CHAPTER FOUR

"Wanted: lady with knowledge of many languages, Balkan tongues desirable, secretarial work. Call between 10 and 11. Second courtyard on left...."

Diana glanced down at her wrist-watch. Nine-thirty! She paid the bill for her breakfast, left the modest hotel where she had put up, and struck out through the park towards the centre of the town.

That morning when she had gone to Milan--was it only last Sunday?--she had been urged onward by an inner force which made her willingly look forward to undertaking almost any kind of work be it never so humdrum. She was tired of the south, and was filled with longing for a northern climate. Such restlessness often seized her towards May or June, and the north appealed to her at no other time of the year. She had clasped her hands and had examined them as if to sample their usefulness; her eyes had travelled up to the massive line of the Alps, that mysterious wall cutting her off from her second self in the north. Six years of untrammelled wandering had taught her to look upon chance happenings as the bridge of fate leading to the unknown.

"How long ago was it?" she asked herself that evening as she looked out of the window in the train. "Two years? No, it must be three since I took up a job because I needed to do so. Lack of money and the wish no longer to lead a quiet life always seem to coincide! Should I go to Paris? No, London would be better. But I went to Paris where I worked under Charpentier at the institute.... What extraordinary things developed out of that move! Of course the parting had been easier, Sidney was in good hands, and Father... Father..."

She laid her hot forehead against the cold window-pane and caught her own reflection in the glass. Suddenly she became aware of lights creeping by, slowly and stealthily when they were away there across the wide fields, and like a flash when they were near the line. "Other people's destinies are crossing my path through this transparent pane. Always these alien destinies, which I have not summoned, move athwart my eyes, and I am doomed, nay rather, I am blessed in being allowed to let them go by. Stars! I would that the starlight might once again delight my eyes...."

Diana looked up, but the sky was overcast. On reaching Milan the other day she found that her total cash amounted to fifteen hundred francs. One thousand she spent in buying underclothes, two hats, one evening gown, and a costume for day-time use. She was wearing the latter now, with a white blouse, a plain straw hat, and comfortable, low-heeled shoes. Neither jewellery nor flowers were there to relieve the Puritan simplicity of her toilet. But her efforts to assume the aspect of an ordinary office girl were unsuccessful. In the first place she did not trip along, or strut, or slouch; she just walked. Her carriage, too, betrayed her, for her head was well poised on the broad shoulders and her elastic body swayed rhythmically from the slender hips. She looked like one accustomed to much rowing and riding. Her arched brows gave her away, as did likewise her hands with their long, delicate fingers and the finely moulded wrists. Above all, her face denied her assumed profession. The bronzed profile was that of a young Sicilian, such as Antonello da Messina loved to portray. Everything in her belied the character she had endeavoured to suggest by means of clothes and her alias.

"This is a very fine park," she thought, "but the lawns should not have been fenced in, nor all the paths made into alley ways, nor every bush clipped into a round. How obsessed the north is with its dreams of the south! Fearing its own peculiarities it becomes a mere imitator, and tries to tame all that would fain be wild."

She turned into the central walk which ran in a perfectly straight line from entry to exit. Here the great town seemed inspired with the wish to hide its practical, everyday life behind luxuriant trees, while all the time the electric trams went screeching and roaring through the ancient forest. Diana sped on.

"Whenever I wake in this city I feel that it is in some small degree akin to me, that it responds to the northern half of my make-up. Did ever town spur one on to activity as this one does? Is London or New York so incorruptible? I am glad that I am going into its very heart. Here I shall be able to work just like other people; indeed I must! High time I began again...."

Diana had now been a week at her secretarial post. She had adopted a new name, determined to forget the past, determined to be an unknown unit in the metropolis and thus to avoid head-waggings and questions in regard to her changed circumstances. She was scared at the idea of repeating previous encounters on the same stage. Since she was entirely free from sentimentality, she fostered memories only when they could prove useful to her development. This time, she had resolved to bury them.

She sat in the little whitewashed room with its two doors always flung wide, while twenty voices could be heard clamouring simultaneously, the simplest sentence being uttered with the loudness characteristic of persons whose profession it is to be ever on the go. After a while she glanced up, and gazed at the patch of grey wall to be seen above the reflector which did its best to cast a little daylight into the dark office.

"It's one o'clock," she mused. "We should be coming from our swim. Andreas's bathing-wrap would fly open and he'd pick his way gingerly over the stones.... He never liked them! The Barbary doves used to fly out of our path and flutter overhead. Domenico would speak of the wind, and would tell us that the weather had set fair till the new moon.... Till the new moon, an eternity, two whole weeks! A fortnight of clear skies and sunshine and wind. When before did the days seem so long; when before had I ever wished them to be unending? What if Othello could trace me to this cell? ... He'd lay hold of our bald-headed editor who always comes singing into the office, and would shake him by the slack of the trousers! Only for a while, only for a little while I must hold out here...."

She set to work again. There were articles from Turkish newspapers to be translated, Serbian reports to run through, Greek pamphlets to be read. Everything had to be summarized as tersely as possible and at topmost speed. She found the task interesting, for she knew the countries well. Certain names would provoke her to laughter, for though they now stormed through a troubled Europe as signatures to telegrams, a year ago they were absolutely unknown save in the locality where their bearers dwelt; the names of petty lawyers, nervous young deputies, and the like. On the flowery island confronting Pallanza, she had dreamed away her days in blissful ignorance of events in the world without, events which her contemporaries in self-complacent optimism chose to call "historical."

"Fräulein Linke!"

Diana answered promptly.

"Yes, Herr Larisch."

"Have you any Belgrade left? We want another twenty lines of Belgrade stuff for tonight."

The owner of the voice now appeared in the doorway. The man was big and shapeless, wore his pince-nez astride a thick nose. His left hand was in his trouser pocket and was for ever fidgeting with the contents, while with his right he pulled the collar away from his neck as if to give himself more breathing space.

"Herr Mailuft has of course gone to sleep at the vital moment, and yet he's well paid and for a year and a half has had nothing to do but run up expenses! That comes of engaging literary men to do journalistic work. Do you know what the fellow did the day the prince was hunted out of Albania? He sent a long wire describing a sunset over the mountains of Epirus!"

Diana laughed. The speaker, who was delighted at her appreciation of his wit, continued:

"You may well laugh. They just sink into places others have prepared for them, and have no responsibilities. If their work is not done one day they can just as well do it the next. I wouldn't mind taking on a job like that.--How do you come to know all their mad tongues, Fräulein? Have you ever been there? A pretty sort of amusement. What are those people to us, I should like to know. It's the diplomats' fault when poor innocent nations are involved in such a crisis."

By now he had got into his stride, and had no difficulty in pursuing his discourse.

"The reason is obvious. Not until there is a parliamentary government which has assumed control over ministers of State and diplomatists, not until the responsibility of such persons to the duly elected representatives of the people has been enforced by a written constitution..."

"No disquisitions here, Larisch; that is the chief's prerogative. Here's the stuff for your evening edition, just count the words, I must see where it is best to break off...."

Larisch, crestfallen, withdrew to his own place in the neighbouring room, thus making way for the newcomer who stepped over to the writing-table where Diana was at work, and sat down opposite her. His mocking eyes twinkled at her from behind gold-rimmed spectacles, yet Diana could detect an underlying melancholy which may have been due to disappointment at lack of recognition for his talents. He looked at her placidly and kindly, folded his hands on the table, and said:

"Do you think Larisch is right?" Without waiting for an answer, he continued to hold forth in the way natural to those who have the gift of words and like to hear the sound of their own voices. "As if it were not thus in every country, as if, indeed, it were not highly desirable that the few should decide the fate of millions! As if, for instance, you, my good Larisch," he turned round and raised his voice, quite disregarding the fact that his words could be heard by the whole office, "as if you could sit there in peace and quiet were it not that our honoured father, the blessings of Allah be on him, pays you a monthly wage of nine hundred marks in beautiful blue bank-notes counted out to you by a grim-visaged Cerberus at the cash desk, not to mention pension insurance, Christmas bonuses, and all the rest...."

"Why are you inditing rhapsodies in terms of contracts?" cried the oily voice from the next room. "Besides, unless I am well paid for it, how can I sub-edit the precious material sent in by our worthy chief?" He modified his voice as he came in with the papers. "It's poor stuff again today. Not infrequently--what is it Horace says?--'dormitat Homerus'! 'Thoughts!' said Socrates. 'Thoughts, Gentlemen, if you please!' exclaimed Lassalle. A polished style is not enough to get us out of this coil. When I recall the happy days in which straightforward German was the fashion here! One had not then to overhaul every sentence in order to see whether Nietzsche might not have expressed the news-item more pithily. We're too refined nowadays, old chap...."

He suddenly cut short his eloquence. Scherer, the owner of the paper, stood on the threshold. The advent of this little god almighty before whom even the editor, according to Larisch's mythological hierarchy, was but as Mercury to Jupiter, had become so rare an occurrence that when he did appear his presence caused no small amount of perturbation. Scherer, the financier and head of the great publishing house, was still a comparatively young man. He was the son of the founder (God rest his soul) of this international journal; but there was no trace in him of the humble origin of his forbears, nor, indeed, could one detect any sign of degeneracy in him. He combined the maturity of a carefully trained successor with the reposeful qualities of the democrat of the second generation, and he clothed his whole being with so earnest a philosophical outlook that he was bound to attract the mistrust of every circle he came into contact with either in the realm of business or in the realm of thought.

The two male subordinates stood to attention as the big man entered, but Diana kept her seat and analysed his character by the mode of his entry. She looked him squarely in the face, undismayed by his prestige. His eyes were dark, and it seemed to her that they were out of place in their blond setting behind the horn spectacles. Or did they, perhaps, betoken a certain unrest in this head which seemed cast in metal, and over which an artificial constraint of silence had been imposed? Diana was quite unaware that she was gazing at him with as much concentration as a playgoer looking at an actor through opera glasses. The chief noticed her scrutiny, and thought:

"That's no ordinary secretary."

"Are you the one," he continued aloud, "who sent in this detailed statement, or, rather, this summary, yesterday?"

The two men withdrew, and closed the door with a great deal of noise as much as to say that they had not the slightest interest in what was to follow. Diana nodded. As she recognized her own handwriting the blood crept slowly upward into her face until she was blushing all over. Meanwhile, she was thinking:

"A metallic voice. I've no liking for tenors as a rule, but the voice suits the man...."

"It's very good, Fräulein..."

He waited for her to help him out with the name.

"Linke," said Diana, as if she had never been called anything else.

"Fräulein Linke, excellent. My name is Scherer. Were you ever in the Balkans? Correspondent?" He took the chair on the opposite side of the writing-table.

"I've not as yet done any newspaper work. I was travelling."

He looked at her more attentively, and thought:

"Proud. She says: 'Not as yet.' Avoids the word 'never'--which might serve her very well, for she must know that this first essay of hers has struck me very favourably."

Slowly, he set about questioning her, testing her:

"You were travelling?"

"Yes."

She threw the syllable into the air, raising her chin in the act and thus avoiding his scrutiny. The word rang forth with bell-like purity, shutting the door upon further questions; it verged on rebuff; was self-confident, full of a sense of responsibility, determined. A second or two passed while she felt his analytical gaze upon her. Then the clear-toned voice was saying;

"They told me that a woman had put this report together.... There's a good deal of noise here.... You are not as a matter of fact engaged to do editorial work. I'll find you an office over in the firm.... Will you step across with me?..."

They rose. Diana gathered her papers together. He did not attempt to help her. Arrived at the door, he made an almost imperceptible movement to allow her to pass out first.

The whole office was agog. The two eavesdroppers were immediately surrounded by an inquisitive crowd. It never entered any of their heads that Scherer had come to make gallant overtures--they knew him too well! Within their knowledge, there had never been the faintest rumour of such things in his connexion. What could he be after? Who was this new employee?

"What did he say?"--"What did she say?"--came from three or four typists simultaneously. Larisch answered evasively.

"Fish and find out, girls! Do you want a share of the good luck? You need only come to my department!"

"Your department? Oh, Herr Larisch!"