Thus Augustine’s letter-writing limped, and presently he laid down his pen and mooned round the room examining the pictures all over again. There was a distant group of figures in one of them, on the banks of a river, which had intrigued him before; for they were so minute he couldn’t make out what they were at. Were they bathing—or ducking a witch?
If only he’d been standing on yon tufted abbey tower with that telescope he’d had as a boy turned on them! Vividly Augustine recalled the pleasure he used to get from studying just such distant groups, himself unseen. But then a new thought struck him: now—and without any telescope at all—he could study a blind Mitzi just like that! He could gaze right in her face at six inches range without giving her offense, just as long ago he used to study those ... those distant little girls in the garden! At the queer thought of it his heart jumped like a fish in his breast.
The recollection of his telescope made him turn automatically to the window, and look down from it into the great courtyard underneath. And there, to his astonishment, went Mitzi herself—quite alone, and blundering through the snow.
Mitzi (he saw) was purposefully feeling her way along the façade of the house: she had followed it right into the corner of the court where the snow had drifted: she was floundering almost waist-deep in snow. But then she turned at right-angles along the side-wall (evidently she hadn’t dared risk a bee-line in the open): found the door she wanted: unlocked it, and vanished inside.
6
For at the moment when Mitzi had felt herself to be at the implacable very bottom of despair, beating her head against the bars of her imperfectly-remembered religious instruction like a bird in a trap, a voice as real as the hand which had smitten her inward lips had said: “Think, Mitzi—THINK!” and suddenly the answer had come to her. There was indeed one damnable sin she had never repented nor even confessed for she had never noticed till now she was sinning it: all her life she had allowed herself to feel afflicted because she could not see as other children saw: she had never once thanked God for what little sight she had.
Now she had lost it she realized what a treasure even that purblind sight had been. Finding her way about used to seem difficult—yet how easy it had then been in comparison with now! Moreover, how singular had been the beauty of that peculiar world once hers! Those soft-edged, looming shapes things had: the irised patterns of color changing from moment to moment as when a kaleidoscope is shaken, the flickering fringes of bright violet round where windows were and the gorgeous coronas that meant lighted lamps: the veined and marbled skies, the moving dappled pillars that were her friends and the standing ones that were the trees ...
She, who had always hovered halfway to blindness—surely this should have been a perpetual reminder to her that sight is not intrinsic to humanity: that sight is a gift—which God gives, or God withholds. Yet all this she had enjoyed and never once thanked God for it.
It was at this instant of perfect contrition for her ingratitude to God, this realization of the worthlessness of all her petty repentances of sins that were so minuscule in comparison with this one, that her intolerable nervous tension snapped and Mitzi at last made her necessary “leap” into the stretched blanket.
Thereafter all fear of Hell—all thought of punishment even—was suddenly gone as completely as a finished thunder-storm is gone. What remained was a feeling of floating: of floating on God’s love. It soaked her through like sunshine. She felt God incomparably nearer than ever before: God held her whole being nestling in the hollow of His infinite hand ... or no, God wasn’t even that much outside her—He was running in her veins. He was the tongue speaking in her mind’s ear and He was the mental ear which listened, He was the very mind in her which did her thinking. There was now no obstacle at all between herself and God: her will and His were one. Once, Mitzi had made her sight into a barrier between herself and God: so God had touched her eyes with His healing finger and now that barrier was gone ... and how she loved and adored Him for it!
Mitzi believed herself already quite lost in God. But was she, wholly? Surely there was still one tiny part of this neophyte which even now watched the transaction as it were from outside; and, curiously, that outsider was the “I” at the transaction’s very heart. That “I” in her which couldn’t help feeling just a little bit cocky that she had been chosen for an act of such exceptional grace; for after all, it isn’t everybody God thinks worth striking blind to bring her to Him.
But it is difficult to express this cavil at all without exaggerating it. For the moment at least the voice of this outside watcher inside Mitzi was in comparison as faint as the piping of a gnat dancing in the spray of a roaring waterfall: the Mitzi-of-the-Adoration was scarcely aware of it, and let it pass; and presently her desire for prayer and praise—to thank God for her new blindness as the source of this ecstasy she now enjoyed, of this foretaste within Time of the Eternal Life—had become so insistent her ordinary weekday room could no longer contain it, and she felt her way to the door.
No one saw Mitzi cross the hall; for that family council (which had met to decide what was to be done with Mitzi) was still in session: a conference at which the chairman—the late King Ludwig—watched, but said never a word. Thus no one saw, no one heard Mitzi creeping down the stairs. Even Mitzi herself never noticed when she tripped and nearly went headlong, so intent was her whole thought on reaching her goal.
It was not till she was right out in the courtyard, fumbling her way through the snow to find the door which led through the vestry into the castle chapel, that Augustine alone at last caught sight of Mitzi from his window—and darted down after her with thumping heart.
7
Augustine was an adept wildfowler and his shoes had thick crêpe-rubber soles. The door Mitzi had entered still stood open and he slipped inside, careful to make no sound.
He found himself in a room lined from floor to ceiling with noble old cupboards and presses in painted pine—like the changing-room of an 18th-century football club, he thought (if the 18th Century had had football clubs), but this changing-room had a faint ecclesiastical smell and he observed a holy oleograph of exceptional crudity (a rather disgusting surgical item, a bleeding heart) on the only bare patch of wall. However there was no Mitzi here; so he continued equally stealthily through a further open door and found himself in what he at once knew must be the chapel: and there he stood aghast.
For the little family chapel at Lorienburg was a baroque confection of exceptional splendor. Augustine had been reared in an Anglo-Gothic reverential gloom; but this was all light and color and swelling curves. There was extravagantly molded plaster and painted trompe-l’œil, peeping angels, babies submerged in silver soap-suds and gilded glittering rays ... Augustine had heard of Baroque—as the very last word in decadence and bad taste; but anything so outrageous as this was incredible in a secular ... and this was a sacred place! Even the professing atheist could not but be shocked.
Yet Augustine soon realized he ought rather to be reassured. Hitherto he had shirked wondering whether Mitzi was really a believing Christian; but even if she thought she was, a religion which expressed itself in a place like this couldn’t possibly be more than skin-deep—something easily sloughed, under his teaching. Yet could any teaching of his be needed? Surely the utter callousness of what had just happened to Mitzi must already have taught her more forcibly than any words could that the Universe has no heart. Mitzi must know now there was no one else in heaven or earth to love her—only him.
But in that case why had she come here? And where was Mitzi? For he hadn’t found her, still.
Seeking her, Augustine peeped gingerly into the dark confessional; then he tiptoed to the sanctuary rails. But his eyes soon began to wander, for though the general effect of this awful place was so utterly wrong all the same there were details which plucked at his eyes so that he could not help but look. Even the billowing chaos of color and glitter above the altar once he examined it began to assume shape and meaning:
patently it was intended for an enormous storm-cloud with the rays of God on top—and then suddenly Augustine noticed that from every cranny and interstice of that vasty tornado towering under the God-light from above there were miniature heads of child-angels peeping! In their rather sweet way these were quite lovely—and palpably all portraits: every child in the village that long-ago year must have been singly portrayed here: this was a whole child-generation of Dorf Lorienburg. One Sunday centuries ago all these fresh young faces up there must have been mirrored by the First-Communion young faces bowed over the altar-rail below, each carved face with its own living counterpart. But whereas in time those faces at the rail had grown old and disillusioned and coarse—and had all died, generations ago—these through the centuries had remained forever singing: immortal, and forever child.
All portraits, and all singing: as the eye traveled up the cloud from parted lips to parted lips it seemed inconceivable one couldn’t hear that singing: the eye filled the laggard ear with visionary sweet sound ...
“Gloria in excelsis Deo ...”
—in thin, angelic treble unison the ancient and holy chant was floating on the air; and with a sudden shiver up the spine Augustine realized he could hear the singing.
Augustine’s scalp pricked; but a moment later he realized this must be only Mitzi—just Mitzi somewhere, and the echoes that she woke. Momentarily he felt furious with her, as Franz too had been furious when her yapping duped him in the night. What did the little fool think she was up to, singing—here, alone in this empty frightful chocolate God-box?
Where had she got to? He turned where he stood, and glared all down the nave.
Augustine found Mitzi in the end crouched before something in a far corner: something of which he had been half-conscious all the time, for though it was part-hidden by a gorgeous catafalque it still showed up incongruously in all this welter of color, being carved in dark unpainted wood: an object palpably much older than anything else here, as well as nobly different in style. It was a great 13th-century Deposition, more than lifesize; and half-hidden at its foot knelt Mitzi.
The thin but almost faultless voice had finished the ecstatic Latin chant, and fallen silent. Mitzi was silently praying. She was still, and hardly seemed to breathe; and the big black bow was coming off her fair plait of hair.
He longed to retie it for her ... oh how he loved her—and what poles apart they were!
Mitzi was praying for a miracle, no doubt—to that bit of wood! Or, was she merely the hurt child who clings leechlike but hopeless to her teddy bear? Was it, then ... was it possibly better at least for the time being to leave her with her religious illusions, if these were a comfort to her?
Perish the thought! It can never be better to believe a lie; and surely “God” was the biggest lie ever uttered by the human race!
How thankful Augustine now was he had yielded to his returning instinct for watching unseen—with the sense it conferred of almost supernatural guardianship over the loved one, on this mysterious solitary sortie of hers!
But Mitzi’s hair ... Augustine’s fingers of themselves were craving for the touch of it just as the parched tongue itself craves for water; and at once he could think of nothing else. Dropping on hands and knees he inched forward across the floor-matting without sound—himself now scarcely daring to breathe. Delicately he lifted his hand and at last as lightly as touching a butterfly’s wing just touched the tip of her hair.
But instantly he withdrew his fingers for even that contact had so quickened his breathing that now she surely could not help but hear!
8
Indeed Augustine’s heart was beating so wildly that only her rapt religious state could possibly have kept him undiscovered long. For although he realized it would be fatal to be discovered now he had presently begun acting as uninhibitedly as if he wore a cap of darkness indeed—fluttering noiselessly about Mitzi, as she moved from one devotional spot to another, in a kind of one-man unwitnessed ballet. And when at last Mitzi left the chapel, as she locked the vestry door Augustine glided to her side “as if” to take her arm and guide her—so close their two bodies were almost touching. They moved off like that, too—he hovering over her mothlike. His right arm even started its own passionate makebelieve, raised “as if” round her.
Augustine was trying to will Mitzi into the right path through the snow; and they must have looked unequivocally a pair of lovers as the two of them plunged together into snowdrifts and out again as if neither of them had eyes at all for the outside world; for what else could prompt so wildly erratic a course but the mutual blindness of love? But so intoxicated was Augustine now with his role of Zvengali-cum-Invisible-Man, he had quite forgotten that the only eyes to which he was really invisible were Mitzi’s. Thus it was now Augustine’s turn to be watched unwitting—from the dormer so mysteriously unboarded—by the truly Invisible Man (that existence in the attics nobody knew about except Franz).
Nor was that watching eye benevolent—or harmless.
Augustine had meant to speak to Mitzi as soon as they reached the hall—as if meeting her there. But when they got there the two little girls were framed in the dining-room doorway; so he hesitated, and Mitzi made a bee-line for her room.
He’d lost her! But no doubt she’d be out again soon, so he’d wait; and in the meanwhile Augustine was in such a gay, exalted and rather fantastical mood, so bubbling over with makebelieve, that children to work it off on seemed a godsend—if only he could get these ones to accept him at last!
Augustine advanced on the children all smiles, and mooing like a cow (so tiresome, this language difficulty!): then, changing his note, stood still and bleated like a lamb. The effect was not quite any one might have expected. There was the first shock of bewilderment of course (and embarrassment, for at eight and nearly ten the two little girls were surely too old for quite such nursery tactics); but what was odd was that then they ran towards him apparently in an access of extreme friendliness. They began chattering away to him nineteen-to-the-dozen; and so far as he could make out, they were saying there was something lovely they wanted to show him—to show him especially, their dear Uncle: something quite wonderful ... downstairs.
Taken aback, Augustine studied their faces: for this just wasn’t true! They were laying on all the charm of two elderly experts; but behind all the smiles and cajoling there was fright in those four eyes like little gray stones.
Through the dining-room door, too, came the unmistakable clink of metal on metal. Augustine had to use sheer muscular strength to shake off their pulling and plucking, but then he peeped through. The air in the dining-room was thick with feathers. There was white down everywhere, swirling in the currents of hot air the stove set up. Feathers covered the floor; and in the midst of it all, of course, were the Twins. Heavily armored (indeed they could hardly move) in real shirts of chainmail reaching their ankles and even trailing along the floor, and with real swords, they were acting out some legend of their race. It was evidently a fight in a snowstorm; for they had slashed open a big down cushion and had hung it from the great central chandelier—and here an occasional whack from a sword sent still more down and feathers eddying on the air. Already their well-greased armor was sicklied o’er with feathers.
But at that very moment Augustine heard the distant drawing-room door open and voices down the hall. The Council was at last adjourning: from the far end of the hall Walther was advancing, and behind him Adèle, Franz and Otto.
With an urgent whispered “Achtung!” Augustine turned to face them. What was to be done? The two failed sentinels still stood at their post but their crestfallen faces had gone as expressionless as Christmas annuals: they were beyond even trying any more. So it was Augustine himself who babbling of forestry or something somehow contrived to head Walther and the rest of them off, and lead them harmlessly elsewhere.
Thereafter Augustine returned to his own waiting-post in the hall: he lingered there till it was time to eat, but even then Mitzi s
till didn’t reappear.
Luncheon was always rather a movable feast at Lorienburg, but that Saturday it was quite exceptionally late. In the meantime some skilled sympathizer (Augustine suspected Lies) had been in the dining-room and made a wonderful attempt at clearing up the mess there; but when the meal was at last served there were still feathers here and there, as Walther—evidently wholly bewildered how they had got there—rather pettishly kept pointing out.
The children ate their food without seeming to hear him, but Adèle was profuse in her apologies to her guest: “It’s that little fox,” she explained—“he must have got in here and disembowelled a cushion and played at chicken-coops with it ...
“But alas!” said Adèle. “As Walther says, you can’t punish foxes—they don’t understand!”
With her serious watery-blue eyes she fixed Augustine’s—and winked.
9
So Lorienburg went about its normal business that Saturday. Mitzi kept to her room while Augustine roamed restlessly looking for her the whole afternoon: no one mentioned yesterday’s revolution and Hitler seemed already quite forgotten.
But in the meanwhile the discomforted Hitler—a proved failure now, a fugitive hurt and hopeless and with the Green Police on his trail—had finally gone to earth in Uffing. Uffing is a village on the edge of the Staffelsee, that lake of many islands at the foot of the towering Bavarian Alps where the broad Ammer valley leads up towards Garmisch. Hitler went there not because he saw there any hope of safety but because the hopeless hunted animal tends always to bury its head in some familiar hole to await the coup de grace. Some years past Putzi’s American mother had acquired a farm near Uffing, and last summer Putzi and Helene themselves had bought a little house there too: Putzi and Helene, that young couple who alone perhaps in all Germany seemed to Hitler to be fond of him for his own sweet self.