The Saint in Europe (13 page)

“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 sanнdals-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 any more,” 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 anнother 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 underнstand, 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 himнself, 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, Bruderlein, 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?”

5

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 Innsнbruck?”

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 halfway 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 carefree, swung along that trail half-way up the wall of 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-abaseнment 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 shameнfacedly, 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 enjoyнing 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 printed 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, hangнing aloft in a solid curtain of pines like a picture nailed to a wall. The crucified Christs set up by every path and roadнside 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…”

She scarcely heard him at first. It was as if he spoke a foreign language. She was looking up at the mountains that girdle the town, which can be seen from every corner, looming above the house-tops like the bastions of a gigantic fortress, the gates of the trail that ran halfway up the wall of the world.

“Jack, I was the only one who was wrong. But we’re going on with Simon just like this, over the Alps into Italy.”

Easton shook his head.

“Nothing doing,” he stated firmly. “I’ve had my share, and I could do with some hot baths and civilized meals for a change. We’ll rent an automobile and drive over if you like.”

Unbelieving, she stared at him. She had never seen him before. Clean, carefully and inconspicuously dressed, smoothly pink-faced, the embryo of a stolid pillar of the civilized state. She looked down at herself, travel-stained and not caring. At the people around-townspeople mostly, sprinkled with tourists. They were like utter strangers; she looked at them with a queer pride, a pride in the dust and stains of the road that had become part of her, in which they had no part. She looked at Simon Templar, brown and dusty and strong like herself, sitting there with an amazed and motionless foreboding in his eyes. He was real. He belonged. Belonged back there under the wide reaches of the sky that she had once thought so terrible and comfortнless, which now was the only ceiling of peace.

“Darling, your nose is peeling,” said Jack Easton jovially; and something that had been in her, which had grown dim and vague in the passing of seven days, was suddenly lifeнless, dying without pain.

“No, no, no!” she cried, with her heart aching and awake. “Simon, I can’t go back. I can never go back!”

V. LUCERNE:
The Loaded Tourist

The lights of Lucerne were twinkling on the lake as Simon Templar strolled out towards it through the Casino gardens, and above them the craggy head of old Pilatus loomed blackly against a sky full of stars. At a jetty across the National quai a tourist launch was disgorging a load of trippers, and the clear Swiss air was temporarily raucous with the alien accents of Lancashire and London. Simon stood under a tree, enjoying a cigarette and waiting patiently for them to disperse. He had a deep aversion to mobs, and did not want to walk in the middle of one even the short distance to his hotel: something perhaps overly sensitive and fastidious in him recoiled instinctively from their mildly alcoholic exuberance and the laughter was just a shade too loud and shallow for his tranquil mood. It was not because he was afraid of being recognized. Any one of them would probably have reacted to his name, or at least to his still better-known sobriquet, the Saint; but none would have been likely to identify his face. The features of the mocking buccaneer whose long and simultaneous vendettas with the underworld and the law had become lengendary in his own lifetime were known to few-a fact which the Saint had often found to his advantage.

But at that moment he was not even thinking of the advantages of anonymity. He was simply indulging a personal distaste for boisterous holiday-makers. He was still trying to take a holiday himself. He wanted nothing from them except to be left alone, and they had nothing to fear from him.

Presently they were gone, and the esplanade was deserted again. He dropped his cigarette and stood like a statue, absorbed in the serene beauty of shimmering water and sentinel mountains.

From the direction of the Hotel National, off to his left, came a single set of footsteps. They were solid, purposeful, a little hurried. Simon turned only his head, and saw the man who made them as he came nearer-a stoutish man of middle height, wearing a dark suit and a dark homburg, carrying a bulky briefcase, the whole effect combined with his intent and urgent gait giving him an incongruously brisk and businesslike appearance in the peaceful alpine night. Simon caught a glimpse of his face as he passed under one of the street lamps that stood along the waterfront: it had a sallow and unmistakably Latin cast that was accentuated by a small pointed black beard.