The Fox in the Attic (37 page)

“Syl! What's that one called, Syl?” For sometimes they went for long walks in the woods together, that father and his growing son, and Gwilym taught him the names of the birds and Syl showed him the nests he had found. Then they talked about God, who created all those beautiful birds and painted their eggs; and the baby still bubbled.

When Sylvanus entered his teens his Dad insisted on serious practical talks about all possible sorts of jobs, though knowing full well the one thing Sylvanus wanted was to be a preacher like Dad (but every call to the ministry has to be tested like this). Whereon the baby woke up and crowed, and opened a mouth toothless as a tortoise's in a wide smile, dribbling and showing his gums.

But always, whatever the boy's age at that moment, Gwilym talked to him endlessly about that little angel who sat at a window in Heaven and watched him whatever he did, the guardian-sister whose love he must learn to deserve: “Syl, if ever you're tempted to think about girls with ... in a way you know to be wrong, just say to yourself five words: ‘My angel-sister was one.'”

All this made Gwilym blissfully happy, and he often thought how lucky he was. Nowadays it never struck him as in any way sad that the boy's whole upbringing had to be condensed like this into a few months at most.

On fine afternoons—at least on the days when Gwilym's back was a little less bad—Nellie used to take both of them out for their “walk” together. She half-lifted Gwilym from his bed into an old wicker Bath chair Mary had lent them, and tucked him up well with blankets topped with an old horse-rug from the Mellton stables. Then she set the baby on Gwilym's knee, and trundled them a few hundred yards over the frozen turf to the edge of the escarpment where the whole deep river-valley lay spread beneath them, and there they rested awhile. It was a perilous journey, for the topheavy Bath chair was not intended for such rough going; but the view at the end was well worth it at least so far as Gwilym himself was concerned. Far beneath them the river curled: in the distance the downs rolled and rolled: on clear days you could even see Salisbury spire. For now he was ill Gwilym found an infinite pleasure in this beau-tiful terrestrial world: no longer was it the arid “vale of woe” he had once decried from the pulpit, and he took to writing poems.

An idyllic life while it lasted: till Gwilym's accident, that later was to leave such a load of guilt on the wife and child, occurred.

The horse Mary was riding was an old cob steady as a billiard-table (and much the same shape), for Mary was now two months gone with child and her doctor did not really approve of her riding at all. But surely sitting on Cherry hardly counted as “riding”! Cherry was more stable than the hills; for according to the psalmist the hills can skip—but certainly Cherry couldn't. The doctor moreover had prescribed a daily walk, so for part of the way Mary got off and led him. This gave her an opportunity too for another mouthful or so of Augustine's letter:

(Who? Oh, those everlasting Kessen children of course!)

Mary turned back to look at the date: yes, this
had
been a long time in the post ...

Even that wasn't nearly the end, but Mary pushed the sheets back in her pocket and remounted. An odd sort of letter from someone of twenty-three and intelligent! That last paragraph—
really
! Indeed the whole tone of the letter was childish. Like a kind of regression. What an unexpected effect for travel to have on Augustine! It worried her rather. She knew he had taken his guns, but no mention of shooting ... in fact, Augustine seemed to like messing around with small children better than being with his natural companion Franz—let alone with Walther or Otto. Trust Augustine to be adored by the children wherever he went—but not,
not
to waste his whole time with them this way: he didn't do that even with Polly, and she was his niece ...

Trudi
the “eldest,” he had said? Trudi hadn't been born ... Funny none of his letters had mentioned once that eldest girl Mary remembered. Little Mitzi'd be now ... what, seventeen? “I suppose,” thought Mary, “she must be away at school.”

In the far distance a few small patches of snow on the hilltops seemed to float in the haze, each with its own dollop of white mist like wool clinging close to it. Otherwise the day was a gray sort of day: dead still, with a faint haze the sun just showed through like a small, watery-yellow pea. The light was indefinite: a dim, ominous, over-all glare that was shadowless.

Slowly Cherry plodded his uphill way on a long rein, gently rocking under Mary like a ship. Fleetingly for no reason she found herself recalling her father who had died when she was a child ... tweeds like nutmeg-graters for bare skin to sit on, and his long mustache that smelt of tobacco and tickled ... But suddenly Cherry blew a deep organ-note through his nostrils—tremolo, so that with its vasty vibration Mary's legs quivered like jellies and the whole landscape shook.

When it settled again, lo—there were the chase gates in sight now, and Nellie running towards her half tripping over the ruts in the turf that the workmen's cart had made weeks ago. Nellie was panting and her eyes starting out of her head: would Mrs. Wadamy
please
go at once for the doctor? Something about Gwilym being worse, and a frightful accident yesterday: it was all Nellie's own fault, she would never forgive herself ...

In later years Gwilym's “accident” came to loom so large we had better be quite clear what did happen, that frosty day on the downs.

Yesterday the baby had had a stomach-upset and so couldn't go out. But the weather yesterday had been wonderful, so rather than do Gwilym out of his walk Nellie had wheeled him to his usual viewpoint and left him there by himself while she dashed back to see to the baby. She meant just to give Sylvanus his peppermint-water and come straight back to Gwilym again; but the little wretch wouldn't stop crying, so she stopped with him.

Gwilym must have dozed off, for the heavy horse-blanket slipped from his knees and he woke feeling cold. In trying to retrieve it he overbalanced the chair and was spilled out on the ground. There he lay, too weak to get up by himself. Nor could he even shout: his cauterized throat could only
whisper
“Help!” He was blue with cold and nearly unconscious when at last the terrified Nellie got back to him. Strong as Nellie was she had a terrible struggle to get him back up into his chair off the ground.

That evening Gwilym's temperature had soared to new heights, but Nellie dared not leave him to go for the doctor. How could she? She
had
to wait for the morning and hope that Mary would come.

When Mary did bring the doctor at last he looked grave: a touch of pneumonia, he said. The patient might live through the attack but it would certainly leave him weaker.

In Nellie's mind as the years passed it became more and more that accident which had tipped the scales: without it the sick man might have—
must
have recovered. Little Sylvanus was a murderer before he was born, twice a murderer ere he was weaned.

Far more lay behind Augustine's disgruntlement with Lorienburg and his exeat to Munich than he chose to tell Mary. At the time of writing he had been in love for a whole three weeks yet his progress was nil. True, Mitzi appeared at meals now, but she seemed more distraite than ever and vanished as soon as she could. The only person she seemed to respond to ever was Otto. In short, Augustine could sometimes feast his eyes on her now (and he certainly made the most of it); but he never again got a chance like the one he had missed in the chapel of talking to her, he never once saw her alone.

Somehow it never entered Augustine's head to offer to take Mitzi for a walk. But once, greatly daring, he did summon up courage to offer to read to her: “Schiller or something.” Mitzi thanked him warmly, which made his heart hop like a bird: but instead of taking him to the empty library she led the way to the drawing-room, and thus the reading took place with her mother there and her two younger sisters as well (for the children shadowed Augustine now like dogs everywhere, and they wanted to make him come out and play in the snow). The two little girls were palpably bored by Schiller and longing to carry him off for themselves: Adèle jumped like the toothache at every mispronounced word: Mitzi showed no reaction whatever till he paused, when she thanked him again and slipped away to her room. The reading was
not
a success, and was never repeated. How he cursed the German language! For in English he knew he read rather well.

To forget his woes he did indeed make use of the children: he spent whole days with them, for entering into their minds at least took him out of his own. But this “regression” of Augustine's was not always wholly successful either: far too often he would lead the twins into some shocking piece of mischief and then at the crucial moment his mind would revert to Mitzi, so that by sheer inattention to business he landed them all in a mess. Walther couldn't understand Augustine's behavior at all: he seemed “totally lacking in seriousness: quite irresponsible!” As for Franz, overbuoyant now with the weight of the world off his shoulders at last, he was longing to be off to the mountains skiing: with his guest for excuse he might have wangled it if only Augustine had shown the least interest ... Franz found him rather a bore.

The sensible part of Augustine knew well that the sensible course was to go away, at least for a while. His hosts would have welcomed it: indeed at the time of Wolff's funeral (it had been touch-and-go, that police inquisition: it had called for endless pulling of strings) they had almost openly wished he would take himself elsewhere at least till that business was over. Yet it wasn't till a fortnight after the funeral that Augustine remembered Dr. Reinhold's offer to show him Munich: a proposal which his hosts, when he finally broached it, effusively approved. So at last he wrote to Dr. Reinhold, and at last his going was fixed.

*

Dr. Reinhold had a large flat on the Odeonsplatz close to the Theatinerkirche (he would have had a wonderful view of the end of the Putsch if he hadn't left Munich so soon). A bachelor and a bit of a sybarite, with a married couple for butler and cook, his place was impeccably run; yet he seemed to be hardly ever in it himself, so Augustine found. Dr. Reinhold went to his office at nine, and thereafter his guest was left to his own devices: “showing him Munich,” it seemed, consisted chiefly in planning sight-seeing tours which the guest carried out on his own.

Moreover, departure to Munich did nothing (Augustine discovered) to empty his mind of Mitzi. Indeed she kept cropping up in the unlikeliest contexts: in the Dom, for instance, while they were showing him the Devil's Footmark he spun round on his heel for he felt her right at his shoulder. Certainly “selling Newton” was an idea which never entered his head: he was far too busy just now envisaging Mitzi as its mistress and major adornment for that: Mitzi under his guidance learning to find her way all over the house: Mitzi learning the feel of the furniture with his fingers covering hers: Mitzi learning the changing seasonal smells of an English garden, the songs of the birds, the voices of all his friends ... he would get that old harp in the small south drawing-room restrung for her (blind harpists are always the best).

Augustine was sent, of course, round the corner to the Königsplatz where the galleries were. There were wonderful things in them: acres of pictures, famous pieces of Greek and Egyptian sculpture already familiar in photographs; but the galleries themselves were vast, altogether dwarfing their contents. Thirty or forty minutes of looking at masterpieces Augustine intensely enjoyed; but, because of this very intensity, he couldn't stand longer. At the end of that time he felt a pain in the back of his head: he suddenly felt what a waste of time
everything
was without Mitzi: he suddenly felt a passionate longing for beer.

Hurrying out of the Glyptothek thus, with his eyes unfocused to give them a rest, he barked his nose on the door.

The churches here Augustine was sent to admire, however, really shocked him; for they all, excepting the Dom (late Gothic) were baroque or even rococo. This confirmed what he had already felt at Lorienburg: people who found such things beautiful must be essentially unserious people: their religion (and so, Mitzi's)
must
be only skin-deep: their culture, a froth and a sham. Was it conceivable that the sensitively cultured Dr. Reinhold with real Art in his blood sincerely admired these sugared monstrosities, or had he his tongue in his cheek? The “AsamKirche,” for instance: where here was the classic austerity (hall-mark of all true art), the truth to nature? The bareness of line, the restraint?