Antal Szerb - The Pendragon Legend

“Oh my God,” she said. “How stupid, how utterly immoral, how thoroughly screwed-up. On the other hand — don’t you find? — there’s something rather sweet in all this purity of soul.”

I didn’t answer. Something had just occurred to me, something that had happened during our outing that morning, which I hadn’t thought anything of at the time. We were driving through a wood, beside a clear little mountain stream. Osborne stopped the car, stripped off and had a swim, though there was quite a chilling breeze. As he was getting dressed again, shivering with cold, he said to me:

“Oh, Doctor, if only I could live on an uninhabited island … a coral island in Polynesia … where there was no one to talk to, only birds and fish … and not a soul to be seen, especially not women … then a chap would be able to keep his human dignity.”

I remembered the look on his face. It bore all the misery of a dog that feels thoroughly ashamed of itself.

I had another tense and restless night. I dreamed of Eileen St Claire as a whore in a sea port, somewhere at the back of beyond. All sorts of obscene, and at the same time deeply horrible, things were going on. The next morning I woke, still rather tense, with the strange feeling that I had briefly understood, but had then forgotten, why the Earl still loved her.

Cynthia was in happy mood and looking her loveliest, seated golden-blonde at the breakfast table in a sleeveless dress that showed off her girlish, sunburnt arms. She made quizzical faces over her tea to ask why I was looking so dull when we happened to be alone — Lene and Osborne had gone out to bathe — and she came over to me, kittenish and intimate, to ask why I was so sad.

“I had a very strange dream,” I told her.

“Tell me.”

“You shouldn’t ask me such an improper thing.”

“Oh,” she cried. “So, it was about a woman?”

“Certainly.”

She looked downcast for several minutes, then steeled herself to ask:

“Was it me?”

“I’m sorry, but it wasn’t.”

“Recreant, traitor! So who was it then?”

“You don’t know her.”

“What does she look like, then?”

“She’s taller than you, has reddish-blond hair and a stunning figure. She has the face, sometimes, of an Etruscan statue.”

“Tell me what her name is.”

“You don’t know her, but you’ve certainly heard of her … ” and something suddenly struck me. “I was dreaming of Eileen St Claire.”

“Eileen St Claire? But she’s my best friend! I was with her that day in Llandudno!” she exclaimed, blushing prettily. “So you know her? Isn’t she wonderful, a real angel?”

I put my pipe down and stammered:

“What are you saying? Your best friend?”

“Yes. She’s the one I’ve been telling you all about, the person whose name I didn’t want to say. My great friend, my only true love.”

Oh the silly, tragic little goose! God knows what she had done in the innocence of her heart.

“How did you come to know her?”

“Two years ago I was having my summer holiday in Brittany and she was staying in the villa next door. I was still very upset — it was just after my mother’s death. She gave me back my joie de vivre. She’s so beautiful. And she was so good to me. But not just to me. She knows my uncle very well. They used to be very good friends. She’s the only one who knows what a truly wonderful man he is. Why are you looking at me like that … like a police superintendent?”

“Nothing, nothing. Please carry on.”

“What else can I say? I’ve told you how much I like her. How much she means in my life.”

I was gradually piecing it all together. Of course Cynthia had no idea who Eileen St Claire was. No one dared utter her name in the Earl’s presence, and this taboo extended to all the other Pendragons. No one had told Cynthia that Eileen St Claire and Mrs Roscoe were one and the same person.

I had only ever spoken of her as Mrs Roscoe. I had told her nothing of what the woman was like, or how I knew her. I had had no wish to discuss the night I spent with her, so I had said no more than was strictly necessary.

And Cynthia was as dreamy and romantic as all the other Pendragons. She too had projected her most cherished fantasies on to the beauty of Eileen St Claire.

“Oh, Cynthia … and have you kept in touch with her ever since? Have you been writing to her?” My alarm was growing by the second. “Do you mention the Earl in your letters?”

“Oh yes, I didn’t tell you — I promised to report everything that happened to my uncle, and I have done, all this time. And now you must tell me how you came to know her.”

So here was the ‘spy’ who had kept Morvin’s gang informed of everything.

I leapt up and walked round the room twice, at great speed.

“I’ve written to her about everything,” she continued dreamily, and quite untroubled. “I’ve told her a lot about you too. Even before you got here I told her you were coming. I felt your coming here would be a major event. And when you went back to London I explained exactly why you’d gone. I’ve written lots of bad things about you. You’ll hear all about them the next time you see her. But what’s wrong with you? What is it? You mustn’t tease me.”

By then I think I must have been tugging at her arm.

“Cynthia, did you also tell her where the Earl is right now?”

“Of course. I gave her the precise details. She’s taught me that whatever I do I must be thorough.”

“When did you write to tell her the Earl was going?”

“But why? What’s the matter with you? I wrote yesterday afternoon.”

“Where to?”

“Llandudno. The Palace Hotel.”

I made a rapid calculation. The letter could well have got there by the evening. So they could already have set off to find him. There was no time to lose — if indeed there still was anything left to lose.

“Cynthia my dear, you must telephone your friend this minute. We absolutely have to know if she’s still in Llandudno.”

“But why?”

“I will explain everything. But you must phone her now. Tell her whatever you like, but go.”

And I dragged her to the phone.

A few minutes later she was put through to the Palace Hotel. Mrs St Claire (as she had registered herself) was out. She had left the night before. She hadn’t left word when she would be back.

No doubt, the moment she got Cynthia’s letter …

“Pack your suitcase, and have it put in the tourer. Now. Immediately!”

With bewilderment on her face, she hurried out. I rang for one of the page boys and sent him dashing off to the stream where Osborne and Lene were bathing. They were told to come at once. Then I went up to my room to pack.

I was filled with energy, and hard as steel. I could barely recognise myself. I knew we were going into the last great battle. Unless it was already too late … The Earl was caught between two opposing catastrophes, and I wondered which was the more dangerous — the increasingly sinister spirit or the coldly-calculating twentieth-century assassin. The Knight, Death and the Devil …

Thirty minutes later we were all together in the reception area. I told the others how things stood. Cynthia went deathly pale and burst into tears. Her world was in ruins.

But every detail tallied. She recalled that during the day she had spent at Llandudno her friend had gone out twice in the car alone, once in the morning and once in the late afternoon, leaving her with some acquaintances. They were precisely the times when Eileen had tried to gain admittance to Llanvygan.

We piled into the car, excited and confused, four children left on their own by the grownups to wrestle with Death and the Devil.