Curtain of Fear Read online

  “It’s not that!” she flared. “It is that you are going back on your word. When we became engaged we solemnly agreed that we would not allow politics to interfere with our private lives.”

  “Yes, that’s what we agreed; and I stand by what I said.”

  “How can you say that, when you have just refused to come to Aunt Agatha’s next weekend because you want to attend a conference of the Independent Labour Party, and this weekend you are scratching our match in order to stay up in London for the purpose of planning the issue of some filthy red rag with a Communist agitator?”

  Two crimson spots appeared in Nicholas’ lean cheeks, as he snapped, “Igor may be an agitator, if by that you mean a man who has the courage to speak openly in defence of the downtrodden masses, but he is not a member of the Communist Party, and I resent your stigmatising our honest project to expose capitalist abuses in a new periodical by terming it a filthy rag.”

  “All right, then I resent it if you like; but I refuse to be treated like this. If we are to make a success of our marriage, from now on you must give your political activities second place to our life together.”

  “Wendy, my work is not for myself but for others; so I cannot give it up. But I swear to you that I’ll do my best to honour our agreement.”

  “Very well. Meet me half way, then. Either come to Aunt Agatha’s next weekend or get back here to-morrow in time for the match.”

  “Damn it, I can’t,” he cried in sudden exasperation. “I am already committed for this weekend and next.”

  She was very near to tears as she stammered, “I think you’re horrid. I’d … I’d have half a mind to give you back your ring, if …if your head had not been too full of your beastly politics for you to think of giving me one.”

  “I’m sorry about that,” he said contritely. “I meant to but I’ve had little chance. I’ll get you one while I’m in London and give it to you on Monday.”

  “I may not feel like accepting it,” she retorted angrily. “Stay up in London if you like, but while you are there you had better think things over. If by Monday you have not decided to meet me half way and come to Aunt Agatha’s, I shall consider our engagement at an end.”

  “Wendy, please!” He held out his arms to her, but she evaded his embrace, turned on her heel, stalked swiftly to the door, wrenched it open and slammed it furiously behind her.

  It was not until she was half way down the corridor that she realised that she had forgotten to snatch up the attaché case that held her sandwiches. Nothing would have induced her to go back for them, and she felt in no state to face her fellow students in the canteen. The prospect of a lunchless interval added further fuel to her anger, and during it she shed bitter tears in a quiet corner of the grounds. As she finally dried her eyes her resolution was taken. She had faced the fact that on this question time could be no healer. She must make her stand now, before she became further committed by publicly announcing her engagement. Desperately as she loved Nicky she must force herself to give him up unless, on his return from London, he was prepared to put her happiness before his other interests.

  CHAPTER II

  THE ATOMIC SCIENTIST

  On his journey to London that evening Nicholas was a very worried man. One of the things he admired most about Wendy was her strength of character. She was not the sort of girl who could be cozened into meek submission by a display of tact and a little petting; and he had an uneasy feeling that she really meant what she had said. The thought that she might stand by her ultimatum appalled him, for he had never wanted anything so much in his life as he wanted her. Yet how could he possibly continue with what he had come to regard as his life’s work if he ceased to collaborate actively with the little group of people who thought as he did, and believed that given the power to do so they could remedy all social ills?

  That damnable problem had been lurking in the back of his mind ever since the wonderful evening when Wendy had first confessed her love for him. For the past fortnight his overwhelming joy in being with her and thinking of her had enabled him to put it out of his thoughts for the greater part of the time, but at unexpected moments it had kept popping up and he had known that sooner or later it must be faced.

  Idealist as he was, Nicholas was by no means unconscious of the practical benefits which would accrue to him from marrying the rich Miss Stevenson. Apart from the delights and material comforts that a loving wife in any circumstances would bring him, now that he had agreed to let her accept the help that her doting father would almost certainly offer he could look forward to exchanging his dreary lodgings for a pleasant home. Entertaining on a modest scale would not be beyond them, and Wendy already had her own little car. Once the Stevensons were reconciled to the marriage they would probably insist on providing the means for the young couple to take pleasant holidays—perhaps even trips abroad—and if there were children it was certain that old man Stevenson would make himself responsible for seeing that they had the best education money could provide.

  As Nicholas had thought of all these things he had suffered certain qualms of conscience, recalling uneasily his own past diatribes against ‘worthless parasites who battened on the rich’; but he had succeeded in persuading himself that provided he did not use any of the ‘tainted’ money for personal ends he need not reproach himself. That he could not avoid benefitting from it indirectly was inescapable, but against that he set the argument that it would be little short of brutal to compel a girl who had had Wendy’s upbringing to scrape and slave when there was no necessity for her to do so. Moreover, he considered himself far from worthless, and further placated his scruples by the somewhat cynical reasoning that marrying a girl with money must result in his having far more free time which could be devoted to his political work.

  About that, too, he had, up till now, managed to lull himself into a false optimism. As a student Wendy had shown such promise that he had felt certain that with her good brain she could in due course be brought to see ‘the Light’, abandon the shibboleths of her bourgeois antecedents and be moulded into his right-hand in the great crusade for internationalism and equality. Only in the past few days had he begun dimly to realise that her patriotism, fervid loyalty to the monarchy, and belief that the Socialists were incapable of governing the country in its best interests, were far more the fruit of her own reasoned convictions than habits of thought accepted instinctively from the world of comparative affluence and privilege in which she had always lived.

  Another pleasing prospect that had taken shape in his imagination was that as a result of marrying Wendy he might hope for professional advancement. It so happened that her father and his immediate chief were friends of many years’ standing, as they had been brother officers in the First World War. The latter, Professor Benjamin Salting-Sala, was regarded by Nicholas as a charlatan of the first water; and it was probably true that he owed his present position more to the connections he had made during half a lifetime spent at Oxford, and his flamboyant personality, than to his academic achievements. He was a fat, florid bon viveur with charming manners and a cynical wit that made him excellent company. Being a rabid anti-Socialist he lost no opportunity of using his occasional lectures as a vehicle for tilting with derisive mockery at the revolutionary tenets that Nicholas held most dear. Had they both lived in Paris in 1793 and Nicholas had been a crony of Robespierre’s, he would have seen to it that Salting Sala was given a specially high priority for a one-way trip to the guillotine; as things were, the corpulent, luxury-loving professor was far too occupied with his own concerns even to be conscious that the most intelligent but disreputable-looking of his juniors was not among his many admirers.

  His blindness in this respect was now, in view of Nicholas’ marriage prospects, particularly fortunate, for Salting-Sala was a power to be reckoned with in the University; and while he was too much of a snob to extend his patronage to a member of his staff whom he looked upon as his social inferior, all the odds were that, having no
personal prejudice against Nicholas, he would readily do so to him, as John Stevenson’s son-in-law.

  The thought that he might be about to achieve through favouritism the promotion which he had earned by merit, but was denied by lack of influence, was another that made Nicholas’ conscience squirm. Yet again he had quieted it with the sophistry that the higher his standing in the academic world the greater would be the regard paid to his articles championing the rights of the toiling masses.

  In fact, during the past fortnight his mind had taken on an entirely new orientation. Almost unconsciously he had come to accept that Wendy would bring him not only married bliss but a new life of ease and comfort, and hitherto unhoped-for opportunities to become a more potent force in the political field.

  But that morning he had been rudely awakened from this happy dream. She had made it unmistakably clear that their political views were utterly irreconcilable. He could still have her and the ease and comfort, but there was a price to be paid for those things. Not only had his cherished plan of making her his willing helpmate finally gone up in smoke; she was not even prepared to tolerate a continuance of his own activities on their present modest scale.

  Despite his very human tendency to find plausible excuses for wandering from the straight and narrow path, Nicholas was at heart a man of great integrity. Desperately as he wanted Wendy for his wife, he knew that he could not have her on those terms.

  As the train rumbled into Euston he made up his mind about that. On Monday he must tell her that he meant to adhere to the undertaking he had given his friends to attend the Conference of the resurrected I.L.P. the following weekend. That was, he knew, to risk that she might throw him over there and then, once and for all. That risk had to be taken; but there was at least a hope that she would give him another chance. If she did he would meet her wishes as far as he possibly could in the future, and by treating his political work as a thing apart, do his utmost to prevent it from interfering with their social life; but whatever happened he must continue his self-imposed task of writing and speaking on behalf of the helpless millions who were incapable of writing or speaking for themselves.

  At half past six he arrived at the Russell Hotel, and having left his bag in the cloak-room, went through to the cocktail bar, where he had arranged to meet his cousin. Bilto Novák was there at a table in a corner drinking a whisky and soda. He was ten years older than Nicholas, a shade shorter, a little broader in the shoulders, and had a touch of grey above the ears in his red hair; otherwise their physical resemblance was striking. Their faces were the same shape, their eyes the same colour, and both had the lean cheeks and jutting chin inherited from a common grandfather; so anyone seeing them together would at once have assumed them to be brothers.

  That they had seen little of one another in recent years was mainly due to Bilto’s long stay in Canada and the United States, and since his return to England the opportunities for them to meet in London had been few and far between. But in the early nineteen-thirties Nicholas had spent several of his summer holidays with Bilto’s parents in Prague. He had then been a schoolboy and Bilto a University student, but despite the difference in their ages a strong affection had grown up between them, and the mutual memory of it made them greet one another now with the happy handshake of old intimates.

  Asked what he would drink Nicholas chose a gimlet, and Bilto ordered him a double with another whisky for himself. Then, with that directness which was one of Nicholas’ characteristics, he asked his cousin the reason for this urgent request to meet him in London. Glancing at the nearby tables, two of which were occupied, Bilto lowered his voice and replied, “It is a private matter so I’d rather not talk about it here. After dinner we’ll go up to my room and settle this business there. In the meantime tell me about yourself. How are you liking it at Birmingham?”

  Nicholas shrugged. “I’ve no complaints. I know I’m doing a good job and I think I’m pretty popular with my students—with those who come from the lower income groups, anyway—and one can hardly expect the minority who have capitalist backgrounds to like some of the policies that I advocate in my lectures.”

  “Do they allow you a free hand to say what you like?”

  “Oh yes. That’s one of the good things about England; and the tradition that no one should be penalised for the free expression of his political views is particularly strong in the universities. Of course, I don’t go the whole hog, as my bosses would be bound to kick at that; but I’m managing to give a useful grounding in the principles of true Socialism to a number of highly-absorbent young people.”

  “What do you imply by the term ‘true Socialism’?” Bilto inquired.

  “You ought to know,” Nicholas replied quickly, “since you grounded me in it yourself when I was a kid and you were a student in Prague.”

  “It is generally referred to by another name,” Bilto said with a grin.

  Nicholas grinned back. “I know; but ‘a rose by any other name would smell as sweet’; and it’s getting the principles of the thing into the heads of the coming generation of intellectuals that counts.”

  “Your subject, Political Economy, provides the perfect vehicle for that. But how about your colleagues? Don’t they see what you are up to?”

  “As I’ve just implied, it is very much a live-and-let-live world, and quite a lot of the younger ones incline in varying degrees towards the Left. Unless someone monitored all my stuff and that of the others too, they would have difficulty in differentiating between our shades of opinion.”

  “Yes, I suppose that’s true. Have you any prospects of advancement?”

  “Not as things stand at the moment. The Senior Professor who has the most influence over my section is an old crook named Benjamin Salting-Sala. His principal assets are an acquaintance with half the people listed in Debrett and a Rabelaisian humour. He is the sort who goes about pinching the cheeks of the girl students, and gets away with it. God knows why, but they seem to like it, and look on him as a kind of funny uncle.”

  “I seem to have heard of him somewhere,” Bilto remarked.

  “That is quite probable. His influence is very far-reaching. His opinion is nearly always asked when the question arises of appointing a new Headmaster at one of the Public Schools; and it goes much further than that. It is said that he is even consulted from time to time by members of the Cabinet, on subjects entirely outside his own province.”

  Bilto nodded. “It is one of the queer things about the English that they often take major decisions on the advice of people who have no real qualifications to give it. That is why their foreign policy is so hopelessly unpredictable.”

  “Maybe you’re right. Anyhow, you can well imagine that a man of Salting-Sala’s type has little use for a junior like myself. His patronage is strictly reserved for those who can afford to ask him to dinner and fill him up with Chateau Claret.”

  “Still, you’re a personable chap, Nicky; so I take it you manage to have quite an enjoyable social life on more modest lines.”

  Nicholas’ mind was so saturated with thoughts of Wendy that his immediate impulse was to tell. Bilto about her; but he temporarily repressed it and replied, “The various undertakings for furthering the movement we are both interested in are always short of funds, and I feel it is up to me to help as much as I can. That keeps me pretty short, but I know a few interesting people and go out with them for drinks or a snack now and again. I’m having more fun, though, now the tennis season has started again.”

  The cousins were both tennis enthusiasts, so while they had another drink they talked of the game, and the prospects of their favourite players in the approaching championship tournament at Wimbledon. Then, after a while, Bilto glanced at the clock and said:

  “It’s a quarter past seven. Come on; let’s go in to dinner.”

  Before they were half way through the meal Nicholas could restrain himself no longer, and blurted out, “I’m by no means certain of things yet, but I’m hoping to get mar
ried in the fairly near future.” Then he launched into a glowing description of Wendy.

  After listening to him for a few minutes, Bilto shot him a swift apprehensive look, and said, “From all you say she sounds a typical bourgeois, and not at all a suitable wife for anyone who thinks as we do. Does this mean that you have succumbed to the flesh-pots and are going over to the enemy, Nicky?”

  “Not on your life!” Nicholas declared. “But it is that which makes things still uncertain. Her father is the typical blood-lusting Briton produced by the Public Schools. He won a D.S.O. as a young Major in the First World War, and served in the second as an Intelligence Officer. If a third broke out to-night he would chuck up his business to-morrow to get back into any sort of uniform—if they’d have him; so it is hardly to be wondered at that the whole family is for all Queen and Country, and regard even futile old Attlee as first cousin to the Devil.”

  “I see; and having been a conscientious objector in the last show-down puts you on a pretty bad wicket.”

  Nicholas flushed slightly and looked down at his plate. “They don’t know about that, and I see no reason why I should make my case worse by telling them. I’ve let them assume that I spent the war working on a farm because my health was not then up to the standard required by the Services.”

  Again Bilto glanced a little apprehensively at him, and asked, “Isn’t that putting one foot on the slippery slope?”

  “No. I don’t regard it in that way. The past is past, and all that really matters is that I should have a clear conscience about the future.”

  “Anyhow, I take it that the girl’s family are opposed to her marrying you, and that is the fence you have got to get over?”