(1941) Up at the Villa (5 page)

`No, I had no dinner. Wine would go to my head.’

`Why did you have no dinner?' He gave a careless, boyish
laugh.

`I had no money. But never mind about that; I shall eat
tomorrow.,
'Oh, but that's awful. Come into the kitchen and
we'll see if we can't find something for you to eat now.’

`I'm not hungry. This is better than food. Let me see the
garden with the moon shining.’

The garden will keep and so will the moon. I'm going to
make you some supper and then you shall see anything you like.’

They went down into the kitchen. It was vast, with a
stone floor and a huge old-fashioned range where you might have cooked for
fifty people. Nina and Ciro were long since in bed and asleep and the cook had
gone home to her cottage halfway down the hill. Mary and the stranger, hunting
about for food, felt like a pair of burglars. They found bread and wine, eggs,
bacon and butter. Mary turned on the electric stove which the Leonards had put
in, started to toast some slices of bread and broke the eggs into a frying-pan
to scramble them.

`Cut some rashers of bacon,' she told the young man, `and
we'll fry them. What is your name?' With the bacon in one hand and a knife in
the other, he clicked his heels together.

`Karl Richter, student of art.’

`Oh, I thought you were Italian,' she said lightly, as
she beat the eggs.

`That sounds German.’

`I was Austrian when Austria existed! There was
a sullenness
in his tone which made Mary give him a
questioning look.

`How is it you speak English? Have you ever been to
England?' No. I learnt it at school and at the University.’

Suddenly he smiled.

`You're marvelous to be able to do that.’

`To do what?’

`Cook.’

`Would it surprise you if I told you I'd been a working
girl and not only was able to cook for myself, but had to?, 'I shouldn't
believe it’

`Would you rather believe that I'd lived in luxury all my
life with a host of servants to look after me?’

`Yes. Like a princess in a fairy story.’

`Then it's true. I can scramble eggs and fry bacon
because that was one of the gifts I received at my christening from my fairy
godmother.’

When everything was ready they put it on a tray and, Mary
leading,
went into the dining-room. It was a large
room with a painted ceiling, with a tapestry at each end and great gilt-wood
sconces on the side walls. They sat opposite one another in tall stately chairs
at a refectory table.

`I'm ashamed of my poor and shabby clothes,' he smiled.

`In this splendid room I should be dressed in silk and
fine velvet like the cavaliers in an old picture.’

His suit was shabby, his shoes patched, and his shirt,
open at the neck, frayed. He wore no tie. By the light of the tall candles on
the table his eyes were dark and cavernous. He had a strange head with
close-cropped black hair, high cheek-bones, hollow cheeks, a pallid skin and a
look of strain which was somewhat moving. It occurred to Mary that in costume,
dressed, say, like one of those young princes in a picture by Bronzino at the
Uffizi, he would have been very nearly beautiful.

`How old are you?' she asked him.

`Twenty-three.’

`What else matters?’

`What is the good of youth that has no opportunity? I
live in a prison and there's no escape from it.’

`Are you an artist?" He laughed.

`Can you ask me after hearing me play? I'm not a
violinist. When I escaped from Austria I got work in a hotel, but business was
bad and I was sent away. I've had one or two odd jobs, but it's difficult to
get them when you're a foreigner and your papers aren't in order. I play the
fiddle when I get the chance just to keep body and soul together, but I don't
get the chance every day.’

`Why did you have to leave Austria?’

`Some of us students protested against the Anschluss. We
tried to organize resistance. It was stupid of course. We hadn't a hope. The
only result was that two of us were shot and the rest put in a concentration
camp. They put me in for six months, but I escaped and crossed the mountains
into Italy.’

`It all sounds rather horrible,' said Mary. It was a lame
and inadequate thing to say, but it was all she could think of. He gave her an
ironical smile.

`I'm not the only one, you know. There are thousands and
thousands of us in the world now. Anyhow I'm free.’

`But what are your plans for the future?' A look of
despair crossed his face and he was about to answer. But he made an impatient
gesture and laughed.

`Don't let me think of that now. Let me enjoy this
priceless moment. Nothing has ever happened to me like this in all my life. I
want to enjoy it so that whatever comes to me later it will be a recollection
that I can always treasure.’

Mary looked at him strangely and it seemed to her that
she could hear the beating of her heart. It had been almost a joke, what she
had said to Rowley, the reverie of an idle day that, when the moment came, she
knew she would shrink from. Had the moment come now? She felt queerly reckless.
She drank very little as a rule and the strong red wine she had been drinking
to keep him company had gone to her head. There was something mysteriously
disturbing in thus sitting in that vast room with its memories of long ago
opposite this young man with the tragic face. It was long past midnight. The
air that came in through the open windows was warm and scented. Mary felt a
sort of languor running through her excitement; her heart seemed to melt in her
bosom and at the same time the blood seemed to race madly through her veins.
She rose abruptly from the table.

`Now I will show you the garden and then you must go'
Access to it was most convenient from the great
room in which
were
the frescoes, and thither she led him. On the way through he paused
to look at a handsome cassone that stood against the wall; then he caught sight
of the gramophone.

`How strange that looks in these surroundings!’

`I sometimes put it on when I'm sitting in the garden by
myself.’

`May I put it on now?’

`If you like.’

He turned the switch. By chance the record was that of a
Strauss waltz He gave a little cry of delight.

`Vienna. It's one of our dear Viennese waltzes.’

He looked at her with shining eyes. His face was
transfigured. She had an intuition of what he wanted to ask her, and saw at the
same time that he was too timid to speak. She smiled.

`Can you dance?’

`Oh, yes; I can do that. I dance better than I play.’

`Let me see.’

He put his arm round her and in that sumptuous, empty
room, in the dead of night.
they
waltzed to the old-fashioned
charming tune of the Viennese conductor. Then she took his hand and led him out
into the garden. By the garish light of day it had sometimes a look that was a
trifle forlorn, like a woman much loved who has lost her loveliness; but now
under the full moon, with its trimmed hedges and ancient trees, with its grotto
and its lawns, it was thrilling and secret. The centuries fell away and
wandering there you felt yourself the inhabitant of a fresher, younger world in
which instinct was more reckless and consequences less material. The light
summer air was scented with the white flowers of night. They walked silently,
hand in hand.

`It's so beautiful,' he murmured at last, 'it's almost
unbearable.’

He quoted that celebrated line of Goethe's in which
Faust, satisfied at length, begs the fleeting moment to stay.

`You must be very happy here.’

`Very,' she smiled.

`I'm glad. You're kind and good and generous. You deserve
happiness. I should like to think that you have everything in the world you
desire.’

She chuckled.

`At all events I have everything I have any right to hope
for.’

He sighed.

`I should like to die this night. Nothing so wonderful
will ever happen to me again. I shall think of it all my life. I shall always
have this evening to remember, the glimpse of your beauty and the recollection
of this lovely spot. I shall always think of you as a goddess in heaven and I
shall pray to you as though you were the Madonna.’

He lifted her hand to his lips and with an awkward,
touching little bow, kissed it. She gently touched his face. Suddenly he fell
on his knees and kissed the hem of her dress. Then a great exaltation seized
her. She took his head in her hands, raising him towards her, and kissed his
eyes and his mouth. There was something solemn and mystical in the action. She
had a feeling that was strange to her. Her heart was filled with loving
kindness. He rose to his feet and passionately clasped her in his arms. He was twenty
three. She was not a goddess to pray to, but a woman to possess. They went back
into the silent house.

5

IT was dark in the room, but the windows were wide open
and the moon shone in. Mary was sitting in a straight-backed antique chair and
the youth sat at her feet leaning his head against her knees. He was smoking a
cigarette and in the darkness the glow shone red. In answer to her questioning
he told her that his father had been head of the police in one of the smaller
towns of Austria during the Dollfuss Government and he had put down with
severity the various agitations which disturbed the peace during those troubled
times. When Schuschnigg became head of the State after the assassination of the
little peasant Chancellor, his firmness and determined attitude had maintained
him in his post. He favoured the restoration of the Archduke Otto because he
thought that this was the only way to prevent Austria, which he loved with
ardent patriotism, from being absorbed by Germany. During the three years that
followed he aroused the bitter enmity of the Austrian Nazis by the stem
measures be took to curb their treasonable activities. On that fatal day when
the German troops marched into the defenceless little country he shot himself
through the heart. The young Karl, his boy, was then finishing his education.
He had specialized in the history of art, but was going to be a schoolmaster.
At the moment nothing could be done and with rage in his heart he listened
among the crowd to the speech Hitler made at Linz from the balcony of the
Landhaus when he entered the town in triumph. He heard the Austrians shout
themselves hoarse with joy as they acclaimed their conqueror. But this
enthusiasm was soon followed by disillusion, and when some of the bolder
spirits gathered together to form a secret association to fight the alien rule
by every means in their power they found many adherents. Karl was among them.
They held meetings which they were convinced were private; they conspired in an
ineffective way; they were no more than boys any of them, and they never dreamt
that every move they made, every word they said, was reported at the
headquarters of the secret police. One day they were all arrested. Two were
shot as a warning to the rest, and the others were sent to a concentration
camp. Karl escaped after three months and by good luck was able to get over the
frontier into the Italian Tyrol. He had no passport nor papers of any kind, for
these had been taken from him in the concentration camp, and he lived in terror
of being arrested and either put in prison as a vagabond or deported back to
the Reich where a harsh punishment awaited him.

`If I'd only had enough money to buy a revolver rd have
shot
myself
as my father did.’

He took her hand and placed it on his chest.

`There, between the fourth and fifth ribs.
Just where your fingers are.’

`Don't say such things,' said Mary, with a shudder,
snatching her hand away. He gave a mirthless laugh.

`You don't know how often I've looked at the Arno and
wondered when the time would come when nothing was left to me but to throw
myself in.’

Mary sighed deeply. His fate seemed so cruel that any
words she might have found to console him could only have been futile. He
pressed her hand.

`Don't sigh,' he said tenderly.

`I regret nothing any more. It's all been worth it for
this wonderful night.’

They ceased to speak. Mary thought of his miserable
story. There was no way out. What could she do? Give him money? That would help
him for a while perhaps, but that was all; he was a romantic creature, his
high-flown, extravagant language was that of a boy who knew more of books than,
for all his terrible experiences, of life, and it was quite possible that he
would refuse to take anything from her.
On a sudden a cock
crew.
The sound broke the silence of the night so shrilly that she was
startled. She took her hand away from his.

`You must go now, my dear,' she said.

`Not yet,' be cried.

`Not yet, my love.’

`The dawn will break soon.’

`Not for a long time yet.’

He raised himself to his knees and threw his arms round
her.

`I adore you.’

She disengaged herself.

`No, really you must go. It's so late. Please.’

She felt rather than saw the sweet smile that broke on
his lips. He scrambled to his feet. He looked for his coat and shoes and she
switched on a light. When he was once more dressed he took her in his arms again.

`My lovely one,' he whispered.

`You've made me so happy.’

`I'm glad.’

`You've given me something to live for. Now I have you I
have everything. Let the future look after itself. Life's not so bad; something
will turn up.’

`You'll never forget?’

`Never.’

She lifted her lips to his.

`Good-bye, then.’

`Good-bye till when?’ he murmured passionately.