The Gap in the Curtain

Bosworth. But every witch and warlock in Carmarthen got on to their hindlegs and prophesied—said they saw him in a bloody shroud, and heard banshees wailing for him, and how Merlin had said that when the Ap-Something red and gold crossed Severn to join the Tudor green and white it would be the end of the race—all manner of cheery omens. Everybody in the place believed them, including his lady wife, who wept buckets and clung to his knees. What did the old sportsman do? Told all the warlocks to go to the devil, and marched gaily east-ward, leaving his wife sewing his shroud and preparing the family vault.'

'What happened?' Charles had lifted his head.

'Happened? He turned the day at Bosworth, set the Tudor on the throne, got the Garter for his services—you see it in the portrait—and about half South Wales. He and his men came merrily home, and he lived till he was ninety-three. There's an example for you!'

Pamela warmed to her argument.

'That sort of thing happened all the time in the old days. Whenever anybody had a down on you he got a local soothsayer to prophesy death and disaster in case you might believe it and lose your nerve. And if you had been having a row with the Church, some priest or bishop had an unpleasant vision about you. What was the result? Timid people took to their beds and died of fright, which was what the soothsayers wanted.

Bold men like my ancestor paid not the slightest attention, and nothing happened—except that, when they got a chance, they outed the priest and hanged the soothsayer.'

Charles was listening keenly.

'But the soothsayers were often right,' he objected.

'They were just as often wrong. The point is, that there were men brave enough to defy them—as you are going to do.'

'But the cases aren't the same,' he protested. 'That was ordinary vulgar magic, with a personal grudge behind it. I'm up against the last word in impersonal science.'

'My dear Charles,' she said sweetly, 'you've let your brains go to seed.

I never knew you miss a point before. Magic and astrology and that kind of thing were all the science the Middle Ages had, and they believed in them just as firmly as you believe in Moe. The point is that, in spite of their belief, there were people bold enough to defy it—and to win, as you are going to do. A thousand years hence the world may think of Moe and Einstein and all those pundits as babyish as we think the old necromancers. Beliefs change, but courage is always the same. Courage is the line for you, my dear.'

At last she had moved him. There was a light in his eyes as he looked at her, perplexed and broken, but still a light.

'You think … ' he began, but she broke in …

'I think that you're face to face with a crisis, Charles dear. Fate has played you an ugly trick, but you're man enough to beat it. It's like the thing in the Bible about Jacob wrestling with the angel. You've got to wrestle with it, and if you wrestle hard enough it may bless you.'

Her voice had lost its briskness, and had become soft and wooing. She jumped up from the sofa and came round behind his chair, as if she did not want him to see her face.

'I refuse to give another thought to the silly thing,' she said. 'We are going to behave as if Moe had never been born.' Her hand was caressing his hair.

'But you are not condemned to death,' he said.

'Oh, am I not?' she cried. 'It's frightfully important for me. On June tenth of next year I shall be starting on my honeymoon.'

That fetched him out of his chair.

He gazed blindly at her as she stood with her cheeks flushed and her eyes a little dim. For a full minute he strove for words and none came.

'Have you nothing to say?' she whispered. 'Do you realise, sir, that I am asking you to marry me?'

5

Chapter

It was now that I entered the story. Mollie Nantley came to Town and summoned me to a family conclave. She and Tom were in a mood between delight and anxiety.

'You got my wire?' she asked. 'The announcement will be in the papers tomorrow. But they are not to be married till June. Too long to wait—I don't like these long engagements.'

'You are pleased?' I asked.

'Tremendously—in a way. But we don't quite know what to think.

They never saw each other for six months, and then it all came with a rush. Pam has been rather odd lately, you know, and Tom and I have been very worried. We saw that she was unhappy, and we thought that it might be about Charles. And Charles's behaviour has been something more than odd—so odd that Tom was in two minds about consenting to the engagement. You know how fond we were of him and how we believed in him, but his conduct before Christmas was rather shattering.

You are too busy to hear gossip, but I can assure you that Charles has been the most talked-of man in London. Not pleasant gossip either.'

'But the explanation seems quite simple,' I said. 'Two estranged lovers, both proud and both miserable and therefore rather desperate.

Chance brings them together, misunderstandings disappear, and true love comes into its own.'

Mollie bent her brows.

'It's not as simple as that. If that had been the way of things they ought to be riotously happy. But they're not—not in the least. Pam is as white as a sheet, and looks more like a widow than a bride. She's very sweet and good—very different from before Christmas, when she was horribly tiresome—but you never saw such careworn eyes. She has something heavy on her mind … And as for Charles! He is very good too and goes steadily to the City again, but he's not my notion of the happy lover.

Tom and I are at our wits' end. I do wish you would have a talk with Pamela. She won't tell me anything—I really don't dare to ask—but you and she have always been friends, and if there is any trouble you might help her.'

So Pamela came to tea with me, and the first sight of her told me that Mollie was right. In a week or two some alchemy had changed her utterly. Not a trace now of that hard, mirthless glitter which had scared me at the Lamanchas'. Her face was pale, her air quiet and composed, but there was in her eyes what I had seen in Charles Ottery's, an intense, anxious preoccupation.

She told me everything without pressing. She could not tell her parents, she said, for they would not understand, and, if they did, their sym-pathy would make things worse. But she longed for someone to confide in, and had decided on me.

I saw that it would be foolish to make light of the trouble. Indeed, I had no inclination that way, for I had seen the tortures that Goodeve was undergoing. She told me what she had said to Charles, and the line they were taking. I remember wondering if the man had the grit to go through with it; when I looked at Pamela's clear eyes I had no doubt about the woman.

'He has gone back to his business and has forced himself to slave at it.

He is crowding up his days with work. And he is keeping himself in hard training … You see, he has tried the other dopes and found them no good … But he has to fight every step of the road. Oh, Uncle Ned, I could howl with misery sometimes when I see him all drawn at the lips and hollow about the eyes. He doesn't sleep well, you see. But he is fighting, and not yielding one inch.'

And then she quoted to me her saying about Jacob wrestling with the angel. 'If we keep on grappling with the brute, it must bless us.'

'I have to hold his hand all the time,' she went on. 'That's his hope of salvation. He is feeding on my complete confidence … Oh no, it's not easy, but it's easier than his job. I've to pretend to be perfectly certain that we'll be married next June tenth, and to be always talking about where we shall go for our honeymoon, and where we shall live in Town, and how we shall do up Marlcote.'

She smiled wanly.

'I chatter about hotels and upholsterers and house-agents when I want to be praying … But I think I understand my part. I have a considerable patch of hell to plough, but it's nothing like as hot as Charles's … No, you