The Flight From the Enchanter

  He turned back into the quiet house. He walked through the drawing-room into the garden. In the last light he saw the flowers closing up; and he saw the wood leopard, which had left the leaf where Mischa had placed it and was walking on the path. Rainborough watched it for a moment or two and then he ground it under his heel.

  Eleven

  NINA the dressmaker was at her sewing-machine. It was a treadle machine of an old-fashioned design. She operated the treadle with both feet, and both her hands were free to guide the material as it came flying through. Nina had once tried to use an electric model, but she had soon given it up. It made her nervous and jumpy. The old machine was harder work, but she liked the way in which it demanded the rhythmical cooperation of her whole body and left her tired, with a satisfying tiredness like that which she remembered having had long ago in childhood after she had been working in the fields.

  She was engaged in sewing an extremely long piece of cotton material. It was figured with some irregular pattern; but Nina was not looking at the pattern, she was absorbed in watching the steel jaws of the machine as they opened and shut with dazzling speed upon the stuff which was passing through them. The machine was looking more and more like some animal through whose rapacious mouth Nina was drawing the cotton, exerting a slight but steady pull to bring it through; and as she pulled it her feet upon the treadle moved at a corresponding pace.

  Then Nina began to notice that the machine was not sewing properly. Perhaps the thread had run out or the needle had broken. The material still flowed towards her like a river and passed through the snapping mouth of the machine and out under her hand, but she could see no signs of stitching upon it. Nina knew that something had gone wrong, but she couldn’t think what it was. She couldn’t even remember now what she was trying to do with that piece of material, or where it had come from with its curious and unfamiliar pattern. The remedy for these doubts seemed to be to operate the treadle even faster. Nina’s feet began to flash madly to and fro, and now the steel jaws were opening and shutting so rapidly that they appeared to be almost immobile. The rhythmical beat of the machine rose to a continuous hum, and the material came flowing through in an unending stream.

  Then Nina realized that she was running through a dark wood. She was running with a desperate speed so that only once in every ten steps did her feet touch the ground. Always beside her ran the machine, and she could see its steel eye glistening in the darkness from time to time. As she ran, Nina was still pulling the cotton material towards her through the jaws of the machine. The creature kept opening and closing its mouth as it ran, emitting a high-pitched whining sound, and Nina was just able to pull the cotton through; but she was all the time in fear lest it should suddenly close its jaws fast. Unless she could go on pulling the stuff towards her, something terrible would happen. If only the material would come to an end, she thought, I could stop running. But there seemed no end to it, and Nina and the machine ran faster and faster and the wood became darker and darker. The darkness began now to be thick and full of impediments. Soft stuffs hanging down from the trees touched Nina’s face with silk and velvet touches, and clawed gently at her arms and shoulders. The cotton stuff which flowed continuously through her hands seemed to be accumulating, however fast she ran, about her feet. It is binding my feet, she thought, I shall fall, and she turned to look at the beast beside her. As she turned she fell and the cotton suddenly billowed out, rising above her like a sail and descending to whirl itself round and round her limbs like a winding-sheet. Before it enveloped her she saw its pattern clearly at last; it was a map of all the countries of the world. At the same moment the creature began to savage the material, tearing it with its jaws, and then it sprang on top of Nina. She could feel its heavy paws upon her chest, and a deafening and continuous barking.

  She woke up with a start and sat up in bed. Her heart was beating with a terrible violence. It was broad daylight. Someone was banging on the door. Nina got up quickly and put on a dressing-gown. She ran to the door. It was a telegram. She opened it with trembling fingers, although she already knew what it contained. It read: Sorry can’t come today. It was unsigned, but she knew that it came from Mischa Fox.

  Nina tore up the telegram and burnt the fragments, in accordance with Mischa Fox’s instructions concerning all his communications, however anonymous. Then she got dressed slowly and tidied up her bed and pushed it away into the cupboard in the wall where it stayed during the day. She had overslept, but it was not important. She would have extra time to work that afternoon. She had put off an important client at short notice, and probably offended her, because Mischa had told her that he was coming; and now after all he was not coming. But nothing could be done about that, and Nina was not even troubled about it. It happened so often.

  She moved now towards the window, pushing aside as she went the rows of hanging garments and letting the sunlight come down the room. The windows were tall, but high off the ground. Nina stood on a chair and pushed the sash up as far as it would go. Then she perched herself, as she so often did in the early morning, upon the edge of the window, sitting half upon the sill outside. But she could see neither the dizzy drop to the street below nor the green of the springtime plane trees which blurred the edges of the houses that lay between her and the river. The cool air blew suddenly into her face. But Nina, looking out with a glazed expression, knew at that moment only the darkness of her own heart. As she sat there stiffly, she looked like a blind girl.

  Nina was thinking, today I will go to see Miss Keepe. I can’t go on any longer. When she had decided this she felt a little relief. Nina knew very well how much she owed to Mischa Fox. When Mischa had first discovered her she had been working in a textile factory and was a dressmaker only in her spare time. Without his help she would never have been able to achieve an independent establishment and a clientele. He had found her this room, the rent of which he still paid, and had somehow brought it about that, without his own name being ever mentioned, a large number of people should hear of her. One client led to another, and soon Nina had as much work as she could deal with.

  Nina had given up some time ago the attempt to define what her relation was to Mischa Fox. When Mischa had appeared in her life she could, from the first moment, have refused him nothing. He bore with him the signs of a great authority and carried in his indefinable foreignness a kind of oriental magic. She was ready from the first to be his slave, though it never occurred to her to think that she might take more than a very minor part in his life. She had been prepared to be neglected and even in the end abandoned. She had not been prepared for the curious role which she found herself in fact forced to play.

  When Mischa had installed her in the room in Chelsea Nina had had, as she imagined, no illusions about his motives; and at that time she loved him with an intensity and an abjection which left her without misgivings. Time passed, however, and Nina began to find it harder and harder to make Mischa out. He came to see her at irregular intervals and asked her politely how she was getting on. Sometimes he would talk to her about something that was worrying him, a business deal, a friend in trouble, the organization of a journey — though always these stories had such an air of generality, such a lack of identifiable details, that Nina wondered whether they were true, while at the same time wondering why Mischa should tell them to her if they were not. At other times he would come and sit for long periods in her room in silence. On such occasions he would usually ask her to continue with her work, though without using the machine; and then Nina would busy herself with sewing seams and buttonholes, casting a cautious glance every now and then towards Mischa, who would be lying back in his chair with a far-away look, his lips moving from time to time. Twice it happened, when Mischa seemed more than usually troubled, that he asked Nina to come and sit near him and not to sew. On one of these occasions he took her hand, which he held rather abstractedly for ten minutes, while he seemed to think about something else. On the second occasion he pressed her hand a
gainst his forehead before he finally let it go. This was possibly the happiest moment of Nina’s life. But nothing further ever happened.

  That is, nothing happened of the things which Nina had expected or wanted to happen. But she soon became convinced, though what exactly the evidence was for this she would have been at a loss to say, that she was playing, in the strange economy of Mischa Fox’s existence, some quite precise part — though what that part was she would perhaps never know. After a while he began to ask certain small favours of her. On a number of occasions she gave a night’s lodging to certain individuals, both men and women, who came to her door very late bearing notes from Mischa. Mischa seemed to expect her to do this without complaining, just as he expected her to make herself available at any hour at which he chose to announce his own arrival; and she did not complain. At another time he suddenly asked her to put on her best clothes and accompany him in an open car which he then drove very fast as far as Richmond and very slowly round inside the Park, before bringing her straight home again. Nina was sure that this was a show put on for the benefit of someone else; but she asked no questions.

  Were these things, she wondered, all that Mischa Fox required of her? She puzzled over this through long nights. At times she felt that he was waiting for her to understand something, to see some need which he would never speak of, and which she was simply failing to see. This thought tortured her. At other times, particularly after she had been present, silently, at one or two discussions of Mischa’s character, she imagined that perhaps he was keeping her in reserve to play a part in some plot or conspiracy which had not yet matured, which might not mature for years. Time passed, and she came to no conclusion, nor did any opportunities come her way for making a closer study of Mischa. He never asked her to come to his house in London. Nina’s thoughts dwelt a great deal upon this fabulous and much-discussed residence, but she had never dared even to go near it.

  A little later again Mischa Fox suggested that he should pay her a monthly allowance, in addition to the rent of the room. When she demurred, he explained that what he called his ‘inconvenient ways’ were possibly damaging to her business, and it would relieve his mind if she would permit him to make this up to her. As Nina was incapable of opposing any will of her own to Mischa should he wish to define her position further in any way that he pleased, she simply agreed; nor was she at that time at all distressed at the thought that she was falling yet farther into Mischa’s power. It was some time after that she first began to feel irked by her condition.

  Nina was ambitious; she was also a good organizer and a good business woman. Her range of contacts was now very considerable, and it occurred to her that if she could have more space, and take on two or three girls to work for her, she could double her profits and set down the basis of a powerful enterprise. She spoke of this one day to Mischa Fox. It was apparent at once that the idea displeased him — and as soon as Nina had spoken she saw with a cold clarity that any plans of this kind would be likely to run counter to whatever Mischa Fox’s mysterious purposes for her might be. It was important to him that she should be alone, that she should be available to speak with him privately at any hour, that she should be able to entertain his anonymous guests. In answer to her, Mischa said shortly, but without irritation, that he would prefer her not to carry out this plan — but that he would see that she was not financially a loser. Nina did not mention the matter again, but from that time her monthly allowance was considerably increased.

  That she should be alone. After her first frenzy of love for Mischa had given place to an emotion more mixed with puzzlement and curiosity, this aspect of the matter became for Nina more and more a source of distress. The strange nature of her relations with Mischa effectively deprived her of any other private life. Although he visited her rarely, she had to be at all times available, and the iron discretion which Mischa, without explicitly enjoining, imposed upon her by his personality made it impossible for her to open her heart to anyone.

  Then Nina began to realize — it became apparent to her in the manner of speech of her clients and acquaintances — that she was coming to be known, for all his and her secrecy, as one of Mischa Fox’s creatures. This reputation would do her little good in her trade; but she was beyond caring about this. The title itself wounded her profoundly. She was aware, it was the current gossip, that Mischa Fox was supposed to have at his disposal dozens of enslaved beings of all kinds whom he controlled at his convenience. But it both shocked her and hurt her that she should be regarded as one of them. It was in her case, she felt, surely quite different. She loved Mischa. But on further reflection she wondered, was it so different? The regime which Mischa imposed upon her condemned that love to silence and deprived it of expression — until it was being transformed, Nina had to admit to herself, into a strange emotion which had in it more of terror and fascination than of tenderness. Once or twice Nina tried to nerve herself to speak frankly to Mischa. But the thought of all the help which she had accepted from him rose up to accuse her — and, more than this, she was too profoundly terrified of him to try to explain something which sounded so like sheer disloyalty.

  Then an idea came to Nina. She had always been aware of the fact that the only way in which she could escape from Mischa Fox would be to leave England — but she had never developed this notion, since it had not seemed to her that it was possible to leave England. She had come to England to get away from other places, and to get away from England there was nowhere left in the world to go to. But then, somehow or other, it occurred to her that this was not so. She might go to Australia. The more she thought of this, the more compelling the idea became. Nina had already rejected the notion of going to America, not so much because it might be hard to get in as because Mischa Fox was frequently to be heard of jumping on the plane for New York. Nina knew herself, and she knew that she could not oppose her will to that of Mischa in any direct combat, she could not propose even the mildest skirmish. Her only hope lay in flight; and once she fled she must be sure that she would never never see Mischa Fox again. America seemed to her, for this purpose, too small a place. Australia seemed to promise her some safety. She had never heard of Mischa going to Australia.

  As soon as Nina became fully aware of this treacherous idea she became obsessed with the task of keeping it hidden from Mischa. She could hardly believe that he could not read her thoughts. It was partly because of this terror of being discovered that for a long time Nina made no move towards the execution of her plan. To begin with, her only indulgence was whenever possible to go to see Australian films, during which she would weep continuously. She pictured a life in Australia which would be in every way the reverse of her present life. There a rough and generous people would take her to their hearts. She would live in their midst a life of openness and gaiety, respected as a worker and loved as a woman.

  At last she began to make a closer study of the matter. She read one or two books about Australia at the reference library. Greatly daring, she bought a map, which she kept in her room rolled up inside a bale of material and only consulted when she was sure that Mischa Fox was out of the country. She stood about, briefly and guiltily, outside Australia House in the Strand, looking at the pictures. The only thing she did not dare to do was to go inside and make some really businesslike inquiries. She was afraid that if she did so she would be asked to leave her name and address — and she had the refugee’s horror of the power and hostility of all authorities and of their mysterious interconnexion with each other. It seemed to her impossible that if she left her name at Australia House Mischa Fox should not be told of this within twenty-four hours.

  What Nina needed if she was to carry her plan any further was a confidant and accomplice, someone, preferably an English person, who could advise her, make inquiries for her, and if necessary provide her with a reference; and it had for a long time been clear that there was only one person in the world whom she could trust in such a capacity, and that was Rosa Keepe. Nina had come
to know Rosa in the way of business soon after she had come to Chelsea. She was not certain, but she thought it likely, that Rosa must have heard the rumours concerning her own dependence upon Mischa. Nina knew, as everyone did, though again, as everyone did, in rather general terms, of Rosa’s former connexion with Mischa — and her regard for Rosa was augmented by an astonished respect for a being who had once been under Mischa’s spell and had freed herself without migrating to the Antipodes. For the austerity and rudeness of Rosa’s character she felt a timid reverence, and for its generosity a timid affection — a sentiment which Rosa, who seemed indeed very scantily aware of Nina’s existence, showed no particular sign of returning.

  Although Nina had never achieved any extensive acquaintance with Rosa, her imagination had not been idle where the Englishwoman was concerned; and by this time Rosa figured in the mind of the dressmaker as a kind of archangel, a beneficient power, and in any case her only hope. The idea of telling all her troubles to Rosa had occurred to Nina much earlier, before the conception of the Australian plan; but fear, both of Mischa and of Rosa, had prevented her from acting. But the plan of escape, gradually growing in her mind, gave her strength; and now, with the terror of her nightmare still upon her, she said to herself, I can bear it no longer.

  She climbed down from the window-sill, and walked slowly back across the room. As she walked, the materials brushed her tenderly with their characteristic touches, and she paused to plunge her face into each and inhale its familiar smell, like one in a garden who moves from flower to flower. Comforted, she prepared to leave. She looked at her watch. It was nearly eleven. It was not too early to call on Miss Keepe.

  It was eleven o’clock. Annette was still in bed. She had been awake for some time, lying there uncomfortably and trying to persuade herself that she felt ill. Unfortunately she did not feel ill, but only extremely miserable. As her gaze wandered about the room, lighting without consolation upon this or that familiar object, she wondered what she could do which would be extreme enough to give expression to the way she felt. She groaned intermittently and attempted to weep. It was most unsatisfactory. When she tired of this, she sat up in bed and began to pull on her dressing-gown.