The day was drenched in light; the near and distant mountains shone like walls of amethyst and rose; but Mark, gazing out into the clear June day, felt a deep inner discomfort.
A man who has early in life adapted his powers with pleasure and success, to a certain fixed code which shows him to great personal advantage, seldom feels any sense of inner distraction. Obstacles in living, Mark had no hesitation in tackling – but to be himself an obstacle to his own living shocked as well as surprised him.
‘Am I going to be ill?’ he asked himself anxiously. Only once before, when he had fallen wildly, hopelessly in love, and for a very short time, could he remember having this shaken feeling of uncontrollable dismay. It was as if the goal ahead of him, though overwhelmingly desirable, was not within his powers.
There was, however, no special goal before him now and nothing in his life about which he need feel personally unhappy. He had not overdrawn his banking account. His holiday was beginning, not ending. Nobody that he disliked was determined to be with him.
On the contrary it was a fine day; he had already executed 16his mission, and part of the day at least, he expected to spend in no worse company than his own. His dejection however still clung to him, even after he had eaten a light breakfast and caught the little mountain train that was to take him up to Seefeld.
The second crop of hay was near its cutting. The long grass was brilliant with the last flowers; sheets of pink ragged robin, interspersed with dark columbines and gold and purple heartsease, filled the meadows to the brim. As the train climbed higher, sulphur-coloured anemones waved gracefully above the smaller flowers, while here and there an orchid stood erect and separate; sometimes a delicately carved spray of pure white blossoms with a fragrant scent; sometimes a wickedly natural bee or fly on a short vivid green stem. Vetches – yellow, purple, pink, orange and blood-red – tangled their way through the tall grasses. Marguerites, their gold and white heads clustered together like children planning a game, stood in groups about the meadows, and in the cuttings, in the cool shadow of a wet rock, a clump of lilies bloomed against a background of blue air.
Mark’s eyes moved upwards in restless longing, over the slopes of the mountains. He was going to waste a perfect climbing day he told himself – that must be the source of his discomfort. Here was Martin’s Wand, and there across the valley stood Hoch Eder, the highest peak of the group. Mark had climbed this mountain once in a thunderstorm. Never had he felt so small and vulnerable, as on that stark height, where the rain dislodged great stones, and sent them bowling down the mountainside at him. Just beneath Eder, was a curious small nameless pyramid, beneath which he had found shelter.
To the left of the valley, if he leaned far enough out of 17the train window, Mark could just catch a glimpse of that round bare-backed peak, the Hohe Mund. Mark had always liked the great shaggy Solitary, standing in lonely grandeur, with a long row of Seven Sisters streaming away from him down into the valley, at a respectful distance – rather like the kneeling daughters of a sculptured knight – well to the left of their spectacular brother. There was nothing between the Hohe Mund’s round head – touched with a light scattering of new fallen snow – and the deep blueness of the sky. It was still early in the morning; but the light had already had long hours to soak into every shape and colour of the summer day.
Station by small station, the peasants dropped in about their daily business from the fields below, or returned from having sold their animals in the market town of Telfs. These were Austrians at last – the same, unstressed, simple people Mark had always loved. They said ‘Grüss Gott!’ to him; and to each other; but not quite as they used to say it. Their eyes seemed to weigh Mark before they received his answer.
These were men and women who were used to dealing with major misfortunes. Storms; floods; houses struck by lightning; crop failures that meant half-starved winters. They could endure the Nazis, but they did not believe in them, except as misfortunes to endure.
What they believed in was their own plain lives and hearts; and the little church which was the centre of their village. They had no weapons nor were they trained to fight. They could do nothing to prevent the armed might of Hitler; but their slow hearts burned against him.
Their eyes meeting Mark’s, instantly divined that here was an Englishman – a potential enemy of the Nazis, and the old subtle friendliness Mark had always felt between himself and the peasants of North Tirol, deepened. The 18eyes of the women smiled at him; they let their children rest against his shoulder. The men smoked tranquilly in his presence.
Mark suddenly knew why he had come with Reggie’s message, he couldn’t have stayed away, and this discomfort that lingered about his heart, he knew too now, what that was – he could not be in this beloved country, and not share its silent pain.
Up through the short dark tunnel out into the golden day, from waterfall to waterfall the mountain train zigzagged and jerked its unhurried way. The little stations flickered past, each with a loved familiar name – Zirl – Hoch Zirl – Drei Heiligen – at last Seefeld, a morose flat little station, with its nearest beauty half a mile away.
Mark remembered the little slope with the larches crowning it, on the way to the village. The grassy slopes were a mass of pale pink crocus, their frail petals lifted to the day, as if to draw the strong golden light down into the depths of their living cups. The larches wore their first bright plumage; they looked so lightly tethered to the earth that they might at any moment have taken flight into the sunny air.
‘They are going to cut our larches down,’ an expressionless voice said close to him. Mark glanced quickly at the speaker, a heavily built farmer who had got out of the train with him. ‘Why?’ Mark asked. ‘Surely the woods are full of larches that would not be noticed – if they must cut larches down!’ The farmer shrugged his shoulders. ‘What do they care whether we notice our trees or not?’ he growled. ‘They are out to destroy whatever other men notice! And I tell you, Brother, that what they themselves notice, is really worth destroying!’ His heart spat out the words before his lips could stop them. He gave Mark a sudden suspicious glance and lurched away from him down the platform. 19
‘Of course I can’t do anything about it!’ Mark told himself savagely, as he turned down the road towards the post office. ‘I’m not even a soldier!’
There seemed at first no sign of Father Martin when Mark reached the centre of the village, so he sat down in front of the Café Lamm and drank a coffee. The post office was just opposite, and after a time, he saw a youth separate himself casually from a group that stood about its doors, and stroll off towards the mountains.
Mark finished his coffee, and started off down a parallel road, to join him. When he came out on the slopes, the figure of the village youth was just visible, some way ahead. At last on the verge of being swallowed up by the trees, the figure stopped, and Mark caught up with him. It seemed to Mark as if besides the disguise of his peasant clothes, Father Martin had made his very face look expressionless and solid. His erect disciplined figure slouched easily, like that of a man who has learned the path of least resistance to physical effort.
‘I wasn’t sure it was you,’ Mark told him.
‘It would have been dangerous to be too sure,’ Father Martin said with a smile, ‘but now we are safe. The pine trees will cover us as far as we go. No one from the village visits scenery unless his business takes him into it. We shall have to do a little climbing, but the slopes of the Wetterstein are easy going after the Habig.’ Puffs of sun-backed resin floated through the trees, the path wound too steeply up the mountainside for speech. They climbed for some time through the warm, scented silence, until the pines abruptly stopped, as if they had been cut off by a knife; and they found themselves standing in the blazing light of the high meadows.
There was no sign of human life, except an empty hut, 20set in a tapestry of flowers. Leaning against it, they could look down two thousand feet below them into the little motionless valley.
‘Here we can talk easily,’ Father Martin explained, ‘for there is no one to listen to us but an eagle, or a mountain hare; and they have no links with the Gestapo. Our friends will join us soon. One comes over the mountains from Larchenfeld – and one by train from Mittenwald.’ Father Martin sank into silence. He sat very still, looking at the great motionless shapes of the high mountains. Every small shining flower among the rocks beside him – stonecrop, or mountain buttercup, or the slim trembling harebells – fixed his fascinated gaze in turn. If a bird plunged or darted into the woods, it was as if his heart flew with them. The spiders’ webs alive and sparkling with dew on a bramble, found a fellow pattern shining in the monk’s heart. When Mark spoke to him, he brought his eyes back reluctantly from the beauty of the earth, with human friendliness, but with a less vivid attention than he had to spare for a squirrel or a butterfly.
‘Do you think,’ Mark asked abruptly, ‘that we belong to the earth?’ ‘But certainly,’ Father Martin said smiling, ‘do not you?’ ‘Not quite in the same way,’ Mark explained. ‘I belong – or feel as if I belonged – more to myself – or to mankind. However I am bound to admit that just at the moment I find myself preferring the earth – to the men on it!’ ‘Well, there you are,’ agreed the monk. ‘It is more obedient! I can imagine your feeling like that. Sometimes it is true one comes on something ramshackle. There is decay and destruction after a storm, for instance, but these get cleared away in time. About the earth one is always more or less sure that it will do its business. It is better trained than we are. A little extravagant here and there perhaps – or 21shall we say lavish! But almost every growing thing faces its difficulties with great ingenuity and courage. See how high these trees climb against the forces of wind and snow, and how clever they are to spread low, where they are most exposed, and as unconflictingly as they can against its terrible power. These small plants too about us – they have very little water and almost no soil to grow on – but look how they manage with snow and rock for their dwelling-place. Their beauty and their brightness one might fancy are the more brilliant because of their discipline.’
‘They grow in clearer air – and nearer the sun,’ Mark objected. ‘Those are also good reasons,’ Father Martin agreed cheerfully, ‘and yet I can believe also that struggle adds to glory in men or flowers. We have before us, I think, in Europe a time of very great hardship, and exposure to cruel forces. When I see part of creation performing with grace and endurance, I am reassured as to what man too may find within his powers.’
‘You can have too many difficulties and dangers,’ Mark said sombrely. ‘As we climbed up through the woods, I was thinking about Austria – what men must feel like under the harrow of absolute power – controlled by brutes like these Nazis – it must be a pretty horrible sensation – for these Tirolers are men!’
Father Martin said nothing for a moment, the light did not leave his happy eyes, but his jaw set resolutely.
‘What you say about the misery of our people is very true,’ he said quietly, ‘and it will become true I believe soon – for all Europe – perhaps for all the world. Yet this is also true, though one seldom has a chance to remember it – this beauty that we see, this inner rapture – the Life that is behind and breaks through the outer covering for the world – is a creative power. There is no end to it; and 22it is our mother. The Forces that make the world are at our disposal. You may say “Are they not also at the disposal of the Nazis?” but I do not think they are. Love is the only creative power there is. Hate is what the Nazis use, and I think – though hate is very powerful when it is used consistently and with modern equipment – that it is less strong than love. I can believe there will be in the coming years – for all their darkness – uprushes and breaks through, of just such stubborn beauty as nature gives us. There will be in the loneliness of strong hearts in danger, a passion for truth, a pure and single-hearted freedom! These forces in men have long been overlaid or hidden away from us, by selfish love of comfort – a Lie has plastered our moral standards into empty advertisements on public hoardings. We have not shared our love, or our comforts, with our poorer brothers, nor have we cared that they should be shared – or that they should be poor. Now we shall have to fight for virtue with our lives, sharing all we have as we go, and we shall see – when virtue is fought for – as much splendour in the heart of man, as in this summer day.’
Mark was silent. He had an uncomfortable feeling as if the virtue of being gloomy about the trials of his friends was perhaps not quite enough. Father Martin’s joy had about it a dual quality. It did not seem to release him from implicating himself in dangerous and disagreeable things, and yet kept him cheerful while he did them. It was as if his pleasure was no more irresponsible than his pity. When Mark was happy he forgot there were such things as duties; but he was not often happy. He was simply as he suddenly told himself, ready to do what he thought right when he knew what it was; if it did not go beyond what he thought sensible, and was his own concern. He was just about to explain what he felt about his duty and how it should – if it were to be 23done properly and in order, begin and end at home – when he saw that Father Martin’s attention had become fixed on the wood. ‘That must be Oskar Pirschl,’ he explained, ‘and I have as yet told you nothing about him – he is Pirschl the painter – you have heard of him perhaps – many countries have – he is a great artist.’
Mark nodded. He had heard of Pirschl. He had even been to an exhibition in Paris and seen some of his pictures. He looked with interest at the figure emerging from the pines. Just, Mark said to himself, what one might expect from his odd, savage, unkempt pictures. He didn’t know how to take a steep slope. He was an untidy sloppy fellow – just clean apparently, but as far as he himself was concerned, he might have been just dirty. His clothes were worn, and unmended. His boots had not been cleaned before the fresh dust of the day had coated them. Only one thing about him was trained, and that was his astonishing huge myopic eyes, looking at the world as though to devour it alive. The eyes that raked Mark had a fearful power. ‘Mein Gott!’ Pirschl exclaimed, as he flung himself panting down beside them, ‘you expect a man to have wings, Father, before he reaches Paradise. This is the third time you have brought me to the height of the Angels – and what merit do I acquire from it? None! My sins remain the same, my stomach kicks against my back, and I hate bird’s-eye views.
‘I knew it didn’t matter really how late I was,’ Pirschl went on in a tone of grim complacency. ‘I shouldn’t be the last anyhow.’
‘You are not late,’ Father Martin said gently. ‘Indeed we have the whole day before us, and the June light is long. Nothing need hurry us.’
Pirschl drew out a pipe and a tattered pouch from which he pulled a scanty chunk of ragged tobacco. He looked 24longingly at Mark. ‘Matches,’ he murmured. ‘War or no war! Nazis or no Nazis! I foretell the English will be the last in Europe to have matches! A thousand thanks. I am to keep the box? I suppose you have grasped that we are going to shed one by one – all our little conveniences – decencies and privacies? To save time I have shed mine already. Father Martin gave up his long ago, and the third of our friends who is about to drop down on us from the gap, never had any. But I rather wonder what you – and that neat little island of yours, are going to do – when the Nazis overrun the earth, and you have to give up all your comfortable ways!’
Mark stared at him – did he really suppose that there was any danger to Great Britain and the French Empire, from these deluded and obstreperous Nazi maniacs? Probably he knew nothing about politics, this artist – and had never even heard of the Maginot Line.
‘We are a small island,’ Mark gracefully admitted, ‘no matter what we own. But we are fortunate in this – that our next-door neighbour is our friend – whereas you had two next-door neighbours who were both your enemies.’
‘Ach!’ said Pirschl, puffing slowly and contentedly at his pipe, ‘so you see it! But better perhaps to have two enemies – than one friend, who isn’t one at heart!’
‘You think France isn’t our friend?’ Mark questioned a little superciliously. He did not himself care much for the French, but it had not occurred to him that the French had no particular affection for the English either. Besides, were not their mutual interests enough?
‘France hates you,’ Pirschl said, ‘perhaps just less than she hates Germany. That is no doubt what you are relying upon. But why should France not hate you? If there is a war – all her men have to fight! A nation of thirty-five 25million against a nation of sixty-five million – all armed; and you her Ally offer her your own security from invasion – and a blockade that only acts as an indirect weapon against a ruffian half over her threshold! You will send her your handful of amateur soldiers no doubt – not fighting on their own soil, and not fighting under her command. France gets too little out of it! All her country has to be overrun! What percentage of your men will fight, or know how to? and how much of your land and how many of your houses will be devastated compared to hers? The French are logical and accurate, they count up everything for – and everything against. I grant you, air warfare will lessen some of your securities. But you need some place in which to build armaments. The Skoda Works, for instance, of which you have just made so handsome a present to Hitler! These might have helped to arm you!
‘Then there is also Italy to consider – and be very sure Laval considers it! You are not even helping to maintain Republican Spain – which is the best Ally you could have had, and which when destroyed will expose the Flank of France. Why Hitler – he has nothing to do, but wait for his good friends, Mr. Chamberlain and M. Daladier, to finish his work for him! You have heard that the Nazis boast a secret weapon? I can tell you all about it. Hitler has found out how to make his enemies destroy their own friends! That is the secret weapon of the Nazis. Once I made a portrait of Hitler. It was very amusing. He sat well – thinking his own thoughts – and I saw them. One by one in his face – all lies! and he with the art of making them his slaves! Truth is no man’s slave – but lies – what magnificent servants they make, and how well they can be used, to carry out a man’s Wish Dreams! I saw all these serviceable lies in Hitler’s face – and the glow of the pleasure they gave him – and I 26painted them under the glow. He was as pleased as Punch with the portrait. But then I fell from favour by painting Goebbels. He was not so pleased with his portrait! He had too much sense. He saw that I had painted him as he really was – no man likes that when he sees it! You can deceive Hitler, for he lives at the centre of his own delusions, like a spider at the heart of his web; but Goebbels stands outside his lies; and he remains outside them. It was a blunder that portrait! But I retrieved it by painting his wife, who is picture-pretty and belongs to other men. That restored me to favour. Now I come and go among the highest, so I can be of use to you perhaps!’
After all, this artist, Mark concluded, did know something about politics. But he seemed to know nothing about Mark.
‘I must tell him at once that I shall have nothing to do with this business of Reggie’s,’ Mark said to himself. ‘It is preposterous. Father Martin should have told him already!’
‘I am afraid,’ Mark said stiffly, ‘that my job will not lead me to any such exalted quarters. My business here is a very small affair, and has already been accomplished.’ It was extraordinary, but neither of the men were listening to him. Instead they had once more become absolutely motionless, as if they were part of the mountain silence.
They had heard something that Mark himself had not heard though he prided himself upon his hunter’s ears. Perhaps the ears of the hunted grow even keener. But Father Martin turned to Pirschl with evident relief. ‘It is Ida, I am sure,’ he said, ‘she has climbed the Pass – what we hear are stones falling. She must have skirted the drop, and come down one of the gulleys. She will have no skin on her hands or her heels, and she should have broken her neck; but she will not have broken it!’ 27
Even as he spoke, a slight, hatless figure in knee breeches, with a short blue canvas coat, scrambled over the rocks towards them. She was, Mark saw with disapproval, as she came nearer, exactly the kind of woman he didn’t like. Her thick untidy ginger-coloured hair was cut close to her head, her face was inordinately white; she had not painted her lips, and she had the cold wild eyes of a sea bird. Her figure was wiry and without curves; she had no allure; no poise. ‘A mind of her own – and what a place to put it in!’ Mark thought discouragingly.
‘I came over the gap,’ she said to Father Martin, when she reached them. ‘People notice one so now in trains. I’ve finished my cigarettes. Has anyone got some to spare?’
‘In this country – a cigarette to spare?’ laughed Pirschl. ‘Ask the Englishman – he even has matches!’
‘This is Doctor Eichhorn, Herr Chalmers,’ Father Martin said courteously. ‘We call her “doctor”, but she was once a Gräfin as well – were you not, Ida?’
‘If that makes it easier for him to bear – I still am,’ Dr. Eichhorn said with a twist of her strong ugly mouth. ‘It impressed the Nazis so that they allowed me to retain my job; nor did they discover that I have tucked away somewhere in the sane past, when we did not know our dangers – a Jewish grandmother! I suppose you, Pirschl, are also a Jew – as much as you are anything!’
‘Not at all,’ Pirschl replied with a friendly grin. ‘I only happen to look intelligent. I am of peasant origin, and I don’t know where I was born – nor strictly speaking, who my father was – nor do I mean to try to find out – I leave these cheerless riddles to the Nazis, who have been so kind as to assure me that I am a pure Aryan. Father Martin is of course not pure – since he is a Jesuit; but as far as I know, he has not yet been accused of being a Jew! Now 28you know all that matters about us – in what is now called “Greater Germany”, Herr Chalmers, and we know all that matters about you – since you are an Englishman, and Austrians have made for years a study of Englishmen. We collect them like postage stamps. It is our favourite hobby. I begin to grow tired of the sound of my own voice; and I am so hungry. May we now eat? I brought with me two sausage rolls and a bottle of beer – and I do not intend to share them!’ ‘Doch! eat, Pig!’ Ida told him dispassionately. ‘Knowing your appetite I have brought with me an extra salad and a whole chocolate Torte. Let us hope that they did not come to an understanding together – in my rucksack. You, Father Martin, will no doubt have forgotten to bring anything – except perhaps a crust of bread, therefore I doubled my portion of ham. The Englishman we will presume came from a good hotel, in this case he will have in his rucksack a stale roll and butter; one hard boiled egg; some very tough salamè and an age-old Ementhaler cheese. He may – if he has lived long enough in Austria – have bought himself also a bottle of wine or at worst of beer. No! Wine! Good, and a whole bottle! You are an intelligent Englishman it seems, and better yet you have chosen a Gumpoldskirchner – a very good wine to drink on a mountainside. Heil everything – and everybody – except Hitler and the German Reich!’
They drank the toast in silence, a queer good-tempered exuberant silence. Everything about these people Mark felt, was redundant and exaggerated. Even Father Martin need not have looked so happy. Mark’s austere senses were shocked by the way in which these Austrians wanted to go further in a shorter while than seemed to him decent. They showed off too much, talked too easily, were too attentive. The quality of their observation was too keen. This 29woman’s eyes for instance constantly strayed over Mark, with a curious piercing but impersonal quality. Not as if she was pleased with what she saw, but as if she were looking for rather an important needle in a haystack. There was no needle; and he had no haystack, but Mark felt as if he had never, in so short an interval, been so thoroughly taken in before. They none of them waited for him to make any advances. Not that he would have made them if they had. He disliked rushing human approaches; and he hoped that after to-day he would never see any of these three fantastic creatures again. What a crew, with whom to conduct a serious consultation on espionage – a monk, an artist, and a woman!
The clouds sailed on over their heads in the deep blue heavens, little rounded shining puffs of cloud, or long lazy streamers transparently white, girdling the dark wooded mountains.
The sun burned down upon the small jewelled flowers between the rocks. The valley swam far below them in an apricot haze.
Ida leaned back against a rock, close to Mark’s side. She shared his wine abstemiously, with a good-humoured air.
Something instinctive and exasperated within himself warned Mark that she was aware of his feeling about her – aware but not annoyed. She was not any more anxious to impress him than she was to be impressed by him. She looked on him as part of the day’s work – a highly important part – so that she would take trouble, whatever he felt like, to understand him. But she did not really care if the material she had to work with was pleasant or unpleasant to handle. The question, her cold speculative eyes demanded, was simply whether Mark could be useful or not.
Far below them a black dot broke the still air, till it grew 30into the shape of a bird; the bird came and went from their vision, in long zig-zagging flights, increasing in size with each rounded circle, till suddenly the air seemed to fall away from the width of his great wings; and they saw he was an eagle, touched by the sun into pure gold. He must have seen them, for without the tribute of an instant’s pause, his flight changed its direction and he sank away into bottomless light.
‘Now he has gone, that great splendid one,’ Father Martin said regretfully, ‘and it is time perhaps that we began to talk of Herr Chalmers’ mission. He tells us he is only a messenger. It is enough for us that he is with us, against the Nazis. Until war is declared he is freer than we are. He may go where he likes and find out what he can. He will not need our help now – and we must none of us be seen with him as an Englishman. That is why I chose this mountain height – to which we could all come and go unobserved and from different directions. But if war were to be declared – well, then it will be of vital importance for his country – and for us – that he, or some other messenger – but preferably Herr Chalmers himself, since we now already know him – should return to us as an Austrian! We must make a plan now beforehand, to bring him in and keep him here as one of ourselves. Have you any ideas to offer us, Oskar – it is a moment for good ideas – and it is to you, as a creative artist, that I turn first.’
‘Mein Gott! but I am not a conjuror,’ Oskar said in mock dismay. ‘I produce rabbits where there are rabbits and pocket handkerchiefs where there are pocket handkerchiefs – not one instead of the other! Still for what it is worth, I have an idea. Since, as all Europe knows, even before the little old gentleman with the umbrella demonstrated it afresh, by flying to meet our gangster in Berchtesgaden, with a 31business proposition instead of a gun – all Englishmen are mad – why not profit by this well earned reputation yourself, Herr Chalmers, and become mad on purpose? You could then qualify as a lodger for Ida’s Nervenheilanstalt? From there you could learn many useful things – without appearing any saner than you are! I myself should not – except from one or two slight character traits of the English noticeable to an artist – have failed to accept you as one of ourselves. It is true I never saw an Austrian lift his feet with such care, or look as if he were saying with so much modesty, “Believe me – I am not proud. I know I am an Englishman – but don’t let us make any fuss about it! We will overlook, just this once, the honour I am doing you in remaining alive!”’
‘Oskar, you are sometimes unbearably rude!’ Father Martin told him severely.
‘No, I am not rude,’ Pirschl contradicted him, with a good-natured wink in Mark’s direction, ‘I am only uncontrollably witty! Besides, I realize that Mr. Chalmers will laugh at himself! Does it not prove that he has a sense of humour; and might it not be overlooked – if he couldn’t prove it?’
Mark frowned, he was so disconcerted by being, as it were, flung into this personal intimacy, without so much as a chance to explain that he himself had nothing whatever to do with the matter in hand, that for a moment or two, he let Oskar run on as he chose; then he sat up straight, and said briskly: ‘But I haven’t the slightest intention of coming back to Austria myself! I’ve done already what I set out to do – I’ve given Father Martin my friend in London’s message. It is true I agreed to talk over with you to-day what sort of a place an Englishman could find, if war broke out – where he could pass on information that would be useful to us, but 32I begin to see that the whole situation is impracticable!’ He paused, the eyes of all three Austrians were fixed on him. Father Martin’s in pained wonder, Ida’s in open scorn, and Pirschl’s with angry incredulity.
‘What did you come here for then?’ he demanded, ‘to look at a worm cut in half – and then go back to your country – which is at present a whole worm – and warn it what it will feel like, when the shears reach it?’
Ida laughed contemptuously. ‘You need not ask him why he is going away,’ she said, ‘that explains itself!’
Father Martin intervened, ‘It is true what Herr Chalmers says,’ he explained. ‘We should be grateful to him. He gave us his message. He will take back ours. But there is something else that perhaps he has not fully realized. Herr Chalmers loves our country. I do not think he yet understands what this love involves. Nor that this country is more than a country – it is a portrait of what is to happen to all helpless, free and harmless lands. They are to be trapped, as Austria has been trapped, set upon and enslaved by force. We cannot limit ourselves any more, Herr Chalmers. Each must give what he can in such an emergency.’
‘If you don’t,’ Ida said bitterly, ‘I hope you will suffer as I think you will Herr Chalmers! Remember that when your own country is overrun – how you would not stand by Austria – when perhaps you could have saved both her, and yourself!’
Pirschl said suddenly, ‘But perhaps he does not mean this! It is only that he does not yet quite understand the Nazis. It is a lovely day to-day, Mr. Chalmers, isn’t it? We are having a fine time up here in the mountains! Twenty miles from here there is a concentration camp, where men are throwing themselves against live wires so as to die easily. In Vienna there are a hundred suicides a week. My best friend cut his 33throat yesterday. Both Ida’s brothers are in prison – none of us know which prison – Father Martin’s mother died of heart failure two months ago, when a Nazi breaking into her house to pillage, struck her across the mouth. You say you “care” for our country – well, this is our country. What do you intend to do about it?’ This personal, emotional way of forcing opinion upon him, shocked Mark deeply. The worst of it was that besides feeling shocked, he found that he felt a sense of angry shame at not being prepared to take a dangerous risk for a cause which was not, as yet, if it ever would be – his own.
Perhaps there were things in the heart of man that had hitherto escaped him. Even in his own heart. He looked up at Ida and said sharply, ‘I am not trained as a spy – I should be of no use to you – even if I wished to stay!’
Ida’s eyes sparkled with scorn. ‘Are we?’ she demanded. ‘In what school were we trained? We are training ourselves, Herr Chalmers – by danger – by persecution – by pity, and yes – by rage! Father Martin may talk of love if he likes – but I train myself by hate! Those who are suffering as we have not yet suffered, have something to do with us – we still think! There in the road is the man set upon by thieves – wounded and robbed! We see the priest go by, and the Levite lift his skirts – but lying in our dust, and our blood – trying to stanch the worse wounds of our own brothers – do you suppose we have yet seen a glimpse of the good Samaritan! How I should laugh at Christians if I were a Jew! I should die of laughing!’
There was a long silence. Pirschl broke it at last by humming a little Viennese song of the day – a curious, lilting tune that was both gay and sad. Something in it, or in Pirschl’s unexpectedly true and charming voice, twisted Mark’s heart. It is true these people were excited, 34exaggerated, roused to a frenzy of strange emotions, but it was because their love of life – their life itself – was threatened. Mark suddenly felt himself nothing but a shadow in a world of cruel actuality. It had nothing to do with him – all this ponderable anguish – he could get out of it to-morrow. He need never return. But had it nothing to do with him? Something was happening to human beings that simply ought not to happen to any human beings.
Mark met Father Martin’s eyes. There was no disapproval in them. He seemed to be waiting without impatience for something he was quite sure would come.
‘I don’t know,’ Mark found himself saying, ‘I just don’t know what to do!’ They were all three silent. ‘You must see for yourselves,’ he went on desperately, ‘that my own country – well, what I mean to say is – they haven’t expected it of me! I simply took the message to oblige my friend, who hadn’t at the moment, a more convenient messenger.’
‘It is convenient,’ Pirschl said, giving up his tune, and becoming suddenly grim, ‘that you speak German – German too, not as we Austrians speak it, but as Hanoverian Germans speak it. It is convenient that as I understand you can climb mountains, and know our ways and our peaks. It is convenient that you are here now – that we have all seen you, and that what we are saying takes the place of any further need of communication. You see, there are almost too many conveniences to overlook, Herr Chalmers. We understand your disinclination to act, but after all it is your country as well as ours, that you will be serving. What happened to us yesterday, may well happen to you to-morrow. That’s it, you see. You haven’t yet quite taken in the Nazis! But they will take you in first if you do not hurry!’
‘It is useless to bother him,’ Ida said contemptuously. ‘After all, perhaps he is right – if he is afraid he would be 35useless. Why is my house full of madmen? Because they found it too hard to be sane. They are irresponsible – they like to be taken care of. Let him go back to his English mad-house then, and be taken care of – till the last!’
‘If I can really be of any use—’ Mark said stiffly, ‘I will consider it.’ None of them moved, they were still as wild things. Was even relief to their shaken nerves, now a new kind of danger?
Father Martin spoke first. He said gently, ‘I think it is certain you can be of use. But this idea of entering an insane hospital – it is a terrible one. You should know, Ida, if it is also possible. Could Mr. Chalmers really pass as one of your patients?’
‘He can train himself,’ she said, with a shrug of her lean shoulders. ‘Many of my patients look as sane as those outside. Of course, Mr. Chalmers looks healthy – but morbid children are often very strong indeed physically. His blood cannot be wrong, but there are cyclic patients, or paranoiacs, or early stages of dementia praecox who can look healthy. Perhaps as he is youngish dementia praecox would be the widest field with the least opportunity of being caught out. He has some months, at least I should think, in which he could study – a mania depressive would be the easiest type. I will lend him books. He must remember that a mental disease is as distinct and separate from other mental diseases, as the separate illnesses of the body. It is important that he should not try to be half a dozen different kinds of lunatic at the same time. Each of us, whether we know what it is or not, has made himself a life pattern as distinct as a criminal’s fingerprints. But if we are sane, we hold less rigidly to our pattern, and we alter it to suit the demands of life. Also we can hide our pattern from others – or from ourselves. But the insane have a rigid pattern. They 36cannot alter it. Nor hide it. So what you must present, Herr Chalmers, is something a little more distinct, but always the same as your own!’
Was she still mocking him? Mark was highly sensitive to fear – and of all fears, that of the insane was the most terrifying to him. The base of his spine froze at the mere thought of what he might be undertaking. Yet he could not bear that this cold and singular woman should think him afraid. Better be mad then yield up his secret fear to those dancing scornful eyes.
‘It seems a very good idea,’ Mark said slowly.
‘But it is horrible!’ Oskar interrupted angrily. ‘I did not even mean it seriously! How can a sane man live with the insane – days and nights – for weeks – for months – treated like them – surrounded by them – and not go mad himself – the very idea nearly sends me off my head!’
‘You have never been very much on it!’ Ida told him drily. ‘A man who is sane in himself, does not go mad. Herr Chalmers is a much steadier person than you are. Besides I shall be there, knowing that he is sane. If you can think of a better idea, certainly let us hear it. Can you, Father Martin?’
‘Any idea is difficult,’ Father Martin said sadly. ‘You see no one in this country will fail to be, in some way or other, known to the police. The Germans are very thorough. Their whole life as a people is at stake. They will leave no loophole. They know we are their enemies. When war is declared on the rest of Europe, very few of us will be allowed to move. We shall be tied down to our own job and our neighbours. A man without a docketed history will not exist outside a concentration camp. Perhaps a trained spy will wriggle in and out for a few days, but Herr Chalmers is not trained. I cannot think the fearful life of a fugitive very possible for him. If he could not prove himself an Austrian 37he would be promptly shot – and if he was able to prove it, he would be forced into the army. I am very doubtful if there is any possibility for a foreigner not already accepted on his history, to remain in this country at all – once war is set loose in Europe. Are you not also, Oskar?’
‘Yes,’ Pirschl admitted. ‘For such a stupid people – and they are so stupid they must make God yawn – the Germans are incredibly skilled at self-preservation. They have already an army that hasn’t left so much as a heel to strike at. Of course they have had the hardihood to invent danger, for if they were not so bloody-minded – they – and all the world with them, would be safe. But that is only another proof of their stupidity! God! what damned, mad stupidity it is in such a world as this – to start a war! Imagine to yourself – Great Britain launching a war to uphold the majesty of the House of Commons, or the thrifty French thinking the Chamber of Deputies worth fighting about – yet this “Reich” – this empty flatulent word, is for every German a signal to kill or die!
‘I hate to return to this mad idea, Herr Chalmers, but it is less mad than any other. I could also give you a start out of my own history. I do not know where I was born – my mother is dead. I had – or I had not a brother. It cannot be proved that he never existed. Perhaps my father was Viennese. Perhaps a Czech – or a Hungarian. Perhaps my brother and myself, equally evaded birth certificates. The Nazis have already agreed to overlook this inadvertence on my part, and would that of my brother. I will therefore baptize you – saving your presence, Father Martin, and not meant impiously, “Anton Pirschl”! I can already see the fellow! I can swear to your identity! You can very easily be considered mad – for you are now my brother, and I have never been considered particularly sane.’ 38
Ida laughed. ‘Very true,’ she said. ‘I would take you into my establishment to-morrow, on your looks alone. An outside doctor whom I will procure for you myself, and your next of kin – that will procure you a certificate, Herr Chalmers. Once certified and your papers already in the institution, you can remain there until Hitler overturns the world – or the world overturns Hitler. Personally I think it a hideous plan – why not give it up?’
Father Martin said nothing. Mark felt that Ida alone was challenging him – it was a duel between her and himself. Between his fear and her scorn of fear. The two men would be relieved if he refused, but Ida would be triumphant. She would have proved to herself that he was the cold-hearted coward she had made up her mind to believe him to be.
The light round them had grown softer; the shadows were less deep; the heaviness of noon had lightened into an exquisite freshness.
‘What I have agreed to do,’ Mark said slowly, after a long pause, and looking towards Father Martin, ‘is not particularly agreeable; nor can any method be considered safe – all therefore that seems to matter is that I should accept this plan as it is the only one we can think of, that gives me a permanent place to be in without suspicion, while I gather what information can be brought me. I think we need waste no more time about the matter. Where is this Nervenheilanstalt of yours, Dr. Eichhorn?’
‘It is in the mountains near Innsbruck – in a village called Obersdorf,’ Ida said promptly. ‘The main line runs fairly close to us, and I have permission to run a car. Ours is not a state-run affair, as you will gather, but a private hospital of some forty to fifty patients. The Nazis have already visited us, and approved of our arrangements. They have, as you know, dangerous ideas about the insane; but less dangerous 39about those who pay well, than about those who are an expense to the state. We have a good estate, and many of our patients are good gardeners. We also run a farm, and think highly of our cows, pigs and chickens. I can recommend our Nervenheilanstalt, Herr Chalmers, for its physical comforts – especially in wartime. When whatever there is to eat in the shops will be sent to Berlin.’
‘It is nevertheless a terrible place,’ Oskar Pirschl muttered. ‘Each man in his own separate Hell, unable to get out or to communicate with others! Father Martin, you – who believe in a good God – how do you explain the insane?’
‘Perhaps,’ Father Martin said cautiously, ‘they are as Ida has pointed out to us, less irresponsible than is always supposed. You say very truly, they cannot communicate; but have they ever – when they could – before they were insane – wanted to? Man was told to love his brother as himself. If he will not do this, then he may very well become mad. We cannot make God responsible for what happens when we break His laws.’
In the distance the rocks ceased to fall, no bird sang; only the waterfalls casually rustled in the still air – until their cool sound became part of the mountain silence.
Oskar Pirschl stood up. ‘The sun is sinking behind the Hohe Mund,’ he said. ‘We can go by train together, Ida, and travel third class, for I have no money. Father Martin will give us notice when Herr Chalmers is to become my brother. Meanwhile I will prepare the Nazis for his future existence. Good-bye, Father, good-bye, my mad brother Anton.’
Ida met Mark’s eyes, her own still taunted him as she rose and held out her hand. ‘I will send you some books. Study them well and choose your type!’ she said. ‘You will not need to become an idiot, you know – you can be quite 40intelligent. Only it must be the intelligence of a blind man in a fog. For the insane the fog is always there – the rest of mankind – that is the fog! Only their own ego, and its desires are clear to them. That is what has happened to the German nation – they have as a people gone completely mad. They were never in fact very sane – those Force-lovers! Well, good-bye and good luck to you.’
Mark watched them in silence disappear into the pines, the heavy shambling figure of the artist, the slim, taut, sexless creature by his side. They were laughing and joking together, as if nothing had happened.
Mark felt as if there was a great deal he wanted to talk about with Father Martin; but the monk said nothing, and Mark did not feel able to break the silence.
The shadows began to stretch longer and longer up the mountainside, till they reached and engulfed the hut. ‘Darkness comes from below,’ Father Martin murmured half to himself and half to Mark, as he slowly rose to his feet, ‘the last place it reaches is the sky! We must go down quickly before it overtakes us. To-day we have learned all that we need to know about each other – have we not? We have discovered that we are friends. That is all that any human being needs to know about another.’
‘Why didn’t you tell them I was only Reggie’s messenger first?’ Mark burst out. ‘I never meant to do this thing! Had you decided yesterday that I should?’
‘I decided nothing for you,’ Father Martin said gently. ‘But I suspect that perhaps you had already taken your decision before you realized that you had taken it – when, for instance, you came out to Austria with your friend’s message.
‘It was, I think, out of friendship that you came, but you have found – as we often find about a friendship – that it is 41deeper than we know. That is why what you have decided to give us is greater than what you intended to give us! I know that it is very great.’
Mark frowned. He wanted to make light of his services, and all its risks. The atmosphere about him, continually deepening into emotion, disconcerted him.
‘We have very little time,’ Father Martin said quietly, ‘to do anything now but plan,’ and with extreme clarity and judgment he laid before Mark each practical step that they must take, to anticipate his return.
Before they reached the village they separated. Mark found himself once more sitting before the Lamm Inn, eating a Natur-Schnitzel and drinking red Magdalena wine. Star after star cut its clear way through the darkening blue of the sky. The whole long fantastic golden day seemed like a dream. Could it be true that he had met a white-faced woman with ginger hair who, in a few months’ time, was going to turn him into a madman?