“It sounds bogus to me,” Bertram remarked frankly.
“I assure you,” his cousin retorted coldly, “that was not how it sounded to me.”
“But the story is completely unsubstantiated, David,” his aunt pointed out dubiously. “I don’t say it isn’t true. But, on the other hand, I suppose the poor soul realized you were an Englishman, and if he were desperately anxious about his girl, he might invent the tale, in order to excite your sympathy.”
“He might, of course. But I’m convinced he did not.”
“You don’t know, though, do you?”
“No, of course not. But what do you suggest I should have done, Aunt Mary?” He faced his aunt, whom he knew to be a just and kindly woman, and challenged her personally. “Withheld reassurance from a dying man? Or do you think I should give up the whole thing now? Leave them wondering why I don’t return and why no English doctor is forthcoming?”
“N-no. Not that, certainly. But—”
“Of course not.” In a mood of high emotion, quite unlike the disapproving indifference she had shown at first, Mrs. Preston now rushed into the conversation. “David must find out the truth. There may be heaven knows what sort of story behind it all. It could even be—How old do you say this girl is? Eighteen, nineteen? Then her father would be—would have been—something between forty and fifty. Why, he might have been anyone! It’s as though we had been led here! He might even have been—”
“Mother, there’s no need to agitate yourself, or to imagine improbable connections.” Celia’s tones were not exactly reproving, but they were definitely intended to cool any feverish excitement. “David will make further enquiries, I am sure. But Lady Ranmere is right. The whole thing may be a story invented in a moment of desperation. David is perhaps a little too kind-hearted and easily imposed upon.” And she smiled, winningly but a trifle indulgently, at him.
David, however, was not in a mood to be either won or indulged. Besides, he disliked the picture of himself as good and gullible.
“I am not specially kind or easily imposed on, Celia,” he assured her curtly. “But I don’t intend to leave these people without help. And nor, I venture to say, would any of you, if it had been to you that the personal appeal was made.”
“Ah, it’s that personal appeal that does it,” Bertram declared, as his mother rose, indicating that they would leave David to finish his meal while they went off after their own pursuits. “Be careful, my boy. What most of these girls need is a safely defined nationality. And the easiest way to get British nationality is to marry a nice, kind Briton.”
David did not accord this even the faintest smile, and he had the impression that he was not the only one annoyed by the careless joke. The others went away, though Mrs. Preston, he felt sure, would have liked to stay and question him further.
Left alone, he absently finished his meal, his thoughts running incessantly on the experiences of the last few hours, and the comments which his party had made upon them.
He was not so naive as to reject his aunt’s theory entirely. But all his natural instincts told him that Anya and her supposed father were people one must accept at their own face value. To David it was inconceivable that the man he had left back there in the barracks could invent a smart and plausible story at a moment’s notice, even to benefit his nearest and dearest.
Having finished his meal, he went to his own room and put through a call to the Munich hotel where he believed his uncle’s one-time assistant was staying. And, with a good fortune he had not expected, he found that Robin Drummond had just come in.
It took some time to explain the situation, especially as the young doctor was the kind of man who liked everything in black and white. But when David had made the situation as clear as he could, the pleasant voice with the slight Scottish accent, at the other end of the wire, said, “But, my dear fellow, I’ve no possible justification for interfering professionally, you know. There must be a doctor attached to the camp.”
“He’s German, and this man Beran won’t see him,” David explained patiently, all over again. “Will you please, as a personal favour to me, come through to Augustinberg tomorrow afternoon and pay a private visit to the camp? I can’t tell you how grateful I shall be, or how much it will relieve my mind.”
“Well, of course, if you put it that way—” There was some murmuring in the background, while Robin Drummond apparently consulted a companion. “All right, I’ll be at your hotel—what is it? the Drei Kronen?—just before three tomorrow. Will that do?”
David said that indeed it would, and rang off feeling more relieved and satisfied than he would have thought possible. Then he went downstairs again, and almost immediately Celia sought him out.
“David,” she said, putting a light and friendly hand on his arm, “you mustn’t think I wasn’t sympathetic just now, or that I wanted to shelve your problem. But I had to get Mother off the subject as soon as possible. You don’t know what she is like if she even so much as senses a story about any unknown Englishman abroad.”
“All right, my dear. I suppose it’s because of Martin?”
“Yes, of course.” Celia sighed. “It’s no use expecting her to be reasonable about it, poor darling. His disappearance was the big tragedy of her life, and for years, on and off, she has sought for some explanation, probable or improbable. It’s nothing to her that he was last heard of in the Balkans and the family you speak of were in Russia. She somehow sees a connection between the two, and talks about her instinct—which is really very embarrassing. For some while now, she has been much more resigned and calm about it. But anything out of the ordinary and dramatic, like this, starts her imagination working afresh.”
“I’m so sorry.” David spoke with real feeling. “I’m afraid I must have upset her. But I had to tell the story, even though she was there, or else make a ridiculous mystery of it.”
“Of course. Don’t worry.” Celia’s smile said that she could forgive him a great deal more than that. “Only I had to explain. And if she tries to talk to you about it, just put her off, won’t you? Very nicely, of course, but firmly. Otherwise you’ll find she wants to come to the camp and see—Anya for herself.”
She hesitated a fraction of a minute before she said the name, and David had the curious impression that she was reluctant to define the other girl as a personality. Once they began to talk of Anya by her first name, it was hard to keep her in the category of a stranger.
“I’ll use all my tact, if your mother mentions the subject,” David promised. “And of course there is no question of her coming to the camp. I’m sure I can make that clear to her.”
With this Celia seemed satisfied, and so they talked of other things, and gradually the normality of his usual life closed round David again. But at the back of his mind there persisted—as clearly as though he were looking at a scene on a stage—the picture of the sick Russian leaning slightly towards him and saying,
“Anya is not my daughter, Monsieur. She was the daughter of an Englishman.”
By a little tactful management on his part (and possibly on Celia’s part too) David was able to avoid any private conversation with Mrs. Preston during the rest of the evening. But the following morning, when he came down to breakfast early, she was already sitting in the breakfast room, sipping coffee and absently breaking and buttering a roll.
She greeted him with an eager smile—reminiscent of Celia, but, inconceivable, of a Celia who was not at all sure of herself—and said,
“Come and join me, David. I want to talk to you.”
He sat down at her table, with a pleasant word of greeting, and immediately she rushed into speech, as though she felt she had little time in which to tell him what she had to say.
“It’s about that girl in the camp,” she explained eagerly. “Celia thinks I’m being rather mad and tiresome, and I daresay you do too, but I have a feeling—one does sometimes, you know, one really does—that there is something tremendously significant about
this situation. Please, please don’t laugh at me or be angry.”
“I shouldn’t dream of doing either,” David assured her. “What did you want to say to me about Anya?”
“Only that you must find out who her father was. You see—you see—” She stopped and looked at David with such pathetic appeal that he felt bound to help her out.
“Mrs. Preston,” he said, very kindly, “I do understand that whenever you hear of some—shall we say unexplained or unidentified Englishman turning up in Europe, your first idea is that he just might be your lost son, Martin. Is that it?”
“Y-yes. I can’t help it, you know.” She twisted her fingers together in a childish, clumsy way which Celia would not have liked, he supposed.
“It’s perfectly natural. You needn’t apologize for it. Anyone who had a similar shock and grief might well feel the same,” he found himself assuring her.
“Oh, David, you’re so good and kind!”
“No, I’m not,” he said, smiling at her. “But I happen to believe that unhappiness can’t be banished by simply pretending it isn’t there. I do understand your natural reaction to this rather curious adventure, as I say, but I feel bound to point out that the chances of Anya having the remotest connection with your son are infinitesimal.”
She was silent for a moment. Then she said—much more quietly, as though it had eased her to have someone else put into words what she hardly dared to express to herself—“With my head, I know you’re right. But my heart still refuses to agree.”
“That’s understandable. But a friend—myself, for instance—would have to remind you that Martin was last heard of somewhere in the Balkans—”
“Bulgaria,” she said quickly.
“Very well, Bulgaria. And Anya described her parents—and her grandparents too—as living in Russia. They left there after Anya was born, and went to Prague. There isn’t much connection there, if one looks at it objectively, is there?”
“Except that Martin might have gone on to Russia, after he was lost sight of in Bulgaria. He might have known—possibly married—Anya’s mother and—and died there before the girl was born.”
“He might, of course,” David conceded. “Anything is possible. But you do see, don’t you, that the chances are a hundred thousand to one?”
“Not quite such heavy odds.” Teresa Preston smiled suddenly, so that one saw she must have been a very pretty girl. “There are not quite so many unexplained Englishmen wandering in Europe.”
“Well, no.” David laughed at that, glad to see that the tension was lessening. “But Anya’s father was not necessarily either unexplained or wandering. He may have been a perfectly ordinary chap working for a Russian firm.”
“Ye-es. That’s true.”
“But, in any case, I promise you I shall get to the bottom of the mystery this afternoon, when I go there with Robin Drummond.”
“Oh, David! You really think you’ll be able to?”
“Why not? It was quite impossible to press the matter further last night. The poor fellow was too utterly exhausted by talking and with the emotion of making his big disclosure to me. But today, as soon as Robin has seen him, I’ll be able to ask all the vital questions. It won’t take long, and I think he is as anxious to impart the information as I am to have it.”
“Oh, thank you, David!” She gave him quite a beautiful smile. “And—and don’t say anything to Celia about this conversation, will you?” She looked anxious. “She is a wonderful girl, but she doesn’t always understand about one’s less sensible impulses.”
“I won’t mention it,” he promised. And for the first time it crossed his mind that if someone were going to live with you for life, it was very necessary that they should understand your less sensible impulses. Or, at any rate, bear with them.
He dismissed the reflection immediately, as being in some way a little disloyal. And then the others joined them and they had quite a cheerful breakfast together.
No all-day expedition had been arranged, and so it was easy for David to be available—indeed, waiting with some eagerness—when Robin Drummond arrived, just before three o’clock, as he had promised.
He was a tall, pleasant-looking fellow in his late thirties, with an air which inspired confidence. And he listened with the greatest attention while David put him in possession of rather more of the story than he had been able to tell over the telephone the previous night.
At the end of the recital, he said,
“Well, as I told you, I can’t exactly interfere professionally. I can see him as a friend, of course. And if I think he is urgently in need of some sort of attention, I suppose you and I had better see the camp doctor at that point, and discuss what can be done.”
“All right.” David would have been prepared to agree to much more, in order to get Robin Drummond to the camp. “We’ll take my car, I think. The man at the gate knows it, and me, very slightly. There’s less chance of difficulty over our getting in.”
Not until they were driving across the bridge and towards the barracks building did David allow himself to think how eager he was to continue this adventure which he had started with some reluctance.
It was not only that he wanted to see the girl again—with an urgency and interest he found impossible to justify—but something of Mrs. Preston’s eager anxiety seemed to have infected him too, and he felt he could hardly wait to hear the end of the story which had been so abruptly broken off the previous evening.
Not, he assured himself impatiently, that he placed any reliance in poor Teresa Preston’s “instinct”. But—well, he was eager to know the truth.
At the gateway they were stopped by the same uniformed man as before. But at the mention of Anya’s name, he waved them on.
“God, what a dreadful place!” exclaimed Robin Drummond feelingly.
“It’s pretty grim, isn’t it? David said. And then he saw Anya.
She was sitting on the steps outside the block where she lived, and, at the sight of the car, her still, listless pose changed instantly into eagerness and joy. Springing to her feet, she ran to meet them, and to David’s fancy it seemed that there was already a little more colour in her cheeks and energy in her step. It both hurt him and pleased him to think this might be due to his money having provided her with a good meal that day and the evening before.
“It is very good of you to have come, Herr Doktor.” She addressed Robin Drummond with a gentle, grateful charm to which he was obviously not at all impervious. “My father has been resting well during the last hour. I think perhaps he was even asleep. But please come up.”
The doctor prepared to follow her, but David, thinking of the cramped quarters, said,
“Suppose I stay down here for the time being. Then when you’ve made your examination, Drummond, you might let me know and I will have a word with him. I promised I would, so reassure him that I’m here and waiting to speak to him when he is ready.”
“Very well.” Drummond picked up his bag and, with Anya leading the way, entered the building which David now began to feel he knew quite well.
Left alone, he walked up and down beside the car and smoked a cigarette. It was a fine afternoon, and possibly many of the inmates were out. At any rate, there were few sounds. Once a woman came out with a pail and threw some water down a drain. She stared curiously at him and the car, but went in again without a word or smile. And once a man shuffled past, apparently unaware that anyone or anything was standing a few yards away from him.
The afternoon sun was warm, even in that grim quadrangle, and above one of the clumps of coarse grass, a couple of bright butterflies chased each other, as though they were in a garden.
Presently David got back into the car and sat there, wondering how long Robin Drummond’s examination would take, and what he himself would learn when his turn came. It was bound to be a strange story, and the very fact that only one man had held the secret of it for so long gave it added drama.
Perhaps if the doctor w
ere able to do a good deal for him—
And then, to David’s surprise—for he had been prepared for quite a long wait—he saw his friend emerging once more from the doorway. He looked calm and self-possessed, as usual, but something, perhaps the extreme gravity of his expression, made David suddenly get out of the car and come over to join him.
“You haven’t been long,” he said sharply.
“No. It didn’t take all that long to—see how things were.”
“You mean—” David hesitated—“that he’s really very ill indeed.”
“No. I’m afraid it’s worse than that,” Robin Drummond said, rubbing his hand meditatively against the side of his cheek. “I mean, my dear fellow, that the poor chap is dead. He must have died about an hour ago, I think. Probably when the girl thought he fell asleep.”
CHAPTER THREE
Afterwards, David was ashamed to recall that his first reaction was one of overwhelming disappointment and frustration. By a matter of hours, he had missed, probably for ever, the chance of discovering the secret of Anya’s real origin.
But then, even as her name came into this reflection, he recalled that her tragedy far transcended any personal disappointment of his and, looking suddenly anxious, he demanded of Robin Drummond,
“Where is she? Have you told her?”
“Of course. Though I think she guessed it when she saw him again. There’s some woman up there with her now. But I suppose it’s up to us to see about formalities. We’ll have to notify the death to someone, I take it, and have the body removed. After all, there are these other people living in the room and—”
“Wait,” David interrupted. “I must speak to her.”
And, leaving his friend standing there, he went quickly into the block and ran up the stairs, two at a time. It was dark in the corridor, after the sunlight outside, but he found the door at the end and he knocked softly and entered.
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