“If I were in your place, Mr. Somerville, I would try and persuade my wife to give you lessons. She is, if I may say so, a very cultivated and highly educated woman.”
“Ach, Grantley, I have not the time. I have my own work to do.”
Ashenden saw that he was being given his opportunity. The trap was prepared and all he had to do was to fall in. He turned to Mrs. Caypor with a manner that he tried to make shy, deprecating and modest.
“Of course it would be too wonderful if you would give me lessons. I should look upon it as a real privilege. Naturally I wouldn’t want to interfere with your work. I am just here to get well, with nothing in the world to do, and I would suit my time entirely to your convenience.”
He felt a flash of satisfaction pass from one to the other and in Mrs. Caypor’s blue eyes he fancied that he saw a dark glow.
“Of course it would be a purely business arrangement,” said Caypor. “There’s no reason that my good wife shouldn’t earn a little pin-money. Would you think ten francs an hour too much?”
“No,” said Ashenden, “I should think myself lucky to get a first-rate teacher for that.”
“What do you say, my dear? Surely you can spare an hour, and you would be doing this gentleman a kindness. He would learn that all Germans are not the devilish fiends that they think them in England.”
On Mrs. Caypor’s brow was an uneasy frown and Ashenden could not but think with apprehension of that hour’s conversation a day that he was going to exchange with her. Heaven only knew how he would have to rack his brain for subjects of discourse with that heavy and morose woman. Now she made a visible effort.
“I shall be very pleased to give Mr. Somerville conversation lessons.”
“I congratulate you, Mr. Somerville,” said Caypor noisily. “You’re in for a treat. When will you start, tomorrow at eleven?”
“That would suit me very well if it suits Mrs. Caypor.”
“Yes, that is as good an hour as another,” she answered.
Ashenden left them to discuss the happy outcome of their diplomacy. But when, punctually at eleven next morning, he heard a knock at his door (for it had been arranged that Mrs. Caypor should give him his lesson in his room) it was not without trepidation that he opened it. It behoved him to be frank, a trifle indiscreet, but obviously wary of a German woman, sufficiently intelligent, and impulsive. Mrs. Caypor’s face was dark and sulky. She plainly hated having anything to do with him. But they sat down and she began, somewhat peremptorily, to ask him questions about his knowledge of German literature. She corrected his mistakes with exactness and when he put before her some difficulty in German construction explained it with clearness and precision. It was obvious that though she hated giving him a lesson she meant to give it conscientiously. She seemed to have not only an aptitude for teaching, but a love of it, and as the hour went on she began to speak with greater earnestness. It was already only by an effort that she remembered that he was a brutal Englishman. Ashenden, noticing the unconscious struggle within her, found himself not a little entertained; and it was with truth that, when later in the day Caypor asked him how the lesson had gone, he answered that it was highly satisfactory; Mrs. Caypor was an excellent teacher and a most interesting person.
“I told you so. She’s the most remarkable woman I know.”
And Ashenden had a feeling that when in his hearty, laughing way Caypor said this he was for the first time entirely sincere.
In a day or two Ashenden guessed that Mrs. Caypor was giving him lessons only in order to enable Caypor to arrive at a closer intimacy with him, for she confined herself strictly to matters of literature, music and painting; and when Ashenden, by way of experiment, brought the conversation round to the war, she cut him short.
“I think that is a topic that we had better avoid, Herr Somerville,” she said.
She continued to give her lessons with the greatest thoroughness, and he had his money’s worth, but every day she came with the same sullen face and it was only in the interest of teaching that she lost for a moment her instinctive dislike of him. Ashenden exercised in turn, but in vain, all his wiles. He was ingratiating, ingenuous, humble, grateful, flattering, simple and timid. She remained coldly hostile. She was a fanatic. Her patriotism was aggressive, but disinterested, and obsessed with the notion of the superiority of all things German, she loathed England with a virulent hatred because in that country she saw the chief obstacle to their diffusion. Her ideal was a German world in which the rest of the nations under a hegemony greater than that of Rome should enjoy the benefits of German science and German art and German culture. There was in the conception a magnificent impudence that appealed to Ashenden’s sense of humour. She was no fool. She had read much, in several languages, and she could talk of the books she had read with good sense. She had a knowledge of modern painting and modern music that not a little impressed Ashenden. It was amusing once to hear her before luncheon play one of those silvery little pieces of Debussy; she played it disdainfully because it was French and so light, but with an angry appreciation of its grace and gaiety. When Ashenden congratulated her she shrugged her shoulders.
“The decadent music of a decadent nation,” she said. Then with powerful hands she struck the first resounding chords of a sonata by Beethoven; but she stopped. “I cannot play, I am
