Authors: Elswyth Thane
Evadne was prepared for argument, or procrastination, or endless cross-questioning, when she entered the flat, but she had not anticipated a flat refusal to budge. The discussion raged all through a pick-up dinner and was carried on in slightly raised voices while Evadne cleared away and stacked the dishes in the kitchen.
“It’s madness,” said Hermione, not for the first time, and her small white teeth snapped shut on the word. “I keep telling you, the evening paper says that German troops are moving towards the border and the Czechs are mobilizing.”
“But Bracken’s there,” said Evadne stupidly. “In Prague, I mean, and he—”
“In the first place, Bracken is an American,” Hermione reminded her tartly. “And in the second place, I don’t think his presence will influence the Sudetens one way or another.”
“Well, Johnny’s still in Berlin, and if anything did happen—”
“Can’t you get it into your head that we travel on English passports?” said Hermione. “We don’t want to be caught in Germany if war is declared, we’d be interned for the duration. We might even be killed by our own bombers!”
“I refuse to believe it will go as far as that,” Evadne said firmly. “Now is the time to do what we can, while there’s still a chance. I’m going to pack.”
“Then you’ll go alone,” said Hermione, and Evadne whirled in the doorway to stare at her.
“You wouldn’t let me down like that,” she gasped. “It’s only for a week or two—just to meet these people of Victor’s and stand shoulder to shoulder with him while he—”
“In front of a firing squad?” inquired Hermione. “No, thank you. If Victor is really in some sort of underground movement in Germany, which I doubt, it would be very dangerous to be seen with him there.”
“Oh, nonsense, the Gestapo wouldn’t touch
us
,”
said Evadne sensibly.
“Anything can happen there now, you know that perfectly well.”
“Victor
said
you’d be afraid to come!” Evadne challenged her. “And I said you were braver than I am.”
“It’s not a question of being brave or afraid,” Hermione replied with dignity. “The German underground, if it exists, is Germany’s affair. You know what happened a few years ago in the Purge. We would be perfectly helpless to save Victor and possibly ourselves too.”
“But Victor
said
—”
“Victor is simply trying to get you to come to Germany, for his own good reasons, no doubt.”
“Now, there you go again, implying that Victor and I—”
“Well, if you want to take a chance on Victor’s morals and integrity you can, for all I care. I wouldn’t put myself in his power for anything on earth!”
Evadne gazed at her in exasperation. As though Victor had time now to bother about— But that was part of Hermione’s trouble, she had a complex about men. According to Hermione, whose experience, Evadne felt, was considerably less than her own, there wasn’t a man alive who could be trusted if you were in his power. It was an old-fashioned novelette sort of notion which did her no credit.
“But I couldn’t reach Victor now to say we aren’t coming,” Evadne objected, determined to be reasonable.
“He’ll find that out when we don’t turn up. If you ask me, it was only a try-on, anyway. He doesn’t really expect us to come.”
“That’s a very limited view,” cried Evadne. “I don’t want him to think
I’m
afraid!” And she flounced off into her bedroom and got out a small suitcase and began to throw overnight things into it.
Hermione followed to the doorway and stood there, watching her.
“You aren’t seriously going to take off alone on this wildgoose chase,” she said.
“If you won’t come with me, I’ve got to go alone,’ said Evadne angrily. “Else the sort of thing they like to say about the English will be true.
Some
of us have got to make an effort somehow!”
“And what possible good do you think you can do?” Hermione asked.
“I can stand by Victor as he asked me to! As a sort of—symbol!”
“Rubbish!” said Hermione crushingly. “He’s only making a fool of you, why can’t you see that? The family would never allow it if they knew,” she added, using all the worst arguments with an air of malicious triumph at her own cleverness.
“The family isn’t going to know,” said Evadne sullenly.
“I can tell them.”
Evadne straightened above the suitcase, which was nearly full now, and she was suddenly ablaze with overwrought nerves and righteous anger.
“If you interfere
once
more
with my life I shall leave here for ever and you can jolly well find someone else to share the beastly flat!” she thundered. “You took Stephen’s letters as fast as they came, all five of them, hoping I’d never see him again! You thought I’d never find out, but I did! And if I hadn’t stopped him yesterday he’d have walked in this door with me and had it out to your face! I tried to do the right thing last year, I tried to give him up because of you, and that’s what I got for it!
Sneak-thieving!
Well, now I’m through trying! I’m all through, do you hear? I shall do exactly as I please from now on!”
Hermione had turned perfectly white in the face, and faded from the doorway back into the living-room. Evadne banged the suitcase shut and fastened it, snatched it up, slammed on a soft hat with one hand and remembered that her bag was on the living-room table. She had more than enough money in it to get to Ostend, which Victor had said was all she would need. She had not enough for a round-trip ticket to Berlin, but once
there she could borrow from Johnny, or even Victor, sooner than ask Hermione for a loan now. She went into the living-room and picked up the bag. Hermione lay face down on the sofa, motionless.
“Well, goodbye,” said Evadne rather lamely from the middle of the room. “I’m sorry I— Well, I don’t expect to be away more than a week or two, but I think when I come back I had better live somewhere else. For a while, anyway. You—can make whatever arrangements you see
Hermione did not move or reply, and Evadne left the flat, carrying her suitcase.
Before she had got down to the street her inevitable compunctions had set in. I shouldn’t have said that, she was thinking as she got into a taxi for Victoria Station. I shouldn’t have thrown it at her like that about the letters and then walked out, it’s never fair to walk out on a row. The only decent thing to do is give the other person a chance to have his say too. I shouldn’t have brought it up about not living there any more unless I could wait to hear her side of it. It’s another mistake. I just
keep
on
making mistakes….
When the door had closed behind Evadne and she did not relent and come back to apologize, Hermione began to cry. But there was no one to hear, and she soon left off and sat up, red-eyed and resentful. She knew that she ought not to allow Evadne to start out alone like that, but she was too muddled with her own unbridled emotions to have any clear idea what to do about it. Evadne would get a train to Dover or Folkestone and cross the Channel tonight, and take any one of several routes to Berlin. Once through that door, she was beyond reach, unless one went to the police…. If Bracken was here, Hermione thought. But Bracken was in Prague. Perhaps if she cabled to Johnny in Berlin….
She wandered moodily about the flat, made herself a pot
of tea, heard the late BBC news, which was not comforting, thought of ringing up one or two people, and then as a gesture of defiance to her own fears, went to bed. She did not, of course, go to sleep, and lying awake in the dark she began to imagine the things that could happen to Evadne alone in Germany…. After an hour or so of that, her anger had cooled and she was thoroughly frightened. She put on the light again and got into a dressing-gown and walked the floor, fighting a growing conviction that she would have to throw herself on Stephen’s mercy and ask him what was to be done. Even now, she preferred Stephen to Jeff, convinced that he would be less rude about her part in the affair than Jeff would. And perhaps he need not know, at least not yet, that she knew that he knew about the letters…. After a little more of this, she decided that it didn’t matter what he knew, she would have to confess everything to him on Evadne’s account.
It was now well into the small hours, and she was aware as she called the Upper Brook Street number that she would probably wake them all from their first sleep and have them all down on her in no time. To her relief, it was Stephen’s voice which answered, speaking low, as though the others had not roused, and she remembered that the telephone was on a small table in the hall of the flat, with a long flex, so that it could be carried into any one of several rooms and the door closed behind the speaker.
“Stephen—it’s Hermione—I’ve got to talk to you—can anyone else hear?”
“No. The ’phone was left in my room tonight. What’s the matter?”
“It’s Evadne—she’s gone.”
“Gone where?” he demanded sharply.
“To Germany. We—there was a sort of row—I refused to go with her and she was furious and went off alone.”
“When?”
“Hours ago.”
“What have you been doing ever since? Why didn’t you—”
“Don’t take my head off, Stephen, I didn’t know what to do, I’m frightened, I—must see you—”
‘Just one thing. Can we stop her now?”
“She must be on the boat by now. I don’t know which route she took.”
There was a second’s pause while he took it in. Then he said, “I’ll be with you in about fifteen minutes if I can find a cab. If I can’t I’ll walk.”
“Thank you—” But he had hung up.
Waiting for him, she tidied her hair, brushed a powder puff across her face, drew her dressing-gown about her, and made another pot of tea. It was brewing on the table in the living-room when his ring came at the door.
“Well, what happened?” he asked grimly, and passed her into the living-room and threw down his hat there and stood facing her as she followed.
“Would you like—a cup of tea?” she asked faintly, her hand on the pot.
“No, thanks. What happened here tonight?”
Hermione poured herself a cup of tea and sat down with it. Her knees were trembling, but he was here, and it would be easier to tell him than anyone else.
“She came in at dinner-time,” she began. “She’d been with Victor all afternoon—”
“How do you know that?”
“He telephoned before lunch and asked her to meet him in the Park, down by the statue. He told her he was flying to Germany tomorrow—that’s today—and somehow got her to promise to meet him there—”
“How do you know that?”
“She
told
me, when she came in. They couldn’t travel together, he’s flying. I gather he’s trying to stop the war from inside Germany—he made her believe that she ought to join him over there as a sort of symbol—to prove to the Germans that Englishwomen weren’t afraid to do their part towards creating a new understanding between the nations. Of course I don’t believe for a moment that there is anything
she can do now—he simply wanted to get her back to Germany—”
“And yet you didn’t go with her?”
Her eyes fell to the cup in her hand, and she sipped the hot tea nervously.
“I couldn’t see any point in either of us going, the Czechs are mobilizing and the war may start any minute. When I tried to make her see that, she flared out at me and packed her own bag and went. To prove she wasn’t afraid, I gather.”
“Didn’t you even try to stop her?”
“Yes, I did. When I threatened to tell the family she called it interfering and got very angry.”
“You’ve never hesitated to interfere before now, that I can see. What became of my letters to Evadne?”
She was silent, looking down.
“You were bound to be found out on that, you know, sooner or later,” he added, and she sighed.
“Yes, she told me. That was part of the row.”
“You’re jealous of her, aren’t you?” said Stephen incredulously, standing still to stare at her. “You envy her so much that you hate her. Perhaps you wanted Victor to be in love with you instead?”
“Not
Victor,
no!” she cried savagely, and then was silent, paralysed, for she had not meant to give herself away to him, but only to protest the implied insult that she herself was fool enough to care for any Nazi, whatever less enlightened women might do.
For a moment their eyes held, while Stephen felt the hot blood rising, rising, towards his white face till he was enveloped to the hair in a colossal blush. At last with a sort of wrenching movement he turned from her and walked away down the room. Hermione set down the empty cup blindly and hid her face in her hands.
“That’s what it was,” he said, stunned with revelation, his back to her. “She knew that—last year, when she suddenly baulked on me.”
“She found out!” cried Hermione, instantly defensive. “I
didn’t tell her, truly I didn’t! She found out, snooping in my bureau drawer!”
He swung round on one foot to face her then, looking puzzled and battered and unable to believe.
“But what did you—how could she—”
“I used to come to the theatre over and over again—just to see you in the show. She found that out. I was—humiliated and angry.”
“Sure you were,” he agreed with a kind of automatic compassion, even now. “She said you didn’t want her to marry me, but I—what good would that do? Dog-in-the-manger stuff?” With a few quick steps he had her by the shoulder in a hard grip, his fingers biting in. “Was
that
why you let her go tonight? So that she—”
“No, no, please Stephen, it’s not as bad as that,” she said, muffled. “I don’t—want anything to
happen
to her!”
“Then why didn’t you give us a chance to stop her? Why didn’t you tell us sooner? What in the name of God have you done ever since she left the house?
Slept?
”
She shook her head, her face hidden.
“We could cable Johnny—or Bracken—” she offered hopelessly.
“They’re not
bloodhounds
,”
said Stephen. “If Victor chooses to hide her in Berlin, what can they do? Has she got plenty of money with her?”
“I don’t know,” said Hermione, and began to cry again.
Stephen took a turn round the room, fighting his own panic. Evadne must have known when she came to the dressing-room that she was going to Germany that night. Those last words of hers at the door, which had kept him floating all through the evening performance—that was her goodbye. And the picture—she wanted the picture to take with her on what even she must have known was a perilous venture. If people had not come in after the show—if he had not gone on with them for supper—he would have rung her up before going to bed himself. Even then, she would have been gone, but he might have got it out of Hermione a bit sooner…. Now what? he
asked himself, to the sound of Hermione’s sobbing. What was the most they could do to get to her? Telephone Bracken in Prague—what good was that? Call Johnny in Berlin—Jeff would have to take charge now, Jeff knew the ropes. Jeff had been around….