Kissing Kin (32 page)

“Germans can’t live without a grievance,” he said, and Bracken laughed.

“And the Russians?” he queried.

“Russians even less. If the League had any teeth in it I’d be more of an optimist myself, but your premise is a little too Wilsonian for me. What is there to prevent a wilful nation from walking out on the League and going its own wilful way, even if it is a member? How does the League prevent a wilful nation from sending its army to wilful war? Where is the Big
Stick? Wilson always seemed to think that accepting
membership
in the League was like entering the Kingdom of Heaven—where automatically the most hardened sinner simply put on the wings and halo issued to him at the gate and became a changed soul, pure white, with only the loftiest ideas from then on. Human nature doesn’t work like that, at least not before it’s dead. Germany in the League will go right on being Germany as it is today and was yesterday—only more so. More so because in the League she can stand on her aggressive right to equality in everything, and rearm openly instead of in a corner with her back turned as she’s doing now.”

The bitterness of his quiet voice, the way the words came out as though bitten off in his teeth, caused Camilla to turn and look at him with more interest than he had at first aroused. He was about Bracken’s age, but greyer, and his compact,
powerfully
built body was lounged easily in the iron chair, his feet stuck out, one hand in his pocket, his eyes—a cool blue—fixed moodily on the mountains, ’way, ’way off. That so much vehemence could come out of a creature outwardly so relaxed was astonishing. She noticed too that Bracken, who in the family was always regarded as the ultimate authority about everything, was listening to Johnny Malone’s views with the utmost respect and waiting for more. As more seemed not immediately forthcoming, Camilla could not resist putting a question of her own.

“Then the League isn’t really going to be any good?” she asked uncertainly.

“No,” was Johnny’s blunt reply. “Not only because America refused to join it. That was bad enough. But before that, they let the German army
march
home, as though it had won. There was no surrender, as such, no occupation of Berlin, nothing to drive it through their German skulls that they were licked. It’s an idea no German can assimilate without a club. The Allies’ pretty ideas about not hurting the German feelings, not rubbing it in—because Wilson was so sure the German people were an essentially peace-loving nation who had been misled
by a few wicked leaders—and how did he know, why
should
he know?—Clemenceau was in a position to know otherwise, but Clemenceau was overruled—that idea of the Allies to play dear old Mrs. Doasyoudbedoneby to the Germans simply won’t wash. There’s a thing called
furor
teutonics
which the Germans are very fond of invoking. They can’t get along without playing soldiers. They’re playing soldiers now, with their sports clubs and their aviation clubs and their hiking clubs. The old Officers Corps is still there, running these things, still kowtowed to, still strutting. Hindenburg is President. Ludendorff is still around too, organizing trouble. He’s picked up a little tramp somewhere, a neurotic-looking little rat called Adolf Hitler, who isn’t as funny as some people would like to think he is. With Hitler’s gift of gab and Ludendorff’s prestige, they can go a long way in Germany. A civilian government has palled on the Germans in no time. Not enough show—not enough bands—not enough uniforms—not enough tin soldiers shouldering people into the gutters in the good old Prussian way. They’re at it again, I tell you, and who’s going to stop them the next time? Poor old France? Not without Poincaré! Poor old England? Not with Lloyd George! America?
Who
did you say? Oh, no, not
America!
”

“My God, Johnny, you have got a nasty way of putting things,” Bracken murmured after a moment, while Camilla sat in stunned silence.

“Oh, hell,” said Johnny, and sat up, pulling in his legs. “Isn’t it about time for a drink?”

For a month they lived in a picture postcard, motoring slowly through the little mountain villages, making day excursions by car or steamer; to the Wolfgang See, where the White Horse Inn was, and where they went sailing and fishing; to Ischl for the cakes, along a narrow winding road which Bracken said could not be done after drinks, at least not by him; to Berchtesgaden, because it was the prettiest place of all—and even as Sir as Grundlsee. They heard Bruno Walter
conduct
Don
Pasquale
in the handsome little Stadt-theatre, and attended the
Everyman
performance in the Cathedral square, and went to concerts in the Mozarteum hall.

Camilla, caught up and dizzied and drunken with music, going round in a haze of remembered or newly encountered enchantment, wrote long, lyrical letters to Sosthène about how Salzburg was fairyland and she hoped she never woke up, and how she wished that he could be there too. For even now she saw everything in terms of Sosthène, and always imagined him at her side when she was particularly happy, as well as when she was particularly not. And Sosthène, who never expected to see Salzburg because Sally did not care to go there and he never left her, wrote most satisfying letters in reply, missing out no detail of the stories and the pictures she sent him, having obviously pored over them for hours.
At
least
I
see
it
all
with
the
eyes
of
my
heart,
he wrote, so that she could make almost anything she chose out of the phrases,
and
I
hear
it
with
my
soul.
And always he asked for more letters.

They lunched at their favourite Baustubernlm, sitting on hard benches and under glorious trees, eating Knödel and Sauerkraut and hunks of bread smeared with golden butter, and drinking beer. They walked the little slanting streets of the town, and kept finding one more fountain. They bought Weisswurstel sausages in the old market-place and ate them as they stood on the bridge watching the river in relaxed and companionable silences, they visited the catacombs and the marionette show, and saw the Capuchin monastery, and bought old pewter in the Kaigasse. They didn’t even mind the rain.

Then Bracken popped off to Berlin with Johnny for a quick look round, and Camilla found Dinah and Jeff ideal
companions
for further holiday. Each day it seemed to her that she came a little more unkinked, and life looked a little easier even without Sosthène, and things mattered a little less intensely. She slept better than she had for years, and actually put on several pounds. Jeff was growing, and had got quite brown in
the sun, and his spirits were high—but he was learning Austrian instead of German, and would open a conversation with
anyone
he encountered, entirely unselfconscious and with irresistible friendliness.

It was not raining the afternoon late in September when they sank into chairs in the garden at Tomiselli’s and ordered coffee, with chocolate for Jeff. They had been up to the Festung again, because Jeff adored the funicular, and Camilla, who didn’t, confessed to a comfortable sort of exhaustion. Most of the tables were occupied, though the season was at an end, and while they were waiting to be served Dinah said, “There are the Shenleys, only a month late, they were coming for the music—at the table in the corner.”

Camilla glanced at the corner table, where a girl in a big hat sat between two men with a third man facing her—she glanced without much interest, looked again, gave a queer little sound, and sat very still.

“Who did you say they were?” she asked, and her tongue felt stiff and cold.

“Paliser Shenley, young Shenley, and Kate, who is one of my best friends. She—”

“The other man,” said Camilla in the same stiff, controlled tone. “Who is he?”

“Never saw him before,” said Dinah. “Would he be a German, with that scar? They say that student duels are still the thing, and—”

Just then Kate Shenley turned her head, as people so often do when they are being discussed, and saw Dinah, and waved, and they both rose and went to meet each other. Camilla waited, gripping the edge of the table, feeling sick and queer, while they linked arms and strolled towards her, and Dinah said, “This is our Cousin Camilla, Kate, she’s travelling with us.”

Camilla returned Kate’s greeting automatically, and because she could do nothing else for this paralysis of shock she sat still while Kate greeted Jeff with affection, took the extra chair, and
said she had just lunched, and began answering Dinah’s questions.

“My dear, don’t scold
me
about being late for the music!” she cried, and Camilla thought how young and carefree and confident Kate looked, with her wide open blue eyes and rather toothy smile, beneath the expensive, sophisticated hat. “I’ve been punished enough already! My dear, those brutes of men of mine have dragged me all over Europe,
flying
, if you please, and
factories,
from Sweden
down!
All they know is
aeroplanes,
I hear nothing else from morning till night, and now this infernal
Conference,
and then on to Pisa where they make
more
aeroplanes! It was much nicer when Father just made
automobiles
, at least then we stayed on the ground!”

Camilla, staring stonily past Kate’s chatter to the table in the corner, had caught the eyes of the man with the scar—and saw it flame up crimson to where it ran under the edge of his hat. For a moment more he sat as motionless as she was. Then he rose, moving in a wooden sort of way as though against his will, and came towards her. Camilla sat looking up at him helplessly until he stood before her, and Kate Shenley’s voice faded away into surprise.

“Hullo, Raymond,” said Camilla gently, and held out her hand.

He took off his hat.

The scar blazed upwards along his left cheek, past the outer corner of his eye forward of the temple, across his forehead and stopped at his hair. There was no distortion of his face in repose, no sign of the scar from his other profile, but even at a little distance the marks where the stitches had been still showed when he faced you. And when he smiled the scar drew upward, kinking his eyebrow into a peak almost the way a pantomime comedian would do it on purpose with make-up—instead of repelling the beholder, the unexpected twist gave to his dark, sombre face an involuntary Puckish fascination. He smiled now, and no one could guess what it had cost him to learn to do that, abandoning rigidity without thinking of the scar.

“Hullo, Camilla,” he said, and his hand was warm and firm on hers. No self-consciousness, no evasion, no apology, no guilt—just Raymond. But still he had changed. His clothes were the best of the right kind, and he wore them as though he had forgotten about them. His manner was completely easy, the rather old-fashioned courteousness of his army days a little toned down. He’s arrived, thought Camilla, for she had learned things too, in the interim. He’s Somebody. Why?

“Well, Raymond,” Kate was saying on the other side of him. “What
is
all this, we’re dying to know!”

He let Camilla’s hand go, and stood bareheaded facing the sun to be introduced to Dinah, smiled again, man to man, at Jeff, who was frankly staring, and then said to Kate, “Camilla and I met in England during the war. She’s kind of surprised to see me alive.”

“Thank God you are, or Father would still be firing his engineers faster than he hired them,” said Kate, and added to Dinah, “Raymond has got Father tamed. He’s the only man who ever made engines at the Shenley works that Father can’t find everything wrong with. I only hope it lasts, because everything’s so peaceful now around the house! But it’s all because of
him
that I didn’t get here for the music! This whole trip is just for Raymond to see aeroplanes, not for me to hear concerts!”

“Sit down,” said Dinah to Raymond cordially, “and defend yourself.”

He laid his hand on an unoccupied chair nearby and swung it round to face the table and sat down beside Camilla.

“I’m sorry about all that,” he said sincerely to Kate. “It was those gliders.”

“We came to a place in Germany where they were
gliding
,” Kate took it up. “And Raymond and Dan over there went completely
nuts
, and Father and I had to sit on the ground with a crick in our necks and watch and pray! I thought they’d never stop having just one more day at it! And now I suppose you’ll start building them!”

“We might,” said Raymond, as though it would be fun to try.

“There we go again!” said Kate cheerfully. “Dinah, darling, it’s wonderful that you’re still here, and where are you staying during the Conference?”

“Stresa. Bracken can motor from there to Locarno every day.”

“So are we at Stresa!” Kate crowed. “What luck! Not that we
belong
there, but Father and Dan are just so curious about what’s going to happen they can’t stay away! Father says it can change the whole equilibrium of the world.”

Dinah made a rueful face.

“Don’t let him expect too much,” she said. “Bracken and Johnny are in Berlin, both very grim.”

“Not half so grim as
mine
can be!” Kate asserted with her gay grin. “We all sit around like a
wake,
and wait to bury civilization! In the meantime, I’m going back to the hotel and have a hot bath before somebody drops a bomb on the
plumbing
! Are you finished swilling coffee here, and can you dine with us at the hotel to-night, or what?”

Dinah explained about the house on the lake, and suggested that they all dine there, and Kate thought that would be lovely, and they all rose and drifted towards the other table. Raymond at Camilla’s side said, “How is Calvert?”

“He died. At Williamsburg.”

“I’m sorry.”

And then there were more introductions, and a reminder of dinner at eight, and directions about how to find the house, and Raymond was gone with the Shenleys.

“Do you want to tell me about it or not?” said Dinah, as they walked back to their own car and Camilla kept a musing silence.