in this way since before his journey to Rome. This might be a result of the action: the surgeon had warned him not to hope to be altogether well at once. To exercise his abilities, then, he would hear through the Prometheus Variations. This went well enough for a few minutes, but at about the half-way point, immediately before the section in triple time, he was forced to stop, because he could not remember how to go on; the harmonic sequence stayed in his head as firmly as ever, but the flow of the notes had been checked.
At this vexatious moment, one of the nuns, little Sister Ho from Indo-China, came bustling up, all smiles as usual, and presented him with a letter-packet. On the front, his name, nothing more, was written in a hand he thought he recognised; on the red-and-blue bordered card inside, the same hand had written, My wife and I are below. We know your true state. Hilda is with us. She believes you to be recovering from a stomach ailment. May any or all of us come to visit you for a few minutes?
Hubert could not decide at once. He wanted very much to see his friends, but was afraid that doing so might cause him to feel sad. The thought that they had come nearly a hundred miles to visit him made up his mind. He sent Sister Ho to fetch the three and put the card out of sight. Very soon they were with him. Dame van den Haag kissed him on the cheek, and squeezed his shoulder to show that she would have embraced him more warmly in private. The Ambassador gave him a steady glance and a firm handshake. Hilda stayed near the end of his bed, but smiled and nodded cheerfully. She was dressed for travelling, in a coat of some short reddish-brown fur and a pointed hat of the same material.
'How do you do, Hubert?' asked van den Haag.
'Very well, sir. They tell me I may go home at the week's end.'
'Good... I was grieved to hear of your sickness.'
'Yes, it came at an unfortunate time.'
'When I think of the immensity of the chance that brought it about, I'm reduced to silence. Just then. And just that. It's as if... I don't know. Maybe a man shouldn't speculate. Well, that's an end of the matter.'
'Yes, sir. I'm heartily grateful for all you did and all the risks you ran.'
'It's nothing, Hubert.'
Van den Haag, by the look in his eyes and the way he spoke, had been trying to tell Hubert of his sorrow at what had happened. Now bitterness had entered his tone for a moment, but he quickly roused himself and asked about the hospital, the nuns, the food. His wife had questions too. Hilda was silent, gripping the bed-rail, leaning back and pulling herself upright after a fashion Hubert had seen before, but she still smiled at him now and then. Quite soon, van den Haag took out his watch and said they must think of going.
'But, sir, it's only a minute since you arrived, and to have come so far for so little...'
'We have another reason. We'd still have come without it, but we have an aircraft to take. To New England.'
'How long will you stay, sir?'
'For a long time, I think. I'll be back here next month for a few days, but my office is ended. Our First Citizen has displaced me.'
'Not for what you did on my behalf?' asked Hubert in two sorts of distress.
'No, no. Well, only partly. I'd offended the English authorities a couple of times before. This was just the finale. They knew of your visit to me in Coverley, you were discovered in the aircraft apartment of a New Englander just come from my Embassy, and, although it seems they've learned nothing of the process that took you from one place to the other, that was enough. Yes, the suspect and the guilty are the same to a Romanist-my excuses, Hubert.'
'I should never have asked you... I should never have allowed you...'
Dame van den Haag laid her hand on Hubert's head. 'Peace, Hubert. We're honoured that you trusted us and asked our help. It was only an evil dispensation that exposed us. And—in private—my husband was never a happy ambassador. For that, a man has to love ceremony, and he doesn't.'
'But to be displaced...'
'He's talked already of resigning-no, Cornelius? And we miss our country.'
'But isn't your First Citizen angry?'
'Maybe, maybe,' said van den Haag, smiling. 'He may swell up with rage till he bursts, for me. Oh, it's quite true, I'm altogether too much a Schismatic for this function. So are most of my countrymen. It amounts to a national weakness.'
Half Hubert's distress had been half relieved. 'What function will you take to, sir?'
'I'll build a concert-hall and you shall come and sing in it. We must go, Anna. Yes, Hubert, I will and you shall. I'll write to you at St Cecilia's. Well, I reckon even in England a father can kiss his son, so...'
He bent and kissed Hubert and his wife did the same.
'Good-bye, my dear. The Lord protect you.' He turned to Hilda and said severely, 'Two minutes, maid.'
'Ya ya, paps.'
When they were alone, Hubert said awkwardly, 'Your father and mother are very gracious folk.'
Hilda came a little nearer and leaned her hip against the side of the bed. She spoke not fast but with great determination, as if she had taken a wager to finish what she had to say however it was received. 'We have a farm in Latimeria with two hundred Indians on it. Sometimes in the evening we go to their huts and see them dance and play. There are cows and pigs and hens—paps has me help in the dairy. And horses—I have one to myself, named Springer. I mean when I'm there he's mine. He's all black but for a white stocking on his far hind. Some of the tracks in the hills are rough, but he never stumbles, not Springer. It's good that we're done with England and Naples: we can be at the farm much more. Do you love horses?'
'Yes.'
