Chapter 7

She was quite bright, because Kew had conveyed to her the hope that the plot for the rescue of the Family was doing well. Cousin Gustus also, with no traces of a headache except a faint smell of Eau-de-Cologne, had come down hopefully to breakfast.

"Obviously the North coast of Cornwall," said Mrs. Russell. "The village might be Boscastle, and the island is surely Lundy.... Such an intensely funny name, Lundy, isn't it? Ha-ha! For some reason it amuses me more and more every time I hear it. It reminds me of learning geography with the taste of ink and bitten pen in my mouth. I used to catch my sister's eye--just as I'm catching yours now--and laugh ever so much, over Lundy. I used to be a terror to my governesses."

"I'm very much afraid that I can't spare much more time for the motor tour," said Mr. Russell, and Anonyma was so anxious for the first signs of rescue that she actually let him speak. "Business in London. I dare say I could get you to Cornwall within the next few days, but some time this week I must get back to town."

"I'll come with you," said his wife. "You can't shake me off so easily, my dear. Ha-ha!"

"It's too rainy to start to-day," said Cousin Gustus. "I have known people drowned by swollen rivers and such while trying to travel in just such a deluge as this. We will start to-morrow."

"Wet or fine," added Anonyma.

"The fact remains," said Kew, "that I must leave you by the ten something. I must leave you to sniff without my help, like bloodhounds, along the trail of the elusive Jay. But I won't bid any one a fervent good-bye, because I daresay I shall be back again on leave for lack of anything else to do in three weeks' time, if we can't get across the Channel. In that case I'll meet you one day next month--say at Land's End or the Firth of Forth. Otherwise--say forty years hence in Heaven."

"It is very wrong to joke about Death," said Cousin Gustus. "I once knew a man who died with just such a joke on his lips."

"I hope it was a better joke than that," said Kew. "It can't be wrong to laugh at Death. Death is such a silly, cynical thing that a little wholesome leg-pulling by an impartial observer ought to do it good."

Mr. Russell was heard asking his Hound in a low voice for the truth about Death and Immortality.

So Kew went away, and left the Family gazing at the rain. Mrs. Russell was conducting a mysterious process known as writing up notes. It was hardly possible, by the way, that Anonyma could have loved the possessor of a rival notebook.

It rained very earnestly. There was no hole in the sky for hope to look through. The puddles in the village street jumped into the air with the force of the rain. You will, without difficulty, remember that it rained several times in the Spring of 1916. But this day was a most perfect example of its kind.

Cousin Gustus was both depressed and depressing. I am afraid I have not given you a very flattering portrait of Cousin Gustus. I ought to have told you that he was very well provided with human affections, and that he loved Kew better than any one else in the world. I might say that the departure of Kew let loose Cousin Gustus's intense grievance against the Germans, except that I could hardly describe a grievance as let loose that had never been pent up.

Cousin Gustus was always angry with the Germans whatever they did, but the thing that made him more angry than ever was to read in his paper some report admitting courageous or gracious behaviour in a German.

"The partings and the troubles that these Germans have caused ought to hang like mill-stones round their necks for ever," said Cousin Gustus. "Talk about Iron Crosses--Pish! I should like to have a German here for ten minutes. I should say to him: 'My Kew was a good boy, I would almost say a clever boy, doing well in his profession: no more thought than that dog has of being a soldier till War broke out. Does that look as if we were prepared for War?' I should say. 'Doesn't that show where the blame lies?' What could he answer?"

Mr. Russell and his Hound were apparently listening, but they could offer no suggestions.

"Kew's going has upset me so that my headache has returned, and I cannot get any Aspirin here," continued Cousin Gustus. "I know a man who was very much addicted to these neuralgic headaches, who committed suicide by throwing himself from the bathroom window, solely owing to neuralgia. And the rain does nothing towards improving matters. They say the German guns bring on the rain. I tell you there is no limit to their guilt. Look at this morning's paper: 'The enemy bombarded this section of our front with increasing intensity during the day....' I ask you, IS THAT WAR?"

"Yes," said Mr. Russell absently.

"Nonsense," said Cousin Gustus. "What we ought to do is to shoot every German we can catch. Shooting's too good for them. Hang them. That would teach them. Any Government but ours would have thought of it long ago. Iron Crosses, indeed, Pish!"

Cousin Gustus finds the Iron Cross very useful for the filling up of crannies in his edifice of wrath.

Anonyma said: "When I think of those old fairy-like German songs, I feel as if I had lost a bit of my heart and shall never find it again. That is what I regret most about this War. It is bad art."

"Art, indeed," said Cousin Gustus. "Why, every time they steal a picture they get an Iron Cross. I know a man who saw a German wearing a perfect rosary of Iron Crosses; the fellow was boasting of having bayoneted more babies than any other man in the regiment. Listen to this: 'The enemy attacked the outskirts of the village of What D'you Call'em, and engaged our troops in hand-to-hand fighting.' Think of it, and we used to say they were a civilised race. At the point of the bayonet, it says--isn't it atrocious? 'The enemy were finally repulsed at the point of the bay--' oh well, of course that may be different. I don't pretend to be a military expert...."

"I hate the Germans," said Anonyma, "because they have spoilt my own idea of them. I hate having a mistake brought home to me."

"I hate the Germans," began Mr. Russell, "because--"

"I'm going for a walk," said Anonyma. "I am sick of sitting here and hearing you two old fogies argue about the War. If War is bad art, it is vulgar to refer to it."

I know exactly what Mr. Russell was going to say. He had a vague culinary metaphor in his mind. I hate the Germans because they are underdone, they are red meat. Their vices and their virtues and their music, and their greed and their fairyism and their militarism, all seem to have been roasted in a hurry, and to contain, like red meat, the natural juices to an extent that seems to us excessive. The reason why some of us dislike red meat is that it reminds us too much of what our food originally was. As we ourselves, possibly, are rather overcooked by the fire of civilisation, this vulgar deficiency in our enemy is very apparent to us. This is an elaborate, but not a pleasing analogy, and it was fortunate that Mr. Russell was interrupted. Otherwise, I think he might have been trying to this day to explain it to an exasperated Cousin Gustus. He spoke of it to his Hound, and the idea interested that animal very much.

Mr. Russell, unfortunately, had a cold, and was therefore unable on such a wet day to leave the house or Cousin Gustus. But Anonyma went out in a mackintosh that gave her the "silhouette" of a Cossack, and a beautiful little tarpaulin sou'wester, and high boots, and a skirt short enough to give the boots every chance of advertisement. The notebook was safe in a water-tight pocket.

She covered with great speed and enthusiasm the few miles to the sea. She reached it at a point where the cliff dwindled into flatness, where the gentle tide rattled on pebbles instead of on sand, where the tall breakwaters contradicted the line of the shore. The furthest breakwater had seaweed like hair waving on the water. At intervals it would seem to be thrust up between two glassy waves, like a victim beckoning for deliverance from the grip of some monster. And then the sea's lips would close on it again. The sea was freckled by the rain, the waves were beaten into submission. The tide was rather low, and not very far away a great company of porpoises bowed each other through the mazes of a slow quadrille. There were a few rocks spotted like leopards, and on one of these a young brown seagull rested, and allowed itself occasionally to be washed gracefully away.

"Lazy Nature!" said Anonyma reprovingly. "To sketch such a scheme in a few careless lines."

For the whole world was rain-colour. There was no horizon to the sea, the downs were blotted out, the wet shingle reflected its surroundings, the waves broke unmarked by foam or shadow. There was nothing but the porpoises and the breakwaters and the rocks, and a little bald sand dune, sketched on the canvas of that pale day.

Anonyma perpetuated in her notebook her opinion of Nature as an artist. On the whole, it was a flattering opinion. Then she sat on the breakwater, and thought how fortunate she was to be able to think such interesting thoughts about what she saw. How fortunate to enjoy thought and to cause thought! How fortunate to feel oneself a member of the comforting fellowship of intelligence! "It is much more delightful," Anonyma informed the sea, "to be intelligent than to be beautiful. Why do we all try to make our outsides beautiful? There is competition in beauty, but there is brotherhood in intelligence. To be clever is to share a secret and a smile with all clever people." A vision of the coast of the United Kingdom encircled by a ring of consciously clever Anonymas sitting on breakwaters, sharing each with all a secret and a smile, came vaguely to her.

She put all that she could of her soliloquy into her notebook.

And then she noticed the face of a man, with its eyes upon her, appearing stealthily over a breakwater. The face wore the grin that some people wear when they are doing anything with great caution. This gave it a very empty, bright expression, like the mask that represents comedy in a theatre decoration. The face dropped down behind the breakwater, after meeting Anonyma's surprised eye for a second or two.

Anonyma kept her head.

First she thought it was the face of a bather, the path to whose clothes she was unwittingly barring.

Then she thought it was the face of a picnicker, resentful of her intrusion.

Then she thought it was the face of a German spy.

The first two of these three thoughts she rejected because the weather reduced their possibility to a minimum. The third she instinctively adopted as a certainty. The face at once became obviously German in her eyes. It was broader about the chin than about the forehead, it was pink, the architecture of the nose was painfully un-English.

She scanned the sea for the periscope of a submarine.

Anonyma remembered that she had written in her notebook, a day or two before, an intimate description of the coast as seen from the Ring. She also remembered distinctly seeing in the bar of the inn a notice warning her to the effect that walls--and probably breakwaters--have ears and eyes in these days, and that the German Government has a persistent wish to possess itself of private diaries and notebooks.

"I am having an adventure," said Mrs. Gustus. "I must keep cool."

She got up from her breakwater, holding her notebook very tightly, and began to walk away. When she looked back, she saw the top of the man's head moving behind the breakwater, in a parallel direction to her own course. When he reached the point where the breakwater ended and denied him cover, he wavered for a moment, and then, with an expression of elaborate indifference, followed her.

"I must keep even cooler than this," thought Anonyma. "I must try and catch the spy."

She walked across some waste land sown with memories of picnics, and reached the main road. The man crossed the waste land behind her. He tried in a futile way to look as if he were not doing so.

On the main road, Anonyma turned and waited for him. It seemed useless in that empty landscape to sustain the pretence that they were unaware of each other.

"Did you wish to speak to me?" she asked, as well as she could for the great lump of excitement that beat in her throat. Before her eyes visions of headlines danced: "LADY NOVELIST'S PLUCKY CAPTURE OF A SPY."

The man became dark red as she spoke. "Yes," he said. "I wanted to ask you what you were writing in that notebook?"

Anonyma paused for a moment, as she decided what she ought to do. Then she said in a hoarse voice: "I have detailed military information about this coast for twenty miles round in my notebook, with accurate reports as to the depth of the water. If you come to my lodgings in D----, I can show you a map that I have made."

A tremor ran through the stranger.

"A map?" he repeated.

"Yes, a map," said Anonyma; and then, as he did not move, she added on the spur of the moment, "Also a design for a new kind of bomb which I bought from a man in London."

"A bomb?" he said.

Anonyma thought that he was evidently a foreigner, though his accent was English. He seemed to find English rather difficult to understand.

"Why do you tell me all this?" he asked finally.

"Because I recognise your face as that of a sp--I mean a fellow-worker in the great brotherhood of espionage," said Anonyma.

"Come on, then," said the man.

So they walked off together.

"Why did you take up this--calling?" asked the man presently. "Are you a German?"

"Well, more or less," said Anonyma. "At least, I have never been a Christian. I believe that one must take either War or Christianity seriously. Hardly both."

It was a good opportunity for a monologue. Obviously the stranger was not one who would resent a monopoly of the conversation.

"After all, men are only minor gods," said Anonyma, "and War is what gods were born for. Germany knows that. That's why, under the present circumstances, I'd rather take German money than English."

"Are we anywhere near D---- yet?"

Anonyma hoped that he still had no suspicions. His voice was distinctly nervous. To reassure him, she said, "Why did you take up espionage yourself?"

"Why, indeed?" said the stranger in an ardent voice. "Of course the pay was enormous. Twenty thousand francs if I could get an exact chart of the South Coast."

"Why francs?" asked Anonyma.

"Not francs. I find these various currencies so confusing, don't you? Of course I mean pfennigs."

"Twenty thousand pfennigs?" said Anonyma. "Look here, are you trying to be funny?"

"Far from it," said the man. "To tell you the truth, I am awfully nervous."

"Of me?"

"Yes. No. I mean of discovery."

"You don't seem to be absolutely cut out for your job," said Anonyma.

They walked in silence for a while. Anonyma sought through her mind to find something she could say in keeping with her part. She decided finally on a rather ambiguous though imposing attitude.

"The Germans have discovered the truth that anything good is belligerent, love included. You can't fight properly with any weapon but your life. Death is not the only thing that passes by the peace-man. He remains alive, but he also remains ignorant. All peace-men are really women in disguise, and all women are utterly superfluous to-day. We only know men. People who disapprove of War shall have no part in peace. The peace shall be ours who suffered for it, and only we have earned it. The only decent thing left for the Americans and Quakers to do now is to hold their tongues when peace comes. They haven't earned the right to rejoice."

"I am a Quaker," said the stranger.

"I didn't know the Germans allowed Quakers at large."

"I am not a German," said the stranger.

"Then what has happened?" asked Anonyma, standing suddenly still at the top of the main street of D----. "Why did you want my notebook?"

"Because I could plainly see you taking notes in it."

"You thought me a spy?"

"You don't leave me much room for doubt."

They guided each other to the gate of the police-station. There they stopped again.

"This is where I was bringing you," said Anonyma, as their eyes fell simultaneously on the label over the door: "Sussex County Police."

"It seems to me that honours are easy," she added after a pause. "Don't you see what has happened?"

The stranger thought for a moment with a look of dawning relief on his pink face. "But you couldn't have made up all those dreadful opinions," he said.

"I didn't," said Anonyma. "I meant them all--as applied to England."

"Don't you think we'd better take each other in to make sure?" suggested her companion. "The Inspector's quite a good sort. I know him well...."

"You may read my notebook if you like to make quite sure," said Anonyma. "I'm almost sure the Inspector would have either too much or too little sense of humour for the situation."

She was conscious of a certain disappointment. Her adventure had fallen flat, she felt no pleasure in the idea of painting a vivid word-vignette for the people at home. Even her notebook must never hear of this morning's work.

"How foolish of you," she said irritably. "Do I look like a spy?"

"Do I?"

She felt impelled to be angry with him, and seized upon another pretext.

"You are a conscientious objector, I suppose. And what business has a conscientious objector to be spy-hunting? Do I understand that you will only help your country when you can do it vicariously, through the police, with no risk to yourself? It isn't very dignified."

"A spy is outside every pale," said the stranger. "My conscience objects to the shedding of blood. Yet it is an English conscience all the same."

"English?" said Anonyma. "If you won't die for England, England isn't yours to love. You shall not have that honour."

"If dying for England is the test of a patriot," said the pink Quaker, "what about you?"

"I would die for England. I work for England," said Anonyma.

(Four hours a week.)

She went on: "I have told you already that women--in either sex--are superfluous to-day. But after all, real women were born to their burden, women were born to put up with second bests. And also posterity is mostly a woman's job. But you were born a man, with a great heritage of honour. You have kicked that honour away. You have sold your birthright."

The Quaker was the sort of man in whose face and mind one could see exactly what his mother was like. Some men are like that, and others, one would say, could never have been so intimate with a woman as to be born of her.

"My soul is greater than I am," said the stranger. "There is no command that drowns the command of the soul. I cannot possibly be wrong."

"You could not possibly be right," said Anonyma. "Good-morning."

Anonyma, on her return to the inn, was very generous with "word-vignettes" dealing with Nature. Her Family during supper was not left in ignorance as to the Peace and Meaning of the Sea, and the Parallel between Waves and Generations, and the Miracles of the Mist, and the Tranquil Musing of the Beaches, and the Unseen Imminence of the Downs. "It would make a wonderful background to a short story," said Anonyma, and then she stopped rather abruptly. Her silence after that might have struck the Family as strange, had it not coincided with the arrival of the evening paper, which turned the listeners' thoughts to less beautiful matters.

"Air raid," said Cousin Gustus. "I prophesied quite a long time ago that we should have another raid, but nobody ever listens to what I say. Two horses killed somewhere in the Eastern Counties."

"I thought Somewhere was a town in France, ha-ha," said Mrs. Russell.

"Was London attacked?" asked Mr. Russell. "I'm rather anxious about--St. Paul's...."

Anonyma rose to the surface again. "I had such a wonderful talk with a 'bus-conductor once about his experiences during a raid. Such an intelligent man. I dearly love 'bus conductors, such an interesting and vivacious class. I should feel it an honour to be intimate with one. He told me in the most vivid terms how a bomb fell in the street in front of his 'bus, blowing the preceding 'bus to atoms. He told me how his driver turned the 'bus in what he called 'The spice of 'arf a crown,' and plunged into a side street. He said that he could see the Zeppelin balanced on its searchlights like 'a sausage on stilts,' and when it was directly above them, the top of his 'bus was suddenly cleared of people as if by magic, except for one man who put up an umbrella and 'sat tight.' I pitied the conductor, it must have been a terrible experience, his eyes were starting from his head,--bulging like a rabbit's,--he said he had a wife and baby up Leyton way, and that he was so worried about them that he frequently called out his list of destinations the wrong way round."

"Look here," said Mr. Russell, "I think I'd better go up and see about--"

"Nonsense," said his wife. "I refuse to go to London until the moon is there to protect me, as it were. So comic to look upon a heavenly body as a practical protection. I will not allow you to run needlessly into danger. Only this morning you were making plans to go to Cornwall, naughty boy."

"No, but--"

"Darling, I insist," said Mrs. Russell. "Cornwall it is for the present. If you say another word I shall smack you and put you in the corner, ha-ha."

Cornwall it was.

The Family drew near to its destination on a misty day. The sun shone not at all, but occasionally showed its bare pale outline through a veil of cloud. The road in front of Christina was so dim that Mr. Russell could people it for himself with imaginations. Now a knight in armour stood at the next corner, now a phantom sea gleamed over the curve of the road, now he saw great slim ghosts beckoning him on.

There were real sheep every few hundred yards, for a sheep fair was taking place somewhere near by. The sheep came out of the mist like armies of giants, and shrank as they grew clearer. The roads were rippled with the footprints of many sheep. Even when there were no sheep in sight, the mist filled their places with ghostly flocks.

Each sheep as it passed examined the wheels of Christina as long as the dogs allowed it to do so. Each flock was followed by two men, and sometimes a child in ill-fitting clothes on a pony, and sometimes a woman with a shawl over her head.

Anonyma's notebook became very restless, and finally Mr. Russell was obliged to drive the Family to the point whither the sheep were bound.

So they went to the little town, through which the excitement of the fair thrilled like the blast from a trumpet. Bewildered sheep looked in at its shop windows; farmers in dog-carts shouted affectionate remarks to each other across its village green, and introduced dear friends at a great distance to other dear friends with much formality. Dogs argued in a professional way about the merits of their sheep. Mr. Russell's Hound, who had never before heard the suggestion that dogs were intended for any purpose but ornament, looked on breathless with surprise. His morals were affected for life by the revolutionary sight of a dog biting the tail of a disobedient sheep. "I'll try it in Kensington Gardens," thought Mr. Russell's Hound, as he looked nervously at his master.