“Oh God,” he said. “I suppose you’re drunk” ? for no friend of Basil’s who maintained a fixed abode in London could ever consider himself immune from his occasional nocturnal visits.
“Let me in. We haven?t a moment to spare.” Basil spoke in a whisper. “The police will be here at any moment.”
Slightly dazed with sleep, Ambrose admitted him. There are those for whom the word “police” holds no terror. Ambrose was not of them. All his life he had been an outlaw and the days in Munich were still fresh in his memory, when friends disappeared suddenly in the night, leaving no address.
“I’ve brought you this,” said Basil, “and this and this.” He gave Ambrose a clerical collar, a black clerical vest ornamented with a double line of jet buttons, and an Irish passport. “You are Father Flanagan returning to Dublin University. Once in Ireland you’ll be safe.”
“But surely there’s no train at this time.”
“There’s one at eight. You mustn’t be found here. You can sit in the waiting-room at Euston till it comes in. Have you got a breviary?”
“Of course not.”
“Then read a racing paper. I suppose you’ve got dark suit.”
It was significant both of Basil’s fine urgency of manner, and of Ambrose’s constitutionally guilty disposition, that he was already clothed as a clergyman before he said, “But what have I done? Why are they after me?”
“Your magazine. It’s being suppressed. They’re rounding up everyone connected with it.”
Ambrose asked no more. He accepted the fact as a pauper accepts the condition of being perpetually “moved on.” It was something inalienable from his state; the artist’s birthright.
“How did you hear about it?”
“In the War Office.”
“What am I to do about all this?” asked Ambrose helplessly. “The flat, and the furniture, and my books, and Mrs. Carver?”
“I tell you what. If you like I’ll move in and take care of it for you until it’s safe to come back.”
“Would you really, Basil?” said Ambrose, touched. “You’re being very kind.”
For some time now Basil had felt himself unfairly handicapped in his pursuit of Susie by the fact of his living with his mother. He had not thought of this solution. It had come providentially, with rapid and exemplary justice all too rare in life; goodness was being rewarded quite beyond his expectations, if not beyond his deserts.
“I’m afraid the geyser is rather a bore,” said Ambrose apologetically.
They were not far from Euston Station. Packing was the work of a quarter of an hour.
“But, Basil, I must have some clothes.”
“You are an Irish priest. What d’you think the Customs are going to say when they open a trunk full of Charvet ties and crepe-de-Chine pyjamas?”
Ambrose was allowed one suitcase.
“I’ll look after all this for you,” said Basil, surveying the oriental profusion of expensive underclothes which filled the many drawers and presses of the bedroom. “You’ll have to walk to the station, you know.”
“Why, for God’s sake?”
“Taxi might be traced. Can’t take any chances.”
The suitcase had seemed small enough when Basil first selected it as the most priestly of the rather too smart receptacles in Ambrose’s box-room; it seemed enormous as they trudged northward through the dark streets of Bloomsbury. At last they reached the classic columns of the railway terminus. It is not a cheerful place at the best of times, striking a chill in the heart of the gayest holiday-maker. Now in wartime, before dawn on a cold spring morning, it seemed the entrance to a sepulchre.
“I’ll leave you here,” said Basil. “Keep out of sight until the train is in. If anyone speaks to you, tell your beads.”
“I haven’t any beads.”
“Then contemplate. Go into an ecstasy. But don’t open your mouth or you’re done.”
“I’ll write to you when I get to Ireland.”
“Better not,” said Basil, cheerfully.
He turned away and was immediately lost in the darkness. Ambrose entered the station. A few soldiers slept on benches, surrounded by their kit and equipment. Ambrose found a corner darker, even, than the general gloom. Here, on a packing-case that seemed by its smell to contain fish of a sort, he sat waiting for dawn; black hat perched over his eyes, black overcoat wrapped close about his knees, mournful, black eyes open, staring into the blackness. From the fishy freight below him water oozed slowly onto the pavement making a little pool, as though of tears.
Mr. Rampole was not, as many of his club acquaintances supposed, a bachelor, but a widower of long standing. He lived in a small but substantial house at Hampstead and there maintained in servitude a spinster daughter. On this fateful morning his daughter saw him off from the front gate as had been her habit years without number, at precisely 8:45. Mr. Rampole paused in the flagged path to comment on the buds which were breaking everywhere in the little garden.
Look well at those buds, old Rampole; you will not see the full leaf.
“I’ll be back at six,” he said.
Presumptuous Rampole, who shall tell what the day will bring forth? Not his daughter, who returned, unmoved by the separation, to eat a second slice of toast in the dining-room; not old Rampole, who strode at a good pace towards the Hampstead Underground.
