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Friday, October 28, 2011

Prince Cecil: XI.

Chapter XI.

A Menace




‘Baden, I wish you would realise that my time is valuable,’ said Wakjavotski to his minister of information and propaganda the afternoon following the extraordinarily eventful day. ‘Why couldn’t you tell me whatever it was you wanted to tell me earlier—why did you have to wait until Zköllmann left?’
‘What I have to say is for your ears only,’ replied Baden.
‘Well, what is it?’
They were, as usual, in Wakjavotski’s audience chamber. Wakjavotski had just been preparing to have his photograph taken in his private studio and had donned a trench coat, hat, and gloves to give the impression that the photograph was taken outside.
‘I’d prefer to talk in your study,’ said Baden, moving towards the study door.
‘Why? I’m busy—I’ll talk to you later. Come, Baden, it can’t be that important.’
‘You’re always busy. Now is as good a time as any. Come along.’
‘You needn’t be so peremptory with me,’ said Wakjavotski haughtily, following him into the study all the same.
‘Well, what do you want? Speak out!’
‘Are you sure we can’t be overheard here?’ asked Baden, closing the door behind them and glancing around at the walls and ceiling as if searching for hidden microphones.
‘Yes, yes, of course. And why all this secrecy, anyway? Don’t worry—Zköllmann has had this room thoroughly de-bugged.’
‘You trust Zköllmann too much,’ remarked Baden.
‘What makes you say that?’ asked Wakjavotski without seeming much disturbed.
‘You leave everything to him—and you tell him everything.’
‘So what if I do? He gets things done, unlike you and that bungler, Grosse.’
‘Yes, Zköllmann gets results, but he may just know how to get results that are only good for himself. Do you follow me? What’s to stop him from grabbing at more power than you want him to have?’
‘What’s to stop him?’ asked Wakjavotski. ‘Ha! He wouldn’t try anything like that—he wouldn’t have a chance.’
‘He might if the SO keeps getting stronger. They’ve already practically taken over the work of the civil police—all the policemen do now is arrest loiterers and distribute parking tickets—and they’re using their semi-military status as an excuse to get military secrets. They know everything there is to know—all about our alliances and our allies and the war at large. They probably know more about our allies than we do ourselves. That’s not safe knowledge for a specially-trained force with its own chief and agenda and with complete and unrestrained authority.’
‘It’s not entirely unrestrained,’ said Wakjavotski. ‘I’m still in charge of it.’
‘How do you know that your authority isn’t just a formality? I’m surprised that you—who are so suspicious—don’t see the threat Zköllmann is to you. If he is merely your bodyguard, he has the opportunity to assassinate you, but no motive; as your minister he has motive but no opportunity. He has both positions—and he has ambition too.’
‘Are you so concerned for my safety?’ asked Wakjavotski, looking incredulous.
‘If I were, do you think I’d try so hard?’ said Baden. ‘It’s simple self-preservation—if you go down, I do too. You know as well as I do that loyalty is just a word to fool the masses. We fought our way to the top together and we have to fight together to stay here.’
‘And you think Zköllmann is capable of toppling all of us?’ said Wakjavotski. ‘We’re three to his one, aren’t we?—not counting Limbrugher who is just a satellite.’
‘Grosse doesn’t count either. He has no imagination. You don’t have anyone to depend on but me.’
‘And you think that I should depend on you, no doubt—simply because we, as you so frankly expressed it, “fought our way to the top together?” Yes, we were friends, we shared the same dreams of freedom and the same hardships, we watched the wealthy go by with their arms full of bread while we starved in the gutter, we hated the bourgeois with the same amount of hatred…Therefore we should be sentimental, call each other “comrade” like the idiot Slavs who stab each other as they embrace, or call each other “brother” like the French in their million revolutions. We should forget that we are made of iron and steel and show each other our weaknesses. That’s it, eh?’
‘Don’t be an idiot,’ said Baden. ‘Of course I meant nothing of the kind, but if you mean to have a Night of the Long Knives, just take care that Zköllmann doesn’t get carried away like Hitler’s minions did.’
‘Pooh!’ said Wakjavotski with a raucous laugh. ‘What if Zköllmann is a knave? We’re all knaves, aren’t we? You’re a scoundrel yourself and everyone knows it.’
‘At least you know how I think and why I do what I do,’ said Baden. ‘You don’t know Zköllmann—nobody does. It’s idiocy to trust him as far as you do.’
‘Remember this, Baden,’ said Wakjavotski suavely; ‘I do not trust anyone—not even you.’

* * * * *

At four o’clock Cecil set out for the Szkolzor Theatre. Karotski and Leiber had done the best they could in the way of a disguise for him. Leiber had gone out that morning and bought him a grey jacket, plus fours, and cap and Cecil had left his sword behind in the flat and only carried his pistol in his pocket.
The weather was so fine and Cecil was in such good spirits that he almost felt as if he were out on a holiday instead of a dangerous mission. At least he was not in school studying decimals, he thought, and the thought was so pleasant that he stopped and on a whim bought a nosegay of red geraniums from a flower seller. He wondered at once why he had done it and, feeling rather embarrassed to be seen carrying flowers through the street, he put them carefully into his pocket.
The Szkolzor Theatre was the finest in Pyromania. Its sumptuously furnished interior sported crystal chandeliers, red velvet draperies with golden tassels, gilded private boxes, and ornate French-rococo mouldings, but one would not have guessed this from the austere appearance of the blank brick wall which formed the back of the building and where the stage door was. This door was reached by going down a long narrow alley between the theatre and the buildings behind it and all that could be seen down its ascetic extent were a few packing cases and alley cats.
Cecil entered at one end and saw, as he made his way towards the stage door, the rays of the setting sun slanting down the bare alley through the gap in the opposite end, for the alley ran due west. It seemed to be a sort of promise and he felt that here he would find an important ingredient for his plan, though what it was he didn’t know. He had some difficulty convincing the doorkeeper that Miss Kaparthy really did know him and it took some minutes before he was finally led to her dressing room.
It was a tiny room crowded with things—a small round cosmetic table with a large mirror almost as large as itself hung above it, a collapsible canvas wardrobe, a leather folio full of sheet music, and a folding chair. The walls were crowded with posters, programmes, photographs, and notes of all kinds, making a dizzying collection. In the centre of it all Miss Kaparthy sat in the chair in front of the table, looking somehow small and simplified in her complicated surroundings. She wore a black dress instead of a red one and was looking over a programme.
She was startled to see Cecil.
‘Your High—!’ she began and then stopped.
‘Hello,’ said Cecil, feeling embarrassed again.
‘What did you come here for?’ she asked, glancing anxiously at the door. ‘Don’t you realise how dangerous it is? They’re looking everywhere for you.’
‘I have to talk to you about something,’ said Cecil.
‘But you shouldn’t have come here. Couldn’t you have sent a message?’
‘A message might get lost,’ said Cecil; ‘and this is terribly important.’
She got up and went to the door, listening at it and then opening it to look out in the strained manner people use when they think they are being spied on.
‘You’d better tell me as quickly as possible and then go away,’ she said to Cecil in a low voice. ‘I should have warned you. I thought you would understand from what you saw last night. The SO watch me always. They’ll find out that you have been here—I wish you hadn’t come!’
‘It’s too late now,’ said Cecil. ‘Anyway, someone had to come.’
‘Why didn’t they send someone older?’ asked Miss Kaparthy. ‘You’re only a little boy.’
‘I’m not that little,’ protested Cecil.
‘Young, then,’ she said. ‘You could get hurt.’
‘I’m not afraid,’ said Cecil.
‘I am,’ she said quickly. ‘I’m afraid for you.’
‘I came too because I wanted to hear you sing,’ said Cecil, undisturbed by her anxiety.
‘Hear me?’ she said in surprise. ‘Well, if that was all, you can hear me on the wireless later this evening. They’re going to record the performance and broadcast it.’
‘They are?’ asked Cecil interestedly. ‘How are they going to do it?’
‘I don’t know—all I do is the singing. They have some men who work the recording equipment during the performance and afterwards, when everyone has left the theatre, a man comes and takes the recording to the radio station.’
‘I’ve seen them make recordings before in England,’ said Cecil. ‘I should like to try it sometime.’
‘Was there something you were going to tell me?’ asked Miss Kaparthy, almost laughing at how unruffled he was. She herself could scarcely keep her tense nerves under control.
‘Yes,’ said Cecil. ‘That’s the real reason why I had to come—I don’t think you’ll say yes to anyone else.’
‘What is it?’
Cecil deliberated. He wasn’t quite sure where to begin.
‘You see,’ he said; ‘our try at freeing Pyromania yesterday didn’t work.’
‘I know,’ she said. ‘I heard something about it but it was all hushed up as much as possible. What happened?’
‘We tried to blow up Wakjavotski with a lot of dynamite,’ said Cecil. ‘But there wasn’t enough and it only blew up the palace floor. Then the SO came after us and flooded the sewers while we were trying to escape. We all got away but it was rather touch-and-go for a while.’
‘Oh I am glad,’ she said, looking relieved. ‘I thought for sure they must have caught some of you. They had every soldier in the capitol looking for you.’
‘Yes,’ said Cecil. ‘But now we’ve got to try again and we haven’t got enough men.’
‘Then you have another plan?’ she asked.
‘Not exactly,’ said Cecil and hesitated. ‘We’ve got an idea. That’s all.’
She wrinkled her brow.
‘And you need my help for it?’
‘Yes,’ said Cecil. ‘We need you to tell us something.’
‘I’ll help you in any way I can,’ she said; ‘but there is so little I can do.’
‘It isn’t anything very hard,’ said Cecil. ‘We need help from the spies in the Hundred Circles ring. Can you tell us the names of any of them?’
She did not answer him at once, but a strange look flashed suddenly into her eyes. It was a look like that of a hunted animal when it can run no longer.
She looked away.
‘I can’t,’ she said.
‘Why not?’ asked Cecil, confused by the look and her manner. ‘Don’t you know any?’
‘No,’ she said simply. ‘All the spies go by code names. They’re not allowed to tell their real ones.’
‘But couldn’t you tell us where to find them?’
‘I can’t do that either,’ she said. ‘I promised when I first became a spy that I’d never give information about any of the others.’
‘But we’re not the enemy!’ exclaimed Cecil.
‘That doesn’t make any difference!’ she cried. ‘Don’t you see? This is bigger than just Pyromania! These are international agents—our enemies would do anything to discover who they are. If I so much as breathed a word about them their lives would be in great danger—and far more than their lives, too. A great deal depends on them; the world is at stake.’
‘But couldn’t you contact them and ask them to help us?’ asked Cecil desperately.
‘I wish I could!’ she said. ‘I want to help you, but I can’t. They’d find out—they watch me all the time, I told you so! They know everything about me. I can’t do anything without them finding out about it. I am no more free than if I were in prison.’
‘Then you won’t help us at all?’ asked Cecil.
‘I can’t!’
She dropped her forehead onto her hand and shut her eyes.
‘I wish I could,’ she said hopelessly.
Cecil stared at her and for a moment she reminded him of Karotski.
‘There’s another thing I wanted to ask you,’ said Cecil slowly.
She raised her head and looked at him expectantly but her face was very pale.
‘Is it really true that you know a secret way into the palace?’ asked Cecil.
‘Who told you?’ she asked quickly.
‘Sir Andrew did.’
She looked away and said quietly, ‘Yes. I do.’
‘Will you tell me how to get in?’
‘You want to kill Wakjavotski,’ she said.
I did not sound like a question but Cecil answered it anyway.
‘Yes—we’ve got to.’
‘How would you do it?’
‘I don’t know yet,’ said Cecil, realising the difficulty. ‘We have to get inside the palace somehow because he never leaves it. It would have to be one of us by himself, I think.’
‘Yes, I know.’
Again she was silent.
‘Why can’t you tell me?’ Cecil asked.
‘You see,’ she explained; ‘the secret entrance is very small. A grown-up couldn’t get in that way.’
‘Oh,’ said Cecil. ‘You don’t want me to do it.’
‘I don’t want you to have to do it. I know you would want to.’
‘But someone has to do it.’
‘You couldn’t kill him all by yourself anyhow,’ she said.
‘You’re trying to look after me,’ said Cecil; ‘—because I’m only a boy.’
Although she was so pale she smiled slightly.
‘I suppose I am,’ she said.
‘But you’re the woman, so I ought to look after you,’ said Cecil.
‘Look after me?’ she said, looking up at him in surprise. ‘You!’
‘You don’t have anyone else to look after you,’ said Cecil.
‘No,’ she replied.
They were both silent for several moments.
‘Good bye,’ said Cecil, going to the door.
She looked after him and opened her mouth to say something, but closed it again as the door shut behind him.
The corridor to the stage door had no lights in it and Cecil found himself tripping over wires in the dark. He found the door at last and let himself out without meeting anyone.
The sidewalk in front of the theatre was beginning to grow crowded as people queued up for the performance. Cecil joined the line and bought a ticket for a private box.

She saw him there, even over the glare of the footlights. A moment before, her eyes had had the empty look of concentration common to performers. Suddenly a flash of alarm darted into them and she nearly betrayed her surprise in her voice. But nobody saw the momentary flicker in the muscles of her face as she composed her disordered nerves and set her mind on this new problem.
He’d come after all! He was not angry, then. But why had he risked so much just to hear her sing? How was she to keep him from being discovered?
She struggled with a sudden wild desire to laugh. It was immediately quelled, but she could not hide the mirth in her eyes. Cecil was so unpredictable. He worried her, but she could not help seeing the funny side of things.
The Javotskis were searching everywhere for the prince while he sat in the national theatre, serenely listening to an operatic performance. He almost seemed as if he couldn’t be caught—like a cloud or a ray of light. He almost made her feel that he could succeed in his endeavour…
She had not hoped for so long that it felt strange to hope now, like going down a road she had not been down for a long time. Hope turns the world upside down and makes you see things wrong way up from the way you saw them before. –Not that they are any different—you are the one that is different.
Perhaps that was the only reason her eyes shone and the music seemed suddenly to mean something new as she sang it that evening. Perhaps there was another reason and perhaps that reason was that a prince was listening. However that may be, the applause at the end of the performance was prolonged and enthusiastic—more so even than usual. She scarcely heard it as she bowed and left the stage. She had heard it so often before that it seemed to have no more to do with her than the static on a wireless set. Her mind was working furiously and she was scarcely aware of anything around her until she reached her dressing room again and had shut the door. It was only then that she saw Zköllmann seated in the folding chair.




He got up quickly and offered it to her, but she stepped back and put her hand on the doorknob, for a brief moment intending to run away.
‘Don’t go,’ he said authoritatively. ‘I’ve something to tell you.'




All she could think of was Cecil. Did Zköllmann know he was here? Had they perhaps arrested him already? She could not conceal her trembling and she sat down in the folding chair in hopes of putting a stop to it.

Wednesday, October 19, 2011

Prince Cecil: X

Chapter X.

We Shall Never Give Up




The strangest flashing circles were floating about before Cecil’s eyes like a lot of Roman candles on Guy Fawkes day. He felt his legs swaying out from under him as if he were on the deck of a ship and then someone caught him by the arm and pulled him backwards and he came down hard into a chair.
‘I’m all right,’ he gasped.
‘You would have fallen if I hadn’t caught you,’ said Karotski. ‘What’s the matter?’
‘I don’t know,’ said Cecil. ‘I felt so queerly all of a sudden. I’ll be all right in a minute, I think.’
‘Are you hurt anywhere?’ asked Karotski, gazing apprehensively at Cecil’s pale face.
‘No,’ said Cecil, taking the glass of water Leiber had been about to pour down his neck and swallowing half of it.
‘When did you last eat?’ asked Leiber.
‘I don’t know,’ said Cecil. ‘Last night, wasn’t it? We had tea and biscuits.’
‘There’s no wonder in that, then,’ said Leiber. ‘He hasn’t eaten anything for twenty-four hours.’
‘Well, get him something to eat, then,’ said Karotski. ‘In the meanwhile,’ he said to Cecil; ‘tell us what happened to you.’
‘But what about Wakjavotski? Are you sure it didn’t work?’ asked Cecil.
‘Yes,’ said Karotski gloomily. ‘How could we have expected it to work? We were too few.’
‘But how do you know that it didn’t?’
‘It’s apparent,’ said Karotski. ‘If he’d been knocked off the whole capitol would be in confusion right now. Everything is going too smoothly for him to have been killed or even seriously hurt.’
‘But just perhaps—’ began Cecil.
‘Hush!’ said Karotski, turning the volume knob on the wireless. ‘Here’s the evening news. Now we’ll know what happened.’
He the tuning knob on the wireless to lessen the static, Leiber paused in the midst of spreading mustard on a frankfurter, and Cecil shut his mouth and leaned forward, all of them listening intently as the final movement of an overture ended and the clipped, business-like tones of a broadcaster’s voice came on. He announced first a few mundane details of the political situation in Europe and then inserted quite suddenly the news they were waiting to hear.
‘Attention, please,’ said the voice. ‘This afternoon an attempt was made on the life of our illustrious and beloved Superior. It was, of course, unsuccessful, and only occasioned minor damage to the palace. Our Superior is well and quite calm after this unsatisfactory event, the perpetrators of which have all been apprehended and destroyed. The unrest was occasioned by a small and erratic sect that is no longer in existence. Let this be a warning to all who would wish to disturb the well-balanced order of our happy State…’
Karotski switched it off and turned away.
‘Well, that’s what everyone gets to know about it,’ he said. ‘It isn’t the truth, but it will do just as well.’
‘What went wrong?’ asked Cecil. ‘Didn’t I lay the dynamite right?’
‘It wasn’t your fault,’ said Karotski. ‘It was a crazy chance to begin with. The sewer walls were too thick—there wasn’t enough dynamite to blow up that part of the building.’
‘If we hadn’t lost the dynamite on that one boatload that upset on the way up,’ said Leiber; ‘it might have worked.’
‘Anyway, Wakjavotski’s alive; that’s quite certain,’ said Karotski. ‘And we’ve no more dynamite.’
‘What are we going to do then?’ asked Cecil.
‘What can we do?’ said Karotski, and Cecil saw that the strange listless mood was on him again as it had been when he had first met the leader of the underground.
‘We can’t just give up,’ said Cecil.
‘That was our only chance,’ replied Karotski. ‘Now they’ll be guarding the palace so closely that we’ll never be able to get in.’
‘Can’t we get Wakjavotski some time when he’s going out—to inspect troops or something?’ asked Cecil.
‘He never goes out,’ said Karotski. ‘—Not even to make a speech. That’s why he always records them. He’s afraid if he leaves the palace someone will try to kill him.’
‘I should hate to be him,’ said Leiber; ‘and always be so frightened all the time.’
‘So should I,’ said Cecil.
‘Have some supper,’ said Leiber, setting the frankfurter and half of a beef sandwich in front of him.
Cecil fell to at once but although he was terribly hungry he hadn’t the heart to enjoy it. Karotski and Leiber sat despondently at the table and since they had nothing better to look at, looked at Cecil and it is hard to eat while you’re being watched. Cecil finished his sandwich and leaned back in his chair with a sigh.
‘There must be another way,’ he said.
‘Another way to what?’ asked Karotski.
‘To free Pyromania.’
‘Well, have you got any ideas?’
‘I was rather hoping you might,’ suggested Cecil.
‘It’s no good. We played our cards and we lost. There never was much of a chance of our winning. If only we had more men!’
‘How many men do we have?’ asked Cecil.
‘Sixteen here in the capitol, including you, and seven more in the countryside,’ replied Karotski without enthusiasm.
‘Can’t we get any more?’
‘Get any more? No, we can’t get any more. What do you want us to do, roust out the whole country—say, “Join our ranks, chappies!”—just like that? The SO would be onto us in twenty minutes. Besides, we can’t have just anyone. We’ve never had more than thirty members at any time because numbers are so dangerous. If even one of us were caught, the Javotskis would force him to betray the rest. There have been some fine, good men whom we might have allowed into the company but we couldn’t because they had families and if they were caught, the secret police would use their wives and children to make them divulge information. Oh, yes, they would, too. You don’t think they would?’
Karotski, growing excited, leaned forward and fixed on Cecil his feverish eyes.
‘They don’t stop at anything. The only reason we haven’t been caught yet is because there are so few of us, but even that isn’t any security. We know we’ll be caught sooner or later and our only hope is to go on fighting while we’re able. You think Leiber and I are friends?’
Cecil had thought so, since they seemed to always accompany each other everywhere and depend on each other.
‘Well,’ said Karotski; ‘if we were caught and they threatened to kill Leiber if I didn’t tell them what they want to know, I’d have to sit in silence and watch them shoot him. We don’t allow ourselves to have friends. We live for only one purpose and that is to fight Javotskism. So you see how it is. What kind of life is that? How can we possibly build up an effective force?’
‘Maybe if we had enough time…’ suggested Cecil.
‘We don’t. Every Javotski is out combing the city for us this very minute. It’s only a matter of time before they find us. We have to act at once and we can’t—that’s the whole trouble.’
‘But what about the tanks?’ asked Cecil.
‘The tanks? What tanks?’
‘The Javotski tanks. I saw several of them—when I was escaping from the sewers.’
They made him tell them all about his escape then. They had forgotten to make him do it before. It was only then that Cecil realised how very much had happened to him that afternoon.
‘Well, what about the tanks?’ he asked at the end of his recital. ‘Do you think we could get hold of them?’
‘Hardly. They know we know about them and they’ll probably move them to the fort.’
Karotski said this. He was very good at predicting what the enemy would do because as you know this was exactly what Wakjavotski had given orders to have done.
‘They would be useful,’ Karotski went on; ‘and we should be able to dispense with a large force of men if we had them, but we haven’t got them so we’ve got to have the men instead.’
‘Even if the tanks were still in the bunker, we can’t get them out,’ said Leiber. ‘We’re not that good at stealing.’
‘Well, I got out of the bunker,’ said Cecil; ‘so it isn’t impossible….Wait a minute, I just remembered—’
He put his hand into his pocket and drew out the TOP SECRET paper he had found in the office.
‘There’s this!’ he said. ‘I forgot about it. Do you think you could decipher it?’
Karotski and Leiber looked at Cecil in surprise and with a shade of respect. They were beginning to discover that they never knew what he would spring on them next.
‘It shouldn’t be too difficult to figure out,’ said Leiber. ‘We’ve already cracked most of their codes. Let me get the book.’
They sat over it for several minutes and when they had finished it read like this:

To Col. Schumm, CO armoured vehicle squadron 14 (tanks):
You have sworn an oath of fealty to the Superior and him alone. You serve no interests but those of the State. No matter what the circumstances are you are to obey no orders save those received from the Superior, General Grosse, or myself, with reservations concerning General Grosse. The SO have no control over your movements and are to receive no information from you. If they make trouble for you, refer them to me. If in the interests of the State it becomes necessary to liquidate the Surreptitious Operations organisation, you will render the full support of your squadron in this task. This is to prepare you in the event of such necessity. For now you are to keep this directive in strict secrecy.
(signed) Baden,
Department of Information and Propaganda


‘I don’t understand it,’ said Cecil. ‘What does he mean?’
‘Baden is afraid of the SO,’ said Karotski. ‘No wonder—they all mistrust each other up there. That’s what you get when you eradicate principles, after all.’
‘Serves them right,’ said Leiber.
‘If only they’d set to work knocking each other off and save us the trouble,’ said Cecil.
‘But we can’t count on that,’ said Karotski. ‘Still, this is interesting. This is the sort of paper you burn immediately upon receiving—not the kind you leave lying about your desk. The fact that Schumm kept it means that he’s playing for stakes of some sort. If he does what Baden tells him to then he gets a promotion—something the officers are always trying to get—and then, of course, if he doesn’t do as he’s told he it’s curtains for him. But, on the other hand, the SO are very strong and if they should turn out to be stronger than Baden, all they have to do is arrest Schumm and he’ll never be heard from again. He knows this, but he doesn’t know who’s the stronger and he’s not sure how to act. He saved that paper to give to the SO and so do them a service in exchange for their help, but if Baden can really get rid of them then he definitely doesn’t want to do that, and he can’t make up his mind.’
‘Then that Erlich fellow comes along and wants him to throw over both of ‘em, and Wakjavotski too,’ said Leiber. ‘Just now Col. Schumm is a man with many choices.’
‘But there’s something in that all the same,’ said Karotski, deep in thought. ‘That other chap said there were others in the army who wanted to get rid of Wakjavotski, didn’t you say?’
‘I think that’s what he said,’ said Cecil.
‘There may be something in that,’ said Karotski. ‘It may be the place to get the men we need. But we’d still have to kill Wakjavotski because they’re all afraid of him and of their silly oath.’
‘It would be rather difficult to subvert the entire army,’ said Leiber. ‘—Or even a large part of it.’
‘That’s just because we don’t know how to do it,’ said Karotski. ‘There are some who know how. There are spies and saboteurs everywhere, you know—from that ring, the “Hundred Circles”.’
‘That’s the spy ring that the singer—Miss Kaparthy—is a part of,’ said Cecil.
‘But how would we get in touch with them?’ asked Leiber. ‘How would we even know who they were? And what if they didn’t want to help us?’
‘All I know,’ said Karotski; ‘is that there are a lot of them and that if they wanted to, they could help us—a great deal. We might be able to pull it off with their help. They and the army are the only possible places to find recruits that I can think of. They’re both crazy chances, but all we’ve ever had are crazy chances. If there were only a way to contact them…’
As Karotski said this, Cecil noticed that his eyes had regained their lustre and a note of hope had crept into his voice again.
‘We might ask Miss Kaparthy,’ said Cecil.
That’s no good,’ said Karotski. ‘How could she get in touch with them? The SO know about her, you know. And who’s going to walk up to her and ask her anyway? She doesn’t know us: she’d probably think it was a trap.’
I will,’ said Cecil. ‘She knows me.’
'How would you even find her?' asked Karotski.
'She's singing at the Skolzor Theatre to-morrow afternoon,' said Leiber.
'Then I'll go and see her before the concert,' said Cecil. 'You know how people go backstage and visit with the singers at a performance? I think they usually go afterwards but I'll go before and save time. I'm sure she'll help us.'
'She may,' said Karotksi; 'and she may not.'
'It can't hurt to try, I suppose,' said Leiber.
'All that could happen is that we could all be caught,' said Karotski drily.
'But we might be caught anyway,' said Cecil. 'We have to try.'
'There is one way she can help us,' admitted Karotski; 'even if she won't help us contact the spies—she could help us get rid of Zköllmann.’
‘How can she do that?’ asked Cecil.
‘He plagues her all the time and she’s the only one he tells ahead of time when he’s coming to see her. Baden is right if thinks the SO is getting too powerful—they are, and Zköllmann’s at the bottom of it. He’s the brains behind the whole operation.’
'But how can she help us get rid of him?'
'She can pretend that she has some information to give him and arrange a meeting in some out-of-the-way place. Then when he comes to the rendezvous we shoot him and it's all taken care of nice and quietly.'
This sounded to Cecil markedly similar to the Wakjavotski putsch and he was not prepossessed with the idea.
'Do we have to kill everybody?' he asked.
'Zkollmann would have been condemned by a jury after you were reinstated anyway,' said Karotski. 'To kill him now is kinder--the same for all of the top Javotskis. They are all criminals and can ask for nothing more lenient from the Pyromanian people than a long rope and a short shrift.'
'Very well,' said Cecil reluctantly.
‘While you go off on your unpromising enterprise,’ said Karotski; ‘I shall go pay a call on this Major Erlich person.’
‘What for?’ asked Cecil.
‘On the chance,’ replied Karotski; ‘that he may prove useful. It’s a lead, anyway.’
‘But what if you were caught?’
‘Better let me, old fellow,’ said Leiber. ‘You’re the one running this show, you know.’
‘Confound it, you don’t think I’m going to let you and him take all the risks, do you?’ said Karotski.
They saw that it was no use arguing and were silent.
‘I’m going down to wind my watches,’ Leiber informed them, getting up.
Cecil and Karotski remained sitting at the table deep in thought.
‘There goes one of the most loyal subjects you’ll ever have,’ said Karotski, watching as Leiber went down the stairs.
‘Leiber?’ said Cecil in surprise.
‘Yes. And he’s suffered for his loyalty—more than you will ever be able to appreciate.’
‘How?’ asked Cecil.
Karotski didn’t seem to have heard. He sat with his elbows on the table, staring into vacancy and seemingly lost in reminiscence. His reflections did not appear to be pleasant, either, from the way he knit his brows and bit his lip. He sat so for several minutes, then suddenly seemed to return to reality and turned to Cecil with a look in his eye that was almost angry.
‘Look here,’ he said.
He got up and took off his coat, hanging it over the back of his chair, sat down again and proceeded to roll up his sleeve.
‘Look at that,’ he said, showing a small blue number tattooed on the inside of his wrist.
‘133762,’ read Cecil aloud.
‘That was my name to the Javotski government for six years,’ said Karotski. ‘Wakjavotski took power when I was eighteen. When I was twenty I was arrested for leading a strike in a factory and spent seven months in prison. I got out, led a protest, and was sent to a labour camp where I got that number. My name, age, occupation, family, future—all meant nothing to the government. I was just a number on their list. I was there for six years, building the new highway. Actually, it was the canal for the first four. When I got out, I had at last learned that you can’t fight this kind of evil in the open. So I started the underground.’
‘That means you are twenty-nine now,’ said Cecil, doing the arithmetic.
‘Leiber’s thirty. He was nineteen when he was sent to a labour camp. He tried to get away from Pyromania when Wakjavotski got into power but he was caught. He had taken a berth on board a British ship and meant to go to England, but his ship put into harbour at Corsica and one night when he went ashore he was kidnapped by some Javotski agents there, clubbed senseless, and dragged back to Pyromania and prison. If you turned up his sleeve, you’d find more than a tattoo mark. He has scars all up and down his arms from the tortures they put him through. They didn’t do it to extract information, either. They just wanted him to die. How he survived I don’t know, but I think he did just to spite them. The things they did to him—’
Karotski stopped suddenly, seeming to realise that what he was saying was not exactly suited for boys’ ears.
‘Well, anyway, he survived,’ he said. ‘Then they put him into a labour camp. He was there for almost ten years—think of it! Ten years! The best years of his life—wasted away in hard labour, poor food, and no medical care. Did I tell you why they did it? Simply because he saved your life.’
‘Mine?’ said Cecil.
‘Yes, when he shot the gunner who was about to shoot you and your mother the night you escaped. That was his crime. They’ll never forgive him for it. Leiber has more reason to hate than anyone else ever did, and still he doesn’t hate. I don’t know why not.’
‘Are you sure you meant it when you said he wasn’t your friend?’ asked Cecil.
‘I didn’t really mean it,’ admitted Karotski. ‘Leiber is the only friend I’ve ever had. It’s the most utter evil that a man like him should be treated like they treated him. You see now why it is we must fight.’
‘Yes, I see,’ said Cecil. ‘I see why we have to win, too.’

Tuesday, October 11, 2011

Prince Cecil: IX

Chapter IX.

Three Interviews


Cecil had not only been well-trained by the British Secret Intelligence Service, he also possessed quite a lot of brains on his own account. He saw the man outside the door before the SO chief saw him and in a split second Cecil had slipped swiftly and noiselessly behind one of the heavy drapes that hung against the wall. The toes of his shoes stuck out underneath but, being in a dark corner, he hoped they wouldn’t be noticed.
The singer stood in the doorway, one hand on the door and the other on the door frame, for the moment frozen with shock. Her eyes were fixed resistlessly on those of the SO officer and as he slowly advanced into the room she retreated before him, never taking her eyes from his. Once inside the room, he broke off the locked stare and glanced casually around him. The woman looked around it too and the dread in her eyes seemed to lessen when she found Cecil was not in sight.
‘I hope our officers didn’t give you any trouble,’ said Zköllmann. ‘They’re insolent fellows.’
She made no reply to him.
‘Sit down. Don’t let me keep you standing.’
Dropping her eyes, she took the chair she had left only a moment earlier. Zköllmann took another—fortunately it was not Cecil’s or the wet cushion would have given him away. The singer’s eyes wandered about the room and rested on the toes of Cecil’s shoes where they showed underneath the curtain.
‘I hope you don’t mind if I take off my coat,’ said Zköllmann, throwing it over the arm of his chair and setting his hat on top of it. ‘It got rather wet from the rain.’
His back was towards Cecil and Cecil, watching through a moth hole in the curtain, could only see a quarter of his face and a bit of his profile when he happened to turn his head. He could see enough of him, though, to get a good appraisal of the man.
The chief of the Surreptitious Operations organisation was of middle height and possessed of unremarkable features. Yet behind those quick eyes was the keenest brain in Pyromania and if there was a heart in him as well it never gave evidence of its existence. To plead for mercy from Wakjavotski’s personal private eye was as mad as putting one’s hand in a nest of adders and as futile as beseeching a tidal wave to alter its course. Zköllmann was feared by all who had heard rumours about him, but he was feared more by those who had experienced the truth of the rumours and most of all by his most intimate associates.
He leaned back in his chair and looked around the room again.
‘What made you choose this room to wait in?’ he asked the woman. ‘The lighting is poor.’
‘An officer told me I wouldn’t be bothered here,’ the woman replied.
Her voice sounded slightly accusatory but Zköllmann took no notice of it.
‘Why was it you come here to-night?’ he asked, looking directly at her.
‘I come here all the time.’
‘—To practice; yes, we know that. But why did you come here to-night?’
‘For the same reason,’ she said, looking away. ‘And your men have already questioned me, so you needn’t take the trouble.’
‘What did they ask you?’
‘A lot of nonsense—I don’t remember half of it. What do you suspect me of?’
‘Some very dangerous things, unfortunately. You, a once-active spy, happen to be in the proximity of the palace at the very time a coup was staged—you must admit that makes you look suspicious.’
‘I didn’t know anything about it. I come here nearly every night of the week—you know that.’
‘We also know that you’re very observant.’
‘But I haven’t seen anything—that’s the truth.’
‘Or anybody?’
She drew herself together with an effort and seemed trying to control her trembling hands by drawing her cloak tighter around her.
‘What makes you think anyone’s hiding here?’ she asked, evasively. ‘I thought you said you killed them all. What makes you think they got away?’
‘Because as yet we have not found them—not even their bodies.’
Cecil, listening, felt hope come rushing back.
‘We traced one of them as far as this block,’ Zköllmann went on. ‘If he came here the first thing he would do would be to throw himself on your mercy. That’s why you’re here, isn’t it?’
‘I didn’t know anything about the coup. You should know that. You know everything else about me. I haven’t been in contact with anyone for two years—not since you found me out.’
‘Not until to-night.’
She closed her eyes and pressed her lips together but the utmost concentration could not stop the shudder that ran over her.
‘Do you want to try to deny it?’ he asked.
Cecil watched all this through the moth hole. The other SO men had made him mad, the way they had behaved themselves to a lady, but this was entirely different—this cold calculation and direct inquisition. She was defenceless before this man. Something strange inside Cecil stirred and he wanted to rush out and knock the awful Zköllmann down.
‘That’s not what we want from you,’ said Zköllmann. ‘We can find the insurgent without your help; there is something else you are going to tell us. You know what it is we need: the code names of your contacts in the Hundred Circles Ring. You’ve pandered about long enough; we can’t brook any more delay. Five names will suffice.’
‘Five?’ she asked, and it seemed to cost her an effort to say it.
‘Five is the barest minimum.’
‘And you think I’ll give you even one?’
‘Yes, we do.’
She stared at him uncertainly.
‘Why?’ she asked.
He made no reply and returned her gaze calmly.
‘You think I’ll give in over time,’ she said.
‘You will.’
She had been pale before but now she trembled.
‘Why continue to resist?’ asked Zköllmann. ‘I know what you are thinking. You think things are about to change in Pyromania. New ideas are spreading--a new order is coming, perhaps?’
‘Your hold on Pyromania is shaking,’ she said.
‘We’re not afraid of him. No matter what he may have told you to-night, he is unsupported and poses no threat.’
She pressed her lips close together and stared at him in terror.
‘Who?’ he asked suavely, interpreting the question in her eyes. ‘The prince.’
She bent her head forward and covered her face with both hands.
‘Am I so easy to see through?’ she whispered.
‘For one who knows how to do it. You may have managed to fool the counter-intelligence for seven years, but you're not so opaque as you'd like to believe. You see yourself it is useless to oppose us. We will get those names from you.’
‘Not from me,’ she said with her hands still over her face. ‘I won’t tell you.’
‘You know yourself you’ll give in eventually. You were careless as a spy—that was your fault. You’ll be careless again. You can’t hold out for ever.’
‘I must!’ she said, but she was saying it to herself. She pressed her hands more tightly over her face and leaned forward until her hair tumbled over her forehead.
‘When will it ever be over?’ she said through her fingers. ‘I paid a horrible price for what I did. I always knew what could happen to me if I was caught and I wasn’t afraid then. But I never thought it could go on for ever. I never thought anything so dreadful could go on for ever.’
She fell silent and seemed to have nothing further to say. Zköllmann got to his feet and took several papers from his breast pocket.
‘It will be over for you,’ he said; ‘when you have performed this last service for us. That is all we need.’
She made no reply and remained with her face covered with her hands.
‘We will get what we want sooner or later,’ he went on; ‘but it will be better for you if you cooperate. I need not elaborate—you know too well what I mean.’
She looked up suddenly and her eyes locked in his again for a moment. Then she shivered and looked away.
‘I have passes for you and your accompanist so that you can leave when you wish,’ he said, handing the papers to her. ‘Will you require a ride?’
‘No,’ she said, looking at the passes with empty eyes. ‘I’d rather walk.’
‘Very well, but it’s raining. I’ll see you to the street.’
He opened the door for her and offered his arm. She stepped forward to take it but suddenly drew back and her eyes met his.
‘I can’t!’ she gasped.
Without a word, he turned and went out. Cecil heard his steps going down the hall, measured like a machine. He waited until the sound died away and then slipped out from behind the curtain. The singer caught sight of him.
‘Don’t!’ she said, springing to the door and looking out. ‘He might come back!’
‘If he does, he’s had his chips!’ said Cecil, drawing his automatic.
‘That won’t do you much good,’ she observed. ‘It will only draw the whole lot of them down on us.’
‘Do you feel all right?’ asked Cecil for she looked terribly pale.
‘I’m all right,’ she said, leaning up against the wall. ‘I’m used to them by now. But you can’t stay here. I don’t care what he says, they’d catch you if they could. Come with me, I’ll show you the passage.’
She looked out into the corridor, listening hard.
‘Don’t you think he might be suspicious and be waiting around the corner?’ asked Cecil.
‘I should have gone with him,’ she muttered. ‘—Only I couldn’t bear it. I should have sooner touched a spider.’ And she shuddered again.
‘I'll go down the corridor a little way and make sure there is no one about,’ she said.
She left noiselessly and returned in a few moments.
‘All clear,’ she said. ‘Come on!’
He followed her out of the room and down the hall to the same staircase he had come up. Cecil, as he followed her down into the darkness, wondered how she found her way so well. He could only follow by the soft sound her dress made, swishing over the steps.
‘Have you got a torch?’ he heard her voice ask when they had reached the bottom.
‘Yes; there,’ he said, turning it on.
It illuminated a dusty room filled with rubbish of all sorts. Mixed up in the rubbish were several old stone tombs with recumbant statues reposing on their tops.
‘Here it is,’ said the lady, pausing beside one of these and putting her hand against the inscription on the side.
It swung gently inwards, revealing a black cavernous space that, when Cecil shone his torch into, proved to be a well with steel rungs of a ladder leading down into it.
‘It goes down about seven feet,’ she said. ‘When you get to the bottom there’s a passage. Go to the right and follow it straight on until you come to a T. You’ll go left and come to a door. It’s easy to open if you just push on it. Hurry up and get in, someone may come any minute!’
Cecil got down into the opening and paused.
‘Are you sure the SO doesn’t know about this exit?’ he asked.
‘It hasn’t been used for years,’ she said.
‘Where will I come out?’ asked Cecil.
‘In the cellar of Sir Andrew Fletcher’s house.’

* * * * *

Wakjavotski, almost entirely recovered from his exciting afternoon, was sitting in his study, trying to examine some papers from the German ambassador and being plagued by a fly that was flying about over his head, dive-bombing the little bald spot on the top of it every now and then under the impression that it was a melon. Von der Grosse stood nearby, waiting for him to finish and fiddling nervously with his hat.
‘Ugh, get away!’ said Wakjavotski, waving at the fly. ‘All right, all right, all right!’ he said, pushing the papers impatiently aside. ‘If you have anything to tell me, Grosse, get it out and be quick about it.’
‘You—um—’ said Grosse; ‘I think you sent for me.’
‘Yes, that’s right, I did—I remember now. I’d like to know how many divisions we have available for an assault on Russia.’
‘An assault on what?’ asked Grosse, hardly believing his ears.
‘Oh, not right away—and it would only have to be a token force, anyway. If it seems that Russia is coming out on top, we can send another force against Germany, but I doubt Russia will hold out.’
‘I don’t understand—Hitler is attacking the Soviets? I thought they had everything all worked out.’
‘It was inevitable. I saw it coming all along. But what does it matter to us, anyway? We only have to make sure that we stay enough out of it to miss most of the blood-letting while still getting something out of it in the end. That’s what I’m trying to figure out just now.’
‘Perhaps it would be wiser not to get involved at all,’ suggested von der Grosse.
‘You have to take risks sometimes, Grosse, if you—ugh, get off! Go away! –Not you, Grosse—that fly. Where was I? Oh yes, let them fight if they want to, I say, and while they do what’s to hinder us from getting a piece of the pie?’
‘But Germany can’t fight the whole world at once!’
‘Oh, it’s not imminent—they’ll take care of France and England first. The ambassador sounded me on what our policy would be towards Russia in the event of a misunderstanding between Germany and the Soviets, but I knew he simply wanted to know how many divisions we could spare for the Eastern Front.’
‘It seems rather strange that they’re planning on war with Russia—after all the treaties and agreements over Poland and everything…’ said von der Grosse, scratching his chin.
‘What’s a treaty but something to get you what you want? It isn’t meant to be stood by,’ said Wakjavotski. ‘How many divisions can we spare, then?’
‘Well, I don’t know,’ said von der Grosse. ‘I’d have to look.’
‘Do so and let me know as soon as possible.’
‘Yes, my Superior.’
‘Well? Why are you still standing there?’ asked Wakjavotski, glancing up and seeing that he was still standing there.
‘I—ahem—wanted to tell you something.’
‘Then tell me!’
‘I only wanted to apprise you of—er—a slight mishap.’
‘A mishap? Those scoundrels have got away, I hear—what could be worse?’
‘We’re still looking for them.’
‘Of course you are—that’s how I know they got away, you mannequin! Well, what mishap?’
‘I’ve just heard of it. It’s nothing serious, really, but cause for concern, I’m afraid. Ahem—they think someone got into the bunker.’
‘What bunker?’
‘The one the tanks were in.’
‘The what? The TANKS? Not the Tanks—that’s not what you said, was it?’
Von der Grosse looked nervous. He had been afraid of an explosive reaction from the Superior.
‘It’s really nothing to worry over. The guard thought he heard someone sneeze, that’s all. It was probably nothing. And if someone was in there, it can’t make any difference.’
‘Probably nothing, eh? Is Nothing in the habit of sneezing? Maybe Nothing sabotages Tanks as well! Those Tanks are absolutely crucial to the whole case. How can you talk like that?’
‘The tanks are perfectly safe.’
‘How can you be sure of that? Evidently someone was able to get in. And if—curse you, get away, pathological prototype!’ cried Wakjavotski, pausing in his harangue to wave his arms wildly about his head in an effort to drive off the troublesome fly.
‘Noisome pest! Foul spawn of a dirty dumpster! Return to the shades—Oh! got him.’
'Hem—and at any rate,’ he went on, addressing Grosse; ‘now that those rebels know about the Tanks, they will be set on destroying or capturing them. I can’t believe you’ve allowed this to happen, Grosse!’
‘We’ve taken every precaution, believe me.’
‘I don’t trust you. Don’t you realise how important this is?’
‘Well, we got along without the tanks before they came—why should they be so important now?’
‘We’re at war now, that’s what’s the difference. We have little enough to fight with as it is.’
‘What about your secret weapon?’
‘That isn’t finished yet. Anyway, those Tanks are mine. I won’t have them hurt in any way. I want them moved immediately and with the utmost secrecy.’
‘Where to?’
‘To the fort.’
‘But the fort is nine miles outside the city. If there were an insurrection, they’d be useless.’
‘My orders are to be obeyed. Whose fault is it if there’s an insurrection? Yours—for not capturing those insurgents. But they’ve played their hand and I think things will be quiet for a little while now.’
‘I hope you’re right,’ said von der Grosse.
‘Of course I am. Now obey my orders immediately. Who knows what may be happening to them while we speak? Remember, if anything happens I shall hold you personally responsible.’
As von der Grosse went out, Wakjavotski put away the papers in his safe and locked it. Then he strode up and down his office to burn off his excitement. It usually only took a few turns up and down the room to cool him. After a few minutes his angry mutters subsided and the red began to leave his face until it didn’t look so much like a Bolshevik flag.
He strolled over to his bookshelves humming a tune and walked up and down in front of them with his hands behind his back, admiring his collection. A large part of it was books he had written himself on socialism and Javotskism in particular. A few of these he took down to examine more closely, open to the flyleaf which he had autographed, and turn over to read the reviews on the back. This was one of his favourite pastimes—when he had the time for it.
‘A man wonders sometimes as to the nature of true success,’ he soliloquised. ‘Will he be remembered in years to come, or forgotten as soon as he is dead or sooner? A book—a published book—is a medium by which a man may be conveyed to future generations. A book is the embodiment of his life, his soul. All his ambitions, passions, moments of highest feeling, are preserved between the pages of a book. Whether he is remembered for good or ill, at least he will never be misunderstood.
‘But what does it matter, after all, whether or not he is understood if people hate his memory? They may burn his books. It’s not impossible for every last one of his writings to be destroyed and then where is he? And even supposing his book survives the general odium—it simply stands as a monument to his ignominy.
‘But why strive for the approbation of posterity, anyway? No matter what you do, posterity will think what it likes of you. Your ideals may not make sense in another era, that’s all. It appears that the only person whose good opinion is worth having is your own, then.
‘But the only people who ever measure up to their own standards are those who have low ones—who have no ambitions or high ideals—who never strive for anything and are never remembered for anything. However satisfied they may be at their deaths, it is an empty satisfaction.
‘So what, after all, constitutes true success? It’s quite a problem—I shall have to write a book about it.’

* * * * *

‘Good heavens, boy!’ exclaimed Sir Andrew.
‘Is the coast clear?’ asked Cecil, who had come upon Sir Andrew as he sat reading in his study.
‘That depends on what you mean by the coast,’ said Sir Andrew, laying aside his book. ‘They’ve searched my house already, but the streets are still crawling with soldiers. Where did you spring from?’
‘I came up from your cellar. There’s a secret passage leading into it, you know.’
‘Yes, I knew that, but I wasn’t aware that you knew of it. How did you find out about it? And what’s happened to you, anyway?’
‘Never mind about me—what’s happened to the others?’
‘Don’t worry about them; they’re safe enough.’
‘How do you know?’ asked Cecil.
‘I know because Karotski’s been calling me recklessly for the past hour to find out if I had heard anything of you. They think they’ve lost you—I did too, until you popped out of the cellar. So what happened, then?’
Cecil told him in condensed form. Sir Andrew listened while deep in thought.
‘What was the lady’s name?’ he asked at the end of the recital.
‘I don’t remember what they called her—something with a K.’
‘Kaparthy?’
‘Yes, that was it.’
‘I thought so. You were lucky to meet with her—she’s on our side. We mustn’t press our luck, though. The first thing is to get you back to the others.’
‘How will we get through the cordon?’
‘We won’t get through it—we’ll go under it. The passage you came down connects with a hundred others—the whole of the old section of the city is catacombed with them. There’s one that opens out under Leiber’s watch shop.’
He led the way to the cellar door while Cecil followed.
‘You’ll be coming with me, then?’ asked Cecil.
‘Of course,’ said Sir Andrew.
He stopped and looked back at Cecil.
‘Afraid of the dark, are you?’ he asked.
‘Not of the dark,’ said Cecil; ‘but I’d rather not go by myself anyway. It wasn’t very nice coming through there just now.’
‘No, I’m sure it wasn’t,’ said Sir Andrew. ‘Those passages aren’t used much except by rats and spiders. You’re no coward to have come down that way alone and I don’t blame you for not wanting to repeat the trip. I’ll be along this time, don’t worry. Come along.’
The passage they took branched off of the one Cecil had come down a few minutes previously. It was a nasty sort of tunnel—very low and narrow and sloping downwards sometimes. The sewers had not bothered Cecil so much because they were, as a general rule, airier and did not give one the impression of being inside a coffin that had been buried for twenty years. If you can imagine the dirtiest, creepiest cellar you’ve ever seen, and then think how you’d feel going into it after having just read Frankenstein or The Bodysnatchers, you’ll have an idea of what the tunnel was like.
Talking always helped to take one’s mind off of his problems when one had any unpleasant business at hand and so Cecil did his best to strike up conversation.
‘If this leads to Leiber’s shop, why didn’t the singer tell me about it?’ he asked. ‘It would have saved time.’
‘She didn’t know about it,’ Sir Andrew replied. ‘Oh, I don’t mean she didn’t know about the passage—she knows every one there is; even one that leads into the palace, so I’ve heard. I mean that she didn’t know about Leiber and the watch shop. She’s had no contact with the underground at all—it would have been too dangerous with the SO after her all the time. You could see that just from what you saw this evening.’
‘Do you know a lot about her?’ asked Cecil.
‘We’ve seen each other some,’ replied Sir Andrew. ‘I’ve helped her to smuggle British spies out of the country and—on a few occasions—into it. Her name is Csilla Kaparthy—she’s of Hungarian parentage but she was born in Pyromania. She’s young, unmarried, and excessively talented. It’s really a pity that she was a spy and had all this trouble befall her, but before she was caught she did good work for us and our allies. She was a member of an international spy ring with thousands of contacts all over the world. It’s known as “The Hundred Circles”.’
‘If she was a spy,’ asked Cecil; ‘then why didn’t they kill her when they caught her? I thought that’s what they do to spies. Was it because she’s a woman?’
‘That wouldn’t have stopped them,’ he replied. ‘No, it was because she is a public figure. All Europe would have protested if they’d done anything, and the Javotskis needed her for their own purposes. She’s invaluable to national morale: she keeps heart in the people.’
‘She’s a good singer,’ said Cecil.
‘She’s a world class operatic singer. Some say that she’s the best soprano voice in the world. I’ve certainly never heard her equal.’
They were silent then, occupied with their own thoughts. Cecil was so deep in reflection that he walked straight into Sir Andrew before he realised the consul had stopped before a door in the wall.
‘Here’s the cellar under the watch shop,’ said Sir Andrew. ‘I’m not coming in with you; I should be getting back to my house in case they decide to search it again.’
‘Does Karotski know about these passages?’ asked Cecil, the question suddenly occurring to him.
‘Yes, to some extent, but I’ve forbidden him to use them except in cases of extreme emergency. We don’t want all of Pyromania knowing about them, after all. Good bye, your Highness, and good luck.’
Cecil found the catch on the door and, opening it, stepped into Leiber’s cellar. When the door in the wall was shut, it was so well-disguised that Cecil could scarcely tell that it was there. His mind was still spinning with all that had happened to him, but one thought came uppermost in his mind: what had happened at the palace?
‘At last!’ exclaimed Karotski, as Cecil, pale, damp, and excessively grubby, entered the little upstairs room where the two underground agents paced anxiously.
‘Tzaddi!’ cried Leiber, ‘You made it!’
‘I was afraid you’d all gotten your cards,’ said Cecil. ‘How did you get out?’
‘That was no trouble,’ said Karotski. ‘We managed to keep the boats afloat until we reached the grating at the harbour. Where have you been all this time? We’ve been searching the sewers all evening as best we could with soldiers and secret police everywhere. We thought you’d been drowned for sure.’
‘We were terribly worried,’ said Leiber.
‘I’m all right; I’ll tell you everything,’ said Cecil. ‘But first, what about the explosion? Did we pull it off?’
‘No,’ said Karotski; ‘Wakjavotski survived—don’t ask me how.’
‘There wasn’t enough dynamite I think,’ said Leiber.




‘So we’re back to where we started,’ said Karotski; ‘and I’ve absolutely no idea—what’s the matter with the kid? Hey! He’s passed out! Leiber, get some water! Quick!’

Tuesday, October 4, 2011

Prince Cecil: VIII

Chapter VIII.


A Song in the Dark



Cecil backed against the cellar door and put his hand on the knob as he heard a soldier coming towards the stairwell.
‘It’s best to be on the safe side,’ he heard the soldier saying.
Whatever he said next Cecil didn’t hear. He had been leaning against the door and had given the handle a spasmodic twitch. In the next instant he was flat on his back on the cellar floor as the door swung silently inward and bumped lightly against the wall, for it hadn’t been locked or even shut properly.
Cecil scrambled to his feet and quickly shut it again, this time from the inside. The instant it closed he was in complete and impenetrable darkness.
He heard the muted sound of the soldier’s voice and then softly, as if from far away, the lorry’s engine rose and its tyres crunched on the gravel as someone backed it up and drove it away. No sooner had the sound of its engine died then another engine’s throbbing was heard and some vehicle hurtled through the alley and lost itself in the distance. Then all was silence again.
It had been a close shave. If the armoured car had arrived a few seconds sooner the occupants would have found the stranded lorry and come looking for him, but thanks to some zealous soldier they were now off on the wrong scent. Cecil let out his breath with an effort and a nervous shaking took hold of his legs. He leaned his back against the door and slid to the floor, resting his head on his knees. He was terribly tired, only he hadn’t had time to notice it until then. He wanted to sit there and rest for ever.
He knew, though, that it was only a matter of time before they came back to look for him. He raised his head and shook it, trying hard to concentrate on his position. Where was he and what had happened exactly? Up to that moment he had not had a moment to reflect on the grand picture at all and as he examined it mentally, it began to look pretty dark.
His first thought was whether or not they had managed to blow up Wakjavotski, for that was the most crucial piece of the picture, but this information he had no way of getting at the moment. His second thought was where he was to go next. Supposing Karotski and Leiber and the others of the little band had all been drowned in the flooded sewers? What if he were on his own?
He didn’t want to think about it and yet he had to think about it. In all the close scrapes he had had yet, this was the worst. He was separated from his friends—perhaps forever—he was lost somewhere in that huge city, the whole of the armed forces were out looking for him, and he was caught inside the cordon.
And suddenly he felt as if that dark place was a tomb and he was buried there. It all came on him at once—all the utter hopelessness of his expedition. He thought of the lorries and the soldiers and the armoured cars out methodically searching the city. He thought of the tanks in their impregnable bunker. This was what he was up against—the cool, smooth precision of the Javotski party machinery, huge and irresistible—and he was fighting it with a sword and pistol. In the darkness Cecil not only doubted, like Karotski, whether they had killed Wakjavotski but whether they even could. Perhaps the Head had been right when he said Cecil was detached from reality. Cecil had always thought it was the Head who was.
Everyone has a low point in his career where he cannot sink any further into the depths of despair and this was Cecil’s. He knew he couldn’t stay where he was—knew he had to get up and go on. He would be found if he sat there and even if escape were hopeless, he had to keep from being captured for as long as he could.
But he couldn’t move. A strange, smothering fear seemed to grip him as he sat there in the stillness. He felt its strangling influence and suddenly he longed desperately for light and noise—anything but that awful black silence. He hated that thick darkness. It felt as he thought it must feel like to be dead. He was terrified of something—but it wasn’t something at all: it was the absolute nothing all around him that horrified him and made him want to scream so badly that it was all he could do to keep from it. He was afraid of the dark.
At that moment he heard a sound. It was a strange sound—strange because it seemed somehow familiar, like a voice he had heard before, and he had no idea at first what it was. It had bejun so softly that Cecil could not be sure when exactly it had begun, but slowly it grew and took definition out of the stillness. And then he realised what it was.
It was music—so high and faint and far away that it almost sounded as if it came from another world. It was an organ playing and as it played a voice joined it—a woman’s voice, high and clear like an angel’s, and coming from somewhere above him.
The strange place was as dark as before, but the clear voice seemed to cut through the silence like a silver blade and in the dark despair of Cecil’s soul it flashed like a light. It was real. It was there. He was not alone.
He shakily to his feet and took an uncertain step into the darkness before him. The ground beneath his feet sloped upwards slightly. He went on and found the bottom step of a staircase beneath his feet. As he mounted it the music grew clearer and nearer and he could see a faint glimmer of light ahead.
The staircase opened onto a narrow corridor, the light coming from a window further down. The walls were of stone and draped and although Cecil could not tell what sort of place it was he felt vaguely that he had been somewhere like it before in England.
There was a narrow door on the left side of the staircase and Cecil opened it. The music grew louder as he did so and he found himself in a sort of side aisle. What he saw to his left was a dais and an altar with a rail before it and candles burning behind it. Beyond, row on row of pews stretched away into dimness and above it all an arched ceiling seemed to soar up to the sky. He was in a church.
All this he scarcely noticed, though, for he had found the source of the music. An organ stood at one end of the dais and near it, a little to one side of the altar, stood a woman, facing out at the empty rows of pews and singing William Blake’s old hymn, ‘Jerusalem’. She wore a dress as red as a poppy and in the candlelight she looked like a bright flame.
Never in all his life—not even at the Savoy theatre—had Cecil heard anyone sing as the lady sang. The music seemed to come straight from her soul and fill all the air with a strange invisible beauty. It was like a bird or some other living thing, real and free, living and loving. It made one want to cry to hear it.
He stood there with his eyes full of tears and realised with an odd feeling that the Javotskis and their tanks no longer mattered to him—nothing mattered. If he lived, he lived and if he died, he died, but Truth would go on, and Goodness and everything that meant anything. It couldn’t be killed, just as that song couldn’t be killed. It would go on being after Wakjavotski and all the other dictators and their ideas were gone. It was what he had fought for and that was the sort of battle one couldn’t lose.
He stood with his eyes fixed on the singer, listening with a sort of bewildered hope. Anyone who sang like that must be good. There was at least one person left on his side. The singer reached the end of the song and suddenly dropped her eyes, which had been turned upwards, while the organ played the closing measures.
The music ended and Cecil saw that as it did, as if he had been waiting until just that moment, a soldier came forward from the back of the church and walked briskly down the aisle. He was an officer and he looked like a decent enough fellow and rather sorry for having an unpleasant job to do, but it was his job all the same and he looked as if he meant to do it, however unpleasant.
‘Excuse me, Miss Kaparthy,’ he said to the woman; ‘but we are searching this building. I’m afraid I must ask you to remain here until further notice.’
The lady looked at him calmly with scarcely any surprise.
‘Do you mean I’m not allowed to leave?’ she asked.
Her voice when she spoke was like her voice when she sang, only softer and more subdued.
‘I’m afraid not. Not until we’ve cleared this place, at least. But you may go on with your practice if you like. Please don’t let us interrupt you.’
‘I’ve finished my practice for to-night. May I leave this room or must I stay here?’
‘You needn’t stay in here. There’s an office we’ve searched already where you won’t be bothered, if you’d like me to show you there.’
‘Thank you,’ said the singer, following him through a door behind the organ. ‘Are you coming, Gerand?’
‘No, madam,’ said the organist. ‘I’ll stay and practice some more on my own. The aria, you know—that run—’ he shook his head. ‘I must practice it for to-morrow’s performance.’
Cecil watched as the officer and the singer went out. The door had only just shut on them when several soldiers entered through another door and began to search among the pews. One of them came down the side aisle straight towards Cecil. He couldn’t see him where he stood in the shadows and Cecil had just time enough to back out through the door he had come in by.
He came out into the corridor again and hurried noiselessly down it, looking for a place to hide. He heard a soldier’s boots ringing on an uncarpeted part of the floor as they came down the passage towards him and with scarcely a second to spare he opened a little door in the wall and slipped into a small closet-like room. It was a confessional chamber and probably no worshiper’s heart beat so hard as he waited to tell his sins to the priest as Cecil’s did while he leaned up against the wall and heard the footsteps of the soldier pass the door.
He had just let out his breath in relief when he heard a voice coming through the wall. Feeling along the stones, Cecil found a second door, the one, probably, that the priests came through, and put his ear to the keyhole.
It was the officer’s voice he heard, ushering the singer into the room beyond.
‘You’ll be comfortable here, I hope?’ it said.
‘As comfortable as it’s possible to be,’ the lady replied. ‘Will it take long?’
‘I doubt it will take more than an hour. I will try to get a pass for you and your accompanist and then you can leave sooner. Are you sure there is nothing further I can do for your comfort?’
‘No, thank you, Lieutenant.’
‘Goodnight, madam.’
Cecil heard the door shut followed by a sigh. He exchanged his eye for his ear at the keyhole and was able to get a comparatively good view of the other room. It was an office, small and cramped, with dusty old draperies hung on the walls and a few uncomfortable-looking chairs disposed about it. In one of these sat the lady in the red dress, a dark opera cloak thrown over her shoulders and her head resting on her hand. She gazed into vacancy, as if her thoughts were far away, and thus she sat without moving or making a sound.
Cecil, as a rule, did not like ladies. His mother had died when he was quite small and his godmother was so busy that he did not often see her and when he did it was only for short periods. He had never been in company with women at all for much of his life except for hired help and on occasional inescapable meetings with mothers of friends. If he had analysed his feelings, he would have found that he was afraid of grown-up ladies and this stemmed mainly from the fact that he had, when a little fellow, been quite a favourite among them because of his good looks. Women seem to be quite fond of little boys with dark hair and eyes and he had once or twice to his extreme discomfort been called ‘adorable’—he had never overcome his dread that one of them might still call him that.
Still, this lady looked different from the sort he was used to. She did not look like a ‘gushing’ female who called boys ‘adorable’, and Cecil did not think he would have felt frightened of her if he had had to speak to her.
She was a very beautiful lady, though of course Cecil wasn’t much of a judge of beauty. Sometimes (in the rare instances when he considered the possibility) he had thought if he were ever obliged to get married he would like to marry someone like a blond baby he had once seen in Hyde Park being pushed in a perambulator by its nurse—only grown up, of course. This lady looked very different from his infant ideal, but even Cecil realised that she was pretty. She had eyebrows like strokes of ink and masses of thick brown hair done up behind her head.
She had sat in the same position during the time that it took Cecil to make these notes on her appearance and had not moved at all except for her eyes, which occasionally shifted their gaze. After a time she stirred a little and drew her hand across her brows as if her head hurt her.
As she did so the door behind her opened suddenly and two men appeared. Cecil, with his eye still to the keyhole, started and felt a thrill of horror as he saw their black uniforms, their armbands with the Javotski party symbol, and the SO pins on their lapels. The secret police were here as well.
The lady turned as she heard the door open but the appearance of the two men did not seem to frighten her. She gazed on them absently and the only emotion she displayed was a mild annoyance.
‘This room has been searched already,’ she said.
‘No matter,’ said one of the officers, crossing the room to lean against the desk. ‘We’ll have a little chat with you instead. You’re rather the person we were looking for. Perhaps you could save us some trouble by telling us what we want to know.’
‘I don’t suppose I could,’ said the lady. ‘I don’t even know what it is you’re looking for.’
‘Don’t you?’
‘I just told you I don’t.’
‘Perhaps you could guess what we’re looking for?’
‘That wouldn’t be hard,’ she said. ‘Probably it’s some poor unoffending person who accidently fell into disfavour with you. It usually is.’
The first officer lit a cigarette without asking the lady’s permission and smoked calmly without replying.
‘Well, who is it?’ she asked resignedly.
‘Kuhn,’ said the first officer to his colleague; ‘she wants to know who it is.’
‘Tell her,’ said the other officer, grinning.
‘But that would be a waste of time, since she already knows everything. Why don’t we make her tell us?’
‘Why don’t you?’ she asked. ‘I enjoy disappointing you.’
‘She doesn’t think she’d tell us,’ said the officer named Kuhn. ‘She thinks she can hold out.’
‘But she might be mistaken,’ said the other.
‘I don’t know who you’re looking for and I don’t want to,’ said the lady wearily; ‘so when you’ve finished having your fun, you can leave.’
‘That won’t do,’ said Kuhn. ‘You know all right and you know why we know you know.’
‘You aren’t making the least sense,’ she said.
‘Shall we speak more plainly? Schneck, perhaps you can be more lucid than I.’
‘You must think we’re stupid,’ said the other officer to the lady. ‘Or do think we’ve forgotten that you’re a spy?’
‘Maybe she’s forgotten that she’s a spy,’ said Kuhn.
The lady gazed at them seriously.
‘I wish I could,’ she said in a low voice.
‘Stubborn,’ said Schneck, reverting to the third person.
‘She wants to make sure that we’re not out of practice,’ said Kuhn.
‘Well, why bother?’ asked Schneck. ‘We’re probably tiring her with all this talk.’
He turned rapidly on the lady and sent her a question with lightening sharpness.
‘What’s Aleph’s real name?’
‘I don’t know who you’re talking about,’ she replied.
Foiled, Schneck bit his cigarette.
‘How about an easier one?’ asked Kuhn. ‘It can’t hurt your friends if you merely told us how they got the dynamite through the grating.’
‘I don’t understand you. What are you talking about?’
‘Still dodging the question,’ said Kuhn with a shrug. ‘Still, no matter. We’re enjoying ourselves, aren’t we, Schneck?’
‘The pleasure is all yours,’ said the lady.
Schneck took the cigarette out of his mouth and blew out a cloud of smoke like a fumigation.
‘Since she insists on hearing the whole of the story, we may as well humour her,’ he said, examining his cigarette and putting it back into his mouth. ‘Where shall we start?’
‘They tried to escape after setting off the dynamite,’ said Kuhn, taking a seat across from the lady. ‘Unfortunately, they thought they’d hide in the sewers—it wasn’t a very good idea.’
‘No,’ said Schneck. ‘—Especially since the water level was so high already. We opened up the water tower—not the old one by the river, the new one up on the hill—it connects with the sewers, you know, so it can be emptied in an emergency. It holds quite a lot of water…well, I’m sure you can guess what happened. It was a good idea—one of Zköllmann’s. Anyway, we’ve taken care of the lot of them.’
‘Then why are you looking for them here?’ she asked.
‘Oh, just for form’s sake.’
‘What you don’t want to admit is that some of them got away,’ she said. ‘I’m glad. I don’t know who they are, but I gather from your drift that they were a few brave souls who dared to strike a blow for freedom. I’m glad there are still some people like that left. What’s more, I hope they were successful.’
The two officers didn’t seem to know what to say to this. While they were still digesting it another officer entered the room and told them to leave.
‘Why?’ asked Schneck.
‘Chief’s orders, that’s all. Clear out.’
They got to their feet disappointedly.
‘The chief’s fond of you, that’s all,’ said Schneck to the lady.
She laughed shakily and made no reply.
They left the room and she was again left alone. She sat rigidly until their footsteps faded down the hall, then she suddenly cried Oh! as if she had been hurt and covered her face with her hands. The electric light in the room flickered as a moth bumped up against it and the room became so quiet that for the first time Cecil could hear the distant rush of rain outside.
He made a sudden resolve. He must get out of the church somehow and here was the only person who would help him. He only hoped she could. He groped for the knob on the door, turned it, and stepped into the little office.
The lady looked up as she heard the little click of the door opening. She was quite startled when she saw Cecil and she half got up, but changed her mind and sank back into the chair again.
‘Where did you come from?’ she asked, her eyes fixed on him.
Cecil stood still without answering. All his bashfulness of ladies came on him at once and he found that he couldn’t say a word. It was not that he was unable to speak; he just couldn’t think of anything to say.
‘You shouldn’t be here,’ the lady said, as she saw he could make no reply. ‘It’s dangerous. They’re searching this building, you know.’
Cecil strove to break the ensuing silence but what she had said was so obvious to him that there really was no remark to make on it. She saw his confusion and her look softened.
‘Don’t be frightened,’ she said gently.
‘I’m not frightened,’ said Cecil, finding something to say at last; ‘but I’d be obliged all the same if you don’t tell anyone I’m here.’
‘What are you doing here?’ she asked, and looking at his clothes she added, ‘Is it raining that hard already?’
‘No,’ said Cecil.
She seemed to realise as he said it that even the heaviest rainfall could not so thoroughly soak a person’s clothes, nor did it usually give them a stale, greywater smell.
‘Were you in the sewers?’ she asked, her eyes widening. ‘Then you must be the one they’re looking for—but you’re only a little boy.’
She set her lips and her eyes flashed.
‘So they’ve taken to hunting down children now, I suppose. The beasts!
‘Do you mean the men who were just here?’ asked Cecil.
‘They were awful, weren’t they?’ she said.
‘They were dreadfully rude to you,’ said Cecil. ‘I should have liked to biff one of them in the eye.’
‘I should have liked to see you do it. But I’m glad you didn’t, because they would have shot you.’
She got up quickly and went to the door that led to the hall and which had been left cracked open.
‘There,’ she said, shutting it and turning the key in the lock. ‘We won’t be disturbed without warning, anyway. Now sit down there—you look worn out—and tell me what they’re after you for. You don’t look much like a desperate revolutionary.’
Cecil sat down as she had said and played with his sword hilt for a few moments without knowing what to say. At last he asked,
‘Is it true that you’re a spy?’
She looked at him thoughtfully.
‘That’s a secret of course, but they know, so it doesn’t matter whether you do or not. I used to be a spy.’
‘Not anymore?’ asked Cecil.
‘No.’
‘Why not?’
‘Because I was caught,’ she said simply.
‘Are you a singer now?’
‘I’ve always been a singer—even before I was a spy.’
‘But why were you here to-night? Do you come here often?’
‘Yes. I come here to practice. Usually nobody bothers me here.’
‘It’s a big church,’ said Cecil.
She looked at him in surprise.
‘It’s a cathedral,’ she said; ‘—the national cathedral.’
‘It is!’ said Cecil, looking surprised in his turn.
‘Yes. It’s hundreds of years old. Kings were crowned here.’
‘I didn’t know that!’
‘They were a long time ago. But no one comes here anymore.’
‘Why not?’
‘They’ve closed it down. No one’s allowed to hold services anymore.’
‘Wakjavotski did that, didn’t he?’
‘Yes.’
Cecil kicked his heels against his chair legs and realised that his bashfulness had almost entirely left him.
‘Then why do you come here?’ he asked curiously.
‘Because I feel sorry for it,’ she said. ‘It’s so lonely.’
‘There,’ she said briskly; ‘I’ve told you enough about myself. I want to hear about you now. Are you really an insurgent?’
She had a little smile around her mouth as she asked it and Cecil felt slightly annoyed to realise that she, like Karotski, though of him as ‘a mere kid’. She was different from Karotski though, because, while he seemed to be annoyed by the fact and felt Cecil to be a nuisance, she seemed to think him more interesting for it.
‘I’m not exactly an insurgent,’ said Cecil. ‘I’m the prince, if you want to know.’
As he said it he felt again the utter hopelessness of everything. A prince who was only a kid—and on his own now, unless the others had somehow managed to escape. What could he possibly do? And how was he to even get away from there?
He happened to be watching her as he said it because there was nothing else in particular to look at in the room. He was surprised to see her start, turn pale, and sit up. Her lips parted and she murmured, ‘Then it’s true!’
She stared at him in a strange way and said, ‘Thank heaven!’ in a low, almost reverent voice.
‘What for?’ asked Cecil, confused.
‘For you—your Highness.’
Then she looked at his clothes.
‘But how did you come back to Pyromania and what does it all mean?’
‘You didn’t know that I had come back?’ asked Cecil.
‘We’ve heard rumours whispered under people’s breath but we scarcely dared to believe them. Is that why they’re searching this place, then? I wondered what they were so frightened of!’
‘Frightened?’ asked Cecil.
She sat back and laughed.
‘Yes, they’re frightened, all right. –Of you!
‘They didn’t look frightened.’
‘They are, though. I could tell. They know that you can snatch the kingdom away from them. We know it too, and we never stopped hoping you’d do it some day. For years we dreamed you’d come. Oh, your Highness, you’ve been gone for so long!’
She wasn’t laughing now. Her eyes shone with a strange, high joy and a red spot that matched her dress shone in either cheek. Cecil felt rather awkward—like when you’re giving someone a present and he’s all excited over it and it’s only a comb or a handkerchief or something and you know he’ll be disappointed when he finds out.
‘Well,’ he said; ‘I’m afraid I’m in rather a fix just now.’
‘Do you mean you’re all on your own?’ she asked. ‘Haven’t you anyone to help you?’
‘I had,’ said Cecil; ‘but I don’t know if they got away. I got seperated from them in the sewer, you see.’
‘What was it you were trying to do?’
‘Kill Wakjavotski and his ministers and take over the country. Maybe we did it, too—kill Wakjavotski, I mean—but I don’t know. I don’t think we did.’
She was silent and looked at him with an expression as if she were puzzling something out.
‘Was that the explosion, then?’ she asked.
‘Yes.’
‘You’re very brave,’ she said. ‘But what do you mean to do now?’
‘I don’t know. I’ve got to get out of here somehow, though, before they find me.’
She leaped up so suddenly that her opera cloak fell from her shoulders.
‘We’re wasting time,’ she said. ‘I’ll get you out—never mind about the soldiers. There’s a secret tunnel that leads out under the streets.’
‘Where?’ asked Cecil.
‘I’ll show you. Come with me.’
She dashed to the door, unlocking it and jerking it open, and almost collided with a man who stood just outside and had been about to come in.He wore a black officer’s cap and a black trench coat, unbuttoned and unbelted to show the SO officer’s uniform underneath. His face was set and passionless and his eyes sharp and scrutinising. He was Zköllmann, chief of the secret police.

All of the Family

A Christmas story


May seemed a little early to think about Christmas, but to Theodore and Amelia, who thought about it all year anyway, it took on the frightening appearance of being too late. It began with the letter from Charlotte telling them that she wouldn’t be able to come home for Mother’s birthday after all. Charlotte was staying with an uncle in Baltimore where there was a good high school. She was quite clever and hoped to go to college. Her letter said that she was studying for exams and couldn’t get away.
There had once been a tradition in the Arnold family that on Mother’s birthday everyone behaved as if a holiday, as important as Thanksgiving or the fourth of July, was afoot. The day began with her breakfast being brought to her in bed and she ate it while being serenaded by the children with “I’m to be Queen of the May, Mother”. She was not allowed, on pain of the highest displeasure of the rest of the family, to do any work whatsoever all day long. When suppertime came, the festivities culminated in a splendid birthday cake and a poem written expressly for the occasion by Father, which always had at least one word in it that didn’t quite rhyme unless you pronounced it wrong and that was very funny if you could get the sense of it.
It was looked forward to quite as much as any other holiday, and once not one Arnold would have missed it for the world. You are not to blame Charlotte however for it had been a long time since all the Arnolds had been together for Mother’s birthday. This year only Theodore and Amelia were home, besides Father and Mother themselves, of course.
The morning did not go so very well. The two children made a very nice breakfast with the help of Miranda and Mother was as pleased and surprised as usual. But when they tried to sing “I’m to be Queen of the May, Mother”, they started too high and stopped abruptly in the middle.
“If you don’t mind, Mother,” said Amelia, “I think we won’t go on.”
Mother laughed. “Run downstairs, children, and have your breakfast,” she said.
The whole day was spent in trying to keep Mother from doing work. It was always a difficult job, but it was even harder when there were only two people to do it. Mother tidied up out of habit and she always noticed when something was out of place before anyone else and would try to set it to rights. Theodore and Amelia were quite busy trying to keep up with her. And then, of course, it was always found out on Mother’s birthday just how much work she did all the other days of the year.
The children were just beginning to feel that Mother’s birthday was longer than it had ever been before when their older brother Roger came by to surprise Mother. It was a great surprise for everybody because Roger had enlisted that winter and had been sent to a training camp in Georgia. He had gotten leave for a few days and had spent most of his money on a train ticket to come up expressly for Mother’s birthday.
“You didn’t have to go to all that trouble for me,” said Mother rather anxiously.
“No fear,” said Roger. “I’ve never missed your birthday yet, have I?”
“No, darling,” said Mother kissing him, and Roger wondered if she had forgotten for the moment that he was twenty-three years old.
Things went better after Roger arrived. Last winter he had had a bad bout with pneumonia and that was the reason he had enlisted late and was not yet in France. Roger was the third born and had been the first to break the Arnold custom of being good-looking. He had a plain, though good-natured face, long arms and legs that made him look like a grasshopper, and large, awkward hands that were a terror around teacups but were remarkably skilful when it came to clocks, motors, wind-up toys, and other things with parts inside them. Whenever anything broke in the Arnold household, Roger was always the one called to fix it.
Before enlisting, he had worked as a mechanic at a nearby mill, but that, as Mother and Father had declared whenever the fact was mentioned, was only temporary. They were convinced that Roger was far too clever to be a mere mechanic. –An engineer, perhaps, but for that one must have schooling and Roger had left college after only a year because he could not make “a go of it”, as he said. All the other Arnold children had done well so far—Elliot, the eldest, had finished medical school and was now a practicing physician who was in a good way to begin earning the money he had already spent on school. Margaret, the oldest girl, had married a man who worked for the railroad. They did not know what he did exactly, because his explanation was always rather confusing, but they knew that it was a good position, whatever it was.
Roger was the only Arnold who lacked ambition. He was quite content with whatever came along and although he was really a wonder in the mechanic business, he had never made much money at it and had always spent what he had made on the other members of his family. But perhaps because of this trait he had not gone far from home as Elliot and Margaret had. The farthest away he had ever been was Georgia. Now it was to be France.
He was not able to stay a whole day, but had to set out that same evening to be back at the training camp by morning. After he had gone the holiday feel seemed to go out of everything. Mother of course did her best to be gay, and Father’s poem was even funnier than usual, but the whole day passed off rather flat.
Theodore, who was less afraid than Amelia of being caught out of bed after bedtime now that he was thirteen and too old to be spanked, came into the nursery where Amelia slept to discuss the failures of the day.
“Mother didn’t enjoy it much,” said Amelia.
“No,” said Theodore. “We didn’t pull it off very well, and that’s a fact.”
“But I don’t see how we could have tried harder,” said Amelia, woefully.
“It wasn’t our fault,” growled Theodore. “We did our best and Mother tried hard to pretend to like it for our sakes, but I caught her crying once before Gerry came, and I don’t blame her. If I were Mother I would have cried too.”
“I feel rather like crying as it is,” confessed Amelia, and then added quickly, “if I weren’t almost eleven, that is. What do you suppose went wrong?”
“I don’t know, but I’ve several clues to the mystery,” said Theodore, who was fond of forensic science. “The first is our singing this morning.”
“It was rather bad,” said Amelia.
“It wasn’t how bad it was,” said Theodore. “We always sound bad. The trouble was that there were only two of us.”
“Well, it wouldn’t have been quite right if we’d gotten Daddy or Miranda to help. It’s supposed to be the children, you know.”
“Yes, I know. The second thing was Gerry’s coming. Mother liked it a lot. I heard her tell him it was better than a present.”
“That’s just the thing. Of course Elliot and Margaret’s presents were very nice and all, but Mother would have liked it better if only they’d come themselves.”
“Yes,” said Theodore. “And the last thing is what Mother said when she kissed us goodnight just a little while ago.”
Amelia waited for him to explain.
“She said ‘My dears, you’re growing up too fast,’” said Theodore. “She almost sounded as if she were crying. I tell you what it is, Amy, she misses the rest of them.”
“Of course,” said Amelia. “I’ve seen her looking at their pictures in the hall and sighing. I wish they didn’t all have to live so far away.”
“I know,” said Theodore. Then he said as if changing the subject, “I think Cherry could have come.”
“So do I,” said Amelia. “I don’t think she really had to study so badly as that, and it would only have been one day.”
“I think Mother deserves a day once in awhile,” said Theodore. “If Gerry could come up from Georgia, Cherry could have managed to come down from Baltimore. It seems no one cares about Mother’s birthday anymore.”
“Mother says it’s different when you’ve a family of your own,” said Amelia.
“But Cherry hasn’t a family of her own. She’s only sixteen and she’s already like that. I tell you what, it isn’t right to treat your family like they aren’t important anymore just because you’re grown up and out on your own. Gerry’s all right, of course, but the others don’t seem to care. And when Terry comes back he’ll probably be the same way.”
“No, he won’t!” cried Amelia fiercely, for Lt. Peter Arnold, AEF, aged nineteen was her favourite brother.
“Well, perhaps not,” said Theodore, “but he’ll probably get married and move away. Do you realise, Amy, that in five more years I’ll be going to college?—or to the army, if the war isn’t over by then. Then it will just be you left at home.”
“I don’t want to think about it,” said Amelia. “It’s perfectly awful.”
“Which is just why we’ve got to do something now, while some of us are still left at home. I say, Amy, let’s try to get everyone to come home for Christmas.”
“Oh, Ted!” cried Amelia, “Let’s! Oh, wouldn’t it be lovely? We’ll make them come!”
“So we shall,” said Theodore. “And we won’t say anything to Mother or Father about it. We’ll manage it all ourselves. That way they won’t be disappointed if it doesn’t work.”
“We can write to Elliot and Margie,” said Amelia, entering on the plan practically. “We’ll tell them they’ve got to come, and we won’t let them say no.” Suddenly she stopped and her face fell as she remembered something. “Oh, Ted,” she said mournfully, “we won’t be able to have everyone. Terry won’t be here, and Gerry will probably be sent to France before Christmas. Oh, I hate the war!”
“I know, I’ve just thought of that,” said Theodore. “But it can’t be helped, of course. We’ll just have to do the best we can. Cherry will be here, of course, so it’s just Elliot-and-Susan and Margaret-and-Richard-and-Rick-and-Jane that we’ll have to talk into coming.
“It’s a pity about Gerry not being here, you know,” added Teddy. “Because he’s the only one we could have really counted on to come.”
I think I ought to explain something before going on, to save the reader from confusion. In the Arnold family each of the children had a pet name given him by Mother and Father, which was generally some shortened version of his real name. It had begun with Elliot, the eldest, and it had really been an accident. Father had one day, with unutterable horror, overheard Mother call the heir and representative of the Arnold family by the appellative “Ellie”, and he had been so appalled at the insult that he determined to provide his son at once with a more suitable pet name. Unfortunately, the name lent itself to all sorts of feminine shortenings, such as Lottie or Lettie, but not many appropriate for young gentlemen, so that Father had been obliged to change the letters about considerably and ended up at last with Tollie.
After that all the children had been given a pet name at birth. The names had stuck through infancy and childhood but had had less success after coming of age. Elliot’s had been the first to go, as it was so queer. Margaret’s followed when she had her first baby and began calling it by a pet name. She was still Margie at times, but seldom to her face. She was too much of a mother to be called a child’s name anymore.
Gerry had kept his still because none of the Arnolds could bring themselves to call him Roger. Peter had not outgrown his yet for family use, but if anyone called him Terry when his friends were about the offender was liable to having his toes stepped on.
This being explained, I hope the reader will excuse me if I call the Arnolds (those who still went by them) by their alternate names as, with the exception of Peter’s, I prefer them to their real ones.
The children’s letters were written and dispatched before the month was out. It isn’t really important to write out the replies for you to read, because I could make this story a good deal shorter by simply telling you what the answers were. However, as the letters give you a bit of an idea of what the people were like who wrote them, and as I for one like to read other people’s mail, I will print them here in their entirety.

Dear little brother and sister,
You dear darlings! How lovely of you to try to make Mother and Father’s Christmas nice for them. I think it is a very nice idea, but I really do think you ought to try something else. This year, I mean, for you know two of your brothers won’t be here, and after all, Elliot may go before Christmas too, for all we know, and I really think it would make Mother and Father feel their loss all the more keenly for having everyone else there. It would be simply lovely another year, of course, after Dicky and Janet are a bit older. They are rather too young this year, I think. It is hard for little children to be away from home at Christmas when they especially want familiar surroundings. Perhaps you remember how it was when you were their age. Besides that, there is not a great deal of money just now and Richard says we must economise. So of course I am very sorry at having to spoil your plan, but I think it was a lovely idea all the same and it was sweet of you to think of Mother and Father. All my love to you both, and Dicky and Janet send their love as well.

Most Sincerely,
Sister Margaret

Dear Teddy, and Dear Amy,
I’m most awfully sorry. I think it’s a good idea of yours, but we can’t come this year. We’re terribly short of funds and we likely won’t have any sort of Christmas at all. If it will make you feel better, we’ll do our best to come next year. I really am sorry, for it was a splendid idea.

Sincerely,
Elliot

P.S. I’m sorry too, and if there is any way we will come after all. I am saving my pennies. Much love to you both. -Susan

“Oh, how could they?” said Amy. “I do think they might have tried.”
“Of course they can’t help it if they haven’t any money,” said Teddy. “Susan’s a trump, though. She’d make Elliot come if they really could afford it, and she’ll probably do her best as it is. I say, Amy, let’s do all we can to help them out. We can save our pennies too and try to earn some money this summer and send it to them.”
“I’ve my chicken money,” said Amy, brightening. “And we can work in Mr. Water’s garden like we did last summer.”
“But not a word to anyone,” said Teddy, “for after all, they mightn’t be able to come even if we do earn the money. I’m glad we didn’t tell Mother or Father anything yet. They’d just have said ‘I told you so’.”

The summer passed and the autumn came. At the end of every month the children added up their money hopefully, but it was never enough for two railroad tickets from New York City, not to mention four from Illinois, and as Christmas came closer and closer hope began to wane. October was half-way over when Gerry came home unexpectedly. Teddy and Amy were walking home from school and met him coming up the lane.
“Hullo, Ted, Hullo Amy!” said Gerry cheerfully.
“Gerry, you’re home!” cried Amy, throwing her arms about him.
“’Lo, Gerry,” said Theodore with a more dignified shake of the hand. “How long have you got?”
“Three days; that’s all,” said Gerry, his face growing long. “And I think it’s my last leave. Someone said we’re to be shipped before the end of the month.”
The little spark of hope the children had kept alive for months was abruptly snuffed. They had tried to, but they had not quite been able to stop hoping that somehow Gerry would be there for Christmas. He saw their disappointment and tried to change the subject.
“How have you been getting on in school; what have you been doing lately?” he asked.
“Not much,” said Amy glumly.
“Maybe you can think of a way to earn money,” said Teddy, speaking of what was foremost in his mind.
“What are you saving for?” asked Gerry.
Then they told him their whole plan. Neither felt it a breach of security, for it was not to be Gerry’s surprise. Gerry was always interested in their ideas and he never said “I told you so.” He listened with interest and when they had finished he thrust his hands into his pockets and thought long and hard.
“I haven’t much money of my own,” he said at last. “But I have a little. Look here, I’ll help you out all I can with whatever I get. I’ll post home my pay.”
“Oh, Gerry, will you?” asked Amy. “Then perhaps we’ll have enough after all!”
“Not likely,” said Teddy. “It’s a hopeless business, really. Do you realise how much it actually costs for train fare? Well, I asked at the station the other day and they told me. We’ll never make enough by Christmas, and that’s the truth.”
“Well,” said Gerry, who was rather an optimist, “You never know what will happen, after all. Maybe Toll will be called to operate on some sick millionaire and save his life and make a whole lot of money, or maybe the railway will give Richard a free ticket, or maybe you’ll find some money lying about in the road. You never know. I say, I wish I had a hundred dollars!”
“You might as well wish for a million while you’re at it,” said Teddy. “It’ll buy those tickets just as soon.”
“Oh, wouldn’t it be nice to have a million dollars?” said Amy. “Just think how easy everything would be.”
They all looked up then, for they heard Mother’s voice calling from the house. In another moment she was hurrying down the walk towards them.
“Oh, Gerry,” she said affectionately as Gerry threw his arms about her, “what on earth are you doing standing here in the lane?”
“Wishing, Mother,” said Gerry.
Mother’s face fell slightly, but she smiled with a pretence of cheerfulness. “Can you stay long?” she asked.
Gerry hated to disappoint her. “Not very long,” he said, “but I mean to make the most of it.” He was not brave enough to tell her the news that he was to be shipped.
“Well,” said Mother briskly, “come along inside then, and don’t stand out here talking.”
She bent to pick up Gerry’s knapsack, which he and Teddy immediately attempted to take from her, for the Arnold boys had been raised as gentlemen.
“What was it you were wishing for?” asked Mother, as she walked to the house with one arm in Gerry’s and one hand in Amy’s while Teddy followed behind whistling.
“Lots of things,” said Amy. “Mostly that we were rich.”
“We are rich,” said Mother, which was what she said whenever the subject was brought up.
“We aren’t poor,” said Amy, “but we aren’t exactly rich, Mother. There are lots of people who have far more things than we do.”
“But we have each other,” said Mother. “That’s the most important, you know. All the money in the world couldn’t take the place of one person you love.”
Amy turned to look at Teddy who, she found, was looking at her. Their looks said the same thing: “We were right”. Mother wanted everyone home again.
“Oh dear,” said Amy, turning her head again and looking at the ground. “I wish—”
She broke off suddenly and said nothing.
“More wishing?” said Mother. But she squeezed Amy’s hand as if to say, “So do I”.
After Gerry had gone away again the children fell into despondency. There seemed nothing left to plan; nothing to look forward to. They were used to anticipating Christmas from the first week of October, but now that there was nothing particular to look forward to there seemed to be a great hole in the calendar. They were in Teddy’s bedroom one grey November day, lying on the floor and painting in Amy’s paint book.
“I tell you what it is, Amy,” said Teddy, “it’s no use our saving up our money anymore. Even if Elliot and Margie come with their families, Christmas won’t be like it ought to be. They were right. We’ll just have to wait until next year.”
“I don’t think next year will be any different,” said Amy, pessimistically. “How do you make everyone come at the same time? They’ll either be too busy or won’t have the money, or something. It’s hopeless.”
“We’ll just have to promise ourselves that we’ll always come home for Christmas when we’re grown,” said Teddy. “Kids, wives and all. A chap belongs at home on Christmas day, I say. You know what, Amy—”
He paused suddenly as a cry was heard from downstairs. Both children waited and listened in breathless silence.
“That was Mother,” said Teddy.
They gazed into each other’s eyes, a dreadful fear creeping over them.
“Gerry hasn’t been shipped yet,” said Teddy slowly, “so it must be—”
“Oh, Ted!” gasped Amy. “I can’t go downstairs and see what’s happened. I can’t! Oh, Teddy, supposing—Oh Terry!”
And so saying, she dived into Teddy’s bed and buried herself under the blankets.
Teddy got to his feet.
“I’ll go,” he said with the air of a soldier going to cut the wire.
He went shakily to the door and put his head cautiously out.
“I say, Amy,” he said, drawing it in again and speaking in a whisper, “they’re all talking downstairs. They wouldn’t be talking if—”
He broke off and slipped out of the room. Amy, in the middle of the bed, heard his boots going down the stairs but she did not move. She was curled up into a tight ball, her arms clasped around herself and her eyes squeezed shut. It couldn’t be that anything terrible had happened. It couldn’t be. If only Teddy would hurry and find out. If only someone would come and tell her everything was all right. Oh, what had happened? What had happened?At last she heard a loud clumping on the stairs and the next instant Teddy's fists were pummelling her back.
“Amy, get up, I tell you! Get out from under there! The war’s over!

That was a wonderful day. The first thing Amy did was to throw off the covers and throw her arms around Teddy and kiss him, which was something she had not done since she was seven. The next thing she did was to run downstairs and hug Mother and Father and Miranda and join their excited conversation. But she broke away soon and hurried to Terry’s room.
Terry had insisted on his own room so that he might conduct his experiments in it in peace. He cherished hopes of being a physicist one day and kept a collection of bottles, beakers, and little phials of dark-coloured chemicals in boxes here and there, and on a table by the window he kept his gas burner and an apparatus he had built of wire to hold the beakers over the flame. His room was built out over the porch (so he wouldn’t blow up the rest of the house, Miranda said) and it got very cold in wintertime. It was cold today, but Amy didn’t notice. She sat down on the bed and thought about all the wonderful things that had suddenly come piling down on them.
The war was over. Terry would come home and Gerry would not have to go to France. They no longer had to get a sick feeling when a telegram was delivered. The horrid things that no one ever thought about but which always hung in the background, untalked about, no longer mattered. Everything would be as it had been before the war had started.
Teddy opened the door and put his head into the room.
“Thought you might be here, Amy,” he said, sitting down on the rail at the foot of the bed. “I say, everything’s started over again, hasn’t it? I mean about Christmas. The boys might be here after all, you know.”
“Yes, and maybe Elliot and Margaret will come after all,” said Amy. “Oughtn’t we to write them and ask again?”
“I’ve been thinking,” said Teddy. “We might send the money we’ve got so far to Elliot and Susan. If they’ve been saving too there might be enough for them to come. Anyhow, we should try. We won’t get a chance like this another year.”
The money was posted accordingly. For over a week the children haunted the post office, afraid that Mother or Father would find the letter first and begin to suspect something. But the days went by without any reply and the children began to worry, until at last a reply came that made up for the delay.
“Teddy, Teddy!” called Amy, bursting into Teddy’s room where he lay sprawled on the bed with Father Brown. “Two letters, Teddy! Both for us! One from Susan and one from Margie!”
“Not so loud,” said Teddy, coolly. “You wouldn’t want Mother to hear, would you?”
“She’s in the kitchen. She won’t hear anything,” said Amy. “Open it, quick, Teddy, or I’ll open it.”
“Go ahead,” said Teddy. “And read it too. Not too fast, please; I can never tell what you’re saying when you’re reading aloud and get to the exciting parts.”
“Shut your book, then,” said Amy. She composed herself and read,

Dear Teddy and Amy,
I’ve done as I promised and saved every cent I could. It was quite embarrassing sometimes, counting the change so carefully at the grocer’s, but I was quite determined that if it was in human power, we would come this Christmas. Elliot said if we didn’t know by the second week of November we would decide quite definitely that we wouldn’t be coming this year, and you may imagine how I worried I was when I saw how much we still needed for the fare. Then your letter came. To think of you saving all that money just to bring us home! Don’t think me silly, Teddy, but I cried, I was so happy. Then I told Elliot and he didn’t say anything at first, but I could see he felt it just as much as I did. At last he said, “I’ve had Christmas in my mind ever since we heard about the armistice and I’ve been thinking how it would be something for us to have Christmas at home this year, but I couldn’t see how we could do it.” But now we can and we are just as excited as we can be. You’ll excuse my not writing right away, but Elliot had trouble cancelling an appointment and we began to think we would be disappointed after all. But that is all right now and we are coming! I can’t wait to see you, dear little brother and sister. I should like to go on and plan all the lovely things we will do while we are together (carolling and baking—I’ve the loveliest recipe for fudge) but I mustn’t make this letter too much longer, or it will cost a fortune to post. Never mind, I shall see you soon. Won’t Mother and Father be surprised?”

Love,
Susan

There was a short silence after the conclusion of this epistle.
“Susan” said Teddy with gravity, “is A-1.”
“Oh, it’s wonderful! Good old Susan!” said Amy. “I knew she’d do it.”
If the reader will allow me to make a digression, I will say a few words on the Arnolds’ sister-in-law. When Elliot had married Susan a year before (he had married three years after Margaret had, though he was three years older), the children had been rather uncertain of how she would fit into the family. She was a beautiful, clever “city girl” who wore paint and the latest fashions, and she did her hair in a different way than Mother and Margaret. They soon discovered however that Susan had the warmest, kindest heart and the pleasantest, cheeriest ways. She was devoted to Elliot, and didn’t seem to mind at all their straightened life, though she had always been used to riches. She was taken into the Arnold clan even more rapidly than Margaret’s husband Richard had been, though he was a good, pleasant fellow and they had all loved him once they had forgiven him for taking Margaret away from them. Susan often said she had been adopted into the family, and she very well might have been; they all looked on her as a sister and she seemed to prefer visiting them than her own family who were all grown up and most of whom lived on Long Island.
“What about Margie’s?” asked Teddy, taking the second letter from the bed where Amy had dropped it in her haste.
“You read it, Teddy. It’s your turn,” said Amy complacently. “I don’t know what it can be about.”

Dear children, (read Teddy. “Well, really,” said Amy, “she might have called us by our names. We’re not that little.”)
I want to tell you that we are going to come this Christmas after all.“Hurrah!” shouted Amy.
“Not so loud,” said Teddy. “And let me finish.”
I will tell you why we changed our minds. Susan wrote us last week about the money you and Gerry had sent and I thought it was wonderful of you. I had no idea that you were so set on us all coming as that. I thought about it a great deal and I began to think that, what with the boys being back and everything, it really would be a shame if we couldn’t all be there, so I spoke to Richard about it. I said, “If Teddy and Amy and Gerry can save their money to bring Susan and Elliot home (and they’ve so little), we certainly ought to try to save ours.” “But I certainly don’t see what else we can do to save,” he said. “Well I do,” I said. “We can give Dicky and Janet fewer presents this year. I really think we give them more than children of that age really need, and there are lots of children who don’t get anything at all.” “Of course, if you say so,” said Richard, “but they’ll be disappointed.” “They’ll be pleased to see all their uncles and aunts,” I said, and the matter was settled. So we are coming and will be there probably the week before Christmas. I love you, dears, and kiss Mother for me.

Love,
Margie

“Well,” said Teddy, “that’s everyone.”
But it was not everyone after all, for only the next week a letter came from Terry. Mother had written to him as soon as they had gotten the news of the armistice to ask how soon he would be home. Of course everyone was eager to know, for they had not seen him since he had been shipped over a year before. In his letter, though, he said that he would not be home for quite a while—when exactly he did not know.
Definitely not before Christmas, he wrote, though I’m awfully sorry to miss it. They’ve such a regular load of chaps here that they can’t begin to get them back across the Atlantic. I’m afraid I won’t have my turn for several months yet. Perhaps not before spring.This was a sad blow to everyone’s hopes, so much so that even Gerry’s cheery telegram telling them he would be there the week after Thanksgiving could not cheer them up.
Teddy stopped Amy at the gate as she was returning to the house one afternoon.
“What were you doing in town?” he asked.
“Nothing,” replied Amy.
“If you were sending a letter to Terry, it was downright mean of you.”
“Why?”
“Because he can’t come home for Christmas and you’ve only made it worse for him by telling him our plans.”
“He may be able to come.”
“He will not be able to come, and it’s no use wishing about it.”
“I think he may,” said Amy stubbornly.
“You’ve got to face facts, Amy,” said Teddy philosophically. “Terry won’t be home for Christmas. What’s more, now that you’ve told him everything he’ll probably feel that he’s spoiling Christmas for the rest of us and he won’t be able to do anything about it.”
“I don’t care!” cried Amy, breaking past him and running into the house.
“Don’t be a baby!” called Teddy after her. He said this because he had seen traces of tears on her cheeks as she ran past.

Charlotte returned home for several days at Thanksgiving. She was not particularly pleased with her holiday; it seemed that she preferred to be at school with her friends, a feeling that Teddy and Amy did not understand at all for they hated school.
“Cherry dear, can you baste the turkey, please?” asked Mother, as they bustled about the kitchen on Thanksgiving morning getting the dinner ready.
“Mother,” said Charlotte, “I wish you wouldn’t call me by that childish nickname. I’m not used to it.”
“But dear, we’ve always called you that,” said Mother in surprise.
“Nobody calls me that at school,” said Charlotte. “I shouldn’t mind it if it were something more sensible, but whoever thought up the name Cherry?”
“As I recall, Margaret did,” said Mother. “We thought it was sweet, though I admit you have rather outgrown it.”
“I should hope so,” said Charlotte indignantly. “It makes me feel round and red.”
“Goodness,” exclaimed Mother. “I shouldn’t wonder you don’t fancy it.”
And she called her Charlotte after that. Teddy, however, who had been in the pantry drying spoons, was indignant.
“Fancy sassing Mother like that,” he said to Amy who was putting the crumb topping on a brown betty.
“I’m never going to go to a fancy school if they teach you to be smarter than your own parents,” said Amy. “I wonder what makes her so cross?”
“Girls are always cross at that age. Learn a lesson, Amy.”
“Teddy!” said Charlotte, putting her head in at the pantry door. “How long is it taking you to dry those dishes? Can’t you hurry?”
Charlotte,” said Teddy, “I wish you wouldn’t call me by that childish nickname. It makes me feel like a round, red man with spectacles.”

Dinner was dismal. There had never been so few people at an Arnold Thanksgiving before, and there had always been Gerry there to make things cheerful. Father made a few half-hearted attempts to liven them up but nobody felt like being livened up, not even Miranda.
“I’d like to know what our boys beat the Kaiser for if they’re to be cooped up in France for months to come,” said Miranda, setting the potatoes on the table with a thump.
“Please, Miranda,” said Mother. “Not just now. We know there isn’t anything anyone can do.”
“I don’t know about that,” said Miranda. “If we had some Republicans in power, something might be done. The way the government runs things is disgraceful. Takes weeks for 'em even to get a letter over there. And that reminds me, I picked up a letter when I was in town this morning. It’s for you, Cherry.”
Charlotte took the letter eagerly and opened it without bothering to wait until dinner was over.
“Oh, Mother,” she said with glowing cheeks, “it’s from Uncle Felix. You know Miss Grierson whom I was telling you about? Well, she’s going to give a talk on elocution in Baltimore the day after Christmas. Uncle Felix has gotten a ticket and invited me to come to hear her. Oh, may I, Mother?”
“How ever will you get there in time?” asked Mother in amazement.
“Why, leave Christmas Eve, I suppose,” said Charlotte. “There isn’t any train going from here to Baltimore on Christmas day, you know.”
“But what about Christmas, dear?”
“Oh, I can spend Christmas with Uncle Felix and Aunt Kate. Oh, do let me go, Mother. I’ve wanted to hear Miss Grierson speak for ages and I never expected I should ever be able to. Tickets for her talks always sell out immediately; Uncle says he was only able to get a ticket for this one because it was the day after Christmas.”
“I don’t know, dear,” said Mother.
“Please, Mother,” begged Charlotte. “After all, I may be an actual speaker some day, and this may be the only chance I’ll ever have to hear one so great as Miss Grierson.”
Mother looked at Father. Teddy and Amy looked at each other and then at Miranda. Miranda had, of necessity, been let into the plans, but Charlotte had not been told anything. They had simply counted on her being there for Christmas.
“I suppose you may, if you really want to,” said Father slowly, looking at Mother.
“Oh, may I cable Uncle Felix tonight?” asked Charlotte eagerly.
Father fumbled in his pocket for a moment and brought out a handful of coins.
“Very well,” he said. “This should be enough for the telegram, I think.”
“Oh, thank you, Father,” said Charlotte, kissing him.
She hurried through supper and afterwards bundled up in her wraps and slipped out into the early twilight. The rest of the family finished more slowly. Mother and Father ate in silence. Miranda rattled pans in the kitchen.
“Didn’t even wait to eat dessert,” she said to no one in particular, entering the dining room again and setting the dessert plates on the table with unnecessary energy. “But what does it matter? Who wants to be with one’s family anyhow?”
“Never mind, Miranda,” said Mother. “Charlotte is growing up. It’s only natural that Christmas doesn’t mean as much to her as it used to.”
“It means something to some folks,” said Miranda sharply, and the children trembled lest she give away their secret. But Miranda was trustworthy and she said no more.
Mother looked rather tired after supper and Teddy and Amy told her to sit and rest while they helped Miranda clear up. They kept a sharp eye on the side door and when Cherry came back they waylaid her on the back stair.
“We want to speak to you,” said Teddy in a sepulchral voice.
“What about?” asked Cherry carelessly.
“About Christmas,” said Amy.
“Father’s already given me permission, so it’s too late,” said Charlotte.
“It’s something bigger than that,” said Teddy. “Come up to Amy’s room. Mother and Father mustn’t overhear.”
Charlotte hesitated. “All right,” she said, and followed them.
“You ought to have told me sooner,” she said when they had explained everything. “It would have made a difference, you know. As it is, I’ve already told Uncle Felix I’d come.”
“We couldn’t stop you before you left without making Mother and Father suspicious,” said Amy. “Anyway, you’ve got to stay. The whole point of it all is to have everyone home.”
“Mother and Father will be suspicious if I cancel now,” defended Charlotte. “Besides, not everyone will be here for Christmas, anyway. Terry won’t.”
“He might be,” said Amy.
“No, he won’t,” said Charlotte. “You know that, so don’t be childish, Amy.”
“That’s different; Terry can’t help it,” said Teddy.
“Neither can I,” said Charlotte. “It’s too late to change.”
The children were unconvinced, but there was no use arguing. Charlotte would not be persuaded.
Mother found Amy one afternoon on the window seat, deep in Mary Frances’ Book of Housekeeping.
“I’ve a letter for you, dear,” she said softly. “It’s from Terry.”
Amy sat up at once with an eager look. She tore the letter open shakily and Mother, with characteristic understanding, left her alone with it.
The reader may be wondering how much postage this story has absorbed by this time. I do not mean to divulge that fact, but as this letter is the last in the story, I mean to use it to advantage, and the reader will have to make the most of it.

Dear Amy,
It was a splendid idea of yours and Ted’s. Really first-rate. It does seem as if it will only be right if the whole family is home together, so I’m very sorry to have to say that I can’t make it. It’s a great shame, but there’s no help for it. Look here, if a chance presents itself I’ll pop over somehow, but I really don’t see what sort of a chance could happen here. But I think you were quite right in coming up with a plan like that and I’m glad Elliot and the rest agreed to it. Because you see, after being away from you all for so long, I’m beginning to see how important it all is—family, I mean. I used to think that I’d like to get out on my own and look after myself, but I’m not so keen on it anymore. I miss you all, and I felt awfully homesick last Christmas, I can’t tell you how much. It’s just this: one thinks pretty highly of things like universities, and automobiles, and Wall Street, and things like that, but over here they don’t seem so important as they used to. I used to always want to go to France and now all I can think about is the dear old U.S. It’s like Mother always said, The things you take for granted are the ones that are the most important. But you’ve heard all this before, and it’s probably stale. Anyhow, I hope you have a wonderful Christmas and I’ll haunt you all in spirit. I’ll think about you all, anyhow.

Sincerely,
Terry

Teddy came up with his hands in his pockets and sat down on the further end of the window seat.
“Got a letter?” he asked carelessly.
Amy tossed it in his lap.
“You can read it if you like,” she said. “It’s only what you said it would be.”
“Never mind, Amy. I didn’t come over here to pry into your letter, I came to apologise for tiffing with you and calling you a baby. It was rotten of me, and I’m sorry.”
“That’s all right,” said Amy with a sigh. “I was awful mad at you at first, but it was too much trouble to stay that way. You’re all I’ve got to play with now that Cherry’s gone. Do you remember what splendid games she used to play with us?”
“I feel sorry for Cherry,” said Teddy. “Off by herself in a big school in the city with nobody but a lot of stuck-up girls for company.”
“Poor Cherry,” said Amy. “You ought to apologise for being rude to her at Thanksgiving, you know. I think she really was sorry and wanted to stay after all. You should read that letter, Teddy. It says everything we’ve been thinking since Mother’s birthday. It is important, isn’t it—being with your family, I mean? It’s not the most important thing, but it’s one of the most, isn’t it?”
“Yes, it is,” said Teddy. “But anyhow, we tried our best, Amy, and there isn’t anything more we can do.”

The days before Christmas grew fewer and fewer and the Arnold family began their usual preparations for the holiday. There was no rationing now that the war was over, and Miranda and Mother were kept busy baking. Mother protested against Miranda’s liberal plans as to food for, she said, even with Gerry there they would never eat it all. But Miranda only smiled grimly and refused compromise.
Gerry arrived as he had promised and made everyone cheery. He explained that he had not been discharged as yet, but hoped to be soon.
“There are too many fellows applying for their discharges,” he explained. “I’ve leave for Christmas, though, as there’s no particular reason I should spend it in Georgia.”
So they were as merry as they could be, and the children, Gerry, and Miranda were merry among themselves when Mother and Father were not by, anticipating the splendid surprise they would have.
The surprise began the week before Christmas when Margaret and her family arrived. Gerry hitched up the buggy and drove to the station for them while Teddy and Amy kept Mother busy. They did their best, but had to relinquish the job to Miranda when Father came out of his study announcing his intention to drive into town, and they were forced to come up with an explanation of why the buggy was gone.
No one was quite sure how it happened that Mother chose to hang a wreath on the front door at the precise moment that they arrived, but she stepped outside to be immediately enveloped in Margaret’s arms.
“Margie!” exclaimed Mother.
“Merry Christmas, Mother dear! Are you surprised?” asked Margaret.
“Are you all here?” asked Mother in bewilderment.
“All of us—all four,” said Margaret gaily. “Come for Christmas, Mother. How do you like your present?”
Mother could not say how she liked her present, but not because she didn’t know, and everyone else could see that she liked it very much indeed. The minute she had recovered herself, she made them all come in, and called for Father and Miranda and the children. Father was just as amazed as Mother, but the children couldn’t pretend to be surprised and simply beamed.
“Oh, dear,” said Mother, suddenly remembering, “where are you to sleep? There’s your old room, Margaret, indeed, and we can put Amy’s old trundle bed in there for the little ones, but I don’t know how I am to get it ready before tonight.”
“All done, Mrs. Arnold,” said Miranda triumphantly. “Done two days ago, in fact. It was quite a job, I can tell, you, for I had to wash all the bed clothes when you wasn’t by an’ dry ‘em in the attic, and they came that near freezing, but the bed’s all made and the little trundle in there too.”
“Why then, did you know they were coming?” asked Mother in astonishment.
“Yes, Mrs. Arnold,” said Miranda. “I’ve known since November.”
“Goodness!” said Mother. “Have you really been planning this all that time, Margaret? I thought you came down on an impulse.”
Teddy and Amy telegraphed Margaret with their eyes to keep the secret a little longer, and so she only smiled and asked Mother what she might do to help her. Richard took the suitcases upstairs and the little ones went off with Gerry, who sent them into squeals of excitement by telling them of an unexpected meeting with Santa Claus in which the old fellow had told him in the strictest confidence that he intended to stop by the Arnolds’ house on Christmas Eve and was going to leave a spotted wooden horse and a dolly with blue eyes.
Charlotte was home for the Christmas holidays and spent much of the time practicing her elocution. She was very good, it was not to be denied, and Mother thought sometimes as she heard her ringing tones from the library where she liked to practice with an open volume of Browning before her that she really ought to have the opportunity of hearing Miss Grierson’s elocutionary talk, even if it meant missing Christmas with Margaret’s family. But on this last point she sighed.
Christmas Eve came and Charlotte was to leave after supper. She had intended to leave on the afternoon train, but Elliot and Susan were coming on that train and Charlotte had decided to wait and take the later one in order to spend a few hours with them.
Their coming was much less stormy than Margaret and her brood’s. Gerry brought them from the station and they came in quietly to find the family cosily settled in the sitting room, the early twilight brightened by a blazing fire. They all sat in comfortable attitudes, listening reflectively as Mother read aloud to the two littlest children. Susan came up behind Mother’s chair unnoticed and dropped her hand on her shoulder. Mother looked up, and Susan put her arms about her neck and whispered, “Merry Christmas, Mother.”
Mother made no exclamation, but her eyes shone in the firelight and a tear dropped into Susan’s hair.
“You and Elliot both?” was all she said.
“Yes, Mother,” said Elliot, coming round her chair and taking her hand. “Our Christmas present to you and Father. –and a belated birthday present.”
The rest of the family came to life then and ran to them, throwing their arms about them, thumping them on their backs, and all talking at once. Father wanted to know what it was all about and how both families had decided to come and how long they had been planning it, for, he said, he smelt conspiracy.
Then the secret came out and it was Susan who told it.
“It was Teddy and Amy’s doing, all of it,” she said. “They’ve been planning it since Mother’s birthday, you know. They saved up their money and wrote letters and schemed to bring us all home on Christmas.”
“It’s the only present we got you, Mother,” whispered Amy. “We hadn’t any money left.”
Mother said nothing and only kissed her.

The family had a lovely supper together and sat long around the table talking after it was over, till Teddy glanced at the clock and slipped out to hitch the mare to the buggy. Charlotte had left her suitcase in the entry and he picked it up and took it out with him. Charlotte appeared just as he was finishing the hitching and got onto the seat.
“Said your goodbyes?” asked Teddy.
“No,” said Charlotte, after remaining silent for a moment. “I didn’t want to interrupt everyone.”
“I’ll drive you, if you like,” said Teddy. “Father’s probably busy talking to Elliot and Susan.”
Charlotte said nothing, so Teddy climbed onto the seat beside her and took the reins. The mare trotted briskly down the lane leaving four dark tracks in the light dusting of snow that had fallen during the day. The moon shone brightly, picking out the road before and far ahead the lights of the village twinkled like low, yellow stars.
It was a very silent drive, for neither of them spoke a word the whole time. The train station when they reached it was deserted but the lights on the platform gleamed reassuringly. Teddy started to get down, but Charlotte jumped lightly to the platform and hurried across to the station house, calling over her shoulder, “Don’t get down; I can buy the ticket myself.”
“What about your suitcase?” called Teddy, but his sentence reached her only as she was closing the office door.
He sat in the buggy, watching his breath make steam in the glow of the station lights. Ten minutes transpired and he heard the train far off up the track. “She’d better hurry; the train doesn’t stop long here,” he thought to himself. Just then Charlotte came out again and, coming up to the buggy, got in.
“You can drive home, Teddy,” she said. “I’m not going after all.”
“What’s up?” asked Teddy.
“I sent Uncle Felix a telegram to explain. He’ll get it before he has to leave for the station, so it won’t cause him any inconvenience.”
“What about Miss Grierson?”
“Be quiet,” said Charlotte uncompanionably. “I did want to go, but I’ve changed my mind. It was Mother’s face when she saw Susan.”
This somewhat vague explanation satisfied Teddy. He said no more all the way home, but whistled Joy to the World through his teeth.

Amy awoke the next morning early with a thought that had been on her mind very often for the last several weeks. When she had been very small she had used to always put her hand under her pillow before going to sleep at night, to see if there was anything there. There was no reason why anything should have been there, yet for some reason she did not understand she always did it. At last, one night she had put her hand under her pillow and had actually found a chocolate bar. It had been left there by Gerry for no reason but a generous impulse, but Amy never knew that and it was because of this memory that she, at the age of ten, still believed in magic.
Perhaps it was the same impulse that had made her put her hand under her pillow long ago which now impelled her to creep down the hall to Terry’s bedroom and put her head in at the door. She knew quite well that there would be—could be nothing there. And again she had that bewildered sensation of magic, or of not being quite awake, when one finds what he has been hoping to find, though he knows quite well it can’t possibly be there. For she saw scattered about the room coat, putties, boots, cap—and in the middle of the bed, a dishevelled Lump.
Amy clapped her hand over her mouth. Her first impulse was to run forward and spring onto the bed, but with a great effort she controlled herself and went quietly up to a brown tousled head and whispered, “Terry!
The head was raised and in a moment she was embraced (with a good deal of the sheets) while Terry called out, “Merry Christmas, Amy!”

The odd thing was that Terry’s arrival was as much a surprise and just as inexplicable to everyone else in the family when they had all been aroused and found that he was there. Amy needed no explanations—she preferred to believe it was magic—but everyone else wanted explanations, so Terry explained.
“Well, I was in a stew after getting Amy’s letter,” he said. “I was beating my brains out trying to think of a way to come home. They were sending transports of men back over, but it was taking a jolly long time and as I said, my company’s turn wasn’t for a good while yet. One of my friends, Andy Pritchard—his father’s a big nob over in Washington; you know those Pritchard for Congress signs we saw a couple of years ago? Well, that’s his father—Andy was getting leave and going across the Atlantic to spend Christmas at home with his parents. They were paying for him to come first-class all the way in a liner. Andy and I were chums from the beginning, and he wanted to give me something sort of as a good-bye present, so he asked me what I wanted. I was thinking of course of you all and how badly I wanted to get home, and I said ‘Third-class to Baltimore’. I wouldn’t have done it otherwise, but I was keen on getting here for Christmas, you see. Well, Andy’s a brick; he brought me home first-class all the way. Said he needed someone to share his stateroom anyway. It was jolly decent of him, but if he hadn’t brought me, I would have nabbed an airplane and flown the Atlantic to be here with you all.”
“Are you discharged, then?” asked Gerry.
“Not yet. Just on leave, same as you. I’ve got to report at some place or other in Washington next week, but it shouldn’t be too much longer before I’m out of khaki.”
“Why, then the whole family’s home after all,” said Teddy with rather a look of surprise but pronounced satisfaction as well.
“Oh, Teddy,” said Amy, throwing her arms about him, “we’ve done it! We’ve done it!”
“Funny that we really should have after all,” he said reflectively.
I might end the story here, but I want to tell you something that happened at dinner, as it initiated a new Arnold tradition.
“If I may have everyone’s attention,” said Father, who had been writing on a scrap of paper at intervals during the meal, “I should like to read a poem for the amusement of the company, composed expressly for the occasion not two minutes ago.”
Then he got to his feet, brushed the crumbs from his waistcoat, cleared his throat, and read aloud:

“At Christmas sing and make good cheer,
“Because each one of us is here;
“And some have travelled far to be
“Once more among the family;
“For every mother’s son of us
“Knows well that he is one of us
“And every happy heart belongs
“Among the blithe and happy songs
“That greet the pleasant Christmastide
“Around the shining fireside;
“And so we swear right solemnly
“To keep each Christmas heartily
“All together, if we may,
“But in our hearts which-ever way;
“And so we’ll make such merry cheer
“As will last all the rest of the year.
“And so I end with joyful wishes
“To every Mr. and his Mrs.

Post Scriptum:
“Mrs. doesn’t rhyme, I know
“But nothing else would go.”

The end of the poem met with a great shout of laughter from every member of the family, and Miranda besides, and so much racket was made that it is likely the neighbours wondered what was going on over at the Arnold place. But it was only the sound of a large and noisy family making merry together at Christmas.


The End