The Sword of Fate (15 page)

As soon as I arrived I telephoned to Barbara and she said that she would try to get Daphnis to come in for drinks that evening, although normally she did not go to cocktail parties given by members of the British Colony. Half an hour later she rang me back to say that, somewhat to her surprise, Daphnis had accepted at once and that I had better be out at Ramleh myself at six o’clock.

When I got there Barbara told me that she had asked in one or two other friends just to keep us in countenance, but that if I wanted a private session with Daphnis I could either take her out into the garden or into the small sitting-room at the back of the house.

I sank three sherries in rapid succession with Barbara and her sister Dorothy before any of the other guests arrived. The girls were most amused at my state of jitters, and I was both astonished and ashamed at the way my nerves always seemed to let me down whenever Daphnis was in the offing. I seemed to have altogether lost that calm self-assurance which had always been mine until seven months before.

The arrival of a naval lieutenant necessitated the talk becoming general, and I pulled myself together again. Soon afterwards a gunner captain and his wife arrived, and I found myself tied up in a conversation with the wife when Daphnis entered the room. To my fury the sailor pounced on her before I could make my escape, but Barbara took in the situation, rescued me from
the gunner’s wife, and to the sailor’s dismay saddled him with her, leaving the field clear for me with Daphnis.

To my intense relief she smiled, and almost instinctively the two of us turned to walk out of the french windows on to the little terrace behind the house.

“Why were you looking so worried just now?” she asked, with an amused glance, as soon as we were out of earshot of the others.

“I was terrified that you might be furious at finding me here,” I confessed.

“How silly of you!” she laughed. “If I hadn’t wanted to see you I could have refused the invitation. I hardly ever visit any of our few English acquaintances in their houses, and after the way that Barbara Wishart planted you in their party for the Life-boat Institution dance I felt quite certain that she could only have asked me this evening at your instigation.”

We sat down in two basket chairs beneath a gaily-striped sun umbrella. It was hardly needed now, although the sunshine was still pleasant, as it had lost most of its force with the decline of the year.

As I lit a cigarette for Daphnis I said with a beating heart, “Your coming here this evening, then, means that you really wanted to see me?”

She inhaled deeply and lowered her long curling lashes so that they veiled her eyes. “I can’t forget what that old Arab fortune-teller said. He’s been so uncannily right in his predictions about other people. For that reason I still feel that it’s out of the question for us to think of each other seriously. But having thought it over I don’t see why we shouldn’t meet occasionally as friends.”

Inwardly I smiled, and something of my old self-confidence came back. In admitting so much, Daphnis had as good as proclaimed her own defeat. She would not, of course, have acknowledged that to herself as yet, but in an effort to square her declared attitude with her subconscious desire, she had adopted the most ancient female gambit of all time—‘Why can’t we just be friends?’

“I’m glad you feel that way,” I said, “because I was afraid that as long as the war between Britain and Italy continued you would regard that as an insurmountable barrier between us.”

She made a little grimace. “I’ve thought a lot about that too, lately, and I’ve come to the conclusion that I was wrong. If we only meet as friends we ought to be able to ignore the war.”

“I suppose the invasion of Greece has helped quite a lot in changing your views?” I hazarded.

“No, it’s not that. I’m desperately sorry for the Greeks, of course; but it doesn’t make me any the less fond of Italy and the Italians. If you were to see two of your friends fighting you would be most unhappy for them both, but it would not make you like either of them less.”

“Oh, come!” I protested. “Not if one of them were a great big husky man of six foot two and the other were a small boy of, say, thirteen and without the slightest provocation the big man smashed his fist into the small boy’s face? You might have liked the big man before but I’ll bet you wouldn’t feel much friendship for him after you’d seen him do that.”

She sat forward and stared at me earnestly. “That’s not fair. You don’t understand. It’s not the Italian people who have attacked the Greeks. They are charming, cultured, home-loving, and have no wish to make war on anybody. It is Mussolini who has done this horrible thing.”

“I thought you were an admirer of Mussolini’s?”

“I was, and you admitted at one time you used to admire him, too.”

I nodded. “Yes. Any number of people did, but most of us saw the red light when he chose Easter Sunday to send his bombers and his Blackshirts against the helpless peasants of Albania.”

“They were brigands—bandits—everybody knows that—just as were the Abyssinians. Mussolini was right to take over both countries so that law and justice might take the place of the corrupt old-fashioned Governments.”

“There’s quite a lot to be said for that,” I agreed, “but do you really believe that the Italian people have no responsibility at all for this war, and that they were forced into it against their will by Mussolini, Ciano and Co.?”

“Yes. It was a tragedy that Marshal Balbo was killed in that air crash because he was a really great Italian, and Count Grandi, who is another, seems to have lost his influence. Ciano, Starace, Faracini, Ansaldo, and the other extremists who were probably in the pay of Germany, must have got hold of Mussolini and, of course, in these days once a war is declared the ordinary soldiers and the people have no say at all. They simply have to do as they are ordered.”

“Daphnis, I adore you,” I said. “But honestly that’s only the superficial, not the basic, cause of the trouble. Just because we call
these upstart rulers ‘dictators’ it’s the greatest mistake in the world to believe that they could continue to rule for any length of time without the consent of the mass of their countrymen.

“They can persecute small minorities without stirring up the bulk of the nation against themselves. Through their secret police they can establish a state of terror in which people become mighty careful what they say in public. They can enforce certain inconveniences and hardships upon their entire populations, but—if they are to keep their hold—for every individual that they persecute they must provide a good job, a fine uniform or a state of prosperity for at least half a dozen others. No matter what measures they take for the suppression of the Press and free speech, they cannot stop people whispering among themselves, and if they demand sacrifices from their nations they will only get them when the purpose for which they demand them is one with which the bulk of the people are in full sympathy.”

“I’ve never thought of it that way before,” she said slowly. “D’you really believe that?”

“I do,” I assured her earnestly. “In Hitler the German people got the leader that they asked for, and these Nazi swine are the same flesh, blood and cold calculating brain as the brutal jack-booted Prussians of the past. Hitler hasn’t thought up anything new. All he’s done is to assimilate the teachings of other Germans, most of whom are dead and gone, and carry those teachings into harsh realities.

“The same applies to England. In the years of our wicked refusal to face facts we got Baldwin, in the days of our honest but ill-informed seeking to avert a second world catastrophe we had Chamberlain; but now that the nation is roused to a full sense of its responsibilities and has regained its old fighting spirit we have Churchill. That’s where the Germans make such a stupid mistake. They seem to think that a Jewish capitalist clique, led by Churchill, is running this war, and that the wretched British are being forced to stand out against a peace by agreement which they would simply jump at if they only had their own way. But that isn’t so at all. Churchill is England—the very heart and soul of it—and every one of us would give his eyes to have all his qualities. Yet Churchill is only where he is today because he is the most perfect vehicle through which the people of Britain can express their defiance of their enemies, their intrinsic rock-like strength and their utter confidence in complete and final victory.”

“How do you explain, then,” she asked, “the fact that prominent Englishmen are so often reported in the papers as
saying that you are not fighting the German people—only the Nazis; and that the French are still your allies at heart and were only deceived by their ‘wicked leaders’?”

I smiled. “That’s the price we have to pay for being a democracy. Some of these people are irresponsible fools, others are fifth columnists in the pay of Hitler; but unless we can definitely prove that a man is a traitor he’s still allowed to say what he likes. Unfortunately they do immense damage to our war effort, although most of them are only stupid old men who’re afraid to face hard facts. But I want you to face them if you can. If we’re to be friends it’s best that I should never refer to the subject again; but now that the Italians have gone into Greece I feel it’s only right that you should know what other people think about them. Can you take it, or would you rather that I dried up?”

“No, go on,” she said.

“All right, then. The Italian masses are just as much responsible for the actions of their Government as any other people, otherwise the Fascist Party could not possibly have remained in power for eighteen years. Mussolini appeared as a leader offering just that programme and personality which the bulk of the Italian people were ripe to accept and endorse. He cleaned up their country and the strength of their confidence in him grew. Italy is horribly overcrowded, and since the last war emigration to the United States has been made much more difficult through the quota system. Italy had to have breathing-space somewhere. Naturally the Fascist Government did their best to develop such colonial territories as Italy already had in Libya, Italian Somaliland and Eritrea. From that it was only a step to the popular cry for the new Roman Empire. You know how the Italian people loved that idea and cheered themselves hoarse at all the Imperial caperings to which their Fascist leaders treated them. Well … the inevitable outcome of all that is this, so it’s no good now to turn round and say that the Italian people are guiltless and that their heart is not in the war. ‘Nice, Corsica, Tunis!’ was their cry, and you can take it from me that they’re in this war simply for anything that they can get out of it. That’s the truth, Daphnis.”

“Perhaps.” She stared at me unhappily. “About your own people I don’t know, but no one’s ever accused them of lack of courage and ever since they’ve been getting the worst of it they seem to have taken on a new lease of life. I still
don’t think that you’re right, though, about the Italians. I’m desperately sorry for the Greeks, but I shall always love my father’s people. If you want us to be friends it can only be on the understanding that we ignore the war; because as far as that is concerned we must remain enemies.”

I saw that it was useless to argue further. For a second I was a little frightened. The fact that she continued to be so strongly pro-Italian in spite of the attack on Greece seemed to lend support to Major Cozelli’s damnable suspicions that she was actively assisting the enemy. If she was and, through continuing to know her, I found her out, I should have only myself to blame for creating a situation in which I should suffer sheer unadulterated hell.

Yet, as she sat there, so young, so clear-eyed and so utterly the antithesis of everything one connects with stealthy plotting and unscrupulous deceit, I could not believe that Cozelli was right. And, after all, that we should ignore the war was the very line that I had advocated myself when we had last met in August. It was only natural that the feelings of a lifetime could not be suddenly reversed in a single week; and it was not yet a week since the Italians had gone into Greece. Soon there were certain to be stories of their German-inspired ruthlessness, and that would bring about a change of heart in her more genuine than could any of my academic arguments. She had offered me her friendship. I felt that I should be crazy to refuse it.

“All right. Let’s leave it at that,” I smiled. “There are such masses of more pleasant things that I’m longing to talk to you about, and I’m only down here on forty-eight hours’ leave. How and when am I to see anything of you? Can I come to the house openly or is that impossible?”

She sighed: “I’m afraid it is. You see, I never told Mother that I met you again at that dance last August, so she still believes Paolo’s version of—of your misfortune. If you called I’d
never be allowed to see you, and Mother is not the sort of person to whom I could explain about you at just a few minutes’ notice.”

“How about my coming to the garden late tonight, then?” I asked, but she shook her head.

“No, that’s no good either, because Alcis is staying with us again. We had a frightful row about the way she behaved that night I sent her to let you in, and she knows all about the scene with Paolo. I simply dare not trust her now, and as her room is on one side of mine and Mother’s is on the other, I’d never be able to get down and back without one of them hearing me. You see, the house is very old, and at night when it’s quiet every board in the passage and on the staircase creaks appallingly.”

“I see,” I said glumly. “But it’s not much good our being friends if we’re never to meet, is it? And I have to start back tomorrow evening, so we’ve barely twenty-four hours, and if I don’t see you again in that time it’ll probably be weeks before I get another chance.”

“I know!” she exclaimed. “Now that Greece is at war we’re all doing every possible thing we can to help. Tomorrow afternoon I’ve promised to roll bandages and make cotton-wool pads for wound dressings at the Headquarters for Help to the Motherland, which has just been opened in the Sidi el Mitwalli. The car will drop me there at half past two and pick me up again at five. I must go into the building, but I could slip out again, and if you were waiting in another car outside …”