by Ursula Bloom
An answer was demanded to the address in Innsbruck, which was given in full. Would he please to name his seconds? Would he kindly be as immediate as possible?
Six
On Mr. West’s advice Hugo tore the challenge into scraps and let them flutter down into the ornate waste-paper basket of the suite, but he had to admit that he had a peculiarly weak feeling about the knees. He would hate to fight that duel.
The three of them would be leaving in the car at dawn, because Mr. West had decided to try for the five o’clock train from Munich, and the bartender was now communicating with his friend Heinz about reservations on it.
Like this, bed seemed to be a waste of time, Hugo decided, for in one hour they would be starting.
They ordered some breakfast to be sent up to them at once; when it came the hot coffee was comforting, and the crisp rolls pleasant. By now the darkness was lifting, and there was the first hint of morning in the pale opal mist drawn across the face of the mountains. Isolde had been called, after hardly an hour’s sleep, and she arrived still heavy, dragging her body as though it ached, but all ready for the journey in a linen travelling suit.
The three of them ate their breakfast together, and Hugo could only think what a depressing start it was to an engagement. Not that it mattered; nothing mattered save the one fact that they had each other. Mr. West was silent, and Hugo himself only hoped that the seconds of Herr Kurt Freiberger would not arrive impatiently to demand in person that he should give the names and addresses of his own seconds. It would make matters very awkward for him. Appearances would certainly convey the impression that he was running away, and although he kept telling himself that he would never stand an earthly against anybody in a duel, and that discretion was very much the better part of valour, it was unpleasant to have people think that he, an Englishman, was in the words of the classics ‘doing a bunk!’ The fact that the bunk had been forced upon him by his future father-in-law’s financial crisis would not alter it in German eyes.
Dawn was bursting over the Grandeshoffman, an amber gold shot through with orange fire, reflected on the snow and making it vividly alive.
‘It looks like orange ice-cream to me,’ said Isolde, and yawned.
The hay wagons were winding across the fields, led by the men in their silly hats, and the women walked together behind. Occasionally they stopped at shrines, some lingering to pray. Hugo watched them from the windows. Unreal world. Passing world. Dover would seem pretty ordinary after all this.
‘Well, are we all set?’ asked Isolde at last, and then: ‘Oh, I am so weary!’
They got into the car and Hugo saw Mr. West glance at it, and knew the thought that flashed through his mind. When all this was over there would be nothing left; nothing at all.
‘We’ve got it now when we want it most,’ said Hugo in a low voice. ‘That’s something.’
At the last moment the proprietor came rushing out from the lounge, having obviously dressed in a hurry, and carrying a basket of fruit. He was mopping a bland brow, and cursing the porters who had not called him early enough and had made him rush like this. The proprietor knew a good patron when he saw one, and he appreciated the fact that the Wests came year after year, paid well, never looking too closely into their bills, which made it so very convenient.
‘I have here the most exquisite fruit for mein Herr,’ beamed the proprietor, who had no modest qualms about extolling his own gifts. It was a big basket of apricots and grapes and shiny green figs which grew plentifully in the garden. ‘Chocolates for Fraulein.’ He thrust a large packet towards her, leaving Hugo (who had booked only the cheapest room in the hotel) out in the cold. ‘And auf Wiedersehen.’
‘Auf Wiedersehen,’ they all said.
But it wasn’t auf Wiedersehen, because none of them would come back again, and they knew it. The Wests would not return. Hugo would never dare to come back, remembering the challenge which had been delivered, and ignored in the most un-English manner.
The car turned towards Garmeisch. They climbed the lovely mountainous roads, none of the three speaking, as they sat together in the back. Then the strong air and the earliness were too much for Isolde, who curled up beside Hugo and dropped off to sleep. He himself felt like it. But John West never slept, he sat erect, staring ahead of him, and Hugo did not believe that he ever saw any of the magnificent vistas of valley and mountain through which they passed. Nor did he hear the cow bells, or the conversation at the frontier, where the road was barred to traffic by what appeared to be a couple of prone maypoles.
Hugo was very glad when they had actually crossed into Germany itself. Here the scenery was not so stupendous, it did not flash with the same vigour, but he felt that he was further from the challenge, which, although he tried to forget it, was for ever in his thoughts. It was wrong to ignore it, yet equally wrong if he had accepted it.
The day came up very hot, and they paused in the blue shadow of a fir forest to eat some of the fruit, and to stretch their legs. Isolde awoke.
‘Doesn’t going without sleep give you the most awful pain in the back of your neck, Hugo?’
‘But you have been sleeping.’
‘Yes, I know, but I’ve come to the conclusion that, like the proverb, a little sleep is a dangerous thing. It only makes you want more.’ She rubbed the back of her neck with her hands, glancing at him reproachfully. ‘Anyway, why are we bolting off like this? It seems to be all wrong to me.’
Nobody had told her. ‘Your father decided that it would be better if we got back. He can do much more on the spot; also, I’ve had a challenge to fight a duel.’
‘You don’t mean that awful young man in white?’
‘I gather so. It came to the hotel last night, very curt, asking me to name my seconds. Having no seconds I thought it a good idea to get home with you.’
‘How beastly! I’m sure you’d hate to fight.’
‘I’d loathe it.’
They did not delay long but came back to the car and had lunch in the next town. It was an unsatisfying meal, because nobody felt like eating much, and all were sick for the want of sleep. Hugo could not have believed that it would make him feel so drunken. He nodded in the car during the heat of the afternoon, and awoke as they were travelling along that straight and ugly road which runs into Munich itself. John West was still awake. He stared before him and the eyes that had always been so restless were unblinking. They did not flicker.
Hugo had not supposed that they would be able to get seats on the train, much less sleepers, but when they got to Munich the bar attendant’s friend Heinz had been busy, and it was quite easy. It was a comfortable train, already in the station. They had to cross the railroad tracks to reach it, and climb up high into the corridor. There was the sleeper which Hugo and John West would share, and the one further along the corridor for Isolde. The three of them sat down in the men’s sleeper, with the bunks turned back. Hugo and Isolde were hand in hand, and John West still staring. Between them was the basket of fruit that the proprietor had pressed upon them, the figs becoming dry and speckled, and the peaches bruised with dark patches.
‘I’ll peel one for you?’ Hugo suggested.
‘I don’t feel like eating it.’ She curled up closer to him. ‘Hugo, I feel dreadful about all this. We’ve broken up your holiday, you’d have had four more days if we hadn’t had to come racing home. Spend those days with us.’
‘I’d love it.’
‘Thank you so much.’ She pressed his hand tightly, and they sat on hand in hand, with John West still staring fixedly.
The wagon-lits man came down the corridor, walking truculently like a rooster, his hat stuck on the back of his head.
‘Abendessen, Fraulein? Mein Herr?’
Hugo stirred himself. ‘We’ll make a reservation for three of us, please.’
But now he knew that he was weary with fatigue, and that the evening would drag in the over-lively diner with its bustle of conversation and laughter, and all the time the
fixed stare of the man who knew that he was finished.
When they went in to eat, Hugo kept trying to divert Isolde’s attention to the pink-shaded lamp, to the Danube stretching brownly wide between them, to the forest sweeping down the hillsides. But she was tired out, her eyes ringed with violet, and his own spirits lagged with exhaustion. For lack of sleep all his impetus seemed to be slowing up. It was so idiotic when they were standing on the peak of their happiness to have their high good spirits damped by the knowledge of John West’s misery.
They returned to the sleeper, which the wagon-lits man had made ready, and now there was no sound. Sleepiness came to Hugo, paralysing his limbs so that they appeared to relax and fall helplessly on the bed, with the drone of the train in his ears acting as a lullaby. Early in the morning he awoke stiffly, for the customs officials were in the doorway, rapping out questions. He saw John West sitting upright just as he had last seen him, answering the questions in monosyllables, and believed that the man had not slept at all.
When the train started again, Hugo got up, trying to dress without drawing attention to himself, by lying on the bunk and pulling on his trousers, only to find that sheets and blankets and braces had all gone inside. He heaved and struggled and slid his legs over the side. It was just as he had supposed, John West was still staring.
‘I’ll order you some coffee,’ Hugo said, and went out into the corridor to find the wagon-lits man.
The corridor was almost blocked with people queueing up for the lavatory; they were passengers who had no sleepers, and had to wash in the one stale little basin. Hugo pushed past them, each patiently waiting with sponge bag and towel, but hall-marked with the signs of a broken night. He got the wagon-lits man who was counting out tips in his own match-box of a cubicle.
When Hugo got back the compartment seemed to be more fetid than before.
‘What about some air?’ he asked.
‘Very well.’
He shot up a blind, and let in the day, with the sweetly fresh air blown across Belgium, with its long roads of straight trees like lamp-posts, and its little square fields. Not until this moment had he actually realised that he had crossed another frontier out of reach of Kurt Freiberger and his absurd challenge. Now they were in Belgium. The coffee came set on a table which the wagon-lits man conjured out of the window in some occult manner. The coffee smelt good and there were fresh rolls and honey. Isolde arrived too. She had had a dreadful night with an Italian woman in the upper bunk, who had apparently spent most of the time dressing and undressing and had kept on bemoaning her difficulties with stay busks. Never had a woman creaked so much before, said Isolde.
She drank the hot coffee with zest and liked the rolls and honey, but she glanced from time to time at her father.
‘We shall be at Ostend in three hours,’ he said.
‘I’ll be glad.’
‘I know, home will be pleasant.’
‘I’ve never wanted it more, yet it’s all wrong that I should feel like this.’ She turned to Hugo. ‘This ought to be the happiest journey of my life, because I’ve met you.’
‘Something much bigger swamped it.’
‘Nothing can swamp it really. Nothing.’ She slid her hand confidingly in his.
The train came to Ostend at eleven, and looking out, Hugo saw the clusters of too tall white houses, and the confusion of the station, where everybody was falling over one another in their eagerness to get somewhere before the next person. Walking across the roadway they saw the ship, its gangway already crammed. There was the smell of the sea and a strongish wind blowing from the horizon. Mechanically Isolde and Hugo went on either side of her father and found him a chair in the corner of the deck. When they sailed the ship rose and fell, not sharply, but laboriously, as though in pain. Hugo stood at the taffrail and he knew that this was where his place was, with the tumble of water beneath him, and the masts rising above him, and the wind in his face.
‘It takes three hours,’ said Isolde, ‘I’ve done it so often that I know. We’ll have some lunch and spend the time that way.’
‘All right.’
John West did not eat. He sat crumbling his toast, occasionally drinking a little of the wine that Hugo had ordered for him, prompted by Isolde, but he got little of it down. Hugo did not believe that the man had eaten since he had first heard of this disaster.
On deck again, they stood side by side to see Dover coming into sight, and Hugo saw it with the warm old friendliness of feeling, as he had always seen it; over the handlebars of his bicycle as he rode to the sports fields, under the straw hat as he walked down the streets, or crossed the close with prefect’s rights. Dover represented but one place to him and that was the college.
‘I’m sure that you loved it?’ she said.
‘I did. It was the greatest fun. What a shame it is that we can’t go back in life, but that we’ve always got to go on. Always got to go on.’
‘I know.’
Hugo had not thought that the Wests’ house would be so large, when three hours later they reached it by car. It was a fine old house nestling into a cluster of oak trees, and with a park flowing from its doors, whose peace nothing could disturb. Isolde and he went into the sun parlour on the terrace and sat there talking, whilst John West was in his study. The sun parlour was glassed in, with pink geraniums and a plumbago in a vivid streak of blue, as though a flash of the Bergkette had come back with them and had broken into flower here. They were alone together and it seemed to be for the first time since their engagement.
‘Isolde, dearest, I’m afraid there are awfully difficult times ahead.’
‘I don’t mind being poor. I don’t think that I have ever wanted riches, but it is so hard on Daddy. He spent the whole of his life building this up and now it’s gone.’
‘I know. You and I have got our own lives to think of, and we are starting out on a journey together. The moment I get home I’m asking my father to increase my salary. I want to marry you right away, dearest.’
‘Oh, Hugo dear!’ She actually trembled, he could feel it, and it thrilled him.
‘If I manage to get four hundred a year out of my father, I know it’ll be a miracle, but it will open the doorway to heaven. I don’t suppose I’ll get that much, but I’m putting up a fight for it. You won’t be afraid to manage on very little, Isolde?’
‘Why should I?’
‘Having been used to so much, it isn’t easy to come down to the bottom rung of the ladder.’
‘It shouldn’t be too hard when you’re young, and when you’re so much in love.’ She laid her hands on his coat lapels and looked up adoringly. ‘Because we do love one another, Hugo.’
‘Of course we do.’
‘Oh, darling, I’m so happy. It’s heaven. You’ve been in love before?’
‘Yes, I’m afraid I have.’
‘So have I. Only it wasn’t the same.’
He had hold of her small wrists. ‘No, it wasn’t the same thing. It was too eager, too crazy. This has peace. That’s how I know that it’s real.’
‘We’ll keep this peace always. Whatever comes. We’ll hold on to the peace part of it, Hugo?’
He said yes, and kissed her again. Nothing, not even John West’s disaster, could rob them of this rapture.
Hugo got back to Lynton Lodge four nights later. He found that whilst he had been away his father had had another attack from which he was now slowly recovering. He had got to the stage of sitting downstairs in an easy chair, his face drawn and yellow, with the flesh hanging in folds round the chin, and his eyes receded into the head shaped like a jaundiced dome above them. Hugo had screwed up his courage for this, and came straight to the point. He sat opposite to his father, huddled in the chair like an evilly thin Buddha crouched over his stomach.
‘I’ve got engaged,’ said Hugo.
There was silence for a moment. ‘So you’re in love? Love isn’t worth having; it’s a fool’s game. Get out of it.’
‘Her name is
Isolde West, only child of John West of West, Simpson and Neal.’ Hugo ignored his father’s look.
‘A year ago that would have counted for something. I’d have said that you had your wits in the right place, marrying for money. It’s the only thing worth marrying for. Wests are bankrupt to-day, and she’s a pauper.’
‘I’m afraid you and I will never agree. The Wests may be bankrupt, but as I’m not marrying for money that doesn’t affect me. I’ve come to ask you for a rise in my salary.’
‘Think you’re worth a rise?’
‘No.’
‘You think with admirable correctness. Think again and you’ll realise that I’d give no man a rise to marry on. It’s giving him a rope with which to hang himself. That’s what marriage is. Suicide.’
‘I’ve been working my damnedest for the firm, and you know that my heart isn’t in it, which only makes it harder. I get five pounds a week, give me as much as Minch? At least your own son is worth that?’
James Blair stared at him, his dulled eyes were covered with that slime which Hugo hated so, his mouth showed its mauve inner lining of unhealthy flesh. ‘My own son worth that? Because you are my own son, I’ll give you not a farthing more.’
‘I shall have to look for another job then.’ At least he had that much pride!
‘So you’d threaten me? Do you realise that the world has no use for untrained young men? Do you realise that you may be worth a fortune in your own estimation, but to a firm you are merely so much nuisance value?’
‘I won’t listen to it.’
‘You’ll listen to what I wish to say. If you get out, you get out to-night. Where will you go? You’ve got nothing. You can’t even keep yourself. Go now, or stay on at my price.’
It was true. Having spent most of his savings on the holiday, Hugo had about four pounds between himself and perdition. The wise course would be to attempt to talk his father round. The tea office had prospects, and, if he put Isolde before his own longing for the sea, he could ultimately make good in the place, much as he loathed it. It would afford them the chance they wanted. He thought it over and later capitulated.