appeared only when he was sure of finding her alone. There was no hurry; if he went softly he had a whole lifetime in which to drive her mad.
“Bah, you would even lie to him, to keep him from knowing. I have the best ally in you. But it is an offensive smell, the smell of Jew, and even for the fun of seeing you hate me I cannot bear it long. So I am going, don’t be afraid. It isn’t time for you to be afraid yet—not quite time. You have not to go back to the ghetto and the camp— yet!” He laughed again, and touched her cheek with his hard fingertips, and shook and wiped them as if her pale, chill flesh had soiled them. Then he turned carelessly on his heel, and went away from her in a quick, light walk, and slid through the green door in the wall, closing it gently after him.
Gerd stood for a long time staring about her, while the empty twilight deepened perceptibly about her and grew green with the green of the trees. She ought to have become used to it by now, and yet the shock never grew less, was always like the opening of a black pit under her feet. She had almost forgotten, until he came, that it was possible to hate anyone like that. He was all the shadowy horror of her life rolled into one person, and he came and went protected and secure and insolent about her, reminding her softly that he had been the means of destroying her family, and would yet be the means of destroying her; for in spite of the war and the peace and all the good resolutions, it appeared that governments were still on his side, not on hers.
She went on into the house, bracing herself to meet her husband’s eyes and tell him nothing. She had brought him sorrow and trouble enough. But Hollins was not in the house. She supposed that he had merely gone out into the yard upon some late job or other, or up the fields on his usual evening round; but she sat with her sewing for a long time, and he did not come in.
She sat and thought of Helmut. And continually out of nowhere the thought of Christopher’s old service revolver came to her mind. She looked at it calmly, and did not either embrace or put away the suggestion, but only let it lie there in her mind, like a seed patiently waiting to grow.
Helmut went up through the woods toward the rim of the bowl, his hands deep in his pockets, his feet muttering in the scuffle of pine needles and drifted twigs under the trees, and silent in the deep grass of the open places. He whistled as he went, for he was very pleased with events. He liked his job, he liked being in a private lodging, he liked the money he jingled in his fingers as he walked, he liked the evening, and his errand, and the feeling of well-being which his methodical visits to Gerd gave him. He liked his own cleverness and everyone else’s stupidity, which fed it without effort on his part. He liked the large black eyes of the Jewish woman, defying him but believing him when he told her that he was only the vanguard, that racial hate was not far from her heels, even here, and would bring her down at last.
Behind him in the shadow of the trees, out of hearing and screened from sight, someone walked with him, step for step.
Two
« ^ »
Pussy and Dominic came down the wilderness of hills on an evening in the second week of the autumn term, crossed a discouraged little field full of nibbling sheep-tracks now thick with white dust, and came to the squat brick hut of Webster’s well. It lay in an arm of hedge at the rim of the next woodland, the ground falling away behind it in a staircase of sheep-paths, with only fringes of tired grass between them, to the channel of the brook and the shadows of the trees which overhung it; while on the other side, the homing side, the path wound uphill among clumps of silver birch saplings for a time, and then descended along the rim of the Harrow preserves until it reached the lane, and the road into the village. The brook passed along the side of the field, gathered in the powerful overflow from the pipe in the back of the well and spread itself wallowing over the whole basin of low ground behind the brick hut, carrying so strong a flow of water that in winter it was a small lake lying there, and even now after the dry summer there were two or three considerable channels threading the churned-up bowl of clay mud, trodden into great, white, deep holes by the drinking cattle. Only the supply of water in the well never seemed to decline, for it enclosed two vigorous springs, and the overflow sprang out from its pipe with force enough to strike your hand away if you held it against it. Dominic and Pussy knew all the interesting things which can be done with a strong jet of water, provided you do not mind getting a little draggled in the process. They had outgrown most of them, but tonight they had lingered longer than usual in the Comer pool, and emerged already far too late to get back to Comerford in time for the Road Safety Committee’s lectures to senior school-children, to which an hour and a half of their evening should have been dedicated; they felt, accordingly, guilty and abandoned enough to enjoy playing babyish games with water for a further twenty minutes or so, while the sun went down.
“They’ll be halfway through by now,” said Pussy cheerfully, wringing out water from the ends of her pigtails, when they were tired of making fountains.
“Not worrying about it, are you? It was an honest mistake, anyhow. I really didn’t notice the time.”
“You’re the one who has to worry,” said Pussy heartlessly. “Io might nag a little, but Dad hardly dare pretend to be concerned about road safety, I should think—not until his own driving improves a bit. You’re the one who’s going to catch it! Penalty of being the police-sergeant’s son!”
“Most of the time,” said Dominic peacefully, “I can manage him pretty well. But he does get parentish sometimes—I guess he has to, really, in his position. And I suppose it was rather letting him down, to stay away when he’s got to give the lecture. But I didn’t do it purposely.” This fact alone was enough to make him feel as virtuous as if he had not done it at all. He sat teasing burrs out of his wet hair with his fingers, and making faces over the snarls he found in it. “Got a comb, Puss? I seem to have been rolling in a patch of burdocks.”
Pussy had reached the stage of carrying a comb constantly upon her person. She fished it out of the top of her stocking, since the pocket of her skirt had somehow contrived to slit itself wide open in a thorn-bush on the way up the slope from the river; and having detached it from the folds of her handkerchief, she flicked it across to him, and went on wringing drops from the ends of her hair.
“What time is it?” asked Pussy then, flinging the plaits over her shoulders as a mettlesome horse tosses its mane and starts at the touch of it. She scrambled up from the grass and went to the well, to cup her hands in it and drink the icy water.
“Nearly half-past eight. They’ll be at it for another half-hour yet. Bit of a nerve, when you come to think of it,” said Dominic, stiffening into belated indignation as he squinted out from behind his tangled chestnut forelock with horrible grimaces, “to expect us to go to a lecture,
The inconsiderate female administered comfort as cold as the water she was drinking: “Your father would be sure to look for you, anyhow. Almost anybody else could be missing without being noticed, but
Dominic emerged to gape at her in incredulous envy. “Ours wasn’t! And I’ve only done part of it yet, too. My goodness, you girls get away with everything.” He thrust the dark red mass of his hair back from his forehead, gave it a last smooth with his hand, and waved the comb at her disgustedly. “Here, catch!”
