The Moment of Truth Read online

  “No.”

  Smiling, lifting her hands, Elizabeth said,

  “Of course I do. When I was a girl, any woman over thirty seemed to me old and haggard. Certainly past feeling much. But, you know, to General Thorburn—who, by the way, is sixty, not a hundred and sixty—George and I still seem young. And he would be rather surprised if we let him stay on here, alone.”

  Cordelia shivered as you do when a goose walks over your grave. Until this moment she had not known that she hoped.

  “Yes. I see.”

  “What, my dear? What do you see?”

  “You won’t help me because—because if both the generals stood down, it would be morally impossible for Major Heron to go—though there would be room. … But it’s not impossible at all. If the old men stayed, and he went, he would be hurt in his vanity. Nothing else.”

  Elizabeth made one of her light gestures.

  “You think it’s as simple as that? My poor child, even at your age I knew that men never outlive their vanity. George is devoted to me, he depends on me—and he would leave me in less than a year if I were the other person who knew he had behaved badly. Don’t look at me like that. Could you live with a mirror that made you squint? Of course not.”

  Cordelia did not—it was still so new a friend—know what on earth to do with her despair. She stood clumsily with it.

  “I see it’s no use,” she said. She hesitated, and repeated, “No use.”

  Quickly,

  “But perhaps we’re exaggerating everything,” Elizabeth said. “There may be no occupation, or only a partial one. Almost certainly—if the war ends now, if they decide to make peace instead of dragging it on—people will be allowed to get out, you’ll be able to leave England in the ordinary way. Or to stay here and work. You’re both so young. And neither of you is, as my husband is, known—you’re not, I mean, people anyone would notice.”

  “If Major Heron had been worth it,” Cordelia said quietly. “But a man like that—who will leave you if you offend his vanity … a marriage like that—”

  She turned and went out on to the airfield. Mrs. Heron moved as though she were going to hurry after her, stopped, and seeing Emil Breuner sauntering towards the house, ran the other way, to be out of the room before he reached it.

  Breuner had seen her, but not that she was running away. Infinitely curious about people’s minds, they could behave under his eyes with the most astonishing eccentricity, he would never notice it. His work, his speculations, used up his energies; in them he lived the single-pointed life of a child, and for the rest did more or less as he was told, dressed himself carefully, ate when he was told to come and eat. Because he was gay and sweet-tempered he had a great many friends; he enjoyed seeing them—he and his wife. … Thinking about her, making the difficult effort to detach her from himself in his mind, to see her alone, she who had been only—only!—his feminine half, memory, warmth, sister, he stood absently at the table, his hand running through magazines without telling him. The young sergeant-pilot, coming in noisily, startled him. He swung round.

  “I’m sorry. I made you jump, I’m awfully sorry,” Marriot apologised.

  “Don’t be sorry,” he said quickly, “this is your room. We give you a lot of trouble.”

  “Not at all.”

  “Well, I think so.” This one of the three young air people struck him as intelligent, he would like to talk to him. Find out what he thought when he thought of the future. He was drawn to the young man, warmly, but his feeling was not answered—there was a perceptible barrier.

  “The plane will be here to-day, and take you off.”

  “Are you sure it comes?”

  A gleam of mockery came into Marriot’s eyes without spoiling their look of intelligence and gentleness—detached uninterested gentleness.

  “Of course it’ll come. You’re anxious to get clear?”

  “No,” he said.

  “In your place I should be. You wouldn’t be comfortable here,” Marriot said.

  Faintly surprised—by the undertone of familiarity—he considered this for a moment.

  “Well, perhaps not. But I was thinking—you and your friends must resent our arrival. We’ve crowded you off your aeroplane.”

  Marriot stared at him.

  “Nonsense. We’re all right.”

  Stupid of me, he thought ruefully: I’m a fool, I don’t know how to talk to the young. But who does?

  “Is it really impossible to take more people?”

  “Absolutely. Didn’t you understand what you were told last night?”

  The tone of insulting pity made him smile.

  “Yes, I understood. But I don’t care for the division of people into V.I.P.’s. and the others. I’m sure you don’t. And the pilot of the aeroplane won’t, either.”

  “His opinion won’t be asked,” Marriot said. As if regretting his brusqueness, he went on in a serious voice, “Not that he’ll feel happy about it. He’ll always feel he might have got away with it if he’d tried—if he’d taken the risk.”

  “Why shouldn’t he take it?”

  “It’s obvious, isn’t it?”

  Breuner felt a grief that had very little to do with his pity for these three young whose chance of escape had been snatched from them.

  “I am sorry.”

  “No call to be, we’ve had it.”

  Nothing he could say would be better than exasperating. He knew that, and, insensibly, he had turned back already to his own endless monologue.

  “It’s difficult to know what to say. I ran away, you know, once before—from another sort of tyranny. I’m not sure whether running away is worth it. Or even possible. The sort of freedom one hopes for would be possible if everyone is free—young men, peasants, navvies, children—all. It has never existed. Perhaps, unless we all believe in the same God, it’s forever impossible. Who knows? I only know that it exists less now than at any moment in the past. Curious and a little disheartening, don’t you think?”

  He did not notice Marriot’s silence, and started when the young man asked abruptly,

  “By the way, you’re the Emil Breuner, aren’t you? The physicist.”

  Half amused,

  “Am I? I teach physics in Cambridge. I mean I used to—”

  “I took my B.Sc. in London—King’s College—only a month before the war.”

  “In physics?” The interest he had felt in the young man started up. “What were you going to do?”

  “You wouldn’t approve.”

  “Really? How do you know?”

  There was nothing impudent in the boy’s mockery. Simply he did not feel the respect he might have been supposed to feel for the great Emil Breuner. Breuner preferred it that way.

  “I know what you believe! You’d like me to skulk in my padded cell and get on with my job of discovering a way to put more powers in the hands of men who’ll use them for their own futile ends. Greedy—self-interested—not fit to govern.”

  Ah, thought Breuner. The same quarrel he had had again and again—on his part without bitterness. He was never bitter; his passionate and impersonal curiosity did not leave him time for it. Often enough, though, his opponents were bitter enough to need to despise him. He said softly,

  “You would like to govern?”

  “No,” answered Marriot. “Yes.”

  How decent he is, thought Breuner—how young, vivid, modest, intelligent. …

  “Not,” the boy went on swiftly, “for the sake of governing. Good God, no. But—what was it you said?

  —for young men, peasants, navvies, children. I’ve been trained to be objective, to reason sanely from the facts. Tell me—what other sort of training is any use now? Would you give a child a candle and send it to play in a room full of explosives? Why think you can run atomic power on slogans and party jealousies and greed and prejudice? Only logical scientific minds …” He stopped. “You know it all,” he said coolly.

  Breuner did not answer at once. He knew wha
t he thought, yes, but there was always the brief moment when he wondered: Am I right? what is the truth? Also, he did not want to offend the boy. It is so easy with the young to talk in a shorthand they don’t follow, and which rouses their mocking resentment. His feeling for Marriot was almost affection. He had an impulse of mischief and gaiety, and gave way to it.

  “Do you believe that scientists are so god-like? It’s a delightful picture—the world run by calm reasonable tolerant chemists and biologists, who will never be corrupted by power because they think objectively. I am just afraid they might turn out to be human, after all.”

  Marriot’s eyes sparkled with good-humoured malice.

  “I bet you believe in original sin.”

  Smiling,

  “Is that reactionary?” murmured Breuner. “I should have said it fitted the observed facts.” Still smiling, he added, “You’re a communist, aren’t you?” The boy did not answer. “You needn’t be afraid, I don’t talk nonsense to people.”

  He saw the change in Marriot’s face, to something eager and less guarded. The young man said rapidly,

  “After all, it’s the future if there is one. Maybe there isn’t. But I believe there is, I believe you can wash away this bloody clot of injustice, I believe people will come to be amazed there was ever a time when an infant was born poor or rich. It’s as simple as that!”

  Breuner looked at him with the grave sympathy he felt.

  “It won’t be very simple for you, will it?”

  There was nothing else he could have said. But the boy took himself back at once, into his defensive coolness—friendly enough.

  “What do you mean?”

  “You’re on one side as a—as English, and on the other through your religion”—he failed as usual to bring off a flat English r.” What a pity you didn’t get away.”

  Marriot glanced at him with the caressing warmth he seemed able to call at will into his dark eyes.

  “A wicked world. Have to do what you can,” he said lightly. “Excuse me, I must go now.”

  He went off. Disturbed, without telling himself precisely why, Breuner looked after him. He had, he felt, said the wrong things … A comforting thought soothed him. After more than twenty years, he had not learned to trust easily the English trick of reconciling contradictions by sending them to play in different rooms. They have wisdom and no logic. If they have forgotten the trick, we are lost, he thought, smiling, all of us. But they don’t forget it. … He turned and saw three of them coming in from the airfield, the general and Lackland: they supported between them a bent groaning Clarke.

  As they lowered him into a chair, Clarke said,

  “One thing about this damned disease—it leaves off as suddenly as it came. To-morrow I may be skipping like a young ram.” He grinned spitefully at Breuner. “Why can’t you spend more time trying to cure our poor old bodies and less on tricks for killing us? You can’t even get rid of my paunch, can you?”

  Not sure whether he were serious, Breuner said kindly,

  “If we walked on all fours, we shouldn’t develop paunches.”

  “Many thanks,” said Clarke, rolling his eyes.

  George Heron sauntered in after them. Pale, the long hair matted against his neck by the sweat pouring out of him, he looked sourly aware that it was ridiculous for him to be masquerading as a soldier. His voice was dry and peevish.

  “Any news of our aeroplane?”

  “Not a sign,” Clarke answered. He was delighted to be able to disappoint Heron. “The professor here advises us to grow a couple of gills each and swim for it.”

  Lackland sent Heron a steady and expressionless glance.

  “Do you intend to go, then?”

  “Of course.”

  More out of mischief than from any wish to keep him, Lackland said,

  “Very enterprising of you, I must say.”

  The general had not been able to check a movement of surprise. He rubbed his head, shook it vigorously from side to side like an impatient horse, and spoke with a curtness intended to silence Lackland.

  “Have you finished the report you want me to take over?”

  “No, sir, not quite.”

  “Well, get on with it, man, get on with it.”

  “I will, sir.”

  His nervous smile pulled Heron’s mouth out of shape. In spite of his contempt for Lackland, he had been too deeply pricked to hold his tongue. With an offensive boredom, he said,

  “I’m a writer, not a soldier.”

  “I know,” Lackland said pleasantly. “I could use you just the same.”

  Heron did not answer at once. When he spoke, a sincerity forced itself through his bored condescension.

  “You miss the point, don’t you? There still are other values than the heroic ones, and it may be worth trying to save them. You’re like all Spartans, my dear fellow—very noble, and a little smug and self-righteous. You don’t simply prefer soldiers, even bloody inefficient soldiers, to intellectuals—you want the poets to learn their drill because you understand drill and you don’t understand poetry—or believe it’s worth anything in comparison with your own highly-skilled job—which God knows must be done. It’s an opinion. I shouldn’t dream of quarrelling with you about it. But can’t you find a little politeness, I won’t say charity, for us desperately unlucky—er—idea-bearers? We don’t want, God help us, to go into exile.”

  The gleam of derision in Lackland’s eye went no further.

  “My dear chap, run away and hatch your ideas,” he said. “I quite see that you need a warm nest.”

  Holding himself together, Clarke laughed, squealed—“A-a-ah”—and blinked away tears of pain and spite. He glanced slyly at Thorburn, and was sobered by the profound sadness he detected in his friend’s impassive face. He sees that his cock won’t fight, he thought. This pleased him. He was sorry for his friend; he had an impulse to interfere before things got worse—and a contrary impulse to keep out: a peasant’s instinct that no good comes of poking your nose into the quarrels of your masters. And besides, he was enjoying it.

  A flush spread over Heron’s protrusive forehead.

  “I doubt whether you see anything beyond the narrowest limits of your job,” he said ironically. “It may never strike you that what you’re trying to defend is more than this or any country. In any case, Europe is finished for at least a hundred years. Is anything, my God, more important than to save a few seeds of our civilisation and replant them in decent soil?” His sallow eyelids fell. “Do you read history? It’s hardly the first time men like me have had to go into exile with only what they could carry in their minds.” He glanced, with unfriendly civility, at Breuner. “I see you smile. But surely you agree?”

  Breuner had been smiling in absence of mind. He was conscious, somewhere, of a quarrel going on round him, but he was not able to understand it: between him and these others stretched everything they had not lived through: not one of them knew yet what a man who has been your friend looks like when he has decided to denounce you to save himself. … His politeness came forward to help him—but only to help him speak the truth.

  “Perhaps America is too far. Or the wrong kind of soil for seeds from Europe. Who knows yet?”

  Exasperated, Heron shrugged his shoulders.

  “It can scarcely matter to you where you live,” he said. “You’ve flourished here very nicely. I imagine you will there.”

  The general lifted his head, and stared down his great nose with extreme displeasure.

  “Hold your tongue, boy.” He frowned, moving clumsily in his chair. “And don’t pretend it’s anything but humiliating to leave the country because we’re defeated. … What’s more, I’m not sure you can save ideas by bolting with them. Either they’re alive and kicking and don’t need you to save them, or they’re beyond anyone’s help. … Eh?”

  No one answered him. Heron stood stiffly, an offended smile on his pale lips. With the mischievous glance of a schoolboy tormenting another under the ma
ster’s very eyes, Lackland said,

  “You wouldn’t be any use here, my dear fellow. Certainly not to me. Don’t worry, you’ll be far better off transplanting yourself. I suppose you have friends over there. Chaps were bolting years ago with their precious seeds. Quite a nursery.”

  “Less murderous than yours,” said Heron thinly. “What shocks me about your Robin Hood outfit is its uselessness. You’ll kill any number of young men and young women, and for what? For a sordid—clumsy—adolescent romanticism. My God, what a bore adolescents are.”

  Lackland smiled at him with complacent mockery.

  “Romanticism? Ah—when you’re living your sensible virtuous life in America, think charitably about us——”

  He was interrupted by Clarke. In his coarsest tones,

  “What about me? All I ever asked was to be let end my days in a decent stuffy comfort—and what happens? I’m shot off to the ends of the earth without even the excuse of taking culture with me. Culture, God bless you, I have none. I respect it, y’know. Or do I? I talk the most ridiculous nonsense. Professor, you’re the cleverest chap here—tell me: Am I more of a fool than a knave? Or is it t’other way—more knave than fool. What?”

  “No, you’re not a fool,” Breuner said.

  Clarke’s grin became a preposterous leer.

  “Well, God knows. I didn’t think I was a coward—and here I am, running away like any skrimshanker of a staff goat.”

  “We all talk—I do too,” murmured Breuner, “as if our civilisation is the only one. But the Russians have virtues of their own.”

  Lackland turned round on him with contempt.

  “Nonsense!” He jerked his head up, so that for a moment the black patch over his left socket was startlingly distinct. He touched it lightly. “The chaps I was with when I got this—Serbs or what have you—are fighting against us now. As I could have told you they would. Fine brutes, tigers for fighting. And that’s all. The Reds won’t be able to raise enough trained men—apart from local traitors—to administer half the countries they’ve laid open. That’s the one thing you can be sure of.”

  With sudden weariness, agreeing with him heart and soul, and unable to like him, Thorburn growled,