–As when she told him he was the kind of man things happened to, and not the kind that made them happen?
–Oh, come, brother, you were not taken in by that old chestnut, were you? You know as well as I that people often make the most astonishing reversals of what seems to be their basic nature, when they are compelled to do it. Really, my dear colleague, you astonish me! I don’t wish to be offensive, but here we are, a couple of Minor Immortals, watching Francis’s life unfold before us, as you have it filed away in your archive, and yet sometimes you talk as if we were no wiser than a pair of human beings watching television, where the unexpected, the unpredictable is rigorously forbidden to happen. The laws of such melodrama are not binding on us, brother. You have typed Francis, and you talk of Ismay as if she were vanished forever. As for me, you seem to degrade me to the level of that detestable theological fraud, a Guardian Angel! Come, come!
–Don’t scold, brother. I am sorry if I have appeared to underestimate your daimonic role in this affair. But I have so much to do with mortals that sometimes I think a little of their sentimentality is rubbing off on me.
–Don’t be distracted by trivialities, said the Daimon Maimas. What do the theologians say? Circumcise yourself as to the heart and not as to the foreskin. And never neglect what is bred in the bone. Do you think it was bred in Francis to be a victim all his life? How would that reflect on me? As a rather superior mortal once said to a sentimental friend, Clear your mind of cant! Shall we continue?
Part Five
Click-clack… click-clack… twenty-four repetitions of the sound, and a melancholy toot as if from an entirely innocent Bummelzug passing over a switch-point. But why would an innocent Bummelzug be rumbling through the Bavarian countryside at half past eleven at night, when all decent freight-trains were at rest on their sidings? Twenty-four click-clacks meant twelve vans. Twelve vans, loaded, perhaps, with people, were being hauled to the internment camp that lay obscurely in a nearby valley.
Francis made a note in the book he carried always in his breast pocket. Tomorrow he would write to Sir Owen Williams-Owen in Harley Street, to report on the condition of his heartbeat under particular conditions of stress. This was the first such observation he had made during his first week at Schloss Düsterstein. It was providential that his bedroom lay on the side of the great house that was nearest to the railway line.
The great house had been a surprise—was still a surprise, after a week’s exploration. To begin, in spite of its name it was not particularly suggestive of melancholy. Old it unquestionably was, and large even as country houses go, but its chief quality was that of the centre of a large farming district, and on its own lands and tenant-farms adjacent the Gräfin von Ingelheim conducted a big agricultural industry with exemplary efficiency. Motor trucks took vegetables, fowls, and veal or pork every week to the railway that carried them on to Munich, where wholesale dealers awaited them, and distributed them to a number of hotels, restaurants, and butchers. In a wine of the castle was an office from which the farms were managed and the dispatching of the foodstuffs was arranged, probably in some of the goods vans that now and then visited the camp in the hills. Schloss Düsterstein was, as agricultural matters go, big business.
Castle it was called, but there was nothing of the medieval fortress about it. There were reminders of the seventeenth century and a large square tower that was considerably earlier, but its appearance and plan were of the latter part of the eighteenth century; if shabby in some of its details and furnishings—the sort of shabbiness that suggests an aristocratic indifference to newfangledness rather than poverty—it was comfortable and as pleasant as a decidedly grand house could be. It was not domestic in the English sense, but it was not a comfortless imitation of a French chateau, either. Francis’s bedroom, for instance: a heavily furnished room so large that the big bed seemed accidental rather than central, with armchairs and a desk and plenty of room for all his artist’s equipment, and in one corner a large and fine porcelain stove. True, he washed in a little closet concealed in one of the walls, to which hot water was brought through an inner passage, so that he never saw the servant who carried it; but the ewer and basin, the two large chamber-pots, and the slop-pail were of an expensive eighteenth-century china, marked with the crest of Ingelheim. Slops were spirited away every day by means of the same inner passage. Baths were to be taken in a large chamber set out with Empire furniture and a marble tub of almost Roman aspect, into which rather rusty water gushed through huge brass taps; it was a long walk from the bedroom, but as an Oxford man Francis was accustomed to distant baths.
Francis’s room was in the rear of the castle; the family were in another wing into which he never penetrated, but he met them in the living quarters, a series of large drawing-rooms and a dining-room behind the rooms of state, which were now never used except for the display of the collection of pictures that had made Düsterstein and the Ingelheim family famous among connoisseurs for two centuries. Not that the pictures in these private rooms were inconsiderable; they were family portraits by a variety of masters, not always of the foremost rank, but by no means unknown or lightly esteemed.
Ever since his arrival Francis had looked with astonishment from the pictures on the walls to the two representatives of the family who sat below them, the Countess Ottilie and her granddaughter, Amalie, whose features the portraits reflected in a bewildering but always recognizable variety. Here was the Family Face indeed, the Countess’s square and determined as became a great landowner and a farmer of formidable talents, and that of Amalie, which was oval, still unmarked by experience but filled with beautiful expectancy. The Countess was not yet sixty; Amalie was probably fourteen. He conversed with them in English, as the Countess was anxious that Amalie should be perfect in that language.
These evenings were not long. Dinner was at eight, and was never over before nine, for though not a heavy meal it was served with what seemed to Francis extraordinary deliberation. Saraceni talked with the Countess. Francis was expected to talk to Miss Ruth Nibsmith, the governess. Amalie spoke only when spoken to by her grandmother. After dinner they sat for an hour, during which the Countess made one cup of coffee and one glass of cognac last the full time; sharp at ten Amalie kissed her grandmother, curtsied to Saraceni and Francis, and retired under the care of Miss Nibsmith. Then the Countess went to her private room, where, Saraceni told him, she worked over the farm accounts until eleven, at which hour she went to bed, in order to rise at six and spend two hours out of doors, directing her workers, before breakfast at eight.
“A very regular existence,” said Saraceni.
“Does nothing else ever happen?” said Francis.
“Never. Except that on Sundays the priest comes for Mass at seven; you aren’t expected to attend, but it will give satisfaction if you do, and you shouldn’t miss the chapel; it is a Baroque marvel that you won’t see otherwise. But what do you mean—’Does nothing else ever happen?’ What do you suppose is happening? Money is being made, to begin with. This family was almost beggared during the War and the Countess’s father and now Countess Ottilie have made them almost as rich as they ever were—out of veal, which, as you know, is the staple diet of people in this part of the world. Amalie is being prepared for a brilliant marriage to somebody who hasn’t been chosen yet, but who will have to measure up to exacting standards. Great fortunes don’t go to fools—not at Düsterstein, anyhow. And there is the collection to be put into first-class order, and you and I will work on that like galley-slaves, for the Countess expects it. Isn’t that enough activity to satisfy your North American soul?”