The Riddle of the Sands Part 36

'You can't deny it, though! And one thing more; in the harbour just now--no--this is going too far; I shall mortally offend you.' I gave way to hearty laughter.

'Come, let's have it. Your hallucinations are diverting.'

'If you insist; but this is rather a delicate matter. You know we were a little surprised to find you _all_ on board; and you, Herr Bohme, did you always take such a deep interest in small yachts? I am afraid that it was at a certain sacrifice of comfort that you _inspected_ ours!' And I glanced at the token he bore of his encounter with our lintel. There was a burst of pent-up merriment, in which Dollmann took the loudest share.

'I warned you, Bohme,' he said.

The engineer took the joke in the best possible part. 'We owe you apologies,' he conceded.

'Don't mention it,' said Davies.

'_He_ doesn't mind,' I said; 'I'm the injured one. I'm sure you never suspected Davies, who could?' (Who indeed? I was on firm ground there.)

'The point is, what did you take _me_ for?'

'Perhaps we take you for it still,' said von Bruning.

'Oho! Still suspicious? Don't drive me to extremities.'

'What extremities?'

'When I get back to London I shall go to Lloyd's! I haven't forgotten that flaw in the t.i.tle.' There was an impressive silence.

'Gentlemen,' said Dollmann, with exaggerated solemnity, 'we must come to terms with this formidable young man. What do you say?'

'Take me to Memmert,' I exclaimed. 'Those are my terms!'

'Take you to Memmert? But I thought you were starting for England to-morrow?'

'I ought to; but I'll stay for that.'

'You said it was urgent. Your conscience is very elastic.'

'That's my affair. Will you take me to Memmert?'

'What do you say, gentlemen?' Bohme nodded. 'I think we owe some reparation. Under promise of absolute secrecy, then?'

'Of course, now that you trust me. But you'll show me everything--honour bright--wreck, depot, and all?'

'Everything; if you don't object to a diver's dress.'

'Victory!' I cried, in triumph. 'We've won our point, Davies. And now, gentlemen, I don't mind saying that as far as I am concerned the joke's at an end; and, in spite of your kind offer, I must start for England to-morrow' under the good Herr Bohme's wing. And in case my elastic conscience troubles you (for I see you think me a weather-c.o.c.k) here are the letters received this morning, establis.h.i.+ng my ident.i.ty as a humble but respectable clerk in the British Civil Service, summoned away from his holiday by a tyrannical superior.' (I pulled out my letters and tossed them to Dollmann.) 'Ah, you don't read English easily, perhaps? I dare say Herr Bohme does.'

Leaving Bohme to study dates, post-marks, and contents to his heart's content, and un.o.bserved, I turned to sympathize with my fair neighbour, who complained that her head was going round; and no wonder. But at this juncture, and very much to my surprise, Davies struck in.

'I should like to go to Memmert,' he said.

'You?' said von Bruning. 'Now I'm surprised at that.'

'But you won't be staying here either, Davies,' I objected.

'Yes, I shall,' said Davies. 'Why, I told you I should. If you leave me in the lurch like this I must have time to look round.'

'You needn't pretend that you cannot sail alone,' said von Bruning.

'It's much more fun with two; I think I shall wire for another friend. Meanwhile, I should like to see Memmert.'

'That's only an excuse, I'm afraid,' said I.

'I want to shoot ducks too,' pursued Davies, reddening. 'I always have wanted to; and you promised to help in that, commander.'

'You can't get out of it now,' I laughed.

'Certainly not,' said he, unmoved; 'but, honestly, I should advise Herr Davies, if he is ever going to get home this season, to make the best of this fine weather.'

'It's too fine,' said Davies; 'I prefer wind. If I cannot get a friend I think I shall stop cruising, leave the yacht here, and come back for her next year.

There was some mute telegraphy between the allies.

'You can leave her in my charge,' said Dollmann, 'and start with your friend to-morrow.'

'Thanks; but there is no hurry,' said Davies, growing redder than ever. 'I like Norderney--and we might have another sail in your dinghy, fraulein,' he blurted out.

'Thank you,' she said, in that low dry voice I had heard yesterday; 'but I think I shall not be sailing again--it is getting too cold.'

'Oh, no!' said Davies, 'it's splendid.' But she had turned to von Bruning, and took no notice.

'Well, send me a report about Memmert, Davies,' I laughed, with the idea of drawing attention from his rebuff. But Davies, having once delivered his soul, seemed to have lost his shyness, and only gazed at his neighbour with the placid, dogged expression that I knew so well. That was the end of those delicate topics; and conviviality grew apace.

I am not indifferent at any time to good wine and good cheer, nor was it for lack of pressing that I drank as sparingly as I was able, and pretended to a greater elation than I felt. Nor certainly was it from any fine scruples as to the character of the gentleman whose hospitality we were receiving--scruples which I knew affected Davies, who ate little and drank nothing. In any case he was adamant in such matters, and I verily believe would at any time have preferred our own little paraffin-flavoured messes to the best dinner in the world.

It was a very wholesome caution that warned me not to abuse the finest brain tonic ever invented by the wit of man. I had finessed Memmert, as one finesses a low card when holding a higher; but I had too much respect for our adversaries to trade on any fancied security we had won thereby. They had allowed me to win the trick, but I credited them with a better knowledge of my hand than they chose to show. On the other hand I hugged the axiom that in all conflicts it is just as fatal to underrate the difficulties of your enemy as to overrate your own. Their chief one--and it multiplied a thousandfold the excitement of the contest--was, I felt sure, the fear of striking in error; of using a sledge-hammer to break a nut. In breaking it they risked publicity, and publicity, I felt convinced, was death to their secret. So, even supposing they had detected the finesse, and guessed that we had in fact got wind of imperial designs; yet, even so, I counted on immunity so long as they thought we were on the wrong scent, with Memmert, and Memmert alone, as the source of our suspicions.

Had it been necessary I was prepared to encourage such a view, admitting that the cloth von Bruning wore had made his connexion with Memmert curious, and had suggested to Davies, for I should have put it on him, with his naval enthusiasms, that the wreck-works were really naval-defence works. If they went farther, and suspected that we had tried to go to Memmert that very day, the position was worse, but not desperate; for the fear that they would take the final step and suppose that we had actually got there and overhead their talk, I flatly refused to entertain, until I should find myself under arrest.

Precisely how near we came to it I shall never rightly know; but I have good reason to believe that we trembled on the verge. The main issue was fully enough for me, and it was only in pa.s.sing flashes that I followed the play of the warring under-currents. And yet, looking back on the scene, I would warrant there was no party of seven in Europe that evening where a student of human doc.u.ments would have found so rich a field, such n.o.ble and ign.o.ble ambitions, such base and holy fears, aye, and such pitiful agonies of the spirit.

Roughly divided though we were into separate camps, no two of us were wholly at one. Each wore a mask in the grand imposture; excepting, I am inclined to think, the lady on my left, who, outside her own well-being, which she cultivated without reserve, had, as far as I could see, but one axe to grind--the intimacy of von Bruning and her stepdaughter--and ground it openly.

Not even Bohme and von Bruning were wholly at one; and as moral distances are reckoned, Davies and I were leagues apart. Sitting between Dollmann and Dollmann's daughter, the living and breathing symbols of the two polar pa.s.sions he had sworn to harmonize, he kept an equilibrium which, though his aims were nominally mine, I could not attain to. For me the man was the central figure; if I had attention to spare it was on him that I bestowed it; groping disgustfully after his hidden springs of action, noting the evidences of great gifts squandered and prost.i.tuted; questioning where he was most vulnerable; whom he feared most, us or his colleagues; whether he was open to remorse or shame; or whether he meditated further crime. The girl was incidental. After the first shock of surprise I had soon enough discovered that she, like the rest, had a.s.sumed a disguise; for she was far too innocent to sustain the deception; and yesterday was fresh in my memory. I was forced to continue turning her a.s.sumed character to account; but it would be pharisaical in me to say that I rose to any moral heights in her regard--wine and excitement had deadened my better nature to that extent. I thought she looked prettier than ever, and, as time pa.s.sed, I fell into a cynical carelessness about her. This glimpse of her home life, and the desperate expedients to which she was driven (whether by compulsion or from her own regard for Davies) to repel and dismiss him, did not strike me as they might have done as the crowning argument in favour of the course we had adopted the night before, that of compa.s.sing our end without noise and scandal, disarming Dollmann, but aiding him to escape from the allies he had betrayed.

To Davies, the man, if not a pure abstraction, was at most a noxious vermin to be trampled on for the public good; while the girl, in her blackguardly surroundings, and with her sinister future, had become the very source of his impulse.

And the other players? Bohme was _my_ abstraction, the fortress whose foundations we were sapping, the embodiment of that systematized force which is congenital to the German people. In von Bruning, the personal factor was uppermost. Callous as I was this evening, I could not help wondering occasionally, as he talked and laughed with Clara Dollmann, what in his innermost thoughts, knowing her father, he felt and meant. It is a point I cannot and would not pursue, and, thank Heaven, it does not matter now; yet, with fuller knowledge of the facts, and, I trust, a mellower judgement, I often return to the same debate, and, by I know not what illogical bypaths, always arrive at the same conclusion, that I liked the man and like him still.

We behaved as sportsmen in the matter of time, giving them over two hours to make up their minds about us. It was only when tobacco smoke and heat brought back my faintness, and a twinge of cramp warned me that human strength has limits, that I rose and said we must go; that I had to make an early start to-morrow. I am hazy about the farewells, but I think that Dollmann was the most cordial, to me at any rate, and I augured good therefrom. Bohme said he should see me again. Von Bruning, though bound for the harbour also, considered it was far too early to be going yet, and said good-bye.

'You want to talk us over,' I remember saying, with the last flicker of gaiety I could muster.

We were in the streets again, under a silver, breathless night; dizzily footing the greasy ladder again; in the cabin again, where I collapsed on a sofa just as I was, and slept such a deep and stringent sleep that the men of the Blitz's launch might have handcuffed and trussed and carried me away, without incommoding me in the least.