Rachel looked at her husband.
‘Well?’ she said.
And even as she spoke she knew that she was not the central figure in the scene, she never had been. The question of her illness had scarcely touched the fringe of this atmosphere so tense, so still, it had brushed the outer layers of it, and struggled there impotently for the space of a moment, seeking to gain admittance. And now once more it had been wafted aside and she was nothing but a mute spectator, a poor shadow thing, watching some silent duel that held no relation to her, that admitted nothing and no one but the two locked and interwoven forces themselves. They were living their own lives on another plane, seeking the key to their own interests, pushing their way beyond her and losing themselves indefinitely in the white clouds. She was dead to them already. Rachel did not wait for the answer that never came, she got up from the settee where she had been sitting, holding to the cloak that slipped from her tired fingers, and she walked past Julius and Gabriel as if she were truly the ghost she saw herself to be, and she felt her way down the companion-way to her cabin like a spirit in a world of its own.
They heard the door of her cabin close.
Julius moved from the table, lighting a cigarette, and he went and stood by the side of his daughter looking out upon the water. Neither of them spoke for a moment. The hard rim of the sun was rising above the dark grey sea.
He said: ‘I’ve been worried about you lately.You’ve been restless, disturbed about something. I know what was the matter but you had to fight it out alone at first. It will be all right now, won’t it?’
‘Yes,’ she said.
‘We mustn’t be serious about it,’ he said, smiling. ‘From now on everything’s going to be like the party last night, only without the jingle and the glare.You’re going to be happier than you’ve ever been. You must make up your mind to that.’
She smiled too. ‘I made it up a long while ago,’ she said.
‘Did you? When?’ he asked, curious, surprised at this.
She shook her head, she would not tell him. She would always keep some things to herself.
‘What shall we do?’ he said. ‘Shall we make any plans? Is there anything you have in mind?’
‘We might do the cruise you suggested,’ she said. ‘We’ll go south in this boat and not bother to come back until we want to. I don’t want hunting or racing now. Not for a long time, anyway. Shall we do that? Would you be bored?’
‘Don’t be an idiot, I’m never bored,’ he said. The sun was rising higher out of the water, soon the whole dull orange body would appear, and it would not be the odd grey light any more, but the beginning of a new day.
Gabriel stretched her arms above her head and yawned, sleepy suddenly, contented, the strain and tension lost with the new dawn. They laughed at each other. He caught hold of her hand and swung it about in the air.
‘We’re going to have terrible fun,’ he said.
Down below in her cabin Rachel was pouring five, six, seven little grey pellets from a bottle into her hand. She went to her wash-basin and filled a glass of water. Then she swallowed the pellets one after the other, and swallowed the water from the glass. She opened the porthole by her bed and saw the sun come up over the water. It seemed strange to her that her last conscious thoughts should not be of those two on the deck above, but of Walter Dreyfus, her father, sitting alone at his desk in the City, a revolver in his hand.
‘That time when you came home from Italy,’ Julius was saying, ‘and you said at supper you’d like us to go to Venice, I believe you were thinking of this.’
Gabriel laughed.
‘Were you?’ he said. ‘In the depths of your mind - were you?’
She made a face at him.
‘Oh! Papa - you know me too well.’
He glanced at her, hesitating, biting his thumb-nail, and then exclaimed in annoyance, as though irritated, brushing the air away with his hands: ‘Don’t call me Papa.’
The following morning Rachel Lévy was found dead in her cabin. She must have been taken ill in the early hours of dawn, and perhaps called to her husband, and he had not heard.
Julius Lévy wired to his own doctor in London as soon as the tragedy was discovered - he would not let anyone from Cowes see his wife - and this doctor was brought down to Portsmouth in a fast car and a launch met him and brought him right over to Cowes without delay, and on to the yacht.
It was heart failure, of course, so the news was given out; no need for a post-mortem or an inquest. And then a few hours afterwards the Wanderer left her moorings with husband and daughter on board, taking Rachel Lévy home to Granby to be buried.
It was hardly to be wondered that Julius Lévy and Gabriel should decide to go abroad after the funeral. They were to be away some seven or eight months, and would not return for the hunting at Melton that winter. Nobody could remember Julius Lévy being out of England for so long before. His wife’s death had probably broken him up. It was a good thing that he had such a companion in his daughter. Rather odd, perhaps, that they should choose to travel to the Riviera in the Wanderer, the yacht in which Rachel Lévy had died, but perhaps being a Jew and a foreigner he was funny about certain things. He might even have some sentimental attachment to the yacht because of his wife.
So Julius and Gabriel left England, joining the yacht at Southampton one morning towards the end of August, and they did not come back to England until the beginning of April.
News of their travel came through to England from time to time, Julius Lévy keeping in touch with business and happenings in the City, but it was understood that he was taking the first real holiday of his life.
When he returned at the beginning of April looking very bronzed and fit it was decided by all who welcomed him that he had successfully recovered from the shock of his wife’s death. He seemed in splendid health and in terrific spirits, looking not a day older than forty-five. If he was a trifle on the big side, his neck bulging ever so slightly over the back of his collar, it suited him. His hair, thick and growing white at the temples, was most distinguished.
And Gabriel of course was lovelier than ever, older perhaps, a little more self-possessed and sophisticated than before, but quite lovely. She had such abounding vitality, such terrific enthusiasm for life. She was like her father in that way. She was her father over again. She was vivid, amusing, brilliant in twenty ways. She did things well, she was talented. Wherever she was, and in whatever company, she invariably made that place and those people more vital because of her. The word most used to describe her was ‘attractive.’
‘Gabriel Lévy?’ people said with a certain depth of interest, smiling a little. ‘Oh! yes, decidedly attractive,’ and they would put a world of suggestion into their toning of the word ‘attractive’ as though it held infinite possibilities. It became a meaty word, a significant word. She was also ‘mysterious,’ and ‘intriguing.’ ‘Intriguing’ used perhaps by women with an unmistakable tremor of envy in their throats.Yet no one was able definitely to discover the secret of her personality. No one was able to return home and say: ‘Well, now we know what she is.’ She defied interpretation. It was finally admitted that the truest statement made about her was by a young man hardly out of the nursery whose knowledge of life was limited, and yet because of his very simplicity was able to see straight. He said, flushing to the roots of his hair: ‘You know, I think she’s terribly attractive, but when you dance with her she makes you feel she doesn’t want you. It’s as if she were tremendously alive and you were a piece of wood. And that’s all wrong, because she obviously must hate pieces of wood - she has such hot eyes.’
So there was Gabriel Lévy seen by a boy, and soon by everybody else, too - she was baffling and disturbing, and finally explained as ‘Yes - very odd, keeps one at arm’s length and God knows why - she has hot eyes.’
It mattered very little to Gabriel what people thought of her. She went her own way, choosing as companions those who amused her and who did the same things;
who danced, and rode, and sailed boats; but though she laughed with them and gave to them the warmth of her personality she was intimate with none of them. She enjoyed the company of a large collected crowd, she did not want the close relationship of individual friendship. At the moment she was eminently satisfied and happy in her way of living. It seemed to her that her world could continue in this fashion for a long time. There would not have to be any changes.
Julius was happy, too. He thought he had reached a place in his life in which it would be pleasant to dwell for ever. He had climbed a hill, and as yet there was no pressing need to look down upon the farther side. If he chose it would be easy for him to rest here continuously, his back turned to the future. He would make the future into the present. Nothing had ever been so formidable for him. His past, seen in perspective, made an interesting picture to look back upon. He took a pleasure these days in reviewing his past. He had come to a time when there was a certain relish in conjuring up old lost sensations. It seemed to him now that his life had been rich in many ways. There was a zest and a flavour about it that stung and was good. The old early restlessness and striving for achievement were enjoyable to remember now that he was satisfied. There had been doubts and indecisions in his youth that were his no longer. Even those fears and night terrors that had come to him throughout his life even three and four years ago, were banished now. The faces of dead people did not haunt him. Death itself was a bogey in a dark cupboard, locked securely, and tied by the feet. Paul Lévy was not a mocking figure in the silence of the night, but a poor ghost vanished into the air. And the old beautiful intangibility of the secret city had gone up in smoke and dust and ashes. In its place had risen a city of reality, of scents and of sounds, and he dwelt in this city holding the key in his hands.
It was a new and wonderful sensation to be without fear and to have confidence in the night. There was no spectre of loneliness lurking in the shadows, no dreaded whisper in his ear - ‘Why? - Where now? - To what end?’ All that was gone. He had come upon a new land and he was satisfied.
During the eight months he had travelled Europe with Gabriel his outlook had been that of a boy’s, fresh and unspoilt, open to every new impression, ready to receive each sight and smell and sound with enthusiasm and appreciation. There had never been a moment of boredom, no listless yawn, no rebellion at the surfeit of impressions. His energy was boundless, it was impossible for him to tire. Gabriel was the ideal companion, the other self, the ridiculous denial that they were in reality two persons. She was a vital necessity, a limb, an artery, the sap of the tree. It was incredible to him that there had been a time when he had lived alone. They understood one another. They were happy together. He knew that he was content and that this was no phase. He knew that he would never more want anything in life but this relationship.
The war of 1914-18 was the means of breaking up the scheme of things that Julius Lévy had intended for himself. The pleasant relaxation of living could be his no longer, the idle enjoyment of body and soul must give way before the terrific onslaught that shook the security of Europe.
It was imperative that his interest should be held firmly, from the first angry mutterings and rumbles of the approaching storm.
It was impossible that he should remain untouched. Here was a new field of venture open to him that he had not expected and for which he was unprepared, but which nevertheless he must turn upon and use for his own purpose.
War to him was no waving of banners, no departure of troop-ships overseas laden with men ready to sacrifice their lives for their country, no horror of carnage, no desolation of empty homes; but a game that must be played with great caution and subtlety by people who were never seen, who like himself were ready to gamble on the financial resources of that nation whose powers of endurance might be expected to last longest.
A European war, if carefully watched, need not necessarily bring ruin to those who meddled with it, and in a country like England, on whose shores it could safely be assumed there would be no actual fighting, he saw no reason why the state of war should not be the means of producing a source of profit. Profit to men such as himself. It was, perhaps, a welcome interlude in his life, coming at an opportune moment when he had been ready to allow his mind a certain laxity.
It happened that the situation was one which called for immediate action and he was determined not to miss the chance of exploiting this war for his own ends. It was, he reflected, an extremely lucky thing that war was with Germany and not with France. It might so easily have been the other way. Even to be an Englishman of over thirty years’ standing was no help to one whose name unfortunately happened to be Goldberg or Bernstein. As a Lévy he was safe, as a proud possessor of French blood he was safer still. He was glad that he need undergo none of the uneasiness and embarrassment suffered by so many of his friends, Jews of German origin. Their methods to avoid detection afforded him amusement. There was a lack of dignity in the scramble to change the second syllable of a name, a certain infantile air of dressing-up for charades when any of them appeared in uniform. Some fellows had the misfortune to be interned.The war would not be a source of profit to them unless they had the intelligence to employ reliable agents to look after their affairs.
However, their worries were not his worries, the awkward position of the German Jew only left the field clearer for himself.
Sometimes he permitted himself a small particle of personal satisfaction in the thought of this war against Germany; he closed his eyes and turned his mind back to the fear of a child forty years ago who was driven from his home. He thought of Grandpère Blançard shot before his eyes. He thought of the bare garret in the Rue des Petits Champs and the sound of the shells falling upon Paris. He thought of the guttural voice of a Prussian soldier in the silence of the night, and he remembered his own heart beating and his hands sweating as he crouched in the rail wagon. No, he had been through his experience of war. It was the turn of other people now. In England they had turned their backs on his suffering forty years ago, they had sat tight and secure in their little island, stretching no hand across the Channel. He wondered how they would enjoy the experience of bombs falling upon their precious homes. He wondered whether they would wiggle when the prices of food grew dear. These things would be interesting to watch.
Meanwhile, the very herd instinct of these people made them easy to lead. They were like so many sheep in a pen. The shepherd whistled, and they flocked at his bidding. There was only the need to cry: ‘England, my England!’ and they rose to a man. The clarion call of patriotism was a lovely tool. Enthusiasm and a loud voice, shining eyes and a warm handshake, vigour, personality - Hip-hip-hurrah with a tearing ring and a sob at the back of it - these little qualities were useful.
More useful still were factories where women stood for several hours a day to make munitions. Women who must be fed, too, who must queue up to meals in their hundreds and in their thousands if their endurance was to last.
Never should it be said that the women of England failed their native land because of empty bellies.
Rather let there be depôts in their hundreds and canteens in their thousands to satisfy this tide of hungry women. And what could be better for them, what more likely to put muscle into their honest English sinews and health into their stout hearts than Lévy’s Bully Beef?
Those boys who marched on Salisbury Plain, those children who waved their caps at Waterloo Station, weren’t they all trained on Lévy’s Bully Beef?
That line of trenches silent and black in the early dawn, the bunch of grey-faced men waiting for a signal, the officer with his eyes on his watch, the scramble and the shouting, the wild desperate run and the last limb kicking. Victory or Defeat? No matter, these men were fed on Lévy’s Bully Beef.
Kitchener wants you. Yes, but you can’t serve your King and Country until you fill up with Lévy’s Bully Beef.
Why is Fritz frightened? Because Tommy has that Lévy look.
And that poster on every
hoarding, of the Emperor of Germany caricatured as though in terror, his spiked helmet awry, his moustache twisted up in fear, his hands upraised in a gesture of surrender while towards him advance a regiment of red-faced smiling tin-hats - ‘When Kaiser Bill said Kammerad - He learnt that British Troops were Fed on Lévy’s Bully Beef.’
There was the song on everybody’s lips, first sung at the Empire, and afterwards yelled and whistled on route marches:‘Bully Beef’ll take you back to Blighty.’
A household word, born in a night, started by nobody knew whom, and made of nobody knew what - horse, dog, cat - it scarcely mattered - the full flavour, the rich stout blood-making quality of Lévy’s Bully Beef.
The originator of the boom moved amongst the munition workers and the land girls and the raw recruits, the wounded Tommies, the departing troops, and the W.A.A.C.s, and as he watched them he smiled and thought of a boy in Paris forty-five years back who had sold rats in the street for two francs the piece.
Something for nothing - Something for nothing. ‘It is men like you, Mr Lévy, who are helping England to win through.’ The warm handshake, the bright eye, the excited cheers of five hundred munition workers.
‘For he’s a jolly good fellow
And so say all of us.’
Then 1916, 1917, the dreary hammering monotony of war, and Julius Lévy wondering whether Bully Beef had played itself out, and turning his mind to another vital necessity - Boots.
‘Given time,’ he decided, ‘this war could be won on boots alone.’
It was easy enough to flood the market with an unending supply of strong army boots - but they had to be cheap, and they had to look light. They had to have just that extra touch that would make them the smallest bit different from any other boot. The Lévy Boot. Wear Lévy leather and march to Berlin. Could the British Army wearing Lévy leather and eating Bully Beef fail to win the war?