of course I write as if he’d dictated it. . . .  I really think a good secretary SHOULD do little things like that on her own, don’t you?”

I said nothing.

“Really, if he were to ask me to stay, I believe I would, marriage or no marriage—I mean, it would be so hard to refuse him anything— but then, he’s too fine and generous to ask—as soon as he knew about it he urged me not to delay my happiness on his account—just as if his own marriage had brought HIM happiness. . . .  Not that Charles would be an easy man to MAKE happy, even if he HAD got the right woman.  But he isn’t happy NOW—that I DO know—there’s always a look in his eyes as if he were searching for something and couldn’t find it.”

For two or three days Miss Hobbs continued to show me the ropes;

Rainier was away in Lancashire.  During this time Mrs. Rainier gave several lunch parties to which I was not invited, though I was in the house at the time and was even privileged to give assistance to a foreign plenipotentiary who spoke little English and had strayed into the study in search of a humbler apartment.  I could better understand after that why Rainier sometimes locked the door.

Then he returned, having wired me to meet his train at Euston.  As soon as we had found a taxi and were driving out of the station he asked me how I’d been getting on, and added, without waiting for an answer:  “I don’t suppose you’ll find it hard to be as good as your predecessor.”

I said I should certainly hope to be.

“Then you’ve already found out a few of the things I’ve been putting up with?”

“Yes, but not why you HAVE put up with them, for so many years.”

“Pure sentiment, plus the fact that I’ve always had a submerged sympathy with crazy people, and Elsie’s crazy enough.  She used to work at Stourton in my father’s time, then she worked for my brother, and when he naturally wanted to get rid of her there was no one fool enough to take her but me.  I made her my social secretary—because in those days I had no social life and it didn’t matter.  But after I married there were social things for her to do and she did them with a peculiar and fascinating idiocy.  D’you know, I’ve found out she writes long letters to people I’ve never heard of and signs my name to them? . . .  And by the way, did she tell you I’m not happy with my wife?”

“Well—er—“

“Don’t believe it.  My wife and I are the best of friends.  I suppose she also hinted it was a marriage of convenience?”

I felt this was incriminating Miss Hobbs too much and was beginning a non-committal answer when he interrupted:  “Well, THAT happens to be true.  I married her because it seemed to me she’d be just the person to turn a tired business man into a thumping success.  She WAS and she DID. . . .  Can you think of a better reason?”

“There’s generally considered to be ONE better reason.”

He switched the subject suddenly, pointing out of the window to a news placard that proclaimed, in letters a foot high:  “Collapse of England.”  At that moment I felt that one thing Miss Hobbs had said about him WAS true—that look in his eyes as if he were searching for something and couldn’t find it.  He began to talk rapidly and nervously, apropos of the placard:  “Odd to think of some foreigner translating without knowing it’s only about cricket . . . it was something you said about that on a train that first made me want to know you better—but really, in a sense, it doesn’t refer to cricket at all, but to how God-damned sure we are of ourselves—you can’t imagine the same phrase in the streets of Paris or Berlin—it would begin panic or riots or something. . . .  Just think of it—

‘Débâcle de la France’ or ‘Untergang Deutschlands.’ . . .  Impossible . . . but here it means nothing because we don’t believe it could ever happen—and that’s not wishful thinking—it’s neither wishing nor thinking, but a kind of inbreathed illusion. . . .  Reminds me of that last plenary session of the London Conference when it was quite clear there was to be no effective disarmament by anybody and we were all hard at work covering up the failure of civilization’s last hope with a mess of smeary platitudes . . .  Lord, how tired I was, listening to strings of words that meant nothing in any language and even less when you had to wait for an interpreter to turn ‘em into two others . .