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.
‘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.
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