidden in the attic
where they kept their emergency barrel of flour.
Most of these things had happened before the Steuckels'
party had even begun; but true news travels slowly, and
the party had dispersed before the upshot of the Putsch
was known. When a full and authentic account of it all
did at last reach Lorienburg with the next morning's
papers it caused little stir there for the only politically
important fact in it was already surmised — that Kahr's
planned restoration of Rupprecht had after all not come off.
Moreover a miss-fire like this might mean that it had
to be put off for quite a while. That led to some desultory
abuse of Ludendorff, whose clumsy, amateurish interfer-
ence had upset all von Kahr's delicate timing. Ludendorff
would now be totally discredited for keeps: there was at
least that much to be thankful for. And that silly little
Hitler too: like the frog in the fable he had tried to play a
role too big for him and burst. After this we'll hear no
more of Hitler — and that too's a good riddance! I expect
when they catch him he'll just be pushed back over the
Austrian frontier as an undesirable alien.
As a proved incompetent, Exit the White Crow!
Thus it was all soon forgotten. For the Kessen family
had now something on their plates even more important
than politics, for once: a family problem — what to do with
Mitzi now she was stone-blind.
BOOK THREE
The Fox in the Attic
Chapter i
In the darkness of the unvisited attics the bats flitted
endlessly or huddled in bunches against the cold, and
under the heavy pile of furs in the corner the sleeping
figure stirred and moaned.
The very young face with its closed, wide-set eyes was
contorted. He was having one of his 'red' dreams, when
everywhere there was always blood. Tonight he was
dreaming that his legs were paralysed and he was dragging
himself on his elbows across a heap of bodies, and from
their open bellies the living entrails writhed towards him.
When they wound themselves round him they were
barbed, like barbed wire; and the fetid, dully-crimson air
was full of twittering though there was nothing winged
here. . .
This winning, open-faced boy having his nightmare in
the attics was the missing Wolff, Lothar's warrior-brother:
Franz's best schoolfriend, and still his guiding star.
Wolff woke, half-swallowing a scream. His lips were
dry and his mouth tasted of blood from a bleeding gum
(he had pulled his own tooth himself, the day before). His
body was wet and for a moment he thought that was
blood too; but it was only his sweat, under too many furs.
Hauling himself out of his dream by main force he
deliberately recalled to the surface of his mind that day
four years ago when his troop was storming the signal-box
on the Riga railway and he stumbled in the hidden wire
and fell into Heinrich's body that was burst and steaming
and the wire had held him there, in that motherly warmth,
while round him the bullets splashed in the waterlogged
meadow like rain.
Wolff flashed his torch. The beam lit a chin-high stack
231
232 THE FOX IN THE ATTIC
of ancient account-books covered with bat-droppings, for
this hiding-place of his was a kind of muniment-room — the
only room right up here close under the castle clock and the
great water-tank ever finished since the castle was first
built. In the shadows two red eyes were watching him,
and the air smelt strong of fox.
The torch-beam shifted, and shone on what looked like
a gigantic snail. This was a coil of climber's rope he kept
there, covered in cobwebs. Even after the Baltic collapse
those dedicated young men Wolff and his like-minded
fellow killers had kept on killing 'for Germany' — though
killing in Germany and killing secretly now. But ever since
Rathenau's death the police-net had never relaxed: Wolff
was deeply involved, and for the past eight months had
never once set foot on the ground outside.
In the wavering beam the watching red eyes blinked,
and Wolff snapped out the light. But he dared not drift
off to sleep again, and to keep awake in the dark and to
soothe his jangled nerves he made an effort to think about
his 'Lady'. For Wolff had fallen deeply in romantic love,
last summer, with that fair-haired girl in the garden
below who was unconscious of his existence even.
But tonight she eluded him, for tonight he was wholly
in the grip of images of a sort yet more compulsive still
than hers: that cat, for instance, in the drawing-room of
the little deserted manor in the Livonian woods. . . a fat,
white cat. . . willy-nilly he began to recall it all, now,
nervously smiling the while.
It had been one day they were looking for a missing
reconnaissance-party of their own men that they came on
this modest house, hidden among the birches and pines.
There were fresh pink English hollyhocks round the door;
but although it was nearly noon the green shutters were
all closed as though the house were sleeping. Whoever had
been there last had gone, and had clearly left it empty.
THE FOX IN THE ATTIC 233
But those shutters fitted so close that coming in from the
sun you couldn't at first see: only stand there listening to
the drawing-room clock that was still ticking, and wait
for the dazzlement to wear off. This happened to be
Wolff's sixteenth birthday, and at the sound of that clock
the boy had felt desperately homesick.
Moreover, he could hear a purring. . .
But soon the pupils of his eyes dilated enough to see that
the room was heaped with bodies — their missing friends.
The bodies were mutilated in the usual Lettish way; and
these men hadn't died fighting, this had been done to
them alive.
The purring cat had been sleeping luxuriously on the
sofa in this very room when the searchers arrived. But now
she took refuge on the top of that ornate mantelpiece
clock, arched and spitting, her drawn claws slipping as she
scrabbled to keep her balance on the smooth marble.
Underneath her the clock whirred, then started to strike
with tuneful silvery chimes.
In his rage he had torn the cat to pieces with his bare
hands, then slipped in the mess on the floor and twisted
his ankle. Meanwhile the others had rushed outside to
search the buildings; but they found nothing living out
there either except one cow. Her they killed too: they'd
have killed even the tomtits if they could have caught
them.
Now Wolff himself, as he remembered it all, lay there
purring. . .
Conscience had first sent Wolff east, to those freelance
wars in the lost provinces where his birthplace was; and
a conscience blindly indulged like his tends to acquire a
stranglehold. Conscience' had now become the one call
he could no longer ever resist. The fighting had long been
over; but those Baltic years of the beastliest heroism had
been the years while Wolff grew his last inch of height and
234 THE FOX IN THE ATTIC
his spirit set in its mould; and nowadays the dictates of his
conscience had become quite invarious: always the simple
command to kill.
Hidden here, and now no longer able to go out and
murder, Wolff was in every sense an exile from 'life': even
from its warm trickles in the house he hid in. No human
sound reached here: only from close overhead all night the
huge clock's slow, loud, heavy ticking.
Chapter 2
In the roof the castle clock thumped the hour and on the
last stroke Mitzi woke.
It was pitchy black, and a smell of outdoor furs. There
was not even a glimmer from where the window lay
opposite her bed; yet Mitzi was broad awake, and agi-
tated moreover by a sense of urgency. She reached for the
box of matches by her candle and struck one. . . and nothing
happened. She heard the usual sputter, but it made no light.
It was only then that she remembered. But. . . but how-
ever could a person have forgotten she had gone blind?
No no no! Surely this sudden blindness was only a bad
dream Mitzi had just woken from — in the dark!
But that smell of furs. . . suddenly yesterday's sleigh-
ride came back to her. Moreover this wasn't really at all
the normal blackness of night: rather it was the negation
of seeing, the absence of any visual sensation whatever. It
was merely Memory which had translated it into the visual
terms of darkness, as being the nearest equivalent Memory
knew. She tried by an effort of will to see it as 'darkness'
again, but almost at once a chaos of meaningless sight-
sensation began to wake in the deprived optic nerve — like
the sensation Uncle Otto said he felt sometimes in the leg
which wasn't there.
In fact, there was not any proof even that this still was
night-time! It might just as well be broad day — and hence
the feeling of urgency Mitzi had woken with.
Certain, now, she had overslept and was going to be
late for breakfast Mitzi sprang out of bed to find her
clothes. Normally she folded them on the chair by the
window, where in the morning tne dazzling entering day-
light would direct her to them again; but in the misery of
last night, had she remembered to do this? Anyway, where
was that window? She had taken a few steps from her bed
235
236 THE FOX IN THE ATTIC
without thinking, and could no longer be sure which way
she was lacing.
Moreover those phantasms of colour and shape chasing
each other across her mind's-eye had now become
violently vivid — like solid objects flung at her, so that
involuntarily she winced to dodge them. Panicking, she
began blundering about with her hands stretched out to
find some bit of furniture whose touch she could recognise;
and in that big room of hers she was soon completely lost.
It was difficult to keep one's balance on this ancient undu-
lating floor without eyes (even purblind ones) to help one:
her toe tripped on a tilted board and she reached out to
stop herself falling. . . her hand touched something, and
grabbed it — but only to feel an agonising pang of pain, for
it was the nearly red-hot iron flue of the stove she had
seized for support.
The pain brought Mitzi back to her senses. She knew
now just where she was, for she could feel the warmth
coming from the stove several feet away — as she ought to
have felt it before if she had kept her head instead of
blundering right against it. As she stood there with her
burnt fingers in her mouth it occurred to her she must
henceforth learn to use such areas of local heat and cold
for finding her way about: she must learn to steer by the
radiant heat of the many stoves, the cold air near windows
and the draughts through open doors — no longer by the
direction of the light (by day from windows and by night
from lamps) which formerly had fitfully pierced her
private fog like lighthouse beams.
Then Mitzi remembered too the yapping of the fox the
night before, and the changes in resonance when first he
was in the big open hall, then on the enclosed stairs, and
then in the attics above. So perhaps she could use reson-
ance too to help tell where she was — out in the middle of a
room, for example, or close to a wall?
Mitzi began moving about again, feeling for her clothes.
This time she quickly found the window-chair — but they
THE FOX IN THE ATTIC 237
weren't on it. So as she zig-zagged to and fro across the
room she began uttering little staccato fox-like cries and
tried consciously to interpret their reverberation for she
was desperate — she must find her clothes! By now, the
level morning sunlight would be shining straight in —
though she couldn't see it. She knew she was late, and
Papa hated one being late.
A heartfelt urgency crept into her feral yapping.
*
Franz woke, that yapping tingling in his tuned ears.
For a moment he thought it really was their little fox
as before; but he soon realised this was no natural fox.
Indeed it was a most queer, uncanny sound: moreover it
was coming from the room next his: from Mitzi's room.
Something was in there with Mitzi.
A were-fox? — He shivered, and his skin prickled with
goose-flesh. But an instant later he recognised the voice
for Mitzi herself and fright turned to anger. The little
fool! What was she up to, rousing the whole house — had
she gone out of her mind? He felt so cross with her his hand
trembled as he lit his candle, and he barged in on her
filled with an elder brother's righteous wrath. Four in the
morning! Was she out of her senses? What a time for a
girl to stand in her nightgown in the pitchdark in the
middle of her bedroom, yapping!
Mitzi could hardly believe him when he told her the real
time, and she burst into tears as he drove her back into bed.
But then suddenly Mitzi heard a ringing slap — and
Franz's scolding voice ceased abruptly. It was replaced in
her ears by another voice: a cracked old voice that was
chanting a familiar little childhood jingle:
"Der Mops kam in die Ktiche
Und stahl dem Koch ein Ei:
Da nahm der Koch den Lo'ffel
Und schlug den Mops entzwei. . ."
238 THE FOX IN THE ATTIC
"Dear old Schmidtchen. . ." How often, long ago, that
ditty had served to lull a feverish or a fractious little Mitzi
off to sleep!
Mitzi gave a deep sigh. But still the saga continued:
"Da kamen alle Mopse
Und gruben ihm ein Grab. . ."
Candle in hand, the old nurse — her dwarfish figure
swathed in three dressing-gowns, the few grey locks on her
nearly bald head standing out like sea-urchin's spines —
bent over her afflicted young baroness and gave her a
troubled, searching look while she continued to intone:
" Und setzten ihm ein Denkmal
Darauf geschrieben stand:
'Der Mops kam in die Kiiche
Und stahl. . .' "
— and so on, round and round: for the song is endless.
But already Schmidtchen's little Baroness was sound
asleep; and as for the young Baron, he had long ago slunk
back to his room — his tail between his legs and his boxed
ear still stinging.
Chapter 3
When that sluggard Saturday's dawn came at last it
found fifteen-year-old Lies already kneeling on the
cold castle stairs; for the snow off Friday's boots still lay
there unmelted, each morning it had to be swept up with
dustpan and brush.
Augustine was not awake yet: by the time he woke,
Lies was already in his room. On his wash-stand steamed
the jug of hot water for his shaving wrapped in a towel
and the girl was down on her knees in front of his stove,
coaxing it with fir-cones and the breath of her powerful
young lungs. Lies wore her skirts kilted for work, and
rolled her stockings; and on the backs of her broad bare
white knees the rolls of puppy-fat still lingered. Augustine's
sleepy eyes opened on them as she knelt there — surprised
to find legs could look quite so soft (and indeed almost
babyish) on any young woman quite so stalwart as Lies.
Contemplating them, suddenly the thought struck him:
'Suppose you couldn't see?' — and once again a pang of
pity for Mitzi racked him like an angina.
True, one could learn to thread the obstacle-race of
this three-dimensional world without eyesight: that
Augustine discounted. But to the joy of seeing Augustine
was perhaps exceptionally addicted, as if his whole con-
sciousness were concentrated close behind his eyes and
almost craning out of them, like someone who can't tear
himself from the window. Among the five senses sight was
incomparable. Indeed, sometimes he thought he would as
lief be deaf as not in this world where everyone always
talked so much too much: he was not humanly musical,
and the only sound he would really miss aesthetically (he
thought) was bird-song.
239
240 THE FOX IN THE ATTIC
Smells too were mostly unpleasant — since petrol, and
since even respectable women had now taken to powder
and scent. Taste. . . Touch. . . even Movement! He would
rather break his back and live out his life in a wheeled
chair than be blind, for there was an almost infinite and
incessant pleasure to be got from just 'looking': even (but
now he averted his eyes) at a young peasant-girl's fat
knees.
How much Augustine preferred watching people to
hearing them talk! When he was a boy of eleven a kindly
astronomer had helped him build a telescope. It was
meant for nebulae and the rings round Saturn and moon-
mountains and so on; but soon he was spending hours
with it by daylight too, turning it onto people. Being of
the astronomical type it stood them on their heads, but
one got used to that. And it was powerful: framed in a
circle like specimens in a microscope slide, his soundless
specimens could be observed unawares as closely as if they
were with him in the room. How different people's faces
do look when they think no one sees them and so they stop
gesticulating at you with their features! It gave the boy
quite a Godlike feeling, thus to 'know their downsitting
and their uprising, to understand their thought afar off.'
For he was seeing natural human nature, which the
human eye so rarely sees (even if he did see everything
upside down).
For a time this human bird-watching had been almost
an obsession; but at last it was brought to its own abrupt
and wholly shaming end. For the view from Augustine's
bedroom window at home had included another garden,
and there had been three little girls who used to play
there. They weren't quite gentry children, so he never
came into normal naked-eye contact with them — he
never even knew their names. Indeed he was then at an
age to shun little girls like the plague in real life; but this
was different, and soon these three were much his favourite
object of nature-study. He came to know intimately almost
THE FOX IN THE ATTIC 241
every hair of those three heads; for the telescope brought
them seemingly within touching-distance. I suppose he
fell half in love with them, impartially with all three: a
little private, abstract seraglio — so very close to him
always, and yet ethereal visionary creatures without even
voices. And so the idyll had continued, till that day when
the one he happened to be watching wandered off from
the others and, as he followed her with his eye curiously,
suddenly bobbed down between two bushes.
When it was over the young peeper was appalled: he
had seen what no boy's eye ever ought to have seen, he
had broken the strongest taboo he knew. It was weeks
before he used his telescope again and then it was only at
night, to study the moon: the uninhabited, infertile,
utterly geological safe moon.
That moon is covered with mysterious ring-mountains;
some with a solitary peak rising at the very centre, like a
little tongue — surely utterly unlike anything to be seen
anywhere on this earth? Soon he became so enthralled he
planned to map the whole moon's surface, and tried to
draw pictures of those rings.
As for picturing more mundane things, it was galling
for someone so eye-conscious to have no aptitude for
painting, however hard he tried. But Augustine's natural
skill at shooting was some consolation, for here it was the
exact visually-imagined pattern in space and time of the
bird's flight intersecting with the brief trajectory of his
pellets that was the attraction: that, and the utter loveli-
ness of the plumage of the fallen bird.
Only one thing equalled this last — the utter loveliness
of Mitzi's hair; and at the thought of that, this morning,
in his warm body under the warm bedclothes his heart
glowed warmer still.
Yet Augustine this morning — though he would not
admit it — was really in two minds about Mitzi. His heart
might be warmed by the generous fires of love but the pit
843 THE FOX IN THE ATTIC
of his stomach had its sinking moments, its moments of
chill. He loved Mitzi and Mitzi only and would love
Mitzi for ever — and even more so for her blindness! Yet,
to be coupled till death did them part with a blind girl
was a bit like. . . like entering a three-legged race with a
partner who has only one leg.
As a budding lover Augustine had developed some at
least of the instincts of a grown man but he was still an
egoist also, with still the instincts of any normally self-
centred child: too much of an egoist, perhaps, to tolerate
yet the full 'we-ness' of true marriage. So he clutched un-
consciously perhaps at Mitzi's blindness as something by
which his separateness seemed permanently guaranteed.
But the human personality like the plant has its 'growing-
point' with a foresight and wisdom all its own: a foresight
insistent (in this case) that so infantile an egoism could
not last for ever, that to seek to perpetuate it by a lame
marriage must prove a disastrous thing. Hence, then, per-
haps, these queer flutters of panic. He never for a moment
consciously contemplated not marrying Mitzi yet some-
thing within him prompted a curious lack of impatience
about going to her and actually Saying the Word —
although he longed to say it.
With luck there would be an empty place next to
Mitzi at breakfast. Thereafter (Augustine told himself) he
would refuse to be parted from Mitzi all day: he would
devote himself openly and unequivocally to her, claim the
privilege of guiding her from room to room, of fetching
and carrying for her. . .
But when Augustine got to the breakfast-table he found
no Mitzi. Cousin Adele was preparing a tray: Mitzi would
be breakfasting in her own room, and so after all the
moment of final commitment was postponed! Augustine
was desolated; and full of jokes.
Chapter 4
Permission to breakfast in one's own bedroom was rare
in the annals of Lorienburg: one always had to appear
even if one ate nothing. So Mitzi was indeed grateful not
to have to appear today, when such waves of black despair
were rolling over her it would be impossible to keep her
feelings from appearing in her face.
For blindness was not an affliction which would pass —
like a pain, or like an illness which either gets better or
kills you. She was blind now she was young: she would be
blind middle-aged: she would still be blind when she was
old — she would die blind. She was going to be blind all her
earthly life: only beyond the grave would she again have
eyes to see.
The length of life — oh, its interminable length! Almost
she formulated the wish to be struck dead that minute;
but something smote her inward lips as with an actual
blow of the hand, preventing them from quite uttering any
wish so wicked.
Why had God done this to her? What had she done to
deserve it? When she felt it coming on, had she not prayed
with every breath of the lungs of her soul? Why hadn't
God answered her prayer, then? If He'd let her off this
she'd have adored Him all her days and laid her whole life
as a thank-offering on His altar, gone out to nurse
lepers. . .
Why had God done this to her? Because she had
sinned? But everyone sins. Granted she was more sinful
than average, one of the most repellent of all His creatures;
but on the other hand no sin can't be forgiven and she'd
gone to confession regularly, received absolution. Had the
priest's absolution then been somehow always unavailing?
243
^44 THE FOX IN THE ATTIC
It must have been! For a just God would have had to
count up against her anforgiven every sin mortal and
venial she had sinned since babyhood to judge her worthy
of this,
"Most merciful Father. . ." But the gates of His mercy
were shut against Mitzi, it seemed. "Holy Mary, never
was anyone who sought thy intercession left unaided. . ."
But Our Blessed Lady had withheld her intercession from
Mitzi.
From Mitzi — the pariah of Heaven.
The meaningless chaos of sensation in the optic nerve
still revolved without intermission.
Would she have never been born! Would that the day
she was to be born could have been left out of the calendar,
the darkness of the night preceding it joined mercifully
without any intervening day to the darkness of the night
that followed, rather than that Mitzi had ever come into
being as the living human soul in whom this unending
frenzied darkness should come into being! Why had life
been given her, to be so miserable in, so bitter?
What had God put her into the world for at all, if
having put her there He couldn't forgive her?
But forgiveness, she knew, is only for the truly penitent:
without the sinner's contrition absolution is a mere form
of words snatched from the priest's lips by the Powers of
the Air, blown back like smoke.
Had Mitzi never truly repented, then, in her heart, of
the sins her lips had confessed? Since He had not forgiven
her, Reason answered 'that must be so'. — Then again and
again she had taken the Holy Sacrament impenitent, thus
eating her own damnation!
At this sudden thought of damnation Mitzi sweated
with the absolute of terror; for in that case this blindness
was a mere earthly foretaste of the horror to come. In that
case even the grave could be no 'bed of hope' for a Mitzi;
THE FOX IN THE ATTIC 245
for its bottom would open under the weight of her sins to
discharge her incontinently into the bottomless everlast-
ing fires of Hell. . .
Oh how short is that brief postponement of punishment
we call earthly life, and how awful the everlasting wrath
of God!
Mitzi's mind was young and single, her faith unquestion-
ing and her imaginative powers vivid. Her agony of mind
was now passing beyond what tender human nerves can
bear: like the point at which some poor soul trapped in
the top of a blazing building at last makes the necessary
leap from the sixth-floor window into the smoke.
Chapter 5
When breakfast in the dining-room was over Augustine
found himself at a loose end, for Walther shepherded
Adele and Otto and Franz into the drawing-room and
shut the door. Evidently some sort of family council was
going into session (under the fatherly eye of Good King
Ludwig III). Nervous, and with time to kill till Mitzi
appeared, Augustine's first thought was to spend it making
friends with the younger children at last. But that might
not be easy: to begin with there was the difficulty of his
'good' German, and moreover morning and evening they
were all made to file round the table ceremoniously to kiss
his hand which put one on altogether the wrong footing.
Better wait till later, perhaps (he had never before funked
children, but he'd never before struck quite such a
formidable quartette). Moreover he had just remembered
that this was Saturday: Augustine had spent three whole
nights in Germany without sending Mary so much as a
picture-postcard yet.
Augustine had already had one letter from Mary, here.
"Polly has a cough. . ." (Mary had said nothing about
Nellie and the dead child's father coming to the lonely
neo-Gothic 'Hermitage' to live: she thought that wound
better given a little time to heal.)
But when Augustine went to his room and began writ-
ing he found it difficult to keep bent on his travelogue a
mind that kept turning to Mitzi. However, he didn't want
to tell Mary about Mitzi quite yet: not till he had spoken
to the waiting Mitzi and even her father and it was all
settled. It never occurred to him Mary could think thirty-
six hours from first meeting rather soon to have made up
their minds: he was sincerely afraid if he couldn't tell her
something definite she would think them hopeless ditherers
to have havered so long.
246
THE FOX IN THE ATTIC 247
Thus Augustine's letter-writing limped, and presently
he laid down his pen and mooned round the room
examining the pictures all over again. There was a
distant group of figures in one of them, on the banks of a
river, which had intrigued him before; for they were so
minute he couldn't make out what they were at. Were
they bathing — or ducking a witch?
If only he'd been standing on yon tufted abbey tower
with that telescope he'd had as a boy turned on them!
Vividly Augustine recalled the pleasure he used to get
from studying just such distant groups, himself unseen. But
then a new thought struck him: now — and without any
telescope at all — he could study a blind Mitzi just like
that! He could gaze right in her face at six inches range
without giving her offence, just as long ago he used to
study those. . . those distant little girls in the garden! At
the queer thought of it his heart jumped like a fish in his
breast.
The recollection of his telescope made him turn auto-
matically to the window, and look down from it into the
great courtyard underneath. And there, to his astonish-
ment, went Mitzi herself — quite alone, and blundering
through the snow.
Mitzi (he saw) was purposefully feeling her way along
the facade of the house: she had followed it right into the
corner of the court where the snow had drifted: she was
floundering almost waist-deep in snow. But then she
turned at right-angles along the side-wall (evidently she
hadn't dared risk a bee-line in the open) : found the door
she wanted: unlocked it, and vanished inside.
Chapter 6
For at the moment when Mitzi had felt herself to be at
the implacable very bottom of despair, beating her
head against the bars of her imperfectly-remembered
religious instruction like a bird in a trap, a voice as real as
the hand which had smitten her inward lips had said:
"Think, Mitzi — THINK!" and suddenly the answer had
come to her. There was indeed one damnable sin she had
never repented nor even confessed for she had never
noticed till now she was sinning it: all her life she had
allowed herself to feel afflicted because she could not see
as other children saw: she had never once thanked God foi
what little sight she had.
Now she had lost it she realised what a treasure even
that purblind sight had been. Finding her way about used
to seem difficult — yet how easy it had then been in com-
parison with now! Moreover, how singular had been the
beauty of that peculiar world once hers! Those soft-edged,
looming shapes things had: the irised patterns of colour
changing from moment to moment as when a kaleidoscope
is shaken, the flickering fringes of bright violet round where
windows were and the gorgeous coronas that meant
lighted lamps: the veined and marbled skies, the moving
dappled pillars that were her friends and the standing ones
that were the trees. . .
She, who had always hovered halfway to blindness —
surely this should have been a perpetual reminder to her
that sight is not intrinsic to humanity: that sight is a gift
— which God gives, or God withholds. Yet all this she had
enjoyed and never once thanked God for it.
It was at this instant of perfect contrition for her in-
gratitude to God, this realisation of the worthlessness of all
her petty repentances of sins that were so minuscule in
248
THE FOX IN THE ATTIC 249
comparison with this one, that her intolerable nervous
tension snapped and Mitzi at last made her necessary
'leap' into the stretched blanket.
Thereafter all fear of Hell — all thought of punishment
even — was suddenly gone as completely as a finished
thunder-storm is gone. What remained was a feeling of
floating: of floating on God's love. It soaked her through
like sunshine. She felt God incomparably nearer than ever
before: God held her whole being nestling in the hollow of
His infinite hand. . . or no, God wasn't even that much
outside her — He was running in her veins. He was the
tongue speaking in her mind's ear and He was the mental
ear which listened, He was the very mind in her which did
her thinking. There was now no obstacle at all between
herself and God: her will and His were one. Once, Mitzi
had made her sight into a barrier between herself and
God: so God had touched her eyes with His healing
finger and now that barrier was gone. . . and how she
loved and adored Him for it!
Mitzi believed herself already quite lost in God. But
was she, wholly? Surely there was still one tiny part of
this neophyte which even now watched the transaction
as it were from outside; and, curiously, that outsider was
the T' at the transaction's very heart. That T' in her which
couldn't help feeling just a little bit cocky that she had been
chosen for an act of such exceptional grace; for after all, it
isn't everybody God thinks worth striking blind to bring
her to Him.
But it is difficult to express this cavil at all without
exaggerating it. For the moment at least the voice of this
outside watcher inside Mitzi was in comparison as faint
as the piping of a gnat dancing in the spray of a roaring
waterfall: the Mitzi-of-the-Adoration was scarcely aware
of it, and let it pass; and presently her desire for prayer and
praise — to thank God for her new blindness as the source
of this ecstasy she now enjoyed, of this foretaste within
Time of the Eternal Life — had become so insistent her
250 THE FOX IN THE ATTIC
ordinary weekday room could no longer contain it, and
she felt her way to the door.
No one saw Mitzi cross the hall; for that family council
(which had met to decide what was to be done with Mitzi)
was still in session: a conference at which the chairman —
the late King Ludwig — watched, but said never a word.
Thus no one saw, no one heard Mitzi creeping down the
stairs. Even Mitzi herself never noticed when she tripped
and nearly went headlong, so intent was her whole
thought on reaching her goal.
It was not till she was right out in the courtyard,
fumbling her way through the snow to find the door which
led through the vestry into the castle chapel, that
Augustine alone at last caught sight of Mitzi from his
window — and darted down after her with thumping heart.
Chapter y
A ugustine was an adept wildfowler and his shoes had
/jLthick crepe-rubber soles. The door Mitzi had entered
still stood open and he slipped inside, careful to make no
sound.
He found himself in a room lined from floor to ceiling
with noble old cupboards and presses in painted pine —
like the changing-room of an 18th-century football club,
he thought (if the 18th Century had had football clubs),
but this changing-room had a faint ecclesiastical smell and
he observed a holy oleograph of exceptional crudity (a
rather disgusting surgical item, a bleeding heart) on the
only bare patch of wall. However there was no Mitzi here;
so he continued equally stealthily through a further open
door and found himself in what he at once knew must be
the chapel: and there he stood aghast.
For the little family chapel at Lorienburg was a baroque
confection of exceptional splendour. Augustine had been
reared in an Anglo-Gothic reverential gloom; but this was
all light and colour and swelling curves. There was ex-
travagantly moulded plaster and painted trompe-Fceil,
peeping angels, babies submerged in silver soap-suds and
gilded glittering rays. . . Augustine had heard of Baroque
— as the very last word in decadence and bad taste; but
anything so outrageous as this was incredible in a secular
. . . and this was a sacred place ! Even the professing atheist
could not but be shocked.
Yet Augustine soon realised he ought rather to be
reassured. Hitherto he had shirked wondering whether
Mitzi was really a believing Christian; but even if she
thought she was, a religion which expressed itself in a place
like this couldn't possibly be more than skin-deep — some-
thing easily sloughed, under his teaching. Yet could any
teaching of his be needed? Surely the utter callousness of
251
252 1HE FOX IN THE ATTIC
what had just happened to Mitz;. must already have taught
her more forcibly than any words could that the Universe
has no heart. Mitzi must know now there was no one else
in heaven or earth to love her — only him.
But in that case why had she come here? And where
was Mitzi? For he hadn't found her, still.
Seeking her, Augustine peeped gingerly into the dark
confessional; then he tiptoed to the sanctuary rails. But
his eyes soon began to wander, for though the general
effect of this awful place was so utterly wrong all the same
there were details which plucked at his eyes so that he
could not help but look. Even the billowing chaos of
colour and glitter above the altar once he examined it
began to assume shape and meaning: patently it was in-
tended for an enormous storm-cloud with the rays of God
on top — and then suddenly Augustine noticed that from
every cranny and interstice of that vasty tornado towering
under the God-light from above there were miniature
heads of child-angels peeping! In their rather sweet way
these were quite lovely — and palpably all portraits: every
child in the village that long-ago year must have been
singly portrayed here: this was a whole child-generation
of Dorf Lorienburg. One Sunday centuries ago all these
fresh young faces up there must have been mirrored by
the First-Communion young faces bowed over the altar-
rail below, each carved face with its own living counter-
part. But whereas in time those faces at the rail had grown
old and disillusioned and coarse — and had all died, gen-
erations ago — these through the centuries had remained
forever singing: immortal, and forever child.
All portraits, and all singing: as the eye travelled up
the cloud from parted lips to parted lips it seemed incon-
ceivable one couldn't hear that singing: the eye filled the
laggard ear with visionary sweet sound. . .
"Gloria in excelsis Deo. . ."
— in thin, angelic treble unison the ancient and holy
THE FOX IN THE ATTIC 253
chant was floating on the air; and with a sudden shiver
up the spine Augustine realised he could hear the singing.
Augustine's scalp pricked; but a moment later he
realised this must be only Mitzi — -just Mitzi somewhere,
and the echoes that she woke. Momentarily he felt furious
with her, as Franz too had been furious when her yapping
duped him in the night. What did the little fool think she
was up to, singing — here, alone in this empty frightful
chocolate God-box?
Where had she got to? He turned where he stood, and
glared all down the nave.
Augustine found Mitzi in the end crouched before some-
thing in a far corner: something of which he had been half-
conscious all the time, for though it was part-hidden by a
gorgeous catafalque it still showed up incongruously in all
this welter of colour, being carved in dark unpainted
wood: an object palpably much older than anything else
here, as well as nobly different in style. It was a great
13th-century Deposition, more than lifesize; and half-
hidden at its foot knelt Mitzi.
The thin but almost faultless voice had finished the
ecstatic Latin chant, and fallen silent. Mitzi was silently
praying. She was still, and hardly seemed to breathe; and
the big black bow was coming off her fair plait of hair.
He longed to retie it for her. . . oh how he loved her —
and what poles apart they were!
Mitzi was praying for a miracle, no doubt — to that bit
of wood! Or, was she merely the hurt child who clings
leechlike but hopeless to her teddy bear? Was it, then. . .
was it possibly better at least for the time being to leave her
with her religious illusions, if these were a comfort to her?
Perish the thought! It can never be better to believe a
He; and surely 'God' was the biggest he ever uttered by
the human race!
How thankful Augustine now was he had yielded to his
254 THE FOX IN THE ATTIC
returning instinct for watching unseen — with the sense it
conferred of almost supernatural guardianship over the
loved one, on this mysterious solitary sortie of hers!
But MitzVs hair. . . Augustine's fingers of themselves
were craving for the touch of it just as the parched tongue
itself craves for water; and at once he could think of
nothing else. Dropping on hands and knees he inched
forward across the floor-matting without sound — himself
now scarcely daring to breathe. Delicately he lifted his
hand and at last as lightly as touching a butterfly's wing
just touched the tip of her hair.
But instantly he withdrew his fingers for even that con-
tact had so quickened his breathing that now she surely
could not help but hear!
Chapter 8
Indeed Augustine's heart was beating so wildly that only
her rapt religious state could possibly have kept him un-
discovered long. For although he realised it would be fatal
to be discovered now he had presently begun acting as
uninhibitedly as if he wore a cap of darkness indeed —
fluttering noiselessly about Mitzi, as she moved from one
devotional spot to another, in a kind of one-man unwit-
nessed ballet. And when at last Mitzi left the chapel, as she
locked the vestry door Augustine glided to her side 'as if
to take her arm and guide her — so close their two bodies
were almost touching. They moved off like that, too — he
hovering over her mothlike. His right arm even started its
own passionate makebelieve, raised 'as if round her.
Augustine was trying to will Mitzi into the right path
through the snow; and they must have looked unequi-
vocally a pair of lovers as the two of them plunged together
into snowdrifts and out again as if neither of them had
eyes at all for the outside world; for what else could
prompt so wildly erratic a course but the mutual blindness
of love? But so intoxicated was Augustine now with his
role of Zvengali-cum-Invisible-Man, he had quite for-
gotten that the only eyes to which he was really invisible
were Mitzi's. Thus it was now Augustine's turn to be
watched unwitting — from the dormer so mysteriously un-
boarded — by the truly Invisible Man (that existence in the
attics nobody knew about except Franz).
Nor was that watching eye benevolent — or harmless.
Augustine had meant to speak to Mitzi as soon as they
reached the hall — as if meeting her there. But when they
got there the two little girls were framed in the dining-
room doorway; so he hesitated, and Mitzi made a bee-line
for her room.
255
256 THE FOX IN THE ATTIC
He'd lost her! But no doubt she'd be out again soon, so
he'd wait; and in the meanwhile Augustine was in such a
gay, exalted and rather fantastical mood, so bubbling over
with makebelieve, that children to work it off on seemed a
godsend — if only he could get these ones to accept him at last !
Augustine advanced on the children all smiles, and
mooing like a cow (so tiresome, this language difficulty!) :
then, changing his note, stood still and bleated like a lamb.
The effect was not quite any one might have expected.
There was the first shock of bewilderment of course (and
embarrassment, for at eight and nearly ten the two little
girls were surely too old for quite such nursery tactics);
but what was odd was that then they ran towards him
apparently in an access of extreme friendliness. They
began chattering away to him nineteen-to-the-dozen; and
so far as he could make out, they were saying there was
something lovely they wanted to show him — to show him
especially, their dear Uncle: something quite wonderful
. . . downstairs.
Taken aback, Augustine studied their faces: for this just
wasn't true! They were laying on all the charm of two
elderly experts; but behind all the smiles and cajoling
there was fright in those four eyes like little grey stones.
Through the dining-room door, too, came the unmis-
takable clink of metal on metal. Augustine had to use
sheer muscular strength to shake off their pulling and
plucking, but then he peeped through. The air in the
dining-room was thick with feathers. There was white
down everywhere, swirling in the currents of hot air the
stove set up. Feathers covered the floor; and in the midst
of it all, of course, were the Twins. Heavily armoured
(indeed they could hardly move) in real shirts of chain-
mail reaching their ankles and even trailing along the
floor, and with real swords, they were acting out some
legend of their race. It was evidently a fight in a snow-
storm; for they had slashed open a big down cushion and
had hung it from the great central chandelier — and here
THE FOX IN THE ATTIC 257
an occasional whack from a sword sent still more down
and feathers eddying on the air. Already their well-greased
armour was sicklied o'er with feathers.
But at that very moment Augustine heard the distant
drawing-room door open and voices down the hall. The
Council was at last adjourning: from the far end of the
hall Walther was advancing, and behind him Adele, Franz
and Otto.
With an urgent whispered "Achtung!" Augustine turned
to face them. What was to be done? The two failed sentinels
still stood at their post but their crestfallen faces had gone
as expressionless as Christmas annuals: they were beyond
even trying any more. So it was Augustine himself who
babbling of forestry or something somehow contrived to
head Walther and the rest of them off, and lead them
harmlessly elsewhere.
Thereafter Augustine returned to his own waiting-post
in the hall: he lingered there till it was time to eat, but
even then Mitzi still didn't reappear.
Luncheon was always rather a movable feast at Lorien-
burg, but that Saturday it was quite exceptionally late.
In the meantime some skilled sympathiser (Augustine sus-
pected Lies) had been in the dining-room and made a
wonderful attempt at clearing up the mess there; but when
the meal was at last served there were still feathers here
and there, as Walther — evidently wholly bewildered how
they had got there — rather pettishly kept pointing out.
The children ate their food without seeming to hear him,
but Adele was profuse in her apologies to her guest: "It's
that little fox," she explained — "he must have got in here
and disembowelled a cushion and played at chicken-coops
with it. . .
"But alas!" said Adele. "As Walther says, you can't
punish foxes — they don't understand!"
With her serious watery-blue eyes she fixed Augustine's
— and winked.
Chapter g
So Lorienburg went about its normal business that Satur-
day. Mitzi kept to her room while Augustine roamed
restlessly looking for her the whole afternoon: no one men-
tioned yesterday's revolution and Hitler seemed already
quite forgotten.
But in the meanwhile the discomforted Hitler — a proved
failure now, a fugitive hurt and hopeless and with the
Green Police on his trail — had finally gone to earth in
Ufrlng. UfBng is a village on the edge of the Staffelsee,
that lake of many islands at the foot of the towering
Bavarian Alps where the broad Ammer valley leads up
towards Garmisch. Hitler went there not because he saw
there any hope of safety but because the hopeless hunted
animal tends always to bury its head in some familiar hole
to await the coup de grace. Some years past Putzi's
American mother had acquired a farm near Uffing, and
last summer Putzi and Helene themselves had bought a
little house there too: Putzi and Helene, that young couple
who alone perhaps in all Germany seemed to Hitler to
be fond of him for his own sweet self.
'Putzi' — or Dr. Ernst Hanfstaengl, to give him his
proper title — as a half-American had taken no part in the
war. Before it broke out he had been a student at Harvard
and later he had married a German-American girl in New
York. Here in peacetime Germany, naturally this gifted
and musical German-American German couple moved in
circles more intelligent and civilised than any their park-
bench protege had previously known: yet they didn't seem
to see Hitler at all like the nasty caricature Dr. Reinhold
and his cronies elected to see. True, when they tried to
introduce into those circles of the wealthier Munich intelli-
gentzia this tiresome but vital, this incredibly naif yet
258
THE FOX IN THE ATTIC 259
incredibly gifted and indeed sometimes entrancing per-
forming pet of theirs, then things tended to happen which
embarrassed and galled Hitler, so that Hitler was never
really at ease there and retaliated with an assumed con-
tempt. But on musical weekends here at Uffing with Putzi
and Helene themselves (alone or with only the clammy
gloomy young Rosenberg for a foil) he could always
entirely uncurl. He could be then all soul and wit: and
how they responded! Baby Egon in particular adored his
Tunny Uncle Dolf: for Hitler could always be marvel-
lous with children (which seems to be a common corollary
of an addiction to chastity, even so secret and compulsive
and perverse a chastity as his).
The mother's pretty farm was ten minutes out in the
country, beyond the sawmill and the river. But the young
couple's was a neat and homely little house close to the
maypole and the church: it was plumb in the middle of
the village, though backing onto fields: squarish, and un-
like its neighbours built of stone. Moreover with some
vague premonition of trouble Putzi had surrounded his
pocket-size property with a five-foot stone wall as if to
turn it into a dwarves' castle; and Hitler had only the
happiest memories of this friendly little fort.
Helene had been alone at this 'villa' except for her two-
year-old child and the maids when Hitler had himself
secretly dumped there, arriving on foot, through the fields,
after dark, late that Black Friday evening, muddy and
hatless and his shoulder queerly drooping and with a man
each side of him holding him on his feet. "ALto, doch!"
she greeted him: for Helene herself had been in Munich
that very morning yet had heard nothing there of that
disastrous march, and only after her return had heard (and
till now, disbelieved) the village rumours.
Helene learned little factual now, except what was to
be gleaned from incoherent ramblings about the Residenz-
strasse and the bullets and the blood. " — But Putzi. . .?"
a6o THE FOX IN THE ATTIC
she asked him. Putzi was all right, Hitler assured her with
unconvincing conviction. Ludcndorif was dead, though:
the credulous old fool who had trusted the 'honourable'
von Lossow! You should never trust generals: with his own
eyes (he said) he had seen Ludendorff killed. . .
But the Hitler must be mad (thought Helene) to have
come here! This house was bound to be searched (yes, and
the nearby farm as well) even if only for Putzi! Once the
police came meaning business Putzi's pitiful stone wall
would hardly keep them out — it was only an added
advertisement of mystery. Perhaps the Bechsteins would
help? Ah, but it would be crazy to use the phone. . . All
the same, Herr Hitler had to be got away again somehow
and smuggled into Austria (yes, why on earth hadn't he
already crossed into Austria long ago?).
Now, though, the man looked half fainting: for the
moment the one thing he needed above all else was a bed.
So she told his two friends to take him away upstairs.
Hitler went up with them docilely, in a miserable daze,
and they took him to the big attic he knew so well of old —
all full of Putzi's books. But not to bed! For once they had
got him alone up there they stretched him out on the floor
and knelt on him. One was a doctor, and they wrestled
again and again with that dislocated shoulder to get it
back into joint. They had no anaesthetics and for a long
time even downstairs and with the doors shut Helene
could hear him: while the frightened baby woke and
wailed.
But it was all too inflamed by now to discover that as
well as the dislocation the collarbone was broken; and so,
for all the doctor's skill, they failed — and finally they gave
it up and left him.
Hitler was left, all among Putzi's books: but he was
much too distraught to read. He was panting, and for a
moment he leaned against an incongruous open flour-
barrel which these queer Hanfstaengls kept too in this
THE FOX IN THE ATTIC 261
attic-bedroom study; but then he saw the bed, and the
bed had Putzi's English travelling-rug folded on it. So
Hitler rolled himself in the rug as tight as a cocoon to
ease the pain, and lay there in the corner with his face
to the wall.
Hitler had been already half-delirious with pain and
frustration when he arrived: now he was growing more
feverish still. The torn and twisted sinews were shrinking,
the broken bone grated, and pain was piled on pain. If
only Putzi had been there to play Wagner to him, as
David's harp soothed Saul! It was faithless of Putzi to
absent himself now just when he was needed; and mentally
Hitler chalked a bad mark against him.
Hitler was alone, in the dark, and could not hope to
sleep. His mind was wandering. From below came the
interminable rise and fall of voices like the sound of rain
(for the doctor in his excitement was sitting up to tell
Helene his whole life-story) . It sounded like rain. . . or like
a river. . . like the Danube flooding its banks in the spring
rising, gurgling into cellars, murmuring, menacing, still
rising. The sounds from downstairs woke in Hitler his
obsessional fear of water, but he could not escape for the
barrage of perpetual pain whined low overhead like the
English shells and pinned him down.
So, after an immeasurable time without sleep, daylight
had at last come again: the same Saturday daylight that
at Lorienburg had found Lies kneeling on the cold stairs.
For Hitler it began a Saturday of conferences and alarms
and futile planning. Even at this stage of history Hitler
had already developed his famous technique of that kind
of 'leadership' which divines uncannily what most of the
conference wants and propounds that as the Leader's own
inexorable will: thus today he presently heard himself
propounding that the Bechsteins must instantly send their
closed car to drive him into Austria (he could never go
to Austria, of course, or he'd have fled there in the first
place like those others. But time enough to cope with that
l6fl THE FOX IN THE ATTIC
when the car did come: meanwhile, conferences and air-
castle planning at least helped to hold captive his bal-
looning fevered mind).
Noon: at Lorienburg the knightly duel among the
feathers, and at Uffing the unquiet doctor starting for
Munich to fetch a confrere. Hitler himself had already
despatched the other man to contact the Bechsteins: so this
left Hitler alone with Helene (and the maids of course, and
the child). Hitler wanted to keep her always with him,
talking: but she dared not leave for long the equally
excited child: twice she had just caught little Egon outside
trying to climb the wall, for he wanted to shout to the
whole world the good news that Uncle Dolf had arrived.
Dusk again. Why had the Bechstein car not come yet?
Hitler had forgotten by now it could do no good if it did
come: he had sent for it and so it MUST come.
Dusk again, and the baby at last safe in bed. Presently
a car did come but still this wasn't from the Bechsteins: it
was only the two medicos from Munich (so once more two
angels wrestled with their wretched Jacob, and once more
in vain). Finally the doctor swathed Hitler as he was in
bandages like swaddling-bands, and the car took them
both off again (for good, this time).
Thus began Hitler's second night at Uffing. He was
again alone. Outside in the darkness and out of due time
a village cock crowed. Then came the knocking. . . or was
it only in a dream that there was a strange man trying to
get in, saying he had a message from LudendorfF 'for
your visitor here'? But Ludendorff was dead. . . a mes-
senger from the shades, then — or a Judas? Helene 'had no
visitor', and sent the man away.
Midnight, and still no Bechstein car had come; but so
far, neither had the police.
Suddenly Hitler started out of a half-doze, for a calm
THE FOX IN THE ATTIC 263
Sibylline 'voice' was ringing in his ears. It had only spoken
six words and those as if the whole thing was ancient
history, over and done with. But what it had said was,
'In the end he shot himself.'
It was only a dream, of course.
Chapter 10
With Sunday's daylight the man who had knocked was
back again. Hitler found he knew him by sight so
this time he was let in; but he had suspiciously little to say
(except that Ludendorff was certainly alive), and soon
went off again no one knew whither. Why worry, though,
where the man went or what he told? For after questioning
him Hitler was overwhelmed with such a nausea of fatigue
he went back to his bed behind the barrel: he must, must
get some sleep.
Ever since the 'March' Hitler had never quite slept: yet
he was never quite awake, and this second day at Uffing
found it difficult to speak coherently or even think. He
must rest: and yet it was even worse alone, more difficult
to keep hold. Now, as he lay there on his side sleepless and
poring over the past, even his own legs would no longer
obey him: they kept trying to run of their own volition like
a dreaming dog's. Indeed his whole nervous system seemed
to be dissevering itself from central control; that superb
instrument he had been used to playing on at will now
twanged suddenly and discordantly like a concert-piano
when a cat jumps on the keys. He couldn't stay long in
one position. He couldn't keep his eyes either open or shut,
and whenever his eyes opened they saw books leaning
over him in their cases. Hey presto before his very eyes
those books had started exchanging titles like jugglers
throwing balls to each other! They were doing this to
distract his attention: once they managed that they were
planning to fall on him, leaning cases and all.
It was at this moment that suddenly the bells started
ringing: the Sunday bells of Uffing, beating on his ears
with their frightful jarring tintinnabulation. Whereon
somebody must have started pulling a clapper in Hitler's
264
THE FOX IN THE ATTIC 265
own head too, for his own head started chiming with the
bells of Uffing. His head was rocking with the weight of
its own terrible tolling.
Flinging back the blanket Hitler gazed desperately
round. His trusty whip stood just out of reach, but how
he longed to hear again instead of those clanging bells the
whirr of its clean singing thong of rhinoceros-hide — the
whirring, and the crackl If he had given those three traitors
a taste of it instead of letting them through his fingers he'd
have been in Berlin by now — yes, in Berlin!
'Woe to the bloody city! It is all full of lies and robbery. . .
the noise of a whip. . .' (To think that this very hour he
should have been riding triumphant through Berlin!)
'. . . the noise of a whip, and the noise of the rattling of the wheels,
and of the prancing horses, and of the jumping chariots. . .' (In
Berlin, scourging the money-lenders from the temple! A
city in flames!) 'There is a multitude of the slain, and a great
number of carcases; there is none end of their corpses, they stumble
upon their corpses. . .'
Scourging the hollow barons. . . scourging the puking
communists. . . scourging the Lesbians and the nancy-
boys with that rhinoceros-thong!
But that barrel — it was changing shape: now tall now
short, now fat now lean. . . erect, and swelling. . . and
out of the swelling barrel a remembered figure was rising
— smooth, and gross, and swaying and nodding like a tree.
It was a man's figure from his own penurious teen-age in
Vienna: it was that smooth-faced beast at the Hotel
Kummer, bribing the bright-eyed hard-up boy with cream
puffs, promising him all the pastries he could eat and
daring to make passes at him, at Adolfus Hitler!
Then under the hammering of the bells the figure col-
lapsed— suddenly as it had risen.
Scourging the whores, the Jews. . . scourging the little
flash jew-girls till they screamed. . .
266 THE FOX IN THE ATTIC
Now the dark corners of the room were filling with soft
naked legs: those young Viennese harlots sitting half-naked
in the lighted windows all along the Spittelberggasse
(between the dark windows where 'it' was already being
done). For once upon a time the young Hitler used to go
there, to the Spittelberggasse: to. . . just to look at them.
To harden his will; for except by such tests as these how
can a lad with the hair new on him be assured that his
will is strong? The boy would stare, and walk on a few
yards; then come back as 'strong' as ever — back to the
most attractive and most nearly naked and stare her out
again, pop-eyed.
He called it "the Flame of Life", that holy flame of sex
in the centre of a man; and he knew that all his whole
life his 'Flame' had to be kept burning without fuel for
at the first real touch of human, female fuel it must turn
smoky, fill his whole Vessel with soot. This was Destiny's
revealed dictate: if ever Hitler did 'it' the unique Power
would go out of him, like Samson and his hair. No, at
most if the adult male flesh itched intolerably it might be
deviously relieved.
After all, how could that monistic 'I' of Hitler's ever
without forfeit succumb to the entire act of sex, the whole
essence of which is recognition of one 'Other'? Without
damage I mean to his fixed conviction that he was the
universe's unique sentient centre, the sole authentic incar-
nate Will it contained or had ever contained? Because this
of course was the rationale of his supernal inner 'Power':
Hitler existed alone. lI am, none else beside me.' The
universe contained no other persons than him, only things;
and thus for him the whole gamut of the 'personal' pro-
nouns lacked wholly its normal emotional content. This
left Hitler's designing and creating motions enormous and
without curb: it was only natural for this architect to turn
also politician for he saw no real distinction in the new
things to be handled: these 'men' were merely him-
mimicking 'things', in the same category as other tools and
THE FOX IN THE ATTIC 267
stones. All tools have handles — this sort was fitted with
ears. And it is nonsensical to love or hate or pity (or tell
the truth to) stones.
Hitler's then was that rare diseased state of the per-
sonality, an ego virtually without penumbra: rare and
diseased, that is, when abnormally such an ego survives
in an otherwise mature adult intelligence clinically sane
(for in the new-born doubtless it is a beginning normal
enough and even surviving into the young child). Hitler's
adult T had developed thus — into a larger but still undif-
ferentiated structure, as a malignant growth does.
In Mitzi — as could perhaps happen to you or me — with
the shock of her crisis the central T' had become dislodged:
it had dwindled to a cloudlet no bigger than a man's hand
beneath the whole zenith of God. But in this suffering
man always and unalterably his 'I' must blacken the whole
vault from pole to pole.
The tortured, demented creature tossed on his bed. . .
'Rienzi-night', that night on the Freinberg over Linz
after the opera: that surely had been the climactic night
of his boyhood for it was then he had first confirmed that
lonely omnipotence within him. Impelled to go up there
in the darkness into that high place had he not been shown
there all earthly kingdoms in a moment of time? And
facing there the ancient gospel question had not his whole
being been one assenting Yea? Had he not struck the ever-
lasting bargain there on the high mountain under the
witnessing November stars? Yet now. . . now, when he
had seemed to be riding Rienzi-like the crest of the wave,
the irresistible wave which with mounting force should
have carried him to Berlin, that crest had begun to curl:
it had curled and broken and toppled on him, thrusting
him down, down in the green thundering water, deep.
Tossing desperately on his bed, he gasped — he was
drowning (what of all things always Hitler most feared).
Drowning? Then. . . then that suicidal boyhood moment's
B68 the fox in the attic
teetering long ago on the Danube bridge at Linz. . . after
all tlu- melancholic boy had leaped that long-ago day, and
everything since was dream! Then this noise now was the
mighty Danube singing in his dreaming drowning ears.
In the green watery light surrounding him a dead face
was floating towards him upturned: a dead face with his
own slightly-bulging eyes in it unclosed: his dead Mother's
face as he had last seen it with unclosed eyes white on the
white pillow. Dead, and white, and vacant even of its love
for him.
But now that face was multiplied — it was all around
him in the water. So his Mother was this water, these
waters drowning him!
At that he ceased to struggle. He drew up his knees to
his chin in the primal attitude and lay there, letting him-
self drown.
So Hitler slept at last.
Chapter n
The sergeant had hayseed down his sweaty neck and
had taken off his cap for a good scratch. What lovely
clear cold weather this was! The invisible frost fell on
his baldness out of the bright sky like minute pinpricks,
and he stood for a moment relishing it before putting his
cap on again. The snowy mountains above Garmisch
glittered in the evening sun: it was early for really good
snow, but how he wished he was off up there now for a
Sunday's skiing! The Ettaler-Mandl above Oberammer-
gau was caught in a particular gleam.
'No rest for the wicked,' they say, but it's the wicked
rather who allow policemen no rest. They had spent half
this lovely Sunday afternoon searching the American
lady's farm: they had probed haystacks, turned over the
fodder in the mangers, crawled through apple-lofts,
climbed in and out of cornbins, tunnelled under woodpiles
(which fell in on them) , crept under the beds of maidservants
(who boxed their ears), ransacked cupboards and tapped
walls: and now those damned dogs of theirs had broken
into the beehouse and the whole lot were howling. Lord,
what a din! All the same, through the open door he could
still hear the Lieutenant bawling the old girl out for trying
to telephone — the silly old trout.
When her mother-in-law's voice was suddenly cut off
like that Helene put back the receiver slowly. So this was
the end ! They had left it too late now.
Today she couldn't make Herr Hitler out. At lunch he
had seemed better after his rest: he had joked with little
Egon, who was much impressed with the figure Funny-
Uncle cut in the vast old blue bathrobe of Daddy's he was
wrapped in. Then when the baby had gone to rest Hitler
269
270 THE FOX IN THE ATTIC
bad begun to wax furious about the Bechstein car not
coming: yet, when she offered to have him whisked over
the pass to Austria with the plumber's motor-bike con-
cealed in the sidecar (transport far less likely to be searched
at the frontier than the big Bechstein Limousine), he
would have none of it. So she had thought up all sorts of
plans for hiding him in the forest, in some woodman's hut
the police would never think of; but he would still have
none of it. It was the Bechstein car in style, or nothing.
So now it was — nothing.
Hitler was sitting upstairs in a daze again dreaming of
suicide when his Mother walked into the room. She
told him the world was ended, and then took out of his
hand something. . . it was something he didn't really
want.
That woman who had come into the room was Helene,
of course. And when she told Hitler the police were at last
on their way here he had gone apparently demented: still
wound in the big blue bathrobe he began turning like a
top in his efforts to draw his revolver with his one good
arm: "Those swine! Never shall they take me alive!"
She grabbed at the gun in his hand, but with only one
arm to use and all wound up in the bathrobe for a moment
Hitler still seemed to struggle demoniacally. And yet it
was no real struggle, for when she let go of him and told
him not to be so silly he gave up, and let her take it.
Disarmed, too, the frenzy suddenly left Hitler and he
realised who this really was. Yet he hardly seemed to
realise what had just been going on here though he him-
self was still panting from it: he looked at her wonderingly,
surprised to see the beautiful Helene of all people just a
wee bit dishevelled. Then he sank into a chair and hid
his head in his hands and groaned.
To give him something to think about she urged Hitler
to compose his political testament while there was yet
time; and leaving him scribbling she quietly dropped the
THE FOX IN THE ATTIC 271
revolver into that open barrel of flour harmless. It sank
in the soft flour without a trace.
Dark had just fallen when there was a sudden roar
of powerful engines: then a screech of brakes, and the
ominous whining of big dogs. Hitler sprang to the window:
he saw there was a truck down there — two trucks, with
greenfly swarming on them.
Helene slipped quietly downstairs and told the girls to
keep Egon in the kitchen with them. As soon as the door
of the lighted kitchen was closed she felt her way in the
pitch-dark to a shuttered window giving towards the
street.
Meanwhile the police had surrounded the house, each
man with a dog at his side. Except for one light upstairs
the place seemed to be in darkness and downstairs all the
shutters were closed. The sergeant vaulted the wall and
crept close to a window, hoping to peep in where he thought
he saw a chink, and flashing his torch found himself
staring straight in a woman's eyes. Startled, he jerked the
leash in his hand; and startled in its turn his dog barked.
That set them all off and soon the quiet village sounded
like a kennels at feeding-time.
As soon as they were quiet again the Lieutenant knocked.
It was Frau Hanfstaengl herself who answered, and taking
the sergeant and one man with him he followed her up
the stairs. She opened a door — and bless me, there the
blighter stood, dressed up like one of the Christmas Magi!
So he must have been here in the village all the time —
not hidden at all!
When the officer rather apologetically told him he
would be arrested for 'Treason' then Hitler really did let
fly. For at the sight of those three rosy faces goggling at
him his brain had cleared. He felt his 'Power' returning:
it was a fire in his bones, it was mounting in his throat
till it overflowed, it was new wine in a barrel without a
vent. Moreover, speech might be the last shot in his locker
— but surely this his last bullet was a silver one! For you
272 THE FOX IN THE ATTIC
just had to press the right button as so often before, pull
the right lever. . . these three should be his first new con-
verts, he'd march back to Munich at their head!
'Wiry little chap, yon,' thought the sergeant: 'but he
don't look as though he meant to put up a fight. . . though
Muttt-r-dottt's what a noise he's making! Voice like a jay
. . .' For a flash the sergeant was walking with his Gretl in
the June woods and the jays were screaming.
Not for one moment did it occur to the sergeant that
he might hear what the prisoner said, any more than the
jays: for policemen have invisible scramblers in their ears
whenever 'the Prisoner' speaks. In the context of his arrest
every man is a thing only, so any sounds he makes are
mere meaningless noise such as all things tend to make —
doors slamming, rivers roaring, jays. . .
June, and Gretl in her dirndl with him in the woods. . . the
sergeant's mind's arm gave his mind's Gretl a hearty, a
corset-bursting squeeze. But just at that moment the spate
of sound ceased abruptly, and the prisoner stood there
looking like. . . Pfui, for all the world he resembled in
spite of his queer get-up (and rather as some comical
mimicking insect might) any popular platform-speaker
waiting for the applause! One hand was still held aloft, as
if ready to pluck fresh arguments out of the lamplit air.
Whereon the sergeant stepped forward and clapped him
briskly on that drooping shoulder.
The night was bitter and the trucks open ones so they
took Hitler downstairs still wrapped in the bathrobe
(though he refused a beret), and trailing Putzi's prized
English rug by one corner like a child who has been
playing Indians (but his whip was forgotten). Then the
men closed in and hustled him expertly into the foremost
truck, jumped up after him and drove him off to Weilheim
gaol.
Egon had run out, and the last the sleepy baby saw of
dear Uncle Dolf once his pale face had vanished among
THE FOX IN THE ATTIC 273
them was that empty whip-hand, helplessly thrumming
the air. Indeed that was all there was to be seen of him;
for now they were all 'things' together those were bigger
things than he was.
The trucks left Uffing with Hitler jammed among his
captors' bodies too tight to move; and for a minute he felt
curiously at peace. But as the fact sank in of this his
incredible constraint by things and so of his utter impotence
always over deaf adders who chose to stop their ears his
belly griped suddenly as in a colic-cramp. He felt in his
rage as if he was being assaulted by climbing snakes;
though these were only the cramps running up and down
him from head to foot, his own rebellious muscles each
writhing of their own volition all up and down his skeletal
frame.
But that too soon passed, overwhelmed by the nausea
of weariness once more. Damn the woman for taking his
gun! Even in that he had failed.
Did Hitler attempt to speak again, in the back of that
truck? Who cared? Who possibly knows? For one of them
had brought his accordion and they all began to sing.
The sergeant had a lovely baritone, and the song was
sickly-sweet.
Chapter 12
That Sunday of Hitler's arrest was November the
Eleventh: everywhere throughout England they had
been celebrating Armistice Day. The fifth anniversary of
the day all war had ended. . . but how had that lovely
belief arisen, and why did it linger? Perhaps for no better
reason than that nothing less seemed counterweight to the
load of death all their boys had died.
In the morning, everywhere the solemn two-minute
silence. It fell like an enchantment: indoors and out no
one spoke, nothing moved: the cars and buses and drays
in the streets halted, the carts in the lanes, the cowman
in the stall stood still. Then, as the buglers in the churches
everywhere sounded the last note of the resurrectional
Last Post, came the moment of release — like the prince's
kiss. Men in their civvies ramrod-stiff at attention relaxed
and smoked. Women spoke, children ran, cars started,
hooves trotted.
But now it was tea-time. Mellton church was empty —
only their guerdon of Flanders poppies and the carved
names remained there, while at the vicarage the Vicar of
Mellton munched fruit-cake and put the last touches to
his evening Armistice sermon.
At the lonely Hermitage on the downs Nellie had just
set the wash-tub in the new sink.
In Gwilym's sanatorium the nurses all wore poppies,
and there were poppies pinned to the King's portrait on
the wall. Gwilym was already putting his things in order
— tearing up letters, and so on — ready tomorrow to go
home; for he had been quite right of course, he was now
so much better they had to let him go home. Gwilym had
274
THE FOX IN THE ATTIC 275
few possessions, but there was a pencil-sharpener he could
give his friend in the next bed to remember him by. As an
afterthought he gave him a red pencil too, and they both
wept.
The Sister had told Gwilym well in advance that he was
going, in the hope of distracting his mind from the death
of his little girl. But it had been difficult for even the
doctor to make him understand it must be months "before
he could work again". They put this down to his throat,
for his throat is a preacher's most precious organ: in
particular Gwilym must rest his throat!
As a matter of fact Gwilym's throat had been cauterised
too drastically and the vocal cords had been completely
destroyed. It was impossible he should ever speak again
except in a whisper, but that they hadn't told him.
"How long must I rest it?"
"Oh. . . six months, at the very least."
(Gwilym, they thought, could hardly last six months.)
Six months! For someone expecting to die, so short a
reprieve; but to Gwilym, expecting to live, an intermin-
able time to have to wait for his health back. And yet it's
a queer thing, this Spes Phthisica: though confident he
would soon be a giant refreshed and raring for the pulpit
at the same time Gwilym knew perfectly well he would
never get better and was going to die. His mind just
kept both bits of knowledge apart so they need not
contradict.
At the times when he contemplated death his heart
welled over with pity for poor Nellie. So soon would he find
Little Rachel waiting on Jordan's further shore to greet
him; he would enter his Maker's presence with that dear
hand warm in his. But Nellie might have many dreary
years to wait before seeing her lost child again. Two
children dead, and now her husband dying: poor emptied
heart of Nellie's! Gwilym prayed with all his soul that
little Sylvanus might grow to fill it again. Indeed Gwilym's
276 HIE FOX IN THE ATTIC
mind dwelt much on this baby he had not yet even seen.
As soon as he was fit again he and Nellie must visit
Rachel's grave on the bare hill above Penrys Cross; and
they would take Sylvanus with them, for he must be
taught from the first to love and revere the sister he had
never known — that little angel God had lent them for
awhile, who now from heaven was loving him and watch-
ing him grow. They must teach Sylvanus to try to live
always worthy of that angelic love: never to do anything
or even think anything it would pain those innocent eyes
to see. Bit by bit the boy must be brought to realise that
always from heaven his Sister was watching him.
For, apart from religion, the happiest thing Gwilym had
to dream about now was the joy of bringing up his son.
He made endless plans for it (particularly in the evenings,
after his temperature had risen) : all the tilings he and the
boy would do together, as the boy grew.
'The boy and he together'? — Ah, there lay the sharpest
of all death's stings.
The Sunday paper discarded on Gwilym's bed carried
little news of the Putsch in Munich — and spelled
'Hitler' wrong. It was all of no interest to Gwilym,
naturally. But in Mary's paper 'Munich' caught her eye,
though only because her brother must have been there
about then. She jumped to the conclusion he'd have seen
the whole thing and his first letter would be full of it: she'd
better know what it was all about. But Gilbert would
hardly look at the paragraph: Bavarian antics were of no
conceivable importance to England, and a politician must
always keep his eye on the ball. For these were crucial
times! Baldwin had forestalled Lloyd George in calling
for 'Protection' and this had driven L.G. back onto un-
compromising Free Trade, of course. Baldwin's change of
heart moreover was a complete ratting on his party's
election pledges only last spring, so it meant yet another
THE FOX IN THE ATTIC 277
General Election almost at once; and that closed the
Liberal ranks willy-nilly — for the next week or two.
"What chance have we got of turning out the Tories?"
— Today's cake had seeds in it, and absently Gilbert
picked his teeth with the wire stem of his poppy while he
pondered.
Chapter ij
at the lonely Hermitage on the downs Nellie had just
Xl.set the wash-tub in the new sink. Beside her, in a warm
corner near the fire, baby Sylvanus (now three weeks old)
was sleeping in his basket. Cold water from the bucket,
hot from the steaming kettle on the hob. . . Nellie tested
the temperature with her bare elbow to get it just right,
and then — discarding her poppy for fear the wire might
scratch the infant — lifted the tiny object out of its warm
snuggle and laid it on her knees to undress it.
Waking abruptly it wailed, and began to quiver. She
had laid it face-down, and in its anger the scalp blushed
reddish through the sparse black hair. The simple seminal
ego within it was awash with rage. In the transports of its
rage the transparent skin on its tiny naked back suddenly
marbled with quick-flushing veins, while the helpless
waving fists were drained of their blood and turned a
bluish-grey. Then she rolled the object over face-up again.
Now apparently it was too angry to cry out at all — it
hadn't the breath; but the chin quivered like the reed of
a musical instrument and the whole face crinkled.
Competently and gently, like dusting fragile porcelain
— but a bit absently, as if the porcelain was unloved —
Nellie wiped the eyes with a swab of cotton-wool. Then
she made little spills of the cotton-wool, dipped them in
oil and twiddled them in those defenceless ears and nostrils.
The infant's head was too heavy for it to be able to move
it but every other inch of its body jerked and shook in
paroxysms of rage and sneezing, and at every such move-
ment all its tender contours crumpled and collapsed like
a half-deflated balloon.
It was only now Nellie remembered to swathe it in the
towel which hung warming before the fire.
Indoors the light was already failing, and Nellie stopped
278
THE FOX IN THE ATTIC 279
for a moment to light the lamp. But from outside through
the open door still came the sound of sawing; for Sunday
or not the carpenter had to get that shed finished in time,
and it was quite an elaborate piece of work.
Sighing (from mild indigestion) Nellie soaped the
wobbling heavy head, then held it out over the sink to rinse
it. Next, her large hands began soaping the convulsive, pre-
hominid little body and limbs. But now the carpenter's
dog Charlie — a young spaniel with a talent for comedy —
had grown disgusted with the smell of sawdust outside
with his master and wandered into Nellie's kitchen. After
one quick apologetic smirk at his hostess he began nosing
around eagerly; but each time he found some new smell
that amused him he glanced again momentarily at Nellie,
and smirked his thanks politely. With her eyes on this
engaging dog and hardly aware what she was doing Nellie
submerged the baby's body and rinsed that too. At the
benevolent touch of the warm water rage instantly sub-
sided; but his moment of comfort was brief, for she lifted
him out to dry him — and instantly rage returned.
Then Nellie opened her own box of powder that she
had set ready on the Windsor chair at her side. It was a
cheap brand, and the scent drove the dog completely
dippy. Doing the familiar job by rote Nellie watched him
— and broke into a smile for the first time for ages. For
Charlie would fawn towards the powder-box and then
halt, humbly, at least two feet from it. There he bowed
deeply, right to the ground, and took one distant sniff.
Then he danced round the room like a ballerina till his
ecstasy was expended: then he fawned back again, praying
to the gracious box for yet one more replenishing sniff.
When Nellie actually began powdering the baby, for a
dog's nose no doubt that scent billowed on the air and so
his state of religious ecstasy was rendered continuous. He
ran round the tiny room at incredible speed; though
how he avoided colliding with the crowded furniture
was pretty miraculous, for he ran with his eyes rolled up
28o THE FOX IN THE ATTIC
to heaven till the whites showed — and Nellie laughed
aloud.
Engrossed as she was in watching Charlie, none the less
she powdered the baby's body expertly all over in every
crease: with scarcely a glance she folded clean napkins and
put them on him and pinned them, and wrapped him
again in the flannelette nightgown that did up at the back
with tapes. But there was one item of common practice
Nellie left out. I don't mean just that she had forgotten
to oil his bottom before putting the napkins on (she
remembered that afterwards, when it was all finished and
he was back in his Moses-basket — but what the hell, just
for once!): no, I mean that she hadn't kissed him. That
was something as yet Nellie had never ever done.
Before he was born Nellie had hated him. But now she
was completely indifferent to him, for Rachel's death had
numbed her. That indifference wouldn't last much longer,
however; for if Nellie couldn't escape like Mitzi out of
disaster into God, neither could she long remain like Hitler
— cooped up with his disaster in the prison that was the
ring-fence of himself \ For Nellie's central T was minimal.
Hers was a 'self 'consciousness only really vivid ever towards
its periphery — at its sensitive points of contact with other
people: whatever happened at the centre to Nellie always
surfaced out there sooner or later, transmuted into enig-
matic compulsions of love or hate. Before long, Nellie's
numbness must melt in a very cataract of feeling: but of
love. . . Sylvanus her only son and she a widow? Or of
hate. . . had Sylvanus never been conceived Little Rachel
need never have died? Or both?
Tonight, as Nellie carried the bathwater to empty it
outside, she caught sight of Little Rachel smiling down at
her from her fretwork frame on the kitchen wall and burst
into tears.
Charlie nuzzled her knee with his soft nozzle. How
passionately she wished that Charlie was hers! But now
the carpenter was whistling for Charlie: Gwilym's shed
THE FOX IN THE ATTIC 281
was almost ready — and just in time — but the daylight was
quite gone now and he had to stop.
Packing his tools, the carpenter hoped kind Mrs.
Tuckett had saved him a good tea. '"Night, Missus:
marnin' to finish un'!"
Somehow Nellie managed to answer "Goodnight." The
man and the dog were gone; and only the faint evening
churchbells of distant Mellton floated to Nellie on the still
air, sounding infinitely remote.
Chapter 14
Past midnight now; and the only light still showing in
all snowy Lorienburg shone from the window of Otto's
office, for Sunday or no Otto would go on working just
so long as he could keep awake: Otto dreaded his bed.
Everyone else seemed to be sleeping. All their sealed
windows were dark. Heavy curtains occluded even the
nightlight burning in the twins' room: within, its gleam
just revealed them as two mere molehills in the middle
of the blankets evidently not needing to breathe. And like-
wise (through the door he always left open onto the stairs)
the faint glow from his overheated stove just showed
Augustine: he was smiling in his sleep, and stroking the
pillow. But elsewhere the darkness of the silent house was
everywhere profound. Mitzi, in her own private darkness
within it, dreamed she was weightless and climbing a
ladder; but each rung beneath her vanished as she took
her foot off it, ^nd the ladder was topless.
Only in the billowing darkness of the attics above two
eyes were open, and staring. Endlessly cooped-up there,
knowing he could never again leave these attics alive,
something long under intolerable strain in Wolff was
beginning to break at last.
November the Eleventh: in Wolff's eyes and many
others 'blackest day in the calendar, day that the traitors
sold Germany down the river. . .'
Germany had not been defeated: whatever the world
pretended, she had not been defeated! For in childhood
the axiom that Germany could not be defeated had been
imbedded in Wolff deep in his core of intuited knowledge,
far below all corrective reach of perception or reason.
This, then, was the early but abiding disaster of Wolff
282
THE FOX IN THE ATTIC 283
and his kind: transcendental truth had set them at logger-
heads with all reality, a deadlock Wolff could not break.
However, in the course of his self-immolation on the altar
of 'Germany' Wolff's over-altruist self had by now so
atrophied it could no longer contain this his Disaster: yet
of its nature that disaster allowed no normal outlet —
neither into God nor man. Final escape could be only into
the absolute unreality of death; but in the meantime
Wolff had turned, as to Death's twin and surrogate-on-
earth, to Romantic Love: sole comparable realm, with
Death's, of the Unreal.
Thus, in the same knightly way as Palamon in his
Athenian tower, this Wolff had also fallen deeply into
romantic love last summer with the unknown girl seen
'romen to and fro' beneath him in the garden. For Mitzi's
yellow hair too was
"broyded in a tresse
Bihinde hir bak, ayerde long I gesse"
and like Palamon, the moment he saw it Wolff too had
"bleynte, and cryde 'A!9
As if he stongen were unto the herte."
Wolff still knew nothing about Mitzi; for she was too
sacred to speak of even to Franz. They could never meet:
this girl he called 'his' must never know he existed. . .
But that was all as it should be, for this kind of loving alone
could have suited Wolff, and his love was all the more
deep and poignant for being unreal.
Now Reality had broken into even this charmed circle
too, so that tonight Wolff knew his jangled nerves might
no longer turn for solace to what had lately become its
habitual source for him — to inward dramas of killing him-
self in Mitzi's presence, to the exquisite pleasure of dying
with his face bathed in Mitzi's scalding tears. Yet even
tonight his homing thoughts unwatched kept creeping
back willy-nilly towards this their usual performance, and
284 THE FOX IN THE ATTIC
each such time his reverie was shattered anew by the
recurring shock of those two lovers seen stumbling together
through the snow!
Each such blow left something defenceless in Wolff
weaker, till finally the intolerable tension snapped at last.
.1 Herman girl who accepted an Englishman's advances, and this
her guilty lover. . . THEY MUST BE KILLED. It
was a very voice from outside: the most compulsive call
of Conscience even this addict had ever heard.
Why had Wolff not plunged on them from his window
that first moment he saw them together — like a plummet,
like an avenging Lucifer destroying himself and them
together all three?
Perhaps he might have — had they come near enough.
Yet for him that would surely have been altogether too
soon! For this was murder; and surely the essence of
murder lies always less in the final perfunctory act than in
the malice prepense: in the turning it over and over and
over beforehand in one's mind. No, this must be carefully
planned. Wolff was ignorant even, as yet, who slept where
in those storeys downstairs he had never entered. No pre-
cipitate act, this; but rather, a passionless duty he had to
perform, a punishment he had to inflict: his last and
supreme sacrifice to offer on Germany's altar, this was
an act to be done in the coldest of cold blood. . . yet at
the very thought of coming on Mitzi asleep and killing
her an excruciating flame lit in the pit of his stomach,
constricting his breathing!
The supernatural voice had hit Wolff at first with the
suddenness and violence of an electric shock, striking him
rigid; but now the rigor had passed, leaving all over him
a heavenly glow. Vividly now Wolff saw himself creeping
through the dark and silent house like the angel of death:
he saw himself silently opening a door, within which lay
Mitzi still and white on her bed with her eyelids closed
THE FOX IN THE ATTIC 285
and her hair all dispread : he stretched himself on her like
Elisha on the Shunammite child. . . and saw his two hands
close to his own eyes as they smothered her with the
pillow. . .
Wolff was huddled the while face-down on his attic
floor, and the heart in his breast thumped wilder and
wilder for beneath his taut overlaying weight on the lump-
ish furs he could feel Mitzi's heart beating under him. He
could feel it flutter, and stop. At that a thunder as of
falling towers was all about him, setting his ear-drums
ringing: he felt giddy to bursting, almost as if about to
vomit.
Or, ought Mitzi perhaps to die by the knife rather? Yes:
for 'I ABHOR THINGS STRANGLED' came from
the darkness the cold divine command.
Repeating his scene da capo Wolff now dwelt on his
teasing point pricking through the thin nightgown to the
naked skin so that she half- woke: then the sudden thrust
into the throbbing heart itself, the knife pumping in the
wound, the withdrawal and the hot blood welling to his
elbow. And this time, how peaceful that moment of vision!
Wolff's giddiness was gone: in spite of his heart's thumping
his troubled spirit was nearer tranquillity now than for
many months past.
'A passionless duty. . .?' Wolff was contrite. But
nothing could still the new life which coursed in his veins
tonight as he slipped quickly out of his wraps, in the dark,
and crept down the stairs in his socks.
Chapter 15
at nightfall the day's drowsing doubts, like roosting
iVowls, tend to take wing and hoot. Alone in his office
tonight Otto could nohow get Mitzi out of his mind. It
was their decision at Saturday's conclave that gave him
no peace: Had it been right, that decision? For what, after
all, had been their real motive in reaching it?
One thing Otto couldn't forget was the tone of Walther's
voice exclaiming that there'd never been a blind Kessen
ever before: he had sounded almost accusing, as if being
born physically faulty meant she deserved to be banished
from everyone's sight. No one had seemed to consider if
she'd be happy 'there': how to make up to Mitzi for her
affliction.
Surely there was doubt she'd be even accepted!
Normally they'd never take someone so handicapped: at
the least it meant special permissions.
Otto sighed. He knew very well, really, that Influence
could cope with all that. There'd be benefactions. They'd
never refuse. . . not a hope. And if they did refuse, what
was the alternative? (Otto was holding his list of timber
prices close to his eyes but they still wouldn't focus:
annoyed, he turned his oil lamp even higher; but it only
smoked.) He had to admit Adele had been unanswerable:
marriage was out of the question, for what sort of a
Schweinhund would ever marry a blind girl? Some insensi-
tive climbing clerk, for her dowry and connections? Surely
even this was better than that!
What other solution was there?
Mitzi wasn't to be told yet. . . yes, and how would she
take it when they did tell her? But Otto was aware this
was something no one would ever quite know. Mitzi had
286
THE FOX IN THE ATTIC 287
too much courage — too much self-control. When they told
her, she'd just obey orders, poker-faced: make the best
of it.
Looked-at like that the whole thing was near-blasphemy!
But reason told him there must be plenty of similar cases.
Otto was still turning this treadmill when the clock
struck two. — Bed! He was doing no good here. So at last
he lit his carrying-candle and put out the lamp. But this
dimmer light only made vivider his mental image of the
niece he was soon so totally to lose. Mitzi had never been
his favourite among Walther's children (surely one always
likes boy-children better than girls?) but he was deeply
concerned for her; and now as he passed her door on his
way to his own room this concern turned to an impulse
so strong it surprised him: he must see how she was!
Quietly he opened the door, and listened candle in hand
to the darkness inside.
Not a sound. She seemed to be sleeping, but he'd better
make sure. So Otto pushed the door wider, and went in
to look.
Chapter 16
As Wolff had reached habitation-level, the first door he
ilcame to stood open onto the stairs. Since it was right
on his line of retreat (this room normally not used), he
slipped inside to investigate; and by stovelight recognised
his English rival.
'THIS ONE SHALL DIE BY FIRE. . .' The Voice
was so loud Wolff wondered it didn't wake the sleeper;
but Augustine never stirred.
Fire. . . Wolff knew at once what to do, when the
time came (for he had done the same thing once before,
to a police-spy at Aachen) : he must drag this young man
out of bed pinioned in the sheet and too suddenly for any
struggle and kill him by holding his head against the red-
hot stove. Already (remembering Aachen) Wolff heard
the sizzle, smelt cooking bone and hair. It ought to be
quite easy — when the time came: but that was not yet,
might not even be tonight. For this kind of killing was not
like a quiet stabbing: even if he gagged his victim too
with the bedsheet he could hardly count on no noise at
all; there was Mitzi, and he must not risk rousing the
house till there was only himself left to kill.
He knew now where the Englishman slept. But Mitzi
came first: it might be more difficult to discover which
room was Mitzi's, nevertheless that was the next thing
Wolff had to find out.
Augustine stirred, and half- woke just as a reddish
shadow vanished through his door.
Quiet as any shadow Wolff prowled on down into the
pitch-dark hall. Here there were many doors. But here
again Fate was smoothing his path tonight; for one door
stood ajar, with a light inside. Through the chink Wolff
288
THE FOX IN THE ATTIC 289
could just see the head of the bed; and at what he saw
there his skin flushed hot from head to foot — for it was all
coming true. That hair spread over the pillow in the
candlelight was Mitzi's!
The candle which lit the room was hidden from outside,
where Wolff stood. But just then the shadow shifted, and
warned him just in time that someone else was in there
before him! He checked himself on the threshold.
Standing at the foot of the bed, Otto had just raised
his candle to look at her.
Asleep (Otto thought), with her hair all loose undone,
Mitzi looked not even a young girl yet— only a child.
Asleep, he saw with relief, she shut her eyes exactly as
everyone else does: asleep, no one could tell.
Walther and Adele — even Franz — had they no imagina-
tion? Surely they loved her more even than he did: then
had they no notion what the life they were sending her
to must be like for her? For someone so immature still, so
human, so. . . earthly? Almost one heard those great gates
creak as they slowly crushed shut on her!
Otto pitied his niece so deeply that almost (he thought)
it were better the poor girl had died.
Outside in the hall a loose tile clinked as Wolff retreated.
He was back in his attics long before Otto had left Mitzi
and gone to his room.
Wolff knew now where they both slept: he could do it
whenever he liked! Fate whose servant he was wasn't fickle
(said Wolff to himself as he ousted the fox from its nest
in those warm abandoned furs): Fate was helping him;
and Fate wasn't fickle! When the time did come for a
killing she always gave him the signal: till then, he must
wait.
Chapter iy
Morning again! Monday's wintry sun up, and those
twin molehills in the blankets erupting into two little
boys pulling on leather knickerbockers much blackened
and polished at the knees and seats: buckling on belts
which each carried a decorative sheath-knife, its handle a
roe-deer's foot.
After breakfast Augustine praised those knives loudly; for
he saw they were cherished cult-objects and he hoped to give
pleasure. But this marked praise seemed only to cause con-
sternation; and it mystified him still further when, in a solid
glum lump, all four children followed him to his room.
For a moment the lump blocked his doorway in silence.
Then, "Have you told yet?" ten-year-old Trudl asked
him in a deep, harsh voice.
Trudl was speaking 'good' German carefully, for
Augustine's benefit; but what did she mean by 'told', he
wondered? — Ah, about that fight-in-a-snowstorm of
course! But after himself saving the situation for them why
on earth should she think he'd 'tell'?
"No," said Augustine, smiling.
Trudl nodded (after all, if he had told Papa they'd
have heard of it!). Then she signed to the two little boys,
and with yard-long faces they began unbuckling their
belts. Trudl snatched both the knives and held them out
to Augustine: "Here you are, then," she said, and watched
him intently.
"It's a waste!" said the younger girl, Irma. She
addressed the ceiling cynically: "If he takes them he can
still 'tell' just the same."
"No! D-d-don' t give them yet!" stammered Rudi.
"Make him swear first!"
" 'Make him swear'' !" jeered Irma. "When he's
English, you little nit-wit? What good's that?"
290
THE FOX IN THE ATTIC 291
"B-b-but. . ." Augustine was so flabbergasted he even
caught Rudi's stammer: "I-I-I. . . I don't want your knives!"
"We all thought that was what you meant," explained
Trudl, non-plussed. "You as good as said so!"
For answer, Augustine thrust back the two knives
violently — and they fell to the ground.
"He wants something else, then," said Irma, flatly.
Heinz fumbled out a rather sticky pre-war fifty-pfennig
piece, looked at it disparagingly and returned it to his
pocket. There was a pause.
Then, "What will you take, to promise?" asked Trudl
anxiously. "If it isn't the knives you want?"
"I expect all he wants is to tell — when he's ready," Irma
suggested. "He likes keeping us waiting: it's fun for him."
But at this Trudl flung herself furiously on Augustine,
grabbing his jacket as if she was trying to shake him. "You
must say what you want!" she cried: "You must you must
you must!"
"Yes, now's your chance, Greedy!" said Irma, address-
ing Augustine directly for the first time. Then she ex-
changed glances with the twins: "Else we'll tell Papa
ourselves and take our whacking — and that way you'll get
nothing!" she added spitefully.
"Yes — serve him right!" said Rudi, refixing his knife to
his belt. After all, even a caning might be better than black-
mail: "Who minds a sore b-b-bum?" he added, lordly.
"/do. . . he must promise," Trudl miserably muttered.
Astonished, the others stared at her hostile and uncompre-
hending: "I'm too old to be beaten, now. . . it gives me
the 'funny feeling'. I'm older than any of you!"
The situation was so bizarre Augustine hardly knew if
he was on his head or his heels. In vain he tried to convince
them he'd hate for them to be beaten: that he'd no
intention of telling tales — but all gratis, he wanted nothing:
but no, his silence had to be bought! Their attitude was
that otherwise no Englishman's word could be trusted.
This astounded Augustine, for surely 'an Englishman's
a92 THE FOX IN THE ATTIC
word is his bond' is known the world over? (It astounded
this anti-patriot, too, to discover how angry this ignorant
attitude made him!)
In the end, Augustine gave in. "Very well," he said, "I'll
tell you." There was an anxious silence, while resources
were inwardly totted. "I want the biggest snowman there's
ever been; and you've jolly well got to build it for me."
They stared at him in paralytic astonishment. A grown-
up want a snowman? Mad. . . utterly mad! Eight eyes
fixed on him fearfully, the whole body retreated backwards.
"Before lunch!" Augustine called after them cheerfully:
"It's a bargain — don't forget!"
Whew! he thought: and these were her brothers and
sisters — the same flesh and blood as his Mitzi!
What a fool he'd been, Saturday, not to take his chance
in the chapel and speak to Mitzi! He'd had no other chance
since; and indeed so long as she kept to her room how could
he — short of going to Walther and demanding to see her?
No doubt Cousins Walther and Adele were wondering
what he was waiting for; but what did the old idiots
expect? Augustine was quite prepared to ask Walther's
leave for the marriage after speaking to Mitzi, but it was
just too Victorian if Walther expected to be asked for
permission before! 'Leave to address my attentions. . .' yes,
it looked very much as if that was what Walther did
expect, hiding Mitzi away like this!
As for Mitzi herself, what must she be thinking? She'd
be feeling deserted, she'd be asking herself what sluggard
sort of lover was this: she might think he'd had second
thoughts. . . she might even suppose that sacred moment
of one-ness in the courtyard had meant nothing to him!
All eyes were upon him — so Augustine supposed:
everyone was waiting for Augustine to speak! It never
occurred to him no one — not even Mitzi herself — had
noticed him falling in love.
Chapter 18
Mitzi was indeed feeling deserted that morning; but
deserted by God, not Augustine.
Waking (for Mitzi that morning) had been like waking in
an unexpectedly empty bed: God wasn't there — it was as
simple as that! Yesterday God talked in her ear, breathed
over her very shoulder: wherever she turned there wasn't
the tiniest interstice but God was there: yet today, when
she called to Him she could hear the words of her prayer
travelling outwards for ever into infinite empty distances.
Nothing even echoed them back to her — for nothing was
there.
So today Mitzi was indeed alone in her darkness, and
indeed in despair.
Mitzi had taken for granted that first day's first
ecstasy was going to be her condition from now on for ever.
It had never occurred to her once God had found and
possessed her she could ever lose Him again. Had her eyes
of the spirit also been smitten with blindness? Was that
possible? For God must be there!
Mitzi thought of that game where the seeker is blind-
fold but the onlookers help him by saying "You're cold!"
or, "You're hotter now. . ." Surely she was not truly alone,
with the glorious saints (she was told) all around her?
Crowds of them, clouds of them — onlookers, all of them
seeing where God was? Would none of them say 'hot' or
'cold' to her? For God MUST be there!
Or had Mitzi but eyes, to read with! The Learned
Fathers (she knew) had all been here before her, in this
'dark night of the spirit': at least they'd be company for
her — give her hope.
St. Teresa of Avila. . . Teresa had written of 'seasons of
293
294 THE FOX IN THE ATTIC
dryness', times when even that greatest of the mystics
found prayer was impossible; but surely Teresa had some-
thing too, somewhere, about the 'three waters' which
solace that dryness? Mitzi alas had paid little attention in
school when the nun read that bit aloud to them: now she
hadn't the haziest notion what those 'three waters' were
(and for that very reason felt certain that here lay the key
to her problem). The 'first water' was. . . what was it? Oh
had she but eyes, to read that book over once more!
But again, why had God done this? Why (and now her
soul trembled in mutiny), why show her the depths of His
love if He meant to withdraw it? Oh cruel the love that
so used her! Truly Mitzi had welcomed her blindness, if
nothing but blindness could open her heart to His sweet-
ness: but would she had never known bliss rather than
know it and lose it — on top of her blindness.
Yet Teresa. . . Oh could she but read. . . and that was
the state of her mind when she heard a knock at the door,
and her uncle walked in.
It had struck the uneasy Otto that morning how lonely
the girl must be feeling: so far as he knew, no one much
visited her except old Schmidtchen — and it couldn't be
good for her, moping alone in her room all day with
nothing to do. Leg or no leg he must get her to come for a
walk with him. Of course, he himself couldn't walk far; so
perhaps it would be better after all if Franz took her? Or
what about that young Englishman: surely he'd spare an
hour to give the poor girl an outing?
He must find out if she'd like that; and so he had come
to her room. But one glance was enough: Mitzi was huddled
in a chair beside her untasted breakfast, and her face wore
a look of such strain she was certainly fit for no stranger's
company. She answered incoherently, too: she seemed
unfit to converse, even with him.
THE FOX IN THE ATTIC 295
But Otto was determined not to leave her like this, now
he had come. Perhaps she would like him to read to her?
At that suggestion she trembled, but nodded. "Well:
what shall I read, then?"
But alas, to listen to 'Teresa' with him watching! It
must strip Mitzi's soul bare, and today her horrible soul
wasn't fit to be seen — not by anyone's eyes. Just because
she so longed for Teresa, then, Mitzi chose at a venture
Thomas-a-Kempis. Thomas seemed safer — more con-
gruous too (she told herself) with her uncle's disciplined
mind. And who knows? He might even prove helpful.
But Otto's calm unspeculative voice made Thomas's
dry mediaeval apothegms sound even drier still: Otto gave
the words a sharp intonation like musketry instructions
and Mitzi's attention soon wandered. She had been green,
and now she was cut down — dried and withered like grass. . .
"Shut your door, and call to you Jesus your beloved:
Stay with Him in your cell. . ."
— came Otto's confident voice. — Yes, all very well! But
suppose you call and He won't come?
Mitzi was getting sulky with Thomas. God had taken her
up like a toy. . .
The thing finally and supremely necessary for the
Christian (read Otto presently) was
" That, having forsaken everything else, he leave also
himself: go wholly out of himself, and retain nothing
of self-love. . ."
Then for a moment the reader glanced over his shoulder;
for silently Franz had looked in, made a face, and with-
drawn. Perhaps it was that momentary tiny change in
Otto's voice; or perhaps it was only the image of her own
unique ill-treated 'self so vivid that very moment in her
mind that made the bald words hit Mitzi like a thunder-
clap. She shuddered violently: for what did that mean?
Bg6 THE FOX IN THE ATTIC
Was Thomas saying that if she was to return to God,
then even to herself her 'self must become indistinguish-
able— no singer may single the sound of her own hosanna
in the chorus of the heavenly host?
Must she forego even her own 'I am' — the one thing she
had thought nothing could take from her — not Death,
even? But how could she, by sheer act of the will, do just
that? How could she forget she was 'she'? The task was
both unexpected and plainly impossible: if God existed, so
must she.
For Science can prove most things — or disprove them,
sooner or later; but there is one thing Science can't prove
or disprove and nobody asks it to because everyone knows
it already: each knows his own '7-ness'. Other people's
unproven '7-nesses' he is willing to surmise, by analogy;
but he can't be directly conscious of them from within as
he is of his own. Indeed there seems to be no other concept
in quite that same category — I mean, something without
intervention of the senses or logic a direct object of con-
sciousness— except for people like Mitzi conscious of God:
that is, of the '/'-ness of God. For it would be an under-
statement to say that Mitzi 'believed' in God; she was
conscious of His great 'I AM' in the same way — in the
very same breath of partaking — as she was of her own
little T am' that reflected the image of His. Say, rather,
that she 'believed' the existence of the people around her
— her Mother, Franz, Otto, Natascha! But God's existing
Mitzi 'knew' — from within it, just like her own.
In the squeeze of the dilemma Thomas had posed her,
for the first time it occurred to Mitzi that being 'with God'
is never a static condition: it is rather a journey — and
endless.
The discovery was visual. Far below her — like the lights
of an inn left behind in the valley when a sudden turn in
the mounting road shows them again but now directly
beneath you — she saw, in the likeness of a pinpoint of
THE FOX IN THE ATTIC 297
light far down underneath her, that first day's simple,
sweet happiness: and now knew she could never go back
to it. Nor did she want to, she found! For she who seeks
God must -press forward (thought Mitzi) : lost sight of, God
lies always in front.
Something of that moment of vision must have shone in
her face; for, watching and part-comprehending his
niece's emotion, Otto felt — yet hardly dared feel — a
sudden elation. Could it be after all. . . against all odds. . .
that their decision was the utterly right one?
If so, then some Saint had taken a hand since everyone's
motives in reaching it had been so utterly wrong.
Chapter ig
Franz had looked in on his sister because he too was
growing uneasy about that decision as time wore on.
Franz too couldn't get Mitzi out of his mind.
Yet surely Franz at least knew his motives had been of
the noblest? For his iron duty it was to keep his hands
free, his back unburdened for whatever burden Germany
might lay on it (so Wolff had taught him). Each son and
daughter of Germany these desperate days must be devoted
wholly to Germany; and what could a blind girl hope to
do for a Germany in travail except one thing — avoid
hampering the activists, take herself out of their way?
Like Agamemnon at Aulis, Franz had been called to bind
his nearest and dearest on his country's altar. . . and very
noble he was to do it, no doubt.
Yes. . . but would Mitzi herself see it that way unless he
explained to her? Franz must at least have a talk with his
sister and so he had gone to her room — but found his
uncle in there before him.
Uncle Otto was reading to Mitzi, and reading moreover
some of that anaemic soul-rotting drivel no good German
might believe any more. . . Ah, but Mitzi of course from
now on. . . it cut Franz to the quick, how far apart already
he and his dearest sister had drifted.
Disgruntled, Franz crept away without interrupting
them — up to the attics. For the root of Franz's new feelings
of guilt about Mitzi was undoubtedly this: she was to be
sacrificed to the 'Cause', but that Cause (if he would but
admit it) was in fact in a state of utter stagnation. Ever
since Rathenau (more than a year ago) nothing had been
done. Their mystic goal of Chaos seemed now remoter than
ever: even Friday's enigmatic upheaval in Munich had
298
THE FOX IN THE ATTIC 299
only left Weimar stronger. Meanwhile, the legions of the
Activists were. . . were inactive. Kern their old leader was
dead, and Fischer: even the noble young Saloman was in
prison: weaklings had joined the Nazis: that really only
left Wolff to lead them, and Wolff all these long months. . .
"Wolff!" Franz halted, trying to adjust his eyes to the
dusk. "Wolff, where are you? I want to talk."
Huddled in his furs, the recluse was crouched in the
open dormer staring out at the bright interminable sky.
Wolff was the same age as Franz but appeared even
younger, for the idealist's generic tendency to moral
insanity had left the generic innocent charm quite un-
affected— or had even enhanced that youthful magnetism
of altruism and singleness of purpose.
At long last Wolff's climbing rope was uncoiled again:
he was running it like a rosary through his fingers. From
far below in the courtyard the Englishman's voice floated
up to him (in his British impudence hectoring German
children! But his time would be short. . .).
Reluctantly, and with a rapt visionary look in his blue
wide-set eyes, Wolff turned away from the light. For the
last hour or so Wolff had been absorbed in his dreams of
killing Mitzi and naturally was loth to return to earth.
But he must: for. . . heavens, what was this good fellow
saying? (It was indeed something new to be criticised by
worthy little Franz.)
"Wolff, I do wish you'd listen! What I mean is, oughtn't
you to. . . well, in fact isn't it high time now we. . . look,
why don't you come out of here and put yourself at our
head?" Wolff stared at him in silence. "Then at least we
could all die gloriously like Kern and Fischer," Franz
added a little lamely. "But ever since Rathenau. . ."
The great Rathenau — the king-pin (they had thought)
without which the whole hated edifice must collapse —
Weimar's only genius! Walther Rathenau was a Jew, and
had just signed a treaty with the Bolsheviks; but that
wasn't the reason they had killed him: that had meant
3oo THE FOX IN THE ATTIC
nothing to Kern and Wolff and all their likeminded fellow
killers, for these were no bourgeois predictable Nazis. No:
with the complete open-mindedness only true fanatics can
afford they had read all his books with deepening admira-
tion, hung on his lips till they reached at last the mystic
conviction that here at last was the one wholly worthy
sacrifice for Germany's redemption which Fate must
accept. It was not till they at last knew they almost loved
Rathenau that they had heard that final categorical
imperative to kill him.
With an effort Wolff forced himself to answer: "Franz!
Don't you trust me any more?"
"Yes of course, Wolff, but. . ."
"Do you suggest I am shirking my duty?"
"No of course not! But. . ."
"Then can't you trust me to judge when the time is
ripe?"
Yet Wolff's words rang hollow even in his own ears; for
what nonsense they both were talking! He would never
come out, he knew that. Wolff couldn't say so to his only
disciple, but there was nothing left now to put himself at
the head of! All that was kaput — since Rathenau. Now
that Kern and Fischer (the protagonists in that sacrificial
killing) had died fighting in a deserted tower of Saaleck
Castle the whole Noble Army of Martyrs was on the run.
'The king-pin, without which the whole hated edifice
must collapse?' But it had not collapsed: instead, the
nationwide horror and revulsion of feeling had infected
even their own ranks and now Wolff had no friend or
follower left in all Germany but silly Franz.
"Wolff, you must break out — not stick here rotting! A
hundred heroes call you!"
But Wolff only smiled a rather superior smile. He had
nobler things to think about now, did Franz but know it.
Anyway, how could he wish to leave here even if he was
able? In a whole year spent here he had grown into a
unity with the very timbers of these attics (to express that
THE FOX IN THE ATTIC 301
unity he now knotted his rope to one). Look! Like the
bones in Ezekiel already these beams were covering them-
selves with flesh, with skin — and it was his flesh and skin
they were growing (delicately Wolff stroked the wood with
one affectionate finger, tracing beetle-paths in the thick
dust). He would breathe into these dry beams soon, and
then these attics would live. . .
Though perhaps the whole range of them was too large
to vivify: enough his one particular corner, his own bundle
of furs. . . Indeed, better still when he had something
quite closed-in — say a box — to lie in. He must ask Franz
for one. . .
"Wolff! !!— -For the LAST TIME!"
Franz looked so funny in his ignorant, puny vexation
that Wolff started to laugh. Little this booby knew what
final exploit for Germany Wolff was planning: that made
it funnier still! So funny, Wolff laughed and laughed. . .
he'd a good mind to tell Franz all about it just to see how
he took it.
Franz left finally almost in tears. But even before he
was gone Wolff had forgotten him, back in his dreams of
destroying those two.
After all, he would not do it while they slept: no, he'd
kill them together — and so that they knew. One day they'd
go for a walk in the forest; and he would follow them. He
would stalk them, flitting from tree-bole to tree-bole. By
the end, deep in the forest and far from all help, they'd
suspect something was there and yet never see him. He
would circle them round — like this noose he was knotting.
Fear would seize them: they'd cling to each other, and —
hidden — he'd mock them. Then at last he'd come out to
them, slowly, and kill them, and bury them deep in the
snow where no one would find them till spring.
3o2 THE FOX IN THE ATTIC
Mitzi's hair. . . blood, running in its fine gold, running
down till it crimsoned the snow.
Mitzi's blood, spouting — floods of it — lakes of it, warm
and exquisite! — Seas of it. . .
Look! The sun himself dangled a rope of glutinous blood
from his globe — emulous, wanting to join those seas like a
waterspout.
On a fountain of blood like a bobbing ball on a water-
jet Wolff's soaring soul was mounting to heaven — high,
high into the interminable blue. . . but then something
bit it! Bat-winged and black, something sunk teeth in it,
tore it.
The abominable attack was so sudden — no time to
recall Wolff's soul to his body, it was caught out there
bare: spirit to spirit in hideous unholy communion.
Despair! Down he was rocketing falling twisting. . . oh
agony agony! Blackness, everywhere black: noise. . . pain,
everywhere pain — unbelievable pain!
'I ABHOR THINGS STRANGLED. . .'
From his temples the sweat spurted, and his teeth met
through his tongue.
Chapter 20
Below in the sunny courtyard the children were wildly
laughing.
Augustine had driven them hard: he had kept them
working on that colossal snowman a whole hour without
respite. But when it was done he had remodelled its nose
with his fingers a minute or two, added his own hat and
pipe and scarf — and lo, it was him! Then Augustine had
been the first to knock the hat off with a snowball, and
now they were all pelting it madly (not entirely without
rancour, however, and the laughter was rather high-
pitched) .
Otto was in his hot little office again, where almost
nothing was audible from outside; where the only sound
was the slow, stuttering thump of his typewriter as he sat
at it, sweating.
Under Otto's window Franz was alone — skiing, hurtling
down the almost precipitous castle mound between the
close-planted trees and missing them by hairs'-breadths.
It was madly dangerous, but his spirit with its newly-
broken navel-string was now in that kind of turmoil only
deliberate danger can ease. Walther had been away since
early, in a distant part of the forest where there was work
to be planned. Adele was down in the village.
Thus the whole inhabited house was empty except for
Mitzi, still in her room.
There, everything was quiet. Even the voices of the
children she couldn't hear; for Mitzi's window was on the
far side of the house, over the river. But then, in the still-
ness, her acute ears caught an extraordinary sound: a
human and yet inhuman sound, a sound she could only
describe to herself as worse than groaning and it came from
overhead— no doubt of that, it came from somewhere in
303
304 THE FOX IN THE ATTIC
those empty floors above her. There was someone up
there: someone who needed help.
Mitzi went to her door and called Franz: no one
answered of course. Then she called to her father; but the
house was utterly still and now she had that certainty one
feels sometimes in an empty house that it is empty. There
was nothing else for it : she would have to go up there herself.
Crossing the hall at a venture she luckily struck the door
to the stairs first shot, and with her hand on the wall to
guide her began to feel her way up them. Slowly passing
Augustine's door (which stood open as usual) she spoke
his name into it, quietly— though certain he wouldn't be
there. Then she went on as fast as she dared, to the heavy
door at the top.
Hinges and latch had been recently oiled: the door
swung open without the creak she expected. This second
floor, she remembered, consisted of 'rooms', like the first
floor: finished, and even furnished — only not used since
the war so that everything here was lifeless, and shrouded
moreover in dirt and dust: her sensitive fingers abhorred it.
She stood still here a moment, and listened; but there
wasn't a sound. The groaning had ceased. Something told
her, though, it had come from much higher than this —
that terrible groaning.
As best she could Mitzi felt her way to the next flight of
stairs (which she dimly remembered were brick ones) and
started to mount them. These stairs were uneven and
narrow: she hadn't been up here for years and no longer
could picture properly what lay in front of her.
So she reached the next storey, and it was from this
point she reckoned that nearly the whole building lay open
right up to the roof: a timber skeleton only — rooms never
partitioned, floors that had mostly never been planked.
But in that case, surely she ought to. . . wouldn't she hear
the roof-clock clearly, not muffled like this?
She should have, of course! And this muffled sound con-
vinced her she'd made a mistake. So long was it since
THE FOX IN THE ATTIC 305
she'd been up here she'd counted them wrong: there must
be another flight yet before one got to the attics. This was
a whole storey of rooms she'd somehow forgotten. . . and
just then she tripped over a jug.
Again Mitzi started to mount; but confused now, for
having once made a mistake she could no longer imagine
at all what her eyes should be seeing. Progress was night-
marishly slow although the need for haste was so desperate
for she had to trust wholly to feel, and feeling explored no
more than one arm's-length ahead every time.
Then her ears told her she had got there at last! The
slow, clear tick of the clock. . . a feeling of space all around
her, the breath of a draught. . . and again Mitzi stood
still and listened. Though clear and sharp it was still far
above her, the tick. . . took. . . of that clock. From far
above, too, came the sizzle of water that trickled into the
tank in the roof through a half-frozen ball-cock. And the
squeaking of bats.
From here on, the stairs were a makeshift: little more
than a ladder. She needed her hands to climb with. Then
she came to what must be some sort of platform, for her
shuffling foot felt an edge — with nothing below; and her
fingers confirmed it.
The sound of the clock and the sizzling water were
nearer now. But now there was something else too — a
faint sound of movement. . . quite close to her. . . yes, the
sound of. . . Someone was there!
Mitzi opened her lips, and licked them, and called:
"Who is it?"
No answer; and yet the faint sounds continued.
"Don't be afraid!" she called clearly: "I'm coming to
help you! Where are you?"
No answer; yet still that rustle, of somebody moving.
A creak — very close to her now.
The fox had been here: Mitzi smelt him. She dropped
to a squatting position calling his name, and he thrust his
3o6 THE FOX IN THE ATTIC
wet nozzle into her hand with a stifled half-howl. The
creature was in a queer state: she could feel it, and caught
the infection. Suddenly she too was thoroughly frightened.
That faint sound was movement — within feet of her
surely! Nearer than ticking clock or dribbling water,
although so much fainter. Mitzi wanted to call out again
"Who is it?" but now her voice wouldn't come. The stairs!
Could she find her way back to the stairs if. . . if she had
to? But she mustn't think about stairs yet: she had come
here to bring help.
"Sub pennis ejus sperabis" Mitzi breathed: "Non timebis a
timore nocturno. A sagitta volante per diem, a negotio perambulante
in tenebris, a ruina et dcemonio meridiano. . ." As that gabbled
childhood spell against the dark had always done long ago,
now too the sacred words began to work in her instantly.
"Under His feathers thou shalt find hope," she repeated
(in German this time). "Thou shalt not be afraid for any
terror by night, nor for the arrow that flieth by day. . ."
and now fear totally left her: and left of 'her', seemingly,
nothing but a love that spread outwards like pulsing
chimes from a bell.
But then in a puff of sound the distant happy voices
of the children floated up to her followed by Franz's
scandalised voice that admonished them. That recalled
'Mitzi': for the sound must come through a window, and
this meant that now she knew where she was — somewhere
close to the dormer! This platform must be the narrow
planked catwalk that led to it.
On her hands and knees she crept there. The dormer
was open! Something smelling of ammonia was close to
her. . . She craned out and called to him:
"Franz! — Quick, Franz!"
"COMING!" he shouted.
The children — this was what had scandalised Franz —
THE FOX IN THE ATTIC 307
were chasing Augustine out through the Great Gate pelt-
ing him with snow: so neither they nor Augustine heard
Mitzi. But Franz heard, and flight after flight he bounded
upstairs, burst into the attic, then up the ladder. . . and
saw them — there, by the perilous window! His sister was
crouched at the low sill. Close behind her was Wolff,
looming over her. Close to Mitzi — as in life he had never
been close.
For this was Wolff's body, hanged from the beam. The
feet were clear of the gangway — out over nothing. The
body was swinging a little still, and slowly turned from
the tension it put on the creaking rope.
Franz's first thoughts were none for his hideous friend
but all for his sister: how could he get her away unaware
of what was hanging right over her? Any moment she'd
stand up and bump into it.
Franz grabbed her, but Mitzi strongly resisted: "No!"
she cried. "Idiot. There's someone up here, I heard him!
I called you. . ."
She only gave in when he told her, sharply, that Wolff
was beyond help.
Chapter 21
Buckets ringing like bells on the cobbles: the early-
morning carolling of boys with December voices still
hoarse from the pillow, with unwashed eyes still sticky
from sleep and new-donned breeches still cold to their
bums! Jinglings from the saddle-room, whinnyings from
the stalls: a smell of leather, metal-polish, saddle-soap, of
linseed bubbling on the stove, of warm new dung being
shaken, of sizzling urine. . . bobbing lanterns haloed in
mist, rime on the great yard pump ghostly in the gloaming
— and a huge forkful of hay travelling high like a giant's
head on a pike. . .
Two weeks to Christmas — and the stable clock striking
Six! For life began mighty early in Mellton stables under
Mary's regime even if this wasn't a hunting morning
(hunting had stopped even in this scrambling Mellton
country because of the iron frost).
Polly in her nightgown hung out of the nightnursery
window, listening to it all and trying to watch. Alas that
it was all too far off to be smelt also; for in Polly's nose
nothing after Gusting's smell equalled the smell of stables,
not even a rabbit-hutch full of her own particular rabbits.
As she leaned from the window the December air was raw
and her teeth started to chatter, but Polly paid no atten-
tion: it was better to be cold than bored. Polly's purgatory
was that every single day she woke soon after five; and
unless Augustine was in the house, at five no one seemed
to welcome a visit. But except Christmas and birthdays
Polly wasn't allowed to dress till years later — not till Minta
came at the dreary hour of seven. If only they'd let Polly
take her rabbits to bed with her or even a kitten she'd
have stopped on in bed, perhaps; but not just with teddies,
for teddies smelt only of shop, she'd no use for teddies. . .
308
THE FOX IN THE ATTIC 309
Oh lucky stable-boys (thought Polly) allowed to get up
at half-past five every day of their lives!
Polly had told Willie-Winkie once how lucky he was;
but he only made noises for answer, and the noises were
rude. All the same. Wee- Willie-Winkie was her favourite
(fourteen, yet almost Polly's own size) . Willie smelt of gin
and tobacco as well as of horses and 'boy' : he was aimed
for a jockey, he told her. Willie was clever too: she had seen
him bridle a hunter of seventeen hands; he tempted its
head down with an apple laid on the ground, and then
when the horse's head went up again wee Willie went up
with it.
Now the stable clock struck half-past, and Polly could
stand it no longer. She would creep downstairs to see what
the housemaids were up-to, enjoying their brief hour of
sovereignty now while the house was exclusively theirs. As
she opened the door Jimmy scuttled past down the pas-
sage, his arms full of boots and his mouth full of jokes.
Then she found Gertie brushing the stairs: Polly stepped
over her carefully, but Gertie tickled her legs with the
long-haired banister-brush as she passed.
When Polly got to the drawing-room, Rosamond was
dusting the Cupiddy ceiling with a bunch of cock's-
feathers on the end of a twelve-foot cane. Polly hoped to
be chased with it; but Rozzie was 'busy'. . . The dining-
room, then? But Violet was sweeping the dining-room and
Violet was always a cross-patch, so Polly tiptoed away
unseen. However, in the morning-room she found Mabel,
lighting the fire and singing. Mabel had polished the grate
till it shone, and Polly by now was shivering (she'd for-
gotten her slippers and dressing-gown) so sat herself down
on the fender to admire it, watching the flames as they
grew and warming her toes. She and Mabel were friends:
Mabel let her stay on (but, "Now then, Polly Flinders!"
said Mabel, and stopped her playing with coal).
When Mabel departed at last she forgot her black-lead,
3io THE FOX IN THE ATTIC
and Polly — deeply admiring the shine on the grate —
thought suddenly how very much nicer the rocking-horse
up in the nursery would look. . . so annexed the saucer of
wet blacklead and the brushes and (remembering Gertie
to pass) secreted them under her nightgown. But they were
awkward to carry that way, and she dropped them twice
before she successfully got to her room. Just as she got
there moreover the clock chimed the three-quarters: Minta
might come any minute, so prudently Polly hid her spoils
in her bed and climbed in on top of them. Thus at Seven,
when Minta did come at last, against all precedent Polly
was fast asleep.
At Eight, kitchen-breakfast was over and Lily — you
remember young Lily — was out in the scullery washing it
up. For Lily this was a fine coign of vantage for saucing
the postman (a light-weight boxer of note); for at Eight
the post was delivered. The mail for the Chase arrived
grandly, in their own private leather despatch-box with
the Wadamy crest: Mr. Wantage it was who unlocked it
and gave out the post, and as usual he made this a solemn
occasion. The Master's and Mistress's letters he would sort
and set out with his own hands by their places at breakfast,
with the 'halfpennies' underneath the real letters (today
the Mistress had one with a foreign stamp: he would put
this on top). Any letters for Kitchens he gave to Cook to
distribute. Today there was one for Mrs. Winter: that
went to the Room. There was a letter today too for Nanny
Halloran; and this he entrusted to Minta.
Minta took Nanny's letter up with the Nursery break-
fast, and as soon as Nanny had drawn an elegant 'P' in
golden syrup on Polly's plateful of Force she opened it.
The letter came from Minta's forerunner, Brenda (an
orphan, Brenda was devoted to Mrs. Halloran and still
looked to her for advice when she needed it).
Brenda had gone temporary now to Lady Sylvia to help
'Mumselle' with little Lady Jane; and the letter was dated
THE FOX IN THE ATTIC 311
from a village near Torquay, for in spite of the season Her
Ladyship had packed Janey off into lodgings — as far from
Eaton Square as she could. Now, Brenda wanted advice
about giving her notice. "Tchk, Tchk," said Nanny, purs-
ing her lips as she read it and absently cooling her tea
in the saucer: for Janey (it said) the very first day there
had locked Mumselle in her bedroom and gone off ferret-
ing with some village boys. She enjoyed this so much that
next day she and the boy at the lodgings decided to go
on their own; but, not having a ferret, took the cat with
them instead. However, it seems that when the boy pushed
his cat down a rabbit-hole the cat had objected. It tried
to get out, and so Janey sat on the hole. Thus began a
battle of wills; for the half-suffocated cat was desperate
and yet under the boy's eyes Janey just couldn't give in. It
bit and it scratched, but she sat and she sat. In the end,
she 'come home with her knicks all blood and fair tore
to rovings' — and also minus the cat.
"Tchk, Tchk," said Nanny, passing the letter to Minta.
Then she added: "Of such is the Kingdom of Heaven!"
and sighed at the prospect. "When that one was old
enough," Nanny went on, "/'d send her into the Navy —
if she wasn't a girl."
"If she was a boy, you mean," put in Polly.
"That's what I said: 'z/*she wasn't a girl'."
"But she might be a dog," said Polly, her eyes shining
with logic: "Not everyone's boys or girls."
"Eat up your Force, dear," said Nanny.
Mrs. Winter's letter was propped beside Mrs. Winter's
breakfast egg in its green crochet-work cosy, and the post-
mark was 'Flemton' ("Proper mad-house!" Mrs. Winter
muttered: "Ought to be certified the whole lot of them.").
The letter of course came from Nellie's mother-in-law; and
it was certainly short. The old lady was well but wanted
a catapult and hoped dear Maggie would send one.
Chapter 22
When Gvvilym's mother first had that seizure at the
mortuary she was taken to the Penrys Cross infirmary,
but when she was better they had wanted to send her
home. Where should they send her however? She was a
bit 'funny' after her illness: she certainly mustn't live alone
any more. Could she come to her son at the 'Hermi-
tage?
She'd have to sleep in the kitchen of course, and if she
was bedridden. . . but still, if they had to. . . Nellie herself
was prepared. All this ought to have worried Gwilym, no
doubt; but nowadays Gwilym seemed to have lost the
power of worrying just as he had lost the power of using
his legs. It certainly worried Nellie! But what could be
done? Maggie was adamant the old lady mustn't come
to the 'Hermitage'; but Nellie couldn't even get away
to go down there and see to things (nor could she have
borne to go there). So, in the end, Maggie it was who
went.
This had been Mrs. Winter's second visit to Penrys
Cross: she had gone to the funeral (sole family mourner
thereat), and after had called on the coroner to learn all
she could. So now she went straight to the one person she
knew at the Cross. Luckily this was one of Dr. Brinley's
'good' days: when she showed him how hopeless it was
to think of Gwilym and Nellie he promised to fix it. "A
bit funny, you say? Then it means finding suitable lodg-
ings." He would find the old lady somewhere in Flemton
(a place where no one thought anyone inside the com-
munity odd).
On the orders of Dr. Brinley, therefore, Alderman
Teller, who combined a moribund sweets-and-drapery
business with marketing prawns, agreed to let her a room;
312
THE FOX IN THE ATTIC 313
and there Mrs. Winter installed her. After that, Mrs.
Winter had to go home.
The room was lofty, and panelled, and musty, with an
elegant marble mantelpiece (gone a trifle rhomboidal);
and for company, plenty of mice. The mice had shocked
Mrs. Winter; but the old lady took to them and started
a war at once to protect them from cats. For at Alderman
Teller's (all former High Stewards had this courtesy-title
of 'Alderman') the cats of the town roamed in and out as
they liked. They seemed to find Teller mice extra-desirable
— because (she supposed) of some special bouquet these
acquired from their diet of prawns; and soon it was war
to the knife between her and the cats. Thus the mice were
in clover at Alderman Teller's: what with unlimited
prawns, and with snippets of velvet to upholster their
holes, and now the old lady's protection; and she too was
in clover — what with the mice, and the Tellers couldn't be
kinder, and even in bed she could hear the roar of the
sea which she loved and the far-off occasional ping of the
cash-till as sixpence went in.
True, she couldn't see out much unless the window was
open; for the glass was frosted with salt and scratched and
pitted by a century's driving sand. Some days it had to
be tight shut, for at times she felt she was floating and
might float out of it. But the days she felt stable enough to
risk it she kept the window wide open — to harass the cats,
whose favourite way into the house was a broken pane in
the window directly below hers. At first she was able to
check them by waving her arms out of the window and
cursing; but in time they got used to that, and ignored
her and still went in and out as they chose. However,
someone had left a salmon-rod in her wardrobe. So she
plugged up the hole in the glass downstairs, and went back
to her room. There she waited till a queue of frustrated
cats had formed on the sill underneath her, then leaned
right out and swept them all off with the rod (two tabbies,
314 THE FOX IN THE ATTIC
three tortoiseshells, one semi-demi-Persian, and the old
red torn with one ear).
After that, as the cats grew warier she too grew warier:
she developed her sport to an art. As for Flemton, Dr.
Brinley was right: at the spectacle of an old lady fishing
for cats all day with a salmon-rod from a second-floor
window not even the children looked twice.
To get back to the railhead at Penrys Cross Mrs. Winter
had travelled by carrier's-cart on top of the Alderman's
prawns; and His Worship the driver was Tom, the present
High Steward himself. From a lifetime of lifting weights,
Tom's bull-neck and shoulders were prodigious: he was
solider far than his horse. His manner was always laconic:
he drank like a fish: his schooling had been kept to a
minimum: but Tom was no fool. Tom's brother George
owned the 'Wreckers', Hugh fattened store cattle on the
Marsh and together these three were the power in Flem-
ton, with the 'Worshipful Court' and all that in their
pockets (there was a fourth brother too but he didn't
count. Aneurin was a coasting-smack skipper whose ships
always sank and who now had set up as a dentist — or so
his brass plate described him, but no one had ventured
inside).
Jogging along the lanes Tom had given Mrs. Winter
some news which surprised her: Newton was going to be
sold! Oh yes, Tom was sure of it: the young squire had
decided to sell (Tom glanced at her sideways) and any
day now the bills would be out for the auction. . . though
some said the place had been sold already — a war-
profiteer it was who had bought it, one who Lloyd George
had turned into a Lord. After all, why wouldn't he sell?
Nice welcome he'd get if he ever come back here (Tom
glanced at her sideways again). "But some say it's entailed
and mustn't be sold."
When Tom wanted to find something out he never
asked questions: he formed working hypotheses, announced
THE FOX IN THE ATTIC 315
them like this and observed the effect. But although Mrs.
Winter hadn't known this and was taken by surprise,
Tom's 'method' had at last met its match in her habitual
discretion: she listened politely but gave him no shadow
of lead. Tom lashed at his willowy dawdling horse and
lapsed into silence. The point was that just now Tom was
thinking of buying a bus and this made it vital to know
whether Newton was going to be sold, for when an estate
like Newton comes under the hammer there are pickings
which mustn't be missed. If Newton was up for sale, then
the brothers would need all the cash they could raise and
the bus would be better postponed.
"After all,'' he resumed, "now Young Squire has turned
Roman Catholic and settled in Rome. . . bought a very
fine house there they tell me, next door to the Pope. . ."
T.S.,' wrote old Mrs. Hopkins, 'and better send pellets.'
'Proper mad-house indeed!' thought Mrs. Winter again
as she buttered her toast.
Chapter 23
at Nine, Mellton's day really began: for at Nine the
XxMaster came down.
Gilbert's post was a large one, but today he gobbled his
breakfast and left his letters to read in the train. He had
to get up to Town in a hurry. The election was over last
Thursday, but no one knew yet who had won: the cards
had been dealt but the hands had still to be played.
Baldwin had gone to the country on 'Protection':
Liberals and Labour alike had stuck to Free Trade.
Clearly the country rejected Protection since less than five
and a half millions had voted for it while more than eight
and a half voted against; but there all clarity ended, for
the 'defeated' Protectionists were still the largest party in
a House where no single party had a majority (and where
Labour had now somehow got thirty-three more seats than
the Liberals had). Suppose, then, that when Parliament
met in January the Tories were forced to resign, who
ought to succeed them? The party second in strength, the
Socialists? But if eight and a half million votes had rejected
Protection, nine and a half must be reckoned as anti-
Socialist votes! Only the Liberals opposed both policies the
country rejected: thus in a true sense only the Liberals
represented the popular will. The Liberals themselves
then? No doubt some Tories would have supported them
to keep the Socialists out: all the same, since the popular
will had made them the smallest group in the House. . .
(Mary's post was more moderate in size than Gilbert's,
but the German stamp was on top and she wanted to read
Augustine's letter at leisure: she would wait till Gilbert
was gone.)
. . . The practical answer of course was simple in prin-
ciple. Since a Liberal administration was really out of the
316
THE FOX IN THE ATTIC 317
question and the very word 'Coalition' these days was
something which stank, either the Protectionists must stay
in office but at the price of forswearing Protection, or the
Socialists must forswear Socialism and step into their shoes.
In either case Centrist policies would have to be carried
out— by n'importe qui, provided it wasn't the Centrists.
So the Liberals though the smallest were today the most
powerful group in the House, having absolute power to
decide who should govern (provided that wasn't them-
selves), and how they should govern, and for how long. . .
(Without opening the envelope Mary pinched it with
her fingers: it was certainly bulky.)
. . . Well then, which should it be? Should the two elder
parties combine to 'save the country from Socialism', or
shall we let Labour in on Liberal leading-strings? "In such
a dilemma," said Gilbert, "Ethics must guide us not
Interest. I abhor Socialism — at the very thought of a
Socialist government my being revolts. But I see this as
just a plain question of right and wrong, Mary: whatever
the pretext it would be morally indefensible to cheat
Labour of the prize their electoral victories have earned
them."
For a moment Mary looked puzzled. After all, which-
ever party was forced into office on such miserable condi-
tions must cut a pretty poor figure there: at the next
election they'd be bound to be out for the count. . . In
other words, which did the Liberals hate most? " 'Elec-
toral victories'?" she queried: "Oh, I see what you mean:
put them in because they re the ones who've been pinching
rightful Liberal votes!"
But Gilbert was gone. Now his mind was made up he
was off to London post-haste.
*
. . . For several days the police were in and out all the
time [Augustine had written], comic little chaps in green
looking more like gamekeepers — no helmets even! Some-
thing about a body being found somewhere Irma told me
3i8 THE FOX IN THE ATTIC
(she is one of the children). Irma said he hanged himself
in the attic but she must have made that up the little ghoul
for how could a stranger have got in and got up there?
(Mary wondered if Mr. Asquith would listen to Gilbert:
he'd better, this was jolly ingenious!)
. . . But if it had just been a tramp died of cold in a barn
or something why the police buzzing around all that
much? Then a very decent-looking old boy turned up
who Trudi said was the father [Trudi is the eldest he had
written in afterwards] and this is interesting, he had a young
chap with him I more or less knew, he changed some
money for me at that hotel I spent my first night in
Munich at! It must have been the funeral they came for
but it was all kept mighty quiet. . .
(Jeremy had once defined 'political instinct' as "letting
one's transparent nobility of character compel one to
some highly profitable course of action".)
. . . and Walther and Franz both said nothing to me with
such emphasis it obviously wouldn't have done to ask
questions.
(Jeremy's an absolute pig!)
The kids are a lot of fun now though they were a bit
sticky at first, I suppose my being foreign and I don't
think anyhow they are used to a grown-up spending
most of his time with them, in their world, in fact treat-
ing them as fellow-humans with equal rights. . .
With the tail of her eye, through the window Mary
caught sight of a groom walking her horse up and down
(Heavens, she was supposed to be riding up to the Hermi-
tage this morning!). She had better stop now and get
changed. She would take the letter upstairs and read some
more while she dressed. But she mustn't be long or the horse
would get cold (and Nellie might want to go out).
The other day, Trudi and Irma. . .
Chapter 24
Nellie had been at the Hermitage for more than a
month by now, and somehow — with Mrs. Wadamy's
help, and Maggie's — a whole new rhythm of living for
Nellie had bit by bit grown up.
Milk had seemed an insuperable difficulty at first, since
there were no farms in the chase. But Mrs. Wadamy had
evolved an ingenious plan whereby a farm-lad on his way
home from work every evening left it in a hollow oak only
half a mile from the house: from there Nellie lantern in
hand fetched it as early as she could fit in the time (though
sometimes this wasn't till near midnight, after the baby's
last feed) . As for the water, each bucket took seven minutes
to draw (it was lucky that Nellie for all her book-learning
was strong as a horse). There was one advantage in well-
water, though: there were no pipes to freeze, now that
even in England it had turned really cold (especially up
here in the chase).
In short, things weren't easy for Nellie. Some people
find even a baby a whole-time job, while Nellie had the
constant care of an invalid as well and on top of all that
the shopping. In the past, Nellie's housekeeping had been
of the town kind which includes constant poppings round
the corner for little things forgotten, the matching of rival
shop-windows for bargains — a penny off this or that at
So-and-so's this week. But Mellton village had only one
shop-of-all-sorts, and here the prices were uniformly higher
than town prices: all the pennies were on, not off.
Mrs. Wadamy rode her horse over three times a week
to see all was well and generally she brought something
in her saddle-bags, but these little presents were 'extras' —
calves' -foot jelly and the like: the shopping still had to be
done. Maggie had lent her sister her bicycle, and this was
319
320 THE FOX IN THE ATTIC
.in enormous help; but even then Mellton, nearly five
miles away, was a major expedition to be made as seldom
as possible and loads were heavy in consequence. Wheeling
the old machine all hung round with stores (and with its
tattered dress-guard of lacing that kept catching in the
spokes till Nellie took it right off) it was a long pull up the
hill to the chase gates; and Nellie was always in a hurry
to get home, for she was acutely anxious every minute she
had to leave Gwilym in his bed alone. Already the disease
had begun to attack his spine and he had bad bouts of
pain.
Whenever Nellie went out, Gwilym insisted on having
the baby's Moses-basket put in his shed with him where
he could look after the little fellow and talk to him.
Gwilym couldn't get out of bed unaided so there was
nothing he could do about it if the baby did cry: this
distressed Gwilym, so Nellie made plentiful use of a
soothing-syrup if ever she had to go out. Thus, mostly they
enjoyed undisturbed their long conversations together, the
father and his sleeping poppied son: conversations adapted
to whatever age the son was supposed to have reached that
morning.
"That's it, Syl: hold onto my finger. . ." (for today he
was teaching little Syl to walk). Another day he would be
sitting by a four-year-old's cot at bedtime, telling him
Bible-stories — the infant Jesus, and Joseph with his many-
coloured coat. "Well, what did they teach you today,
Syl?" — for now a bright-cheeked boy had just run in from
school. His father heard him his three-times, and (a few
years later) helped with his prep. . . while the baby lay
all the while in his basket and bubbled.
"Syl! What's that one called, Syl?" For sometimes they
went for long walks in the woods together, that father and
his growing son, and Gwilym taught him the names of the
birds and Syl showed him the nests he had found. Then
they talked about God, who created all those beautiful
birds and painted their eggs; and the baby still bubbled.
THE FOX IN THE ATTIC 321
When Sylvanus entered his teens his Dad insisted on
serious practical talks about all possible sorts of jobs,
though knowing full well the one thing Sylvanus wanted
was to be a preacher like Dad (but every call to the
ministry has to be tested like this). Whereon the baby
woke up and crowed, and opened a mouth toothless as a
tortoise's in a wide smile, dribbling and showing his
gums.
But always, whatever the boy's age at that moment,
Gwilym talked to him endlessly about that little angel who
sat at a window in Heaven and watched him whatever he
did, the guardian-sister whose love he must learn to
deserve: "Syl, if ever you're tempted to think about girls
with. . . in a way you know to be wrong, just say to your-
self five words: 'My angel-sister was one'."
All this made Gwilym blissfully happy, and he often
thought how lucky he was. Nowadays it never struck
him as in any way sad that the boy's whole upbringing
had to be condensed like this into a few months at
most.
On fine afternoons — at least on the days when Gwilym's
back was a little less bad — Nellie used to take both of them
out for their 'walk' together. She half-lifted Gwilym from
his bed into an old wicker Bath chair Mary had lent them,
and tucked him up well with blankets topped with an old
horse-rug from the Mellton stables. Then she set the baby
on Gwilym's knee, and trundled them a few hundred
yards over the frozen turf to the edge of the escarpment
where the whole deep river-valley lay spread beneath
them, and there they rested awhile. It was a perilous
journey, for the topheavy Bath chair was not intended for
such rough going; but the view at the end was well worth
it at least so far as Gwilym himself was concerned. Far
beneath them the river curled: in the distance the downs
rolled and rolled: on clear days you could even see Salis-
bury spire. For now he was ill Gwilym found an infinite
pleasure in this beautiful terrestrial world: no longer was
322 THE FOX IN THE ATTIC
it the arid 'vale of woe' he had once decried from the
pulpit, and he took to writing poems.
An idyllic life while it lasted: till Gwilym's accident,
that later was to leave such a load of guilt on the wife and
child, occurred.
Chapter 23
The horse Mary was riding was an old cob steady as a
billiard-table (and much the same shape), for Mary
was now two months gone with child and her doctor did
not really approve of her riding at all. But surely sitting
on Cherry hardly counted as 'riding'! Cherry was more
stable than the hills; for according to the psalmist the hills
can skip — but certainly Cherry couldn't. The doctor
moreover had prescribed a daily walk, so for part of the
way Mary got off and led him. This gave her an oppor-
tunity too for another mouthful or so of Augustine's letter:
... I must say, they have got plenty of guts. . .
(Who? Oh, those everlasting Kessen children of course!)
. . . especially the twins. You remember that horse-sleigh
I told you we went out in that day? Yesterday the horse
bolted with it (empty) and little Heinz fell down right in
its light. He just lay still, though, and one of the runners
went right over him and I thought he would be cut in
half but he was sunk right into the snow and the empty
sleigh was so light it went right over him without the
runner even touching him. What saved him of course was
because he had had the nerve to lie still. But the others
just hooted with laughter and he was laughing too when
he got up, while the horse charged on down the hill like a
dog with a tin can on its tail — you ought to have seen it!
The sleigh swinging from side to side and banging on the
trees till it smashed to matchwood. End of sleigh! Trudi
(she's the eldest) laughed and laughed till it gave her a
pain.
Tomorrow though I'm off to Munich. Frankly, I have
been here exactly three weeks now. . .
Mary turned back to look at the date: yes, this had been
a long time in the post. . .
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324 THE FOX IN THE ATTIC
exactly three weeks now and it is high time I saw some-
thing of the real, new Germany for a change. Lucky I
don't just judge present-day Germany by this place or I'd
come home knowing no more than I set out. Actually of
course all this is right out of the picture, the whole set-up
here is just a left-over from the past. They are even R.C.'s
still, here! Judging just by here you would hardly guess the
new Germany with its broad-minded peace-loving spirit
and its advanced ideas and its Art existed even, but I met
an awfully nice chap that day we went for the sleigh-ride
and he has invited me. . .
Even that wasn't nearly the end, but Mary pushed the
sheets back in her pocket and remounted. An odd sort of
letter from someone of twenty-three and intelligent! That
last paragraph — really! Indeed the whole tone of the letter
was childish. Like a kind of regression. What an unex-
pected effect for travel to have on Augustine! It worried
her rather. She knew he had taken his guns, but no men-
tion of shooting. . . in fact, Augustine seemed to like
messing around with small children better than being with
his natural companion Franz — let alone with Walther or
Otto. Trust Augustine to be adored by the children
wherever he went — but not, not to waste his whole time
with them this way: he didn't do that even with Polly,
and she was his niece. . .
Trudi the 'eldest', he had said? Trudi hadn't been born
. . . Funny none of his letters had mentioned once that
eldest girl Mary remembered. Little Mitzi'd be now. . .
what, seventeen? 'I suppose,' thought Mary, 'she must be
away at school.'
In the far distance a few small patches of snow on the
hilltops seemed to float in the haze, each with its own
dollop of white mist like wool clinging close to it. Other-
wise the day was a grey sort of day: dead still, with a faint
haze the sun just showed through like a small, watery-
THE FOX IN THE ATTIC 325
yellow pea. The light was indefinite: a dim, ominous,
over-all glare that was shadowless.
Slowly Cherry plodded his uphill way on a long rein,
gently rocking under Mary like a ship. Fleetingly for no
reason she found herself recalling her father who had
died when she was a child. . . tweeds like nutmeg-graters
for bare skin to sit on, and his long moustache that smelt
of tobacco and tickled. . . But suddenly Cherry blew a
deep organ-note through his nostrils — tremolo, so that
with its vasty vibration Mary's legs quivered like jellies
and the whole landscape shook.
When it settled again, lo — there were the chase gates
in sight now, and Nellie running towards her half tripping
over the ruts in the turf that the workmen's cart had made
weeks ago. Nellie was panting and her eyes starting out of
her head: would Mrs. Wadamy please go at once for the
doctor? Something about Gwilym being worse, and a
frightful accident yesterday: it was all Nellie's own fault,
she would never forgive herself. . .
In later years Gwilym's 'accident' came to loom so
large we had better be quite clear what did happen, that
frosty day on the downs.
Yesterday the baby had had a stomach-upset and so
couldn't go out. But the weather yesterday had been
wonderful, so rather than do Gwilym out of his walk
Nellie had wheeled him to his usual viewpoint and left him
there by himself while she dashed back to see to the baby.
She meant just to give Sylvanus his peppermint-water and
come straight back to Gwilym again; but the little wretch
wouldn't stop crying, so she stopped with him.
Gwilym must have dozed off, for the heavy horse-
blanket slipped from his knees and he woke feeling cold.
In trying to retrieve it he overbalanced the chair and was
spilled out on the ground. There he lay, too weak to get
up. by himself. Nor could he even shout: his cauterised
throat could only whisper "Help!". He was blue with cold
3a6 THE FOX IN THE ATTIC
and nearly unconscious when at last the terrified Nellie got
back to him. Strong as Nellie was she had a terrible
struggle to get him back up into his chair off the ground.
That evening Gwilym's temperature had soared to new
heights, but Nellie dared not leave him to go for the
doctor. How could she? She had to wait for the morning
and hope that Mary would come.
When Mary did bring the doctor at last he looked grave:
a touch of pneumonia, he said. The patient might live
through the attack but it would certainly leave him
weaker.
In Nellie's mind as the years passed it became more and
more that accident which had tipped the scales: without
it the sick man might have — must have recovered. Little
Sylvanus was a murderer before he was born, twice a
murderer ere he was weaned.
Chapter 26
Far more lay behind Augustine's disgruntlement with
Lorienburg and his exeat to Munich than he chose to
tell Mary. At the time of writing he had been in love for
a whole three weeks yet his progress was nil. True, Mitzi
appeared at meals now, but she seemed more distraite than
ever and vanished as soon as she could. The only person
she seemed to respond to ever was Otto. In short, Augus-
tine could sometimes feast his eyes on her now (and he
certainly made the most of it); but he never again got a
chance like the one he had missed in the chapel of talking
to her, he never once saw her alone.
Somehow it never entered Augustine's head to offer to
take Mitzi for a walk. But once, greatly daring, he did
summon up courage to offer to read to her: "Schiller or
something." Mitzi thanked him warmly, which made his
heart hop like a bird: but instead of taking him to the
empty library she led the way to the drawing-room, and
thus the reading took place with her mother there and her
two younger sisters as well (for the children shadowed
Augustine now like dogs everywhere, and they wanted to
make him come out and play in the snow) . The two little
girls were palpably bored by Schiller and longing to carry
him off for themselves: Adele jumped like the toothache at
every mispronounced word: Mitzi showed no reaction
whatever till he paused, when she thanked him again and
slipped away to her room. The reading was not a success,
and was never repeated. How he cursed the German
language! For in English he knew he read rather well.
To forget his woes he did indeed make use of the
children: he spent whole days with them, for entering into
their minds at least took him out of his own. But this
'regression' of Augustine's was not always wholly successful
327
328 THE FOX IN THE ATTIC
cither: far too often lie would lead the twins into some
shocking piece of mischief and then at the crucial moment
his mind would revert to Mitzi, so that by sheer inatten-
tion to business he landed them all in a mess. Walther
couldn't understand Augustine's behaviour at all: he
seemed "totally lacking in seriousness: quite irresponsible!"
As for Franz, overbuoyant now with the weight of the
world off his shoulders at last, he was longing to be off
to the mountains skiing: with his guest for excuse he might
have wangled it if only Augustine had shown the least
interest. . . Franz found him rather a bore.
The sensible part of Augustine knew well that the sen-
sible course was to go away, at least for a while. His hosts
would have welcomed it: indeed at the time of Wolff's
funeral (it had been touch-and-go, that police inquisition:
it had called for endless pulling of strings) they had almost
openly wished he would take himself elsewhere at least till
that business was over. Yet it wasn't till a fortnight after
the funeral that Augustine remembered Dr. Reinhold's
offer to show him Munich: a proposal which his hosts,
when he finally broached it, effusively approved. So at
last he wrote to Dr. Reinhold, and at last his going was
fixed.
Dr. Reinhold had a large flat on the Odeonsplatz close
to the Theatinerkirche (he would have had a wonderful
view of the end of the Putsch if he hadn't left Munich so
soon). A bachelor and a bit of a sybarite, with a married
couple for butler and cook, his place was impeccably run;
yet he seemed to be hardly ever in it himself, so Augustine
found. Dr. Reinhold went to his office at nine, and there-
after his guest was left to his own devices: 'showing him
Munich', it seemed, consisted chiefly in planning sight-
seeing tours which the guest carried out on his own.
Moreover, departure to Munich did nothing (Augustine
discovered) to empty his mind of Mitzi. Indeed she kept
THE FOX IN THE ATTIC 329
cropping up in the unlikeliest contexts: in the Dom, for
instance, while they were showing him the Devil's Foot-
mark he spun round on his heel for he felt her right at his
shoulder. Certainly 'selling Newton' was an idea which
never entered his head: he was far too busy just now
envisaging Mitzi as its mistress and major adornment for
that: Mitzi under his guidance learning to find her way
all over the house: Mitzi learning the feel of the furniture
with his fingers covering hers: Mitzi learning the changing
seasonal smells of an English garden, the songs of the birds,
the voices of all his friends. . . he. would get that old harp
in the small south drawing-room restrung for her (blind
harpists are always the best).
Augustine was sent, of course, round the corner to the
Konigsplatz where the galleries were. There were wonder-
ful things in them: acres of pictures, famous pieces of
Greek and Egyptian sculpture already familiar in photo-
graphs; but the galleries themselves were vast, altogether
dwarfing their contents. Thirty or forty minutes of looking
at masterpieces Augustine intensely enjoyed; but, because
of this very intensity, he couldn't stand longer. At the end
of that time he felt a pain in the back of his head: he
suddenly felt what a waste of time everything was without
Mitzi: he suddenly felt a passionate longing for beer.
Hurrying out of the Glyptothek thus, with his eyes un-
focused to give them a rest, he barked his nose on the door.
Chapter 27
The churches here Augustine was sent to admire, how-
ever, really shocked him; for they all, excepting the
Dom (late Gothic) were baroque or even rococo. This
confirmed what he had already felt at Lorienburg: people
who found such things beautiful must be essentially un-
serious people: their religion (and so, Mitzi's) must be only
skin-deep: their culture, a froth and a sham. Was it con-
ceivable that the sensitively cultured Dr. Reinhold with
real Art in his blood sincerely admired these sugared mon-
strosities, or had he his tongue in his cheek? The 'Asam-
Kirche', for instance: where here was the classic austerity
(hall-mark of all true art), the truth to nature? The bare-
ness of line, the restraint?
"Baroque isn't even non-Art, it's anti-Art," he tried to
argue with Reinhold, but failed. "This must just be a
blind spot in old Reinhold," he was forced to decide
(to Reinhold of course the blindness was all in Augus-
tine).
This argument happened one Sunday morning. Outside
in the Square where a few weeks back the police had fired
on the Nazis a band had struck up with selections from
Strauss, and the two men moved to the window to look.
In the sharp winter air the notes of the band swirled up
to the sky while coveys of pigeons swirled down to the
ground, and Reinhold pointed out the kerchiefed little old
women assembled to feed them: the famous 'Taubern-
mutterl', the 'little dove-mothers' of Munich. The small
dog with the plaid waistcoat was back there again — brisk,
intent, and important: his elderly dandyfied master fol-
lowed behind on a lead. The whole scene touched a chord
in Augustine and he sighed, windily, wishing that Mitzi
was here. . .
330
THE FOX IN THE ATTIC 331
But Sunday was Reinhold's holiday, so presently he sug-
gested a visit to Schwabing together: " 'The Quartier-
Latin of Munich' they call it," he explained (with an
almost invisible moue). "Anyway, it's the home of all the
Munich poets and painters who count." Augustine pricked
up his ears: this surely was what he had come for even
more than the galleries. "Genius!" Reinhold continued,
observing his mood: "Genius in studios, genius in gar-
rets, genius in basements — back-bedrooms — mezzanines:
Nordic and Latin, Gentile and Jew: genius spilling out on
the pavements. . ." He sighed. "So we'd better take plenty
of money to pay for their beer."
" 'Schwabing' you call it? Is it far?"
"Right here on our doorstep," said Reinhold. "In fact,
here we are now," he presently added as they passed by
the Siegestor. "We're arrived at our 'Chelsea'."
'Odd,' thought Augustine. 'I've walked round here
dozens of times without guessing: it's more like the Crom-
well Road.'
For a while they moved in a great half-circle sampling
bars and cafes ('For sheer joie de vivre', thought Augus-
tine, 'they're much like South Kensington private hotels.')
on the look-out for celebrities. But in all those places they
found only one such, and this was that selfsame emanci-
pated young woman from the party at Rottningen. At the
sight of her Augustine flushed blackly and stopped in his
tracks on the threshold; but Dr. Reinhold bowed with
empressement, whereon she waved a long cigarette-holder
and smiled invitingly. Augustine tugged at Reinhold's
sleeve and said "No!"
"No? Too small game for you?" Augustine left it at that
and they beat a retreat. "Come, these places are no good:
I'll take you to Katty's." So they turned down the Turken-
strasse, and halted outside a little boite where the sign was
a red bulldog baring his teeth. " 'Simplicissimus'," said
Reinhold. "With luck we'll find old T. T. Heine here, and
Gulbranson."
332 THE FOX IN THE ATTIC
"Who are they?" asked Augustine.
"Look!" said Reinhold, nettled: "What living artists
have you heard of?" He paused on the doorstep.
"John," said Augustine. He hesitated for more names,
then added: "Sargent's no good of course; but there's Eric
Kennington, I've bought one of his."
"But apart from Englishmen?"
"Foreign artists? Mind you, I genuinely liked some of
the settings for the Russian Ballet," he admitted.
"Derain and Picasso you mean? 'The Three-Cornered
Hat'? But have you seen any of their real work — or
Matisse? Van Gogh? Cezanne?"
"N-n-no. . . but do I really want to? Isn't that lot all
a bit. . .?"
Reinhold groaned. Then he tilted his chin, and called —
apparently into the sky: "Come down, Jacinto, and have
a drink with us horrible Philistines! Help us to wash out
our sins."
Augustine looked up. At the top of a tall lamp-post,
squatting cross-legged on the very lamp itself and in spite
of the weather dressed only in vest and running-shorts,
was a dark young man who looked like a prentice yogi.
But the yogi up there only shook his head slightly, finger
to lips. From the first-floor window beside him came the
rhythmic sound of a burgher's Sunday siesta.
"Jacinto's a young Brazilian sculptor of distinct prom-
ise," said Reinhold. "He's also a first-class professional
runner: he lives for his art but runs for his living." He
regarded the silent, immovable figure up there with
interest: "Moreover he would now appear to be culti-
vating a connoisseurship in snoring."
"In snoring?"
"Precisely. Doubtless he sprints from superlative snorer
to snorer all over the city — I bet he's just finished his
rounds. — Come down!" he shouted again. "You'll catch
cold!" The solo ended abruptly and the agile young man
slid to the ground and joined them. "Tell me," asked
THE FOX IN THE ATTIC 333
Reinhold anxiously. "Is it possible to translate the essen-
tial rhythms of a snore like that into marble?"
For answer Jacinto made a rapid and complex series
of movements in the air with his hands, then dropped
them to his sides helplessly.
"I was afraid not," said Reinhold sadly, and the trio
moved inside.
Chapter 28
Reinhold ushered them into a tiny room too dark to
see anything at first, and where the only sounds were
the unmistakable sounds of drinking. When their eyes got
used to it the two famous cartoonists (Gulbranson and
Heine) turned out to be absent, but there were other
celebrities here: "That," said Reinhold behind his hand,
"is no less than Ringelmatz! — Servus, Joachim!" he called.
"Join us, my treasure!" The sailor-poet was drunk already
and joined them with difficulty. "And that," said Reinhold
indicating the Jew in the corner, "is Tucholsky himself."
"Don't catch his eye!" hissed Jacinto through chattering
teeth. "I dislike him."
"So? All the same, Kurt's a brilliant writer and our
young English friend here. . ."
"If Tucholsky joins you I go!" said Jacinto with such
finality that Reinhold gave in, ordering beer for only the
four of them. " 'Our young English friend here!' " quoted
Jacinto and examined Augustine owlishly. "Can you run?"
he asked with a note of anxiety.
"Yes. . . no, I mean not like you can."
"What a relief! Then I needn't challenge you when I'd
far rather get drunk."
Meanwhile Ringelmatz was clumsily trying to cover his
mug with a large slab of cheese: ". . . keep out the gob-
lins," he muttered. But the cheese fell into the beer and
then when he tried to drink got in the way of his nose,
so he burst into tears.
"If you don't run what do you do?" Jacinto pursued.
"I mean, for a living?"
"He snores," said Reinhold wickedly. "London theatri-
cal managers employ him to snore off-stage when it's
needed in plays."
334
THE FOX IN THE ATTIC 335
But Jacinto was not to be deceived: "Impossible! He
hasn't the nose."
"Nose?" broke in Ringelmatz angrily. "Who's talking
of noses?" His nose was a large one and he never liked
noses discussed; but especially now when his own was
dripping with beer.
Presently Ringelmatz wandered out to the back, and
when he returned he had borrowed Katty Kobus's own
dressing-gown to wrap round the shivering Jacinto. But
Jacinto was oblivious of the kindness, for the talk had got
onto Aesthetic and Jacinto had gone like a person pos-
sessed. Reinhold was delighting in the scrimmage he had
managed to stir up between Augustine and Jacinto: he
kept himself in the background but from a safe distance
was egging on both and sniping at both.
In any such argument with an Augustine Jacinto was
at several advantages. To begin with, the Brazilian could
talk with his hands (which the subject required) : his hands
served Jacinto as slides serve a lecturer, he drew so fast in
the air the whole line seemed simultaneously there. Second
came something always essential for absolute clarity of
thought: he had read almost everything which agreed with
his theories and nothing whatever which didn't, whereas
Augustine's notions were merely an unorganised ten-year
deposit from many conflicting sources. And third, most
important of all, was his passion: hearing and seeing him
talk you realised that verily 'Significant Form' was for
Jacinto almost what the Cross of Christ Crucified was for
St. Paul.
Augustine admitted at once that of course there was more
in Art than mere imitation: there was a something. . .
"like the wipe-round with garlic essential to a good bowl
of salad?" Reinhold suggested. . . but it staggered Augus-
tine when Jacinto allowed in Art no role for imitation at
all. "But you can't make a salad out of only that wipe-
round with garlic," Augustine argued. Jacinto however
336 THE FOX IN THE ATTIC
took all Augustine's representational notions and tore them
to shreds. He lashed into Augustine as Paul lashed into
the Galatians (those two-timing Gentile Christians who
hankered after obedience to Mosaic injunctions 'as well').
Once you discover Significant Form (said Jacinto) and
know this alone is what matters you must 'stand fast in
that liberty' (as Paul told the Galatians), and never be
entangled again with the representational yoke. "Sig-
nificant Form. . ."
" 'The contemplation of beautiful objects','' Reinhold
quoted: "The first of the only two valid rules of conduct,
according to your own Moore's 'Principia Ethica' — the
bible of Bloomsbury, Augustine! Have you read it?"
". . . is the sole meaning of things," Jacinto pursued,
"without which the universe were a kind of visual gibber-
ish. . ." And so on, and so on. Jacinto had a fourth
advantage in argument: Augustine listened, and so was
pervious to conviction however unwilling, but Jacinto
listened to no one.
By now, moreover, Jacinto had also a fifth advantage:
the powerful nature of Munich beer. Ringelmatz of course
had a start, but now Augustine was becoming inarticulate
too.
Ringelmatz had long been beyond interfering — beyond
listening even. Just now when Augustine had emptied his
pockets to pay for a round he had inadvertently left on the
table his last-year's rover-ticket for Lords, and this circle
of cardboard so beautifully printed in gold had fascinated
Ringelmatz: indeed he admired it so much that presently
he spread it with mustard: later he had added a slice of
salami and topped it with beer-washed cheese and now
he was munching it, his thoughts far away on Parnassus.
Though Augustine liked drinking he hated getting too
drunk (something associated with mindless hearties at Ox-
ford). But tonight, being too deeply absorbed in the argu-
ment to notice how much he was drinking, it caught him
unawares. The first he knew of it was a roaring in his ears
THE FOX IN THE ATTIC 337
that had nothing to do with Jacinto and the coldness of
sweat on his forehead: then the slapping beer in his
stomach seemed almost to top his oesophagus. . . Augustine
had drunk a little too much that first night at Lorienburg
but this was something more dire; for the room was losing
its equilibrium and even its shape, it resolved into separate
revolving planes if he didn't prevent it and only by Hercu-
lean efforts could he hold it together and upright.
Augustine had no ears now for Jacinto : every effort had
to be concentrated on keeping control or the ceiling lost
its balance and swooped, while the menacing floor hung
over his head by a thread. . .
"Significant F-form. . ." That's the thing: hold on to
Significificant Fff. . . Fff. . .
So he held on, as long as he could: then slid to the floor.
Chapter 2g
Never in his life before had Augustine been so drunk.
Even two days later when (on his way back to Lorien-
burg) he pondered this ignominious ending of his visit to
Munich he could still recall nothing, from the moment of
losing his desperate struggle to keep Space loyal to Euclid,
till he woke in his bed at the flat and found it was Monday
and midday. He was wearing pyjamas, so someone had un-
dressed him and put him to bed. . . it was utterly shaming
to think that this must have been Reinhold.
Lord, too, what a head he had had! When he first sat
up his skull had come apart like a badly-cracked cup in
the hands of a housemaid. At that awful moment of waking
he had thanked heaven that Reinhold by now would be
out for the day; for how could he ever face Reinhold again,
he had wondered (yet when Reinhold did come home in
the evening he had been wonderfully decent about it).
What a way to repay Reinhold's kindness. . . what must
his host think of him. . . what a fool he had been!
After drinking a quart from the water-jug and splashing
his face with the rest Augustine had felt better, and
dressed. Then he went for a walk, crossing the square into
the Hofgarten, under the arcade. It was there, in the
frosty air of the Gardens, that he first realised the momen-
tous thing which had happened to him under the shock
of the alcohol: that in spite of his headache his mind was
unprecedentedly clear — and clear because it was empty!
Even now in the train next day Augustine was still
enjoying the pristine freshness of that new empty-headed-
ness; for all those old outworn ideas which had cluttered
his mind for so long had been swept away in a kind
of spring-cleaning — he had been brain-washed in beer
('Good Gracious!' he thought. 'Perhaps then one ought
338
THE FOX IN THE ATTIC 339
to get drunk every two or three years to get rid of the
rubbish!').
The result of the riddance was that two things alone
stood out clear in his mind., now; and one was the image of
Mitzi, washed free of any last trace of hesitation or doubt.
'Heavens!' he had thought in the Gardens. 'What on earth
am I doing in Munich when I ought to be back at her
side? How can I bear to stay away from her one minute
longer? Indeed, why on earth did I ever come away to
Munich at all?' He must go back to Lorienburg at once
and claim her at once.
But beside Mitzi's image stood now one other idea, and
that was 'Significant Form'. In this respect, how describe
what had happened to him? In spite of himself that Gospel
phrase 'being born again in the Spirit' occurred to him;
for though Heaven forbid all this should be concerned
with religion, still that done-away-with clutter had indeed
been replaced by one single overwhelming idea: the con-
cept of 'Significant Form' as an immanence in the per-
ceived which the painter's eye can uncover. A physical
immanence mind you; for though this transcended the
merely physicist's-real it was still a wholly physical kind
of super-reality. 'I mean,' thought Augustine, 'it isn't the
philosophers or the scientists any more than the saints who
have discovered the meaning of the universe, it's the
painters! That "meaning" is something that can't be
intellectually expressed, it's something essentially visual.'
'The eye is the light of the body. . .' How Augustine
longed now to look fresh with his under-used eyes at
familiar pictures — yes, and also to turn this new 'light of
the body' onto the new art Jacinto had talked of so
reverently — Matisse, Cezanne and the rest! If only the
next stop was Paris. . .
But it wasn't, of course: the next stop was Kammstadt,
and by the time Augustine had changed trains and was
chug-chugging up the valley again from village to village
more and more was it Mitzi who filled all his thoughts,
340 THE FOX IN THE ATTIC
filled his very fingers and toes: less and less (for the
moment) Significant Form. For he meant to go straight
to Mitzi the moment he got back. He began rehearsing
what he would say to her — even filling in her answers. His
life's supreme moment was come. When they were married
he must teach Mitzi about. . . but. . . but how on earth
do you teach a blind person about Significant Form? Yet
he felt even that wasn't impossible to the strength of his
love.
When the train at last reached Lorienburg and Augus-
tine jumped down on the line he found that the children
had all come whooping to meet him. All four of them
fought for his bag (too heavy for even all four of them),
then dropped it and fought for his arms and his hands.
They all talked at once and no one listened to the answers
he gave without listening either. When they got to the
village however they stopped for Augustine to buy them
sweets and the atmosphere grew calmer: calm enough, at
least, for him at last to ask after Mitzi.
"You'll just be in time to say goodbye to her: she's off
to a convent."
"For long? Are they teaching her Braille there or
something?"
"What do you mean, 'long'?"
"Mitzi's going to be a Religious."
"She's taking her vows."
"A Carmelite Sister: she's wanted to, ages."
"They've accepted her now; and Papa says she can."
• * * *
"Don't you understand? Mitzi's going to be a nun. . ."
"Is something the matter?"
"Come on, Stupid, what are you waiting for? You've
got your change now so come on. . ."
Chapter jo
How the rest of that day passed Augustine never knew:
he was a walking zombie, with no mind for things to
make any impression on.
When he woke next morning and remembered, his
heart went at once so leaden in his breast that it pressed
on his stomach and made him feel quite sick. When he
opened his sticky eyes it was almost as if he had gone blind
himself; the colour had gone out of the world, and all
solidity. His surroundings were so wraithlike they were
more like memories of things seen long ago than fresh
sense-impressions. Even solid Lies kneeling at his stove was
faded and immaterial as a ghost.
Augustine's legs carried him to breakfast: he drank some
coffee, but ate nothing.
Today Walther and Adele (contrite perhaps at their
own inhospitable feelings of a week or so ago) were full of
plans for his amusement. The sleigh 'smashed to match-
wood' had nevertheless been repaired, and was at his
disposal: "Would you like to see some churches?" asked
Adele, explaining that one of the finest baroque master-
pieces of the Asam Brothers was only five miles away: or,
in the opposite direction there was that little shrine with
its quaint votive pictures of every kind of rustic disaster
and disease. . .
"Nonsense!" said Walther. "He'll have seen enough
churches in Munich — haven't you, my boy?" It transpired
that what Walther wanted was to send him off with the
foreman to a distant part of the forest, there to decide
whether the frost was yet hard enough for a bottomless
bog to bear heavy cart-loads from the castle cesspool to
where their nutrients were needed most. "It takes longer
for that bog to freeze properly than the Danube itself!"
341
342 THE FOX IN THE ATTIC
Walther explained: warmth, engendered by the decaying
vegetation in it no doubt: Augustine would find it all most
interesting, and (he added as a tactful afterthought) he
would value Augustine's advice. Franz too was agog to
teach him skiing: it was a lovely day, and the snow was
just right at last. As for the children — their parents'
presence constrained them to silence, but they were
miming to him imploringly through the open door.
Of the whole sort of them, only Adele noticed at all
Augustine's curious condition. She wondered what on
earth could have happened to the young man in Munich:
bad news, perhaps, from home? But Adele had an un-
shakable belief in the powers of sightworthy objects to dis-
tract the mind and assuage the troubled heart, and only
pressed her sight-seeing proposals all the more.
What Augustine wanted, of course, was simply to be
alone; so he let the torrent of conflicting plans roll over
him, made the best excuses he could to the adults, dodged
the children and set off by himself for a long tramp in
the snow.
The meaningless sky was without a cloud, and set in
it was a sun that gave him neither light nor warmth.
At first his legs felt nerveless. He had hardly got outside
when they wanted him to stop, and for a while he leaned
over the broken palings of the old skittle-alley opposite the
great Crucifix, contemplating with downcast eyes three
dots sunk blackly just below the surface of the snow under
the overhanging linden. Three tiny shrunken bats they
were, that had frozen to death hanging in the twigs above
and dropped there.
. . .That ever Mitzi should shrivel to a nun! In a mind's-
eye flash he saw Mitzi lying white in the unending dark-
ness of her night with tell-tale toothmarks on her throat. . .
Augustine wouldn't look up at it but turning with eyes
still lowered shuddered at the very shadow on the snow of
that (to him) grisly vampire-figure clamped too insecurely
THE FOX IN THE ATTIC 343
to its rood above him; and hurried off long-legged like
someone at nightfall with twenty miles to go.
Augustine was already crossing the wide field beyond
the road with the same idiot haste and now knee-deep in
snow when the children from the castle spotted him far-off
and making for the forest without them. How had he for-
gotten them? They ran out after him; but the snow was
soon too deep for them, and to their astonishment he paid
no attention when they yelled to him to wait. Yet they
wouldn't give up till a waist-deep drift in the middle of
the field almost engulfed them. Here even Trudi was
forced to a halt, and the twins showed little but their heads
above the snow.
He must have heard them, on so still a morning! Yet
with lowered eyes Augustine hurried on, never even look-
ing behind him when they called. At this incredible
betrayal the twins did what they never did — burst into a
wail, puncturing the surrounding snow with tear-holes
while Augustine vanished out of sight.
There had been no new fall lately, and in the thinner
snow on the fringes of the forest the surface had recorded
for Augustine's earthbound eyes all the criss-cross passages
of animals and birds for the past few nights and days. Idly
he scanned them: the neat-punched slots two-and-two of
roedeer: the marks of a fox's pads, set after each other in
one straight line like the track a cog-wheel would make:
the arrowed tracks of all kinds and sizes of birds, with the
delicate imprints of their trailing tails and wings like
fossil ferns. It was as if all these creatures had been here
at the same time together, summoned to a compulsory
dance of all creation without pattern or purpose.
The only living creature in sight now was a single black-
bird about to alight. The dazzling snow made her mis-
judge her height as she came down, so that she tail-slipped
the last two feet to a false landing with claws outspread in
front of her and tail-feathers sticking into the snow. As
Augustine turned into the forest the bird called after him;
344 THE FOX IN THE ATTIC
"You're wdl out of it — you don't know when you're
lucky!"
Augustine turned round in surprise; but he was wrong,
it was only a bird.
In the airless gloom of the forest Augustine threaded his
way between the tree-trunks — smooth tubular boles show-
ing a cold blue-grey against the dull green foliage lining
the heavy, high-overhead canopy of snow. These endless
rows of immensely tall evergreens without branch or twig
for fifty or sixty feet were all exactly alike and closely and
evenly spaced. There was no undergrowth. Because of their
precise spacing and the lack of any lower branches or
foliage their echoing was voluminous and sinister whenever
the silence was broken. One yapping farm-dog in the far
distance sounded like a whole pack of hounds in full tongue
— or like a distant riot.
But presently Augustine debouched from the thick trees
quite by chance onto a broad drive, and for a time fol-
lowed along it. This was the selfsame drive that had taken
them a month ago on their way to Rottningen; but that
at first he failed to notice. Then something familiar must
have struck him; for suddenly he remembered the sound
of their sleigh-bells, and that frost-pink face peeping from
her furs. . . how happy he had been even next-but-one to
Mitzi on the box-seat, that day a month ago!
At first Augustine had been wholly numbed by despair;
but now that he had begun seeing his surroundings again
a little he also began again, just a little, to think. Was it
after all even now too late? It was not as if Mitzi had gone
to the convent already and the gates had shut on her:
then, doubtless, they'd never let her go. But as long as she
was at home they surely couldn't compel her. Had he per-
haps given in too easily — stunned by the first obstacle just
because he had taken for granted the prize was there for
the plucking whenever he chose? If he went back now and
THE FOX IN THE ATTIC 345
declared himself, surely this whole crazy nunnery-project
must vanish like smoke! Surely (and at this idea his heart
kicked like a back-firing engine) Mitzi was only doing this
because she despaired of him: for how could any healthy,
normal girl like Mitzi want to become a nun?
'Fool!' he replied to himself: 'You don't understand her.
You haven't a hope.'
For that was the point: if in a human way Mitzi had
turned him down for another chap. . . but there wasn't
one! Only that ever-living ever-dying figure on the Cross
which Augustine used to think nothing of, but now made
him shudder so.
What sort of a mediaeval, then, must Mitzi be — inside
of her — that she could even consider going into a convent?
It beggared comprehension! How could such a person
nowadays even exist? And how could her parents allow it
instead of sending for a psychiatrist? He couldn't under-
stand them either, not at all. But then, did he understand
anyone here? Perhaps not even dear Reinhold. They were
all. . . cock-eyed, somehow, when you got under the sur-
face (why, look at Franz!). You thought you could see
how the wheels went round but really you couldn't at all.
They weren't the same kind of beings that you were, these
Germans.
These Germans. . . all this passion for politics, as if any
human 'collective' was something that really existed!
These trees. . . all these millions of sinister similar man-
grown evergreen trees. . .
"Christ I want to get out!" he shouted out loud; and
quick as a bullet's ricochet the tree-boles snapped back
at him "Get out/"
Chapter ji
after trudging aimlessly in the forest for several hours
/"^Augustine suddenly found himself coming out in the
open. Here the country before him was strange to him.
Under the trees he had lost sight of the sun, and had no
idea even of the general direction he had taken: he might
have walked in a circle so that 'home' was just round the
corner, or it might be ten miles away. There was nothing
in sight he could recognise.
Augustine felt dog-tired. Normally he could walk thirty
miles without tiring at all, but today the state of his nerves
had set up in his muscles numberless minute internal ten-
sions and now these had fought each other to a standstill:
he ached.
Augustine had come out of comparative darkness to the
edge of this dazzling snow-field, so he had to shade his
eyes with his hand from below as he scanned the landscape
for someone to tell him the way. As luck would have it,
there was a farm not very far off, and briskly walking
towards it a middle-aged man — thick-set, and dressed as
a well-to-do peasant. Augustine forced himself to a jog-
trot to intercept him; and when the man saw him, he
waited.
When the farmer saw this obvious foreigner and obvious
gentleman, who was also so obviously lost, trotting towards
him over the snow, three emotions combined to make him
ask in the stranger: curiosity, compassion, and pride in his
home. Augustine was too nerveless to resist, and anyway,
longed for a chair to sit down on. He followed his host in
without looking round him — for once, he was himself in
no mood to be curious. All that really interested him was
something to sit on awhile.
346
THE FOX IN THE ATTIC 347
He was taken into a parlour where the walls were
covered with horns, and regaled there on layer-cake sodden
in rum; but in his present state the cake seemed to him
tasteless and he could hardly swallow it down. But then
they gave him a generous tot of home-distilled plum
brandy and that made him feel better at once.
Augustine began to look round him at last. Those
hundreds of antlers and horns. . . were they trophies of
the chase, decoration, or simply to hang your hat on (or
rather, your hundreds of hats)? Instead of a dog on the
hearth-rug — incidentally, there wasn't a hearth for it
either — the fur rug had itself once been a dog! What a
compendious arrangement. . . he bent down and tickled
its ear (they offered to fill up his glass, but he firmly
refused — Gosh their plum stuff was strong!).
Almost wherever the horns left room on the walls
there was a carved crucifix or a carved cuckoo-clock — one
or the other: there were also two terrible portraits in oils,
and it gave one a jolt to see how like was his mother's
picture as a bride to this elderly farmer himself, in spite of
his whiskers. Augustine turned, and smiled at his host
benignly — the nice old three-hundred weight!
Again they tried to fill up his glass, and again he refused.
Meanwhile the questioning went on. It was all so
courteous and terribly tactful that everything had to be
carefully answered. They seemed thrilled to learn he was
English, and wanted to know all he could tell them about
King George.
Before Augustine quite knew what was happening they
were showing him round. Never had he seen anywhere
quite so crammed with possessions. Bedroom after bedroom
had three or four beds in it: each bed had three or four
mattresses and then was piled high with all kinds of other
things so that no one could possibly sleep on it. Every
wardrobe was bursting with clothes and had cardboard
boxes on top of it: everything had to be taken down, un-
folded and shown. All these things had accumulated in
348 THE FOX IN THE ATTIC
dowry after dowry over three generations, he gathered.
None of them seemed to be used — they were wealth, like
the gold in a bank. Yet the tiptoe possessors seemed
radiant. . . these were people who knew beyond doubt what
they wanted — and had it! Sorrow suddenly rose in his
throat, but he swallowed it down.
They told Augustine he was not far from the Danube
and also the railway, but further on down the line than
Lorienburg was. The station was two miles off, and it was
getting time for the train but still they insisted he just saw
the cows — nothing else — before he departed.
A door opposite the parlour-door opened off the front
hall straight into the stable (so he had just to look at the
horses). Beyond lay the piggery (he also looked at the pigs),
and furthest of all were the cows — rows and rows of them,
all red-and-white ("What kind of cows has King George
got at Sandringham?" How on earth should he know!).
But the Sandringham cows couldn't be finer than these
were: indeed at the sight of all his own wonderful cows
the farmer seemed ready to float; and in spite of himself
Augustine was intrigued by them. A boy had just brought
in the calves to be suckled: Augustine couldn't help
watching how the milky little nit-wits tried all the other
mothers as well as their own, and how mildly those other
ones kicked them aside.
Just as they were leaving the cows, one of them lifted
her nose from her calf and called after Augustine: "You
just don't know when you're lucky!"
Augustine looked round in surprise; but he was wrong,
it was only a cow.
The visit had done Augustine good, but as he hurried
off along the lane once more his melancholy kept hitting
him in waves as sea-sickness does. When that happened
the colour in everything faded, and the legs under him
almost refused.
THE FOX IN THE ATTIC 349
Even at the best of times Augustine's surroundings in
Germany never seemed to him quite 'real': they had a
picture-book foreignness, down to the smallest detail. The
very snow he was walking in differed from English snow.
Those distant forests were coloured a 'Victorian' green —
the colour of art-serge curtains rather than trees: the edges
of the forest were all sharp-etched (outside of them no
loose trees stood around on their own) and yet these plan-
tations were formless, for their arbitrary boundaries seemed
to bear no relation to Nature or the lie of the land. Thus
the landscape (in his eyes) had none of the beauty almost
any English landscape (in his eyes) had got.
Augustine kept passing wayside shrines, and even the
farms had each its own little doll's-chapel outside with a
miniature belfry and an apse as big as a cupboard. Taken
all together and on top of the churches they added up to
a pretty frightening picture. . . Often these chapels were
almost the only outbuildings the farms had got, apart
from a crow's-nest up an apple-tree for potting at foxes.
Indeed these hardly looked like 'farms' (which are,
surely, essentially a huddle of big byres and barns with
a tiny house tucked away in the middle?). These (because
the animals lived indoors on the ground-floor) looked all
'house'.
Since landscape changes like this from country to
country it must owe very little to Nature: Nature is no
more than the canvas, and landscape the self-portrait the
people who live there paint on it. But no, hold hard!
Surely, rather the people who have lived there; for land-
scape is always at least one generation behind in its por-
trayal (like those other portraits that hung on the parlour
wall). This was Augustine's 'new' Germany, but the land-
scape here was unchanged since Kaiserdom or even before:
whereas the people. . .
But at that point Augustine stopped dead in his tracks,
for something had struck him — something so obvious why
on earth hadn't it struck him before? The people were also
35Q THE FOX IN THE ATTIC
pre-war. History has to use second-hand timber when she
builds a new edifice^ like those awkward post-war chicken-
houses people build out of bits of army huts and old
ammo-boxes, with 'W.D.' stamped all over them and costly
enigmatical fittings too much trouble to unscrew. Likewise
the people the new Germany was built of were the self-
same people the old had consisted of before the structure
was smashed and they were ripped out of their places in
the ruins and. . . but could you call the new Germany
'built'? No! Just at present these were more like rocks sent
wheeling about in the sky when their rookery-tree is felled.
One day they would settle. . .
When Augustine at last reached the plain of the river-
bed, he was surprised to find there no snow at all. There
was ice there instead: on the road it had been swept into
untidy heaps like a dump for shattered window-panes: on
the fields it just lay around on the ground like more
window-panes shattered. Round each of the trunks of the
roadside trees three feet from the ground there was a kind
of ring-table of ice you could picnic on. . .
They explained it all to Augustine when he called at
the village Gasthof for a drink (after all, he had made
good time). A week ago (they told him) the Danube had
frozen. Damned with the barrier its own ice-floes had
piled up, the river had flooded out over the plain and
begun to freeze again, like a lake. But then with the weight
of the water behind it the dam had broken and the floods
had subsided — deserting their new ice, which was left in
the air unsupported, and broke. Now, in sheets and frag-
ments and splinters for miles it lay in the sun and glittered:
only those 'tables' of ice round the trees remained as wit-
ness to the depth of the floods.
In the middle of the village, the market-place had a kind
of Xanadu-wonder because of the trees. For their branches
and twigs were feathered with white ice that glittered in
the sun: they were like cherry-trees every inch in bloom,
THE FOX IN THE ATTIC 351
and whenever the faint breeze breathed on them they
tinkled like tiny bells.
The road to the station took Augustine close to the river
itself. Even now the river was not everywhere frozen: here
and there where the current was strongest there were
still patches of dark grey water that steamed in the sun,
so that the solitary swan indefatigably swimming there
was half-hidden in vapour. But elsewhere the Danube
seemed to be frozen solid in heaps. It was wild, yet utterly
still. Huge blocks of ice had jostled each other and climbed
on top of each other like elephants rutting and then got
frozen in towering lumps: or had swirled over and over
before coagulating till they were curled like a Chinese sea.
None of them had remained in the place where first it had
frozen: each block was complete in itself but now out of
place — like a jig-saw puzzle glued in a heap helter-skelter
so that now it could never be solved.
It was all such a muddle! Although it was utterly still
it expressed such terrific force it was frightening: the force
that had made it — thrusting floes weighing hundreds of
tons high into the air, and the force it would release when
it thawed. When that ice melted at last it would go
thundering down the river grinding to bits everything in
its path. No bridge could possibly stand up to it. The
longer you looked at its stillness, the greater your feeling
of panic. . . Augustine hated Germany: all he wanted now
was to get away as quick as he could.
The moment he got back he would go straight to
Walther, tell him in ten words that he had to marry Mitzi;
and then go straight to Mitzi and. . . and not take 'noJ for
an answer. For he couldn't possibly leave Mitzi behind in
all this: no longer just for his own sake but for hers he must
rescue her — take her to England (and make a reasonable
Englishwoman out of her like everyone else).
Augustine jumped from the train the moment it
352 THE FOX IN THE ATTIC
stopped. He galloped up the hill. Still out of breath he
asked for Walther at once. But the Baron (they told him)
was out. Augustine stamped his foot in fury: every minute's
delay was intolerable! When would he be back? — The
Baron and Baronin wouldn't be back till tomorrow. . .
surely the Gentleman knew that today they were taking the
Young Baroness to her convent? They had started at noon.
— No, she wasn't coming back with them of course: the
Baron and Baronin would return alone in the morning.
But the Young Baron would be here for dinner tonight,
and the Colonel-Baron: three gentlemen dining alone,
Good Appetite to them!
So this was the end! From his protestant upbringing
Augustine knew that what once a convent has swallowed
it never gives up. . .
Flinging his things into the old Gladstone bag that had
once been his father's he could hardly see what he was
doing: he was more like a boxer practising on a punch-bag
than a young man packing his clothes.
Where was he going to next? Anywhere anywhere any-
where! Over the frontier to whatever other country was
nearest! But then, as he turned again to the wardrobe his
bag called after him: "You don't know when you're
lucky!"
Augustine turned round in surprise; but he was wrong,
it was only a bag.
Acknowledgements
The knowledgeable reader will have recognised for
himself how deeply this volume is indebted to Bullock,
Wheeler-Bennett, Hanfstaengl, Kubizek, Saloman and
other published authorities, as well as to private sources.
A long list of these latter would defeat by tedium the
purposes of gratitude but I cannot leave unnamed
Baroness Pia von Are tin: she gave me access to her
father's memoirs and in every way she and her family
have helped me immeasurably. I must also thank par-
ticularly the only living person in a position to describe
to me at first-hand the whole forty-eight hour period
when Hitler was in hiding at Uffing. (Neither of these,
however, is blameworthy for my opinions.)
At certain points my narrative of the 'Putsch' diners
materially from others previously compiled. But I have
imported almost nothing fictitious except the little dog in
the plaid waistcoat, and the historian may be interested
to know that much of this narrative — including the whole
episode in the crypt, the crucial briefing in the fencing-
school with all that implied, and the correct route of the
march — is based on a vivid contemporary account by an
actual Nazi participant, a Major Goetz. This account
was contained in a letter to a friend dated 26th November,
j923j which some weeks later found its way into the
German press. Its very mistakes authenticate it, but it
does not seem to be well known.
I am also more deeply indebted than I can express to
the skilful and patient private critics of my manuscript.
R. H.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Richard Hughes was born in England in 1900, attended Charter-
house School and served in the British Army before going to
Oxford. While still an undergraduate, he was on the contributing
staffs of two London weeklies, had a play produced in London
and published a book of poems.
In 1922 he left Oxford, spending some time in Central Europe
before going back to Wales and a period of writing — poems,
stories and three more plays. After his second visit to the United
States, he returned to found a Welsh dramatic company. At
twenty-four he had had three plays staged in London.
After a trip to Ireland as a deck hand on a small sailing vessel
in 1925, he retired to an Adriatic island, where he began writing
A High Wind in Jamaica — a book he finished three years later
in Connecticut. Its first publication was in the U.S. under the
title The Innocent Voyage, establishing his reputation as an
outstanding novelist. A book of children's stories, The Spider's
Palace, followed. His second novel, In Hazard, was published in
1938, and another volume of children's stories, Don't Blame Me,
a year later. During World War II Mr. Hughes worked as a
civilian for the Admiralty, and later collaborated on its official
history. For three years he lectured periodically in London as
Gresham Professor in Rhetoric.
Since 1946, Mr. Hughes, his wife and five children, have lived
in North Wales. All his life, however, he has "felt from time to
time an impelling need to travel — whether dabbling in Balkan
revolutions, shooting the Canadian Rapids with Indian trappers,
or bluffing my way unarmed among the Berber tribesmen in
Southern Morocco."
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Photo by Sandra Lousada
RICHARD HUGHES was born in Eng-
land in 1900, attended Charterhouse
School and served in the British Army
before going to Oxford. In 1922 he left
Oxford, spending some time in Central
Europe before going back to Wales and
a period of writing poems, stories and
plays.
After a trip to Ireland as a deck hand
on a small sailing vessel in 1925, he
retired to an Adriatic island, where he
began writing A High Wind in Jamaica
— a book he finished three years later in
Connecticut. Its first publication was in
the United States under the title The
Innocent Voyage. A book of children's
stories, The Spiders Palace, followed.
His second novel, In Hazard, was pub-
lished in 1938, and another volume of
children's stories, Don't Blame Me, a
year later. During World War II Mr.
Hughes worked as a civilian for the Ad-
miralty, and later collaborated on its of-
ficial history.
No. 0743B
Jacobus tenBioek library
From the first English
0160
THE FOX IN THE ATTIC
"There are few living writers of whom one would say that they had genius
but somehow it seems the most natural thing in the world to say about
Richard Hughes. . . . We are reminded inevitably of Tolstoy, a comparison
It w writers except Mr. Hughes could survive."
CORONWY REES, Sunday Times
"A work of extraordinary brilliance and authority, of a kind that not even
A High Wind in Jamaica and In Hazard have quite prepared us for . . .
It is all utterlv convincing. ... In a few lines Mr. Hughes seems able to
render any character he chooses in flesh-and-blood actuality. And what one
finally takes away from this superb book is the feeling one receives from
Tolstoy, of life itself being lived."
WALTER ALLEN, Daily Telegraph
"Magnificent, authoritative, compassionate, ironic, funny and tragic . . .
The Fox in the Attic has that universal authenticity that is the hall-mark
of great writing."
Times Literary Supplement
"The design is of the grandest sort, and one is left in no doubt that Mr.
Hughes's immense talents can bring it off. He is absolutely in control, never
obvious, never irrelevant: the writing is immensely assured, a delight to
read. The Human Predicament [of which The Fox in the Attic is the first
panel] looks like being the major fiction event of the 'sixties."
JOHN FULLER, Listener
"A major event in British letters ... he engenders the same sort of trust
in his reader that Tolstoy does."
JOHN DAVENPORT, Observer
"Surely a work of genius ... Of the book's innumerable virtues, two should
perhaps be underlined — its vastness of vision, and ( a rarity in works of this
stature) its sheer readability." \
Belfast Telegraph
HARPER & BROTHERS, PUBLISHERS
No. 0743P