The Saint in Europe (The Saint Series)

by Leslie Charteris

  Belinda drank in a picture of unimagined beauty whose very strangeness made it unforgettable. In truth it was nothing scenically startling, not in any way the kind of view to which tourist excursions are run: it was only an odd corner of the natural splendor of the world, all of which is beautiful. But it was the first corner of the world to which the eyes had ever been opened with emotion, a starting point of undreamed-of experience which must be for ever as unique as all beginnings. Dazed with it as if she had awakened on a different planet, she climbed out of her blankets at last and searched mechanically for comb and mirror. The reflection that met her eyes seemed like the portrait of a stranger. Wind and sun had tinted a delicate gold into her skin, and there was a soft flush in her cheeks that had never been there before unless she dabbed it on. Her lips were riper, her eyes clearer and brighter than she had ever thought Nature could make them. She was entranced with herself.

  She put her bare feet on the grass, and the sweet touch of the dew on them made the rest of her body aware of being soiled and sticky. Reluctant to separate her toes from the green coolness, and yet eager to perfect that physical joyousness in every way, she strapped on her sandals. In the days before that, she realized with amazement, she had been too weary, too numb with self-pity, to care about anything but superficial cleanliness.

  She dug out the soap and went down to the lake shore carrying her towel. What a perfume there was in the chill of the air, what a friendly peace in the stillness of earth and sky! She stood on the road by the shore and looked to her left towards the sleeping white houses of Pertisau, the specks of gaudily striped cafe parasols on the lakeside terraces, and it was like looking at the vanguard of an invasion, and she was a savage come down from the clean hills to gaze in wonder at this outpost of civilization.

  She stripped off her clothes and washed, and swam out a little way into the crystal water. It was very cold, but when she had dried herself she was tingling. She went up the hill again slowly, filled with an extraordinary happiness. She had no more envy of those people who were sleeping in soft beds half a mile away, who would presently rise and straggle down to eat their breakfasts in stuffy dining-rooms. How much they were missing—how much she had missed!

  Breakfast…She was hungry, in a clear, keen way that matched the air. She delved into the Saint’s pack for food, picked up the frying pan and inspected it. The fire was out, and when she turned over the heap of fuel beside it the wood was damp. How did one kindle a fire?

  Simon Templar rolled over and opened his eyes. He hitched himself up on one elbow.

  “Hullo—am I late?” he said, and glanced at his watch. It was half past six.

  Belinda saw him with a start. She had forgotten…she hated him, didn’t she? She remembered that she was still holding the frying-pan, and dropped it guiltily.

  “It’s about breakfast-time,” she said. Her mouth felt clumsy. Odd, how hard it had become to make every word as impersonal and distant as she had trained herself to do—to convey with every sentence that she only spoke to him because she had to.

  He threw off his blankets, and dived back into them again to return with two handfuls of twigs.

  “Always sleep with some firewood and keep it dry,” he explained.

  In a few seconds flames were licking up among the dead ashes, steaming the moisture from the other wood as he built it up around his tinder in a neat cone. He gathered the eggs together, and one of them escaped from his corral and went rolling down the hill. He ran after it, grabbed for it, and caught his toe on the projecting root of a tree; the chase ended in a headlong plunge and a complete somersault which brought him up with his back to the bole of a young sapling. There was something so comical about him as he sat there, with the rescued ovum triumphantly clutched in one hand, that Belinda felt a smile tugging at her lips. She fought against it; her chest ached, and the laughter tore at her throat; she gave way because she had to laugh or suffocate, and bowed before the gale. Simon was laughing too. The wall, the precious barrier that she had built up, was crumbling like sand in that tempest of mirth, and she could do nothing to hold it together…

  Presently she was saying, “Why don’t you show me how you do those eggs, then I could take a turn with them?”

  “It’s easy enough when you know how. Like everything else, there’s a trick in it. You’ve got to remember that a scrambled egg goes on cooking itself after you take it off the fire, so if you try to finish them in the pan they’re hard and crumby when you serve them. Take them off while they still look half raw, and they end up just fine and juicy.”

  She had never enjoyed a meal more in her life, and when it was finished she could not bear to think that they must leave that place almost at once. It was like a reprieve when he announced that his shirt was unspeakable, and they must pause for a washing day. They scrubbed their clothes in pools formed by the tiny waterfall that cascaded close by their camping-ground, and spread them in the sun to dry. It was mid-afternoon before she had to tear herself away: she went down with him to the road feeling newly refreshed and fit for a hundred miles before sundown, yet with the knowledge that she left part of her heart behind up there with the trees and sky.

  As they reached the road a band of twenty young people were coming towards them, singing as they came. The men wore leather shorts and white linen shirts; some of the girls wore the same, others wore brief leather skirts. All of them carried packs, and many of the packs were heavy. Belinda saw one man laden with an enormous iron pot and a collection of smoke-blackened pans: he looked like a huge metalized snail.

  “Grüss Gott!” cried the leader, breaking the song as he came up with them, in the universal greeting of Tirolese wayfarers, and Simon smiled and answered, “Grüss Gott!” The others of the party joined in. A couple from the middle fell out and stopped.

  “Wohin gehen Sie?” asked the boy—he was little more.

  Simon told him they were on their way to Jenbach and thence to Innsbruck.

  “We go also to Jenbach,” said the boy. “Kommen Sie mit!”

  The group re-formed around them, and they went on together, past Seespitz and down the long hill that leads to the Inn valley. Belinda was happy. She was proud to be able to keep up with them tirelessly, and their singing made light of the miles. She was seeing everything as if she had been blind from her birth until that day. At one place a gang of men were working on the road; once she would have passed by without looking at them—they would have been merely common workmen, dirty but necessary cattle to serve the needs of those whose cars used the road. Now she saw them. They were stripped to the waist, bodies muscled like statues and polished with sweat like oil, harmonies of brown skin and blue cotton trousers. One party called “Grüss Gott!” to the other, smiling, fellow freemen of the air.

  “What does that mean—Grüss Gott?” she asked the Saint.

  “Greet God,” he answered, and looked at her. “Isn’t that only gratitude?”

  The boy on her other side spoke a little English. She asked him where they came from and what they were doing.

  “We are Wandervogel. We are tired of the cities, and we make ourselves gypsies. We sing for money, and work in the fields when we can, and make things to sell. Your sandals—they are a pattern made by the Wandervogel. We live now, and some day perhaps we die.”

  “Are you happy?” she asked, and he looked at her in simple wonder.

  “Why not? We do not want to be rich. We have all the world to live in, and we are free like the birds.”

  They came to Jenbach in the cool of the evening, and again there was an inn. But this time it was different.

  “We do not go with you anymore,” said the boy. “We go to Salzburg. But first we drink to our friendship.”

  Belinda sat on a wooden bench and recalled the first time she had entered an inn. Then she had been too sick at heart to care whether it was dirty; now she would not have cared for a different reason, though she had learned that the inns were as clean as any room in her own
home. Again there was a sunburned laborer sitting in the corner she chose, and the Saint talked with him, and when the serving-girl had distributed a tray-load of tankards she joined them and was chaffed and flirted with. It was the first gasthof over again; the difference was in Belinda herself. Now she sat alert, eyes sparkling and shifting from one face to another in an attempt to follow the weaving shuttle of their voices, and when they laughed she laughed, pretending she understood. And the background of it all she did understand, without knowing how. There was a community of happiness and contentment, a fellowship and a freemasonry of people whose feet were rooted in the same good earth, a shared and implicit enjoyment of the food and drink and challenging seasons, a spontaneous hospitality without self-consciousness, a unity of pagans who had greeted God. Man spoke to man, laughed, jested, holding back none of himself, untroubled by fears and jealousies: having no reason to do otherwise, each took the other immediately for a passing friend. Why not? The world they knew was large enough for them all. Why should not nation and nation meet in the same humanity? And Belinda found she was thinking too much, and she was glad when one man who had carried a mandolin slung across his back took it down and strummed a chord on the wires, and the voices round him rose in unison:

  Trink, trink, Brüderlein, trink,

  Lass doch die Sorgen zu Hause—with the others chiming in, beating the tables with their tankards, till they were all singing—

  Meide den Kummer und meide den Schmerz,

  Dann ist das Leben ein Scherz; and the repetition rattled the glass in the windows:

  Meide den Kummer und meide den Schmerz,

  Dann ist das Leben ein Scherz!

  Belinda listened, and Hilaire Belloc’s lines, memorised parrot-fashion at school, went through her mind with a new haunting meaning: “Do you remember an inn, Miranda? Do you remember an inn?”…That was an inn which she would always remember, and she felt strangely humble when the last strong hand had been shaken and she stood outside alone with Simon Templar under the darkening sky.

  “How far is it from here to Innsbruck?” she asked as they walked away from the valley in search of a place to sleep.

  “We could do it in one long day by the road, which is rather dull and dusty. Or if we struck out the way we’re going, making a detour, it’d be two easy days.”

  They were following a lonely cart-track, and every scuff of their footsteps sounded as clearly as if they had been alone in the world. A wagon laden with cordwood creaked out of the blue haze, drawn by a horse and a bullock in double harness; the wagoner cracked his whip and bade them good-evening as he went by. Was that a symbol of something?…

  Belinda said, “Those Wandervogel must be very happy.”

  “They belong to a new generation,” said the Saint quietly. “There are many people like them here, under different names. It’s an attempt to find a way out of the mess this world is in. The cities have failed them, and they’re looking back to the ancient wisdom of contentment with simple things. At least it’s better than idle hopelessness. And who’s to say? Maybe they’ve got something.” He looked around him. “Here’s grass and a stream and wood to make a fire—shall we make this our camp?”

  4

  They cooked their food and ate in silence, but it was not the same silence as others that there had been. Belinda was oddly subdued, and Simon knew that his work was done. Afterwards, when it was finished and they sat on over cigarettes and enamel mugs of coffee, they were still quiet. Simon was thinking of other evenings of great peace in his life, as a man does in times of perfect contentment for the joy of comparing the incomparable, and he thought also of another more perilous adventure which had once taken him over the trail they had retraced.

  Belinda hugged her knees and gazed into the dancing flames. Why had she never noticed the sweet smell of wood-smoke before?…A log rolled over, scattering a small Vesuvius of sparks, and she said, “What are things like where you’re going after Innsbruck?”

  Simon kicked the log back.

  “They’re better than anything you’ve seen yet. I don’t think I’ve ever seen anything more beautiful in the world. It’s a little bit like what we saw yesterday and today, only a hundred times more magnificent. Mountains and valleys and woods and streams. You take a trail that runs half-way up the wall of the world. On one side you can look up through the pines to the snow; on the other side you look down into a green valley with cattle grazing and a torrent racing at the bottom. The air’s full of the scent of wild flowers and the tinkle of cow-bells. When you first come to it you feel you must just sit and look at it all day, taking it into your soul.”

  Belinda listened to the murmur of insects in the grass, and everything she had seen that day passed before her in a pageant. At the end she saw the picture that Simon had painted for her. Young men and girls, sun-bronzed and care-free, swung along that trail half-way up the wall of the world, singing. They ate and slept and were happy around camp-fires like this. “What a lot of useless desires we clutter up our lives with,” she thought, “and never know how unimportant they were until they have been almost forgotten! What a mess of stupid formulas and trivialities!” She lay on her back and stared up into the overarching fretwork of leaves. There was still something else to be said: it hurt her, but a new pride demanded it.

  “I’m sorry I slapped you and wasted so many days,” she said. “I’d give anything in the world to have them over again.”

  He smiled in the firelight.

  “I’ll apologize for saying you’d ceased to be ornamental. It wasn’t true, of course, but I wanted to make you mad. There was only a week, and we had to get the quarreling over and done with. As a matter of fact, you’re more decorative than you ever were before.”

  He was so calm, so natural, that the effort of self-abasement which might have been a wound in her new peace of mind became nothing at all in retrospect. For that moment his unimpassioned understanding and wisdom seemed so godlike that she felt small—not uncomfortably and shamefacedly, but like a child.

  “You’ve done so much for me,” she said, “and yet I know nothing about you.”

  He laughed.

  “I’m just a rogue and a vagabond. Sometimes I’m enjoying a rest like this, sometimes I’m in much worse trouble. You’d only know me from my unlawful exploits, if you read about things like that. I throw my weight about and have no end of fun. Sometimes I steal.” He turned his blue eyes on her, and they danced. “I stole your bag in Munich.”

  She was too astounded even to gasp. “You stole my bag?”

  “Money and passport and letter of credit and everything. They’re at the bottom of my pack now. And I spread some gorgeous rumors about you to the bank and the hotel and the consulate so that you wouldn’t be able to get any help—which explains why they were so nasty and suspicious. It was the only way I could get you in such a jam that you’d simply have to make this trip with me.”

  She made no reply for a while, and then she said, “Why should you take so much trouble over anyone like I was?”

  “It was hardly any trouble to me,” he said, “and I thought you were worth it. The way you were going, you were all set to make Jack thoroughly unhappy and break up both your lives. Jack said you’d never forgive him if he tried to get tough with you, but I figured it wouldn’t do either of you so much harm if you never forgave me. All the same, I’m rather glad you have.”

  Belinda bit her lip.

  She was quiet again, very quiet, until they rolled into their blankets and went to sleep, and Simon let her be. Two more days, she told herself when she awoke, but the time went flying. One more night and a day—a day—three hours—two!…Everything she saw planted itself on her mind with the feeling that she was leaving it for ever. A boy driving a herd of cattle, slim, blond-haired, with transparent blue eyes and a merry smile. A castle built on a steep hill, hanging aloft in a solid curtain of pines like a picture nailed to a wall. The crucified Christs set up by every path and roadside and in
many fields, with bunches of wild flowers stuck in the crevices of the carving—“They’re thank-offerings,” said the Saint. “People going by put the flowers on them for luck.” Belinda picked a handful of narcissi and arranged them behind the outstretched arms of one figure; it seemed a pleasant thing to do. She would never pass that way again, and she must remember everything before she was outlawed from her strange paradise—and then the last hour, and the inn at Hall, where Simon left her on some pretext, and telephoned a message to the address in Innsbruck which Jack Easton had given him. Goodbye, goodbye! And she saw Innsbruck and the end of the journey with a pang. It was so short, like a little life which had to be laid down at its peak.

  And then, somehow, relentlessly jarred out of the dream into a cold light of commonplace, she was sitting in a beer garden in Innsbruck with Jack Easton patting her hand. “I was wrong too, Belinda,” he was saying. “This great-open-space stuff isn’t all it’s cracked up to be. One day we were being broiled alive, and the next it was pouring with rain and we were soaked. God, and those country inns! Always the same food, and sanitary arrangements straight out of the Stone Age…”