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 the
Persians
The Peoples of Asia
General Editor: Morris Rossabi

Each volume in this series comprises a complete history, from origins

to the present, of the people under consideration. Written by leading
archaeologists, historians, and anthropologists, the books are
addressed to a wide, multi-disciplinary readership, as well as to the
general reader.

Published

The Manchus The Mughals of India

Pamela Kyle Crossley Harbans Mukhia
The Mongols The Persians
David Morgan Gene R. Garthwaite
The Afghans
Willem Vogelsang

In preparation

The Turks The Japanese

Colin Heywood Irwin Scheiner
The Phoenicians The Chinese
James Muhly Arthur Waldron
 the
Persians
Gene R. Garthwaite
© 2005 by Gene R. Garthwaite

blackwell publishing
350 Main Street, Malden, MA 02148-5020, USA
108 Cowley Road, Oxford OX4 1JF, UK
550 Swanston Street, Carlton, Victoria 3053, Australia

The right of Gene R. Garthwaite to be identified as the Author of this Work has been
asserted in accordance with the UK Copyright, Designs, and Patents Act 1988.

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a

retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical,
photocopying, recording or otherwise, except as permitted by the UK Copyright,
Designs, and Patents Act 1988, without the prior permission of the publisher.

First published 2005 by Blackwell Publishing Ltd

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Garthwaite, Gene R. (Gene Ralph), 1933–

The Persians / Gene R. Garthwaite.
p. cm.—(Peoples of Asia)
Includes index.
ISBN 1-5578-6860-3 (alk. paper)
1. Iran—History. I. Title. II. Series.

DS272.G27 2004
955—dc22
2004006863

A catalogue record for this title is available from the British Library.

Set in 10 on 12.5 pt Sabon

by SNP Best-set Typesetter Ltd, Hong Kong
Printed and bound in the United Kingdom
by TJ International, Padstow, Cornwall

The publisher’s policy is to use permanent paper from mills that operate a sustainable
forestry policy, and which has been manufactured from pulp processed using acid-free
and elementary chlorine-free practices. Furthermore, the publisher ensures that the text
paper and cover board used have met acceptable environmental accreditation standards.

For further information on

Blackwell Publishing, visit our website:
www.blackwellpublishing.com
To R. Andrew, Alexander, and Martin
Contents

List of Figures viii

List of Dynastic Tables x

List of Maps xi

Acknowledgments xii

Dynastic Tables xiv

Maps xix

1 Persia: Place and Idea 1

2 The Achaemenians (c.550–331 bc) 22
3 Alexander (330–323 bc), the Seleucids (312–129 bc),
and the Parthians (247 bc – ad 224) 66
4 The Sasanians (c.224–651) 86
5 “Non-Iran”: Arabs, Turks, and Mongols in Iran 118
6 The Safavids (1501–1722) 157
7 The Qajars (1796–1926) 191
8 Iran, 1921–2003: Pahlavi and Islamic Republican Iran 221

Notes 282

Further Reading 286

Index 296
Figures

2.1 Cyrus’s tomb 31

2.2 Bisitun inscription 48
2.3 Apadana, Persepolis 51
2.4 Persepolis reliefs of procession of peoples bearing gifts 52
2.5 Rock-cut tomb at Naqsh-i Rustam 54
2.6 Persepolis reliefs of Persians and Medes 61
2.7 Achaemenian ruler, fire altar, and Ahura Mazda,
rock-cut tomb 63
3.1 Heracles at Bisitun 73
4.1 Investiture of Bahram I 88
4.2 Ardashir I receives the diadem 89
4.3 Khusrau I’s palace, Taq-i Kisra, at Ctesiphon 90
4.4 Shapur I’s triumph over Rome 91
4.5 Investiture of Ardashir II 101
4.6 Dish with Khusrau I 106
4.7 Khusrau II, Taq-i Bustan 115
4.8 Dish with Shapur II on a lion hunt 116
5.1 The Shahristan Bridge crosses the Zayandah river just
to the east of Isfahan 119
5.2 Stucco mihrab (niche that indicates the direction
of prayer) and inscription 129
5.3 Oljeitu’s tomb 145
6.1 Ardabil carpet 171
6.2 Masjid-i Shah, Isfahan 176
6.3 Si-u-sih Bridge is named for its 33 arches 178
6.4 Madrasah-yi Madar-i Shah, the theological school of
the mother of the shah 181
7.1 Qajar rock-relief, Taq-i Bustan 196
7.2 Nasir al-Din Shah on the Peacock Throne 198
7.3 Shrine of Fatima, Qum 203
 Figures ix

7.4 Gathering of ulema 204

7.5 Central section of a contemporary copy of Fath
‘Ali Shah mural 205
7.6 Two cigarette papers 216
8.1 Riza Shah 234
8.2 The Shahyad Tower, Tehran 243
8.3 The poet Furugh Furrukhzad 245
8.4 Postage stamp showing Muhammad Riza Shah and
the 12 component symbols of the White Revolution 249
8.5 Postage stamp commemorating the centenary of the
birth of Riza Shah 250
8.6 Poster showing Khomeini’s expulsion of the shah 256
8.7 The Imamzadah (shrine) near Shahr-i Kurd has
revolutionary slogans painted on its walls 258
8.8 Postage stamp showing a woman with a rifle barrel
and wearing the hijab, or Islamic dress 265
8.9 Two wall murals in Tehran, Khomeini and the Mother
of Martyrs 273
8.10 The cemetery near Junaqan, Chahar Mahal 277
Dynastic Tables

1 The Achaemenians xiv

2 The Sasanians xv
3 The Safavids xvi
4 The Qajars xvii
5 The Pahlavis and the Islamic Republic xviii
Maps

1 Iran’s geography xix

2 Achaemenian Iran xx
3 Sasanian Iran xxi
4 Safavid Iran xxii
5 Contemporary Iran xxiii
Acknowledgments

My fascination with Iran goes back a long time, and I am indebted to a

very large number of individuals who first assisted me, especially to the
late Robert J. and Linda Braidwood, Patty Jo and Red Watson, the late
G. E. von Grunebaum, and Nikki Keddie.
I would like to thank Roy Mottahedeh and Stephen Dale, who gave
me the opportunity to try out my initial ideas for this book at seminars
at Harvard and Ohio State University. I owe special thanks to colleagues
who willingly read chapters at their various stages: Mangol Bayat, David
Morgan, Bill Sumner, Touraj Darjaee, Drew Newman, Misagh Parsa,
Morris Rossabi, and the late Charles Wood. In addition these colleagues
and others shared their unpublished work with me, and I would like to
thank David Stronach and Edmund Herzig in particular. Others took the
time to meet with me; I am especially grateful to John Curtis and Amelie
Kuhrt. Thanks, too, to Ervand Abrahamian, Jim Bill, William Hanaway,
and Shaul Bakhash for their assistance and insight.
Special thanks are due to Pamela Crossley for our many discussions
regarding rulership and Central Asia. Others at Dartmouth who have
patiently discussed aspects of this book with me and freely offered their
support include Gail Vernazza, Marysa Navarro, Dale Eickelman,
Kamyar Abdi, Nahid Tabatabai, Virginia Close, Patsy Carter, Fran
Oscadal, and my History and Dartmouth colleagues in general. My stu-
dents at Dartmouth have contributed to this book, and as representa-
tives of that large group, I thank David Ruedig, Drew Newman, Beth
Baron, and Justin Stearns. Thanks, too, to Ali Bakhtiar, Sheila Blair and
Jonathan Bloom, Sheila Canby, Richard Tapper, Sandy Morton, and
notably, Susan Reynolds. I should acknowledge, in particular, my col-
leagues in Iran, Sekandar Amanolahi, Iraj Afshar, and Kaveh Bayat. Lynn
Smith could not have been a better editor, and I am grateful to her for
her sharp eye and critical questions.
 Acknowledgments xiii

I am grateful to Susan and Jim Wright, and especially to all the

Bernsteins, Jane and Raph, John and Jennie, Dan and Claire, and Jeff
and Yoshimi, for their generous support and unending encouragement.

Transliteration

There is no agreed-upon Persian transliteration. In The Persians I have

followed common usage for well-known names and words; otherwise, I
have followed the style of the International Journal of Middle Eastern
Studies, but omitting most diacritical marks.
Dynastic Tables

Table 1 The Achaemenians

Cyrus II (the Great) (c.558–530 bc)

Cambyses (530–522 bc)
Gaumata (Bardiya) (522 bc)
Darius I (522–486 bc)
Xerxes I (486–465 bc)
Artaxerxes I (465–424 bc)
Xerxes II (424–423 bc)
Darius II (423–404 bc)
Artaxerxes II (404–359 bc)
Artaxerxes III (359–338 bc)
Arses (338–336 bc)
Darius III (336–330 bc)
 Dynastic Tables xv

Table 2 The Sasanians

Ardashir I (ad 224–239)

Shapur I (239/240–272)
Hormizd I (272–273)
Bahram I (273–276)
Bahram II (276–293)
Bahram III (293)
Narseh (293–302)
Hormizd II (302–309)
Shapur II (309–379)
Ardashir II (379–383)
Shapur III (383–388)
Bahram IV (388–399)
Yazdgard I (399–421)
Bahram V (Gur) (421–439)
Yazdgard II (439–457)
Hormizd III (457–459)
Piruz (459–484)
Valakhsh (484–488)
Kavad I (488–496 and 499–531)
Zamasp (496–498)
Khusrau I (Anushirvan) (531–579)
Hormizd IV (579–590)
Khusrau II (590–628)
Bahram VI (Chubin) (590–591)
Kavad II (628)
Ardashir III (628–630)
Shahrbaraz (630)
Khusrau III (630)
Puran (630–631)
Azarmigdukht (631)
Hormizd V (631–632)
Khusrau IV (631–633)
Yazdgard III (633–651)
xvi Dynastic Tables

Table 3 The Safavids

Shah Isma‘il I (1501–1524)

Shah Tahmasp (1524–1576)
Shah Isma‘il II (1576–1578)
Shah Muhammad Khudabandah (1578–1588)
Shah ‘Abbas I (the Great) (1588–1629)
Shah Safi I (1629–1642)
Shah ‘Abbas II (1642–1666)
Shah Sulaiman I (Safi II) (1666–1694)
Shah Sultan Husain (1694–1722)
Shah Tahmasp II (1722–1732)
Shah ‘Abbas III (1732–1749)
 Dynastic Tables xvii

Table 4 The Qajars

Agha Muhammad (1779 –1797)

Fath ‘Ali Shah (1797–1834)
Muhammad Shah (1834–1848)
Nasir al-Din Shah (1848–1896)
Muzaffar al-Din Shah (1896–1907)
Muhammad ‘Ali Shah (1907–1909)
Ahmad Shah (1909–1925)
xviii Dynastic Tables

Table 5 The Pahlavis and the Islamic Republic

Riza Shah (1926–1941)

Muhammad Riza Shah (1941–1979)
Khomeini (1979–1989)
Khamenei (1989– )
 Black Sea Tashkent

D
r

C
a

AU
Sy rya

CA
SU
S
Samarkand

M
O
Cas
Am

U
u

N
Mount

pia

TA
Da

n
ry

IN
Ararat a

S
TURKEY 6165

Sea
Tabriz

R.Tigris Mount
Tehran Damavand
R.Euphrates 5671
ELBU
SYRIA RZ MOUNTAINS

Kavir AFGHANISTAN
LEBANON Dasht-e
D
Baghdad as

Z
ht

AG
Karbala -e
Isfahan

RO
Lu

S
t

M
O
IRAQ IRAN

U
N
ISRAEL

TA
IN
JORDAN

Pe
PAKISTAN

rsi
KUWAIT

n a
EGYPT

Gu
lf
BAHRAIN

Red
SAUDI ARABIA Capital city
Other important city

Sea
International boundary
Mountain summit
(height in metres)
Land over 1000m

Map 1 Iran’s geography

 Black Sea
ARMENIA

(A
Ox
m
us

uD
ary
LYDIA

a)
Gordian
Sardis
Caspian
CILICIA Sea

KURDISTAN

KHURASAN
Mediterranean Sea Ecbatana/Hamadan

Nihavand
LURISTAN
Damascus
Babylon
Jerusalem Susa
Sais
Memphis Ur Tall-i Malyan SISTAN
Pasargadae
Bishapur Persepolis
FARS KERMAN
Bushir

Pe
rsi
an
G
ul
f

Kingdom capital
Ancient coastline
Persian Empire c.558 BC Ancient course of river

Re
Territories Conquered by Cyrus II

d
750 km
Territories Conquered by Cambyses
Sea
500 miles

Map 2 Achaemenian Iran

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him seemed to melt, and putting both her hands on his shoulders
and her face against his coat, she began to cry a little, silently.
“What’s the matter, Sister Susie?” he whispered, while from the
end of the passage came the sound of vivacious conversation.
“Isn’t everything in the world the matter?” she asked, and then
dried her tears in a comical way with the back of her hand.
“Can’t you come out to some café and have a quiet talk? I don’t
feel like ‘company’ to-night.”
She told him she wanted him to meet Betty’s uncle and her good
friend, Mr. Mahony, and led him by the hand into a shabbily
furnished room, dimly lit by oil lamps, where Bertram saw Betty
O’Brien, who rose and gave him her hand, and an elderly man with
white hair, a clean-shaven, rather priestly face, and very blue eyes,
in which there was a look of humour and benevolence. He was
sitting back in a low chair, with broken leather, through which the
stuffing protruded, talking in a philosophical strain to three young
men, obviously Irish, who were sitting about the room smoking
cigarettes. Bertram heard him say something about the need of
sacrifice for sacred principles.
“A man who won’t die for a principle sins against the light.”
“Uncle,” said Betty O’Brien, “be hanged to your principles for a
minute. This is Susan’s brother.”
Mr. Mahony rose, and grasped Bertram’s hand.
“Susan’s brother! Then a friend of Ireland.”
“Half an Irishman, and a good friend,” said Bertram.
Yet before the evening was at an end, his friendship for Ireland
was put to a heavy strain again. Mr. Mahony, with his white hair, and
blue benevolent eyes, and the three young Irishmen to whom he
addressed most of his monologues, made no disguise of their
implacable hatred of England. It was not that they denounced
England with any violence of language, but rather the deadly
coldness, and the kind of loathing, with which they spoke the very
name of England.
Worse than that was their contempt. It was plain that they had
the fixed belief that the British Government in Ireland was “on the
run.” The Irish Republican army was succeeding with its policy of
secret warfare. In one week they had killed five British officers and
twenty men. They had raided the barracks, seized great quantities of
arms, and organised a number of successful ambushes. There were
large districts in Ireland into which the Black and Tans dared not
penetrate. The British troops were getting nerve-rattled and
demoralised. It was obvious by the Government answers to
questions in the House of Commons that that was very much the
psychological state of “His Majesty’s Ministers.”
The three young Irishmen, smoking French cigarettes
interminably, had all been officers of the I. R. A., and had escaped to
France when things had become too “hot” for them. One of them,
named O’Malley, a handsome, dark-eyed fellow rather like Dennis
O’Brien, but with brighter, more humorous eyes, described his
adventures as an escaped prisoner from Mountjoy, where he had
been under sentence of death after capture in an ambush near Cork.
The Black and Tans had searched the countryside for him, and all
the time he was selling eggs in the market-place disguised as a
“colleen,” and so seductive in appearance that an English officer had
given him the glad eye.
Mr. Mahony turned to Bertram and whispered a few words about
O’Malley, with a smile of admiration and pride.
“England will never defeat Ireland with that spirit against her!
O’Malley is like all the boys—just laughs at death. It was he who
executed the British officer who gave the order to fire on the people
in the Celtic Football ground—the bloody villain!”
Bertram felt a little cold chill creep down his spine. These people
here were the enemies of England. Some of them, like O’Malley, had
killed British officers, not in open fighting, but by cold murder, under
the name of “execution.” And they were proud of their exploits, with
bright, humorous eyes, not conscience-stricken, as men with red
crimes on their hands, but as men who had done well in the cause
of some divine ideal. They used even the name of God with a sense
of alliance.
“God is working for Ireland,” said Mr. Mahony. “The sacrifice of
our boys is not ignored by Him who died on the Cross to save
mankind.”
 Bertram felt the blood surge to his brain at these words. He
wanted to stand up and denounce them as blasphemy. To him it was
inconceivable that a man like Mahony, a gentleman, a mild-eyed
man, a good Catholic, could defend the Sicilian methods of the Irish
Republicans in the very name of Christ—who spoke words of peace
and pity, who said “Thou shalt not kill,” whose Gospel was Love. He
half rose from his chair to make a violent and passionate protest,
when the words were taken from him by a newcomer, brought into
the room by Betty O’Brien.
“Uncle—here is Mr. Lajeunesse.”
The man who bore the name of “Youth” was an old gentleman of
seventy or more, with a shock of grey hair and a pointed beard, and
a delicate, life-worn face. His eyes, surrounded by a thousand
wrinkles, twinkled with the light of irony, and it was with irony that
he greeted Mr. Mahony.
“I hear you mention the name of Christ, my dear friend!
Doubtless you are quoting the Master’s words to defend militarism
and the right of assassination in special cases? During the Great War,
when we murdered each other wholesale, Christianity was of great
value to Army Commanders, on both sides of the line. I think the
Germans were most successful in using Christ as a propagandist
among the troops. But we did pretty well with the same idea. . . .
Good evening, Miss Susy! My little Irish rose still blooms in Paris?”
The old man kissed the girl on both cheeks with the privilege of
his years, but also with the gallantry of a Frenchman who pays
homage to beauty. And Susan’s roses deepened.
The three young Irishmen had left their chairs when he entered.
They bowed low over his hand and Mr. Mahony addressed him as
cher maître, and did not resent his irony. It was Eugène Lajeunesse,
and Bertram felt a thrill at being in the presence of a man whose
books, so wise, so witty, so wicked, so full of tenderness to
humanity, and yet so cruel in tearing down the faith of simple folk,
had made him famous throughout the world. Alone in France during
the War, he had maintained his faith as an international pacifist, and
not all the outrages of Les Boches, nor all the agony of France had
made him swerve from the belief that the war was only one more
proof of human stupidity.
He brought with him a young Frenchman, blind in one eye and
partly paralysed, it seemed, on one side, so that he walked with
difficulty, using a stick, but wonderfully vivacious and good-
humoured.
Eugène Lajeunesse introduced him to the company.
“Aristide de Méricourt. You know his name and work? If there is
any hope for our poor old Europe, which is in extremis mortuis, it
lies in the success of this young man and his band of brothers. They
are working for international peace and universal brotherhood. What
audacity! What sublime hope in a world that is digging new
entrenchments of hate!”
“We make a little progress,” said the young man with the blind
eye. “From all parts of France youth which saw life in the trenches is
joining our League against Militarism. The Old Men are becoming
afraid of us.”
“As one of the Old Men, I am not afraid of you,” said Lajeunesse,
smiling at his young friend. “I recognise your right to declare a
spiritual warfare against all old imbeciles who are preparing for
another massacre—the last before cilivisation dies—in the fields of
Europe. Gladly would I die to-night to see youth gain its victory over
old age, old ideas, old villainies, old hatreds.”
“You are not among the Old Men, cher maître,” said Aristide de
Méricourt; “You are Lajeunesse—Youth itself.”
The old man laughed, and shook his head.
“I pose as the champion of youth. It is my vanity—to keep young
in mind and soul. Alas, I am convicted of senility because of my
cynical doubts of youth’s adventure. Civilisation is too sick to be
saved, and Poincaré, and all the Poincarés and reactionaries of
Europe, are determined on its doom. How many men and boys have
you in your League against Militarism?”
“Three thousand,” said Aristide de Méricourt, with an air of pride.
“Our membership is spreading in England, Germany, Italy, even in
Austria. We are truly international.”
 “Three thousand young men pledged to international peace! That
is a beginning. It is excellent. But you have three hundred million
souls to convert. The odds are heavy, dear child.”
“We shall win,” said the young man with the blind eye.
“Democracy is solid against the spirit of war.”
Eugène Lajeunesse laughed quietly, as at a child who talks of
killing dragons.
“Let us put it a little to the test. Here in this company of
intellectuals are several young Irishmen. Are they for or against
militarism—after the war to end war? I have heard something of a
little bloodshed in Ireland—or is it only a rumour? They are Catholics
and Christians. Beautiful is the simplicity of Irish faith! Have they
abandoned the use of Force as a way of argument? Do they believe
in Universal brotherhood, among nations and peoples? Or are they
using the bomb and the revolver to break away from brotherhood
with a nation to whom they are bound in blood, to entrench
themselves more narrowly in national isolation? Tell me, little ones. I
am an ignorant old man!”
They told him at some length, and with passionate argument. Mr.
Mahoney said that the international ideal must be based first of all
on national liberty, that universal brotherhood presupposed justice
between one people and another.
It was Aristide de Méricourt, who interested Bertram most, for he
was the immediate opposite in ideals and convictions of Armand de
Vaux who loved the adventure of war and believed that it developed
the noblest qualities of man. But there was something strange and
sinister in the quiet way in which this cripple denounced the existing
institutions of his own country and of western civilisation, the
national heroes of France, all the old loyalties of tradition and faith.
Marshal Foch, he said, had “the soul of a grocer.” He counted
men, battalions, divisions, as so many packets. The sacrifice of
human life left him untouched, unperturbed. Poincaré was a stuffed
puppet with a squeak. French politicians were corrupt and bought.
There must be a clean sweep of superstition—the superstition of the
Flag, of the Church, of Patriotism, of national egotism. The
democracies of the world must unite against the powers of
capitalism. France must link up with Russia for the overthrow of all
the forces of bourgeois stupidity and tyranny. There must be a
revolution in England and the United States, so that Anglo-Saxon
democracy might join hands with Latin and Slav. It was the only
hope of the world.
“The audacity of youth!” said Lajeunesse. “Once, too, I had those
dreams! A thousand years ago!”
“As a Catholic Irishman I disagree with such revolutionary
gospel,” said Mr. Mahony, but there was benevolent tolerance in his
blue eyes for the heresy of the younger man.
Bertram pleaded with his sister for a little private talk.
“All this discussion is very interesting, no doubt, but no good to
me. I want to know what you’re doing and going to do. I want to tell
you Of my own troubles.”
“Joyce?” she asked, and he wondered how much she knew of
that trouble, his greatest.
They went out to a café close by, and took a seat in a far corner
away from a group of men drinking with painted women.
Susan shivered a little, and drew her cloak close about her
though it was warm in the café, and oppressive with the smell of
cheap wine, black coffee, and stale tobacco.
“You don’t look well,” said Bertram. “Is anything wrong with
you?”
“The price of womanhood,” she said. “I’m going to have a baby.
The child of a man hanged by the English because he loved Ireland.
Funny, isn’t it?”
He put his hand on hers, and groaned a little.
“My poor kid! My dear little sister!”
He was stricken by this news of hers, by the awful memory it
revived.
Susan spoke calmly, but with a coldness that was worse than
tears or passion.
“I’ll call him Dennis, if it’s a boy. I’ll make him Irish in soul and
faith, as his father was. And I’ll teach him to hate England as I hate
it.”
 Bertram tried to take her hand again, but she pulled it nervously
away.
“What’s the good of teaching hate?” he asked. “It gets nowhere.
It leads only to more tragedy, more blood, more death. I believe in
peace, and love.”
“Pap for babes!” said Susan scornfully. “Life is war. Peace doesn’t
exist. We’re all savages, and must obey the law of the savage. Strike
first and quickest, before your enemy gets his chance. No pity, no
forgiveness, no forgetfulness. That’s my creed.”
“It was not the Master’s creed,” said Bertram. He told his sister of
the words spoken by their mother as she lay dying. “Work for
Peace!”
“I’m pledged by the promise I made then,” he said. “I’m
dedicated to work for Peace.”
Susan’s eyes filled with tears, but she shook her head and said it
was all useless. How could there be peace when the world was
stuffed with cruelty? Could there ever be peace between France and
Germany? Never in a thousand or a million years. Or ever between
Ireland and England, after what had happened, and was happening?
Not as long as an Irish boy lived to remember the history of his race.
“I’m dedicated too,” she said. “By the blood of the man I married.
In private or in public, by spoken word and written word, I’ve
pledged myself to work against England, so that the British Empire
will be dragged down from its place, and fall in ruin. I’m only one of
England’s enemies, and a poor, weak creature, but I can put in a
word here and a word there. It all helps, and England already has
the whole world against her. France hates her worse than Germany.”
“It’s madness and wickedness,” said Bertram. “You’re hysterical,
my dear, or I couldn’t forgive you for the words you speak.”
She flared up at him, and called him a crawling sentimentalist,
who tried to make the best of both worlds and stand on both sides
of the hedge at the same time.
“You’re tricked by soppy sentiment. Just as Joyce has tricked you.
Are you still loyal to her, may I ask?”
“I want to be,” said Bertram.
She laughed, with a sound of mockery.
 “It’s a one-sided loyalty, old boy. Joyce has betrayed you with
Kenneth Murless. If she’s not his mistress, she’s a much slandered
woman. Every one thinks so in Paris.”
Bertram went cold, and stared at Susan with a kind of horror in
his eyes.
“Susan! In God’s name, what do you mean by that?”
She told him it was none of her business. But friends of hers in
Paris who knew that Joyce was her sister-in-law, had taken it for
granted that she had “run off” with Kenneth. They were always
about together, in the Bois, at the opera, at Longchamps, in Henri’s
restaurant night after night.
“What else can people think when a woman leaves her husband
and comes to Paris with a man like Kenneth?”
“She came with Lady Ottery,” said Bertram, “and what your
friends say is a damned lie. If they say so to me, I’ll beat them into
pulp.”
Susan laughed again, in her mocking way. “That’s the primitive
man. Not peace and love this time, when it touches you so closely!
You’ll beat any man to pulp who slanders Joyce—or tells the truth,
maybe. But you can’t forgive an Irishman who hates England, not
for slandering his country, but for outraging her, trampling on her
face, murdering her children! Nor a Frenchman who wants to beat
Germany to pulp! Where’s your logic, Bertram?”
He sat silent, staring at a puddle of coffee on the marble-topped
table. What Susan said was true enough. She had found the weak
spot in his armour. His “dedication to peace” only held good as long
as it was in the abstract, and impersonal. This accusation against
Joyce, that word “mistress” coupled with Kenneth’s name, put the
instinct of murder in his mind. If he believed the story he would go
to Kenneth and shoot him like a dog. Fortunately it was absurd. He
could afford to laugh at it. He laughed now, harshly.
“Extraordinary how some women, and most Irish, have the spirit
of vendetta. Why do you hate Joyce so much that you want to kill
her reputation?”
Susan rose, and left the café table.
 “Let’s go before we make a public brawl. It’s true I hate Joyce. I
remember a scene over a telephone one night when she threatened
to betray my man. But I hate her now because she’s betraying you,
in heart if not in body.”
Bertram took his sister back without a word, to the apartment
house in the rue de la Pompe. There he left her with a gruff “Good
night!” She had wounded him horribly with a poisoned shaft. Her
words tortured him. He thought of her as a female Iago who had
slandered another Desdemona. And he was Othello, refusing to
believe, yet with foul suspicion gnawing at him, and making a
madness in his brain.
Joyce and Kenneth! No, a million times no. And yet, deep down
in his subconsciousness had been that very toad of evil thought.
Ever since Joyce had written to him, telling him she saw a good deal
of Kenneth in Paris, he had tried to kill this base and frightful
thought which now Susan had stated as a well known belief. “Every
one thinks so in Paris.”
At nine o’clock next morning he took the train to Amiens and, at
the Hotel du Rhin, hired a motor-car and drove to the Château de
Plumoison where Joyce was staying.
 XLIV
He remembered this old château of Picardy. It lay to the right of
the cottage where he had been billeted for a few weeks in 1917. He
had hardly thought of it since, because that memory had been
effaced by more exciting and deadly adventure. But now, as he
passed up the dirty village where cocks and hens clustered across
the roadway and peasant women stared at him from doorways
where once British soldiers had lounged during Divisional rests
between long spells in the line, he remembered the way past the
pump, and then a sharp turn to the right by the estaminet of “La
Véritable Coucou”—that comical name came back to him now with
intimate remembrance—and so to the long avenue of poplars
leading straight through the park to the old white house with its
pointed roofs.
The Vicomte de Plumoison had given the run of the place to any
British officers in the neighbourhood, and Yvonne, his daughter, had
invited them to “five o’clock,” as she called her tea-parties. She was
not very beautiful, though an elegant little lady, but it was paradise
enough to sit with any lady in any drawing-room, after long terms of
servitude in the lousy trenches, in exile from all beauty. . . .
He turned through the iron gates and walked slowly up the
avenue. Somewhere in that white house was Joyce. His heart beat
at the thought, with sickening kind of thuds. He was passionate to
see her, to take her hand, to draw her close to him, and be assured
of her love after all this foolishness of separation and estrangement.
A word from her, a straight look out of her eyes, would be enough to
kill that toad of evil still alive in the slime of suspicion, in those base
and primitive instincts of the male beast which lurk as a heritage of
cave-man ancestry in all human brains.
Janet Welford had spoken a true thing when she said, “Joyce is
the Beatrice of your Divina Commedia.” In the time of his greatest
bitterness against her, when he felt most injured by her ill-temper
with him, she had been his vision, and in his heart, inescapable. His
loyalty had been strained, but was stronger than all his weakness,
and now, as he went towards her, the thought of this girl who had
given him her beauty so generously in time of war, so recklessly,
perhaps, fevered him.
He quickened his pace, and instead of going straight up the
avenue, took a winding path which led to the back of the château by
the trout stream. Perhaps it was some mental “wave-length” which
impelled him to do that instinctively, and without conscious purpose,
because, as he made his way through a little glade, he saw Joyce a
few yards away from him.
There was a stone seat there, which he remembered. It was
underneath a grass bank with a little hollowed place in which stood
a statue of “Notre Dame de Lourdes,”—painted blue and white,
amidst tall growing ferns. He had once stood there talking to Yvonne
de Plumoison with a group of officers. Joyce was alone. Her hat lay
on the seat by her side. She had a book on her lap, but she wasn’t
reading. She was weeping. At least there were tears in her eyes
when, at the sound of his footsteps on the path, she looked quickly
towards him, and then sprang up with a cry of surprise.
He called her name, and went forward hurriedly, with
tremendous gladness in his eyes. She looked as he had thought of
her so often. As she stood there, waiting for him, the sunlight,
shining through young leaves, touched her hair, giving it a glory. She
wore a green frock, cut low at the neck, and looked like the Rosalind
in Arden Woods.
She let him take her hands and kiss her, but did not answer his
passion with any warmth of greeting, so that almost in a moment he
was chilled, and saw that she had become pale in his arms.
“Here’s a seat,” she said. “Let’s sit and talk.”
He sat beside her, holding her hand, and was struck by its
coldness.
“I’ve been longing for you,” he told her. “Dreaming of you o’
nights.”
She said something about his letters. They didn’t suggest any
passionate longing, she thought. He hadn’t bothered to join her in
Paris when she asked him.
He asked her to “wash all that out.” He’d been a blithering idiot.
It had all been a question of jangled nerves—the wrong perspective
—egotism. He’d been thinking things out during his loneliness. He’d
killed his miserable ego. All he wanted now was to make her happy
and to serve her. They’d made a mistake in taking things too
seriously, arguing about trivialities as though they mattered. They’d
allowed “politics” to strain their relations! It was inconceivable,
looking back on it. What kids they’d been! He had grown up at last.
No more of that sort of nonsense. Tolerance was his watch-word.
He’d come to understand that a plain getting on with life mattered
more than theories and minor differences in points of view. Love was
the only thing worth while.
“Do you mean that?” asked Joyce. “Do you think, honestly, that
love over-rides everything?”
“Every damn thing,” said Bertram.
She gave him a queer glancing smile.
“It’s a dangerous philosophy. Sometimes it leads to peculiar
complications!”
“How do you mean?” asked Bertram. “To me it simplifies the
whole riddle. The love of a man for his mate, through thick and thin,
fine weather and foul, ‘in sickness and in health.’—D’you remember
the old words in St. Mary Abbot’s?”
“Yes. I remember. I was a baby then. We were both babes, as
ignorant of life as those tits.”
She pointed to two little birds fluttering about the branch of a
tree where they sat.
“But with the same share in the eternal scheme of things,” said
Bertram. “You and I went to St. Mary Abbot’s under the same divine
impulse as those two tits set up housekeeping in the tree-top.”
“Yes,” said Joyce, “I suppose it’s over-civilisation that has spoilt
the game.”
“Is the game spoilt?” asked Bertram.
“It’s hard to play according to the rules, sometimes. And if we
keep to the rules the fun goes out of the game. It’s just duty. Mostly
disagreeable, and sometimes intolerable.”
 Bertram laughed so that the two tits were frightened and flew
away from their branch. He took Joyce’s hand and put it to his lips.
“We seem to be talking in parables and conundrums. Joyce, let’s
be human. Are you glad I’ve come back to you? Are we going to
wipe the slate clean and start fresh and fair down the good old
highway of married life? Say a word of love to me! Put your arms
around my neck, and whisper what I want to hear.”
Joyce’s face flamed with colour for a moment, and then paled
again.
“I can’t!” she said. “Something’s happened to put things all
wrong—worse than before—between you and me.”
He stared at her, and knew that Fate, or Luck, or God, was going
to hit him another blow between the eyes. What did she mean? That
“Something’s happened—“?
“For Christ’s sake,” he said, “what do you mean?”
“It’s about Kenneth,” she answered in a low voice.
That name, after what Susan had said, after a night of dark
agony, after a fight with frightful suspicion in which old base
jealousies had surged up from the darkness of his mind, was like the
jab of a bayonet in his brain.
“What the hell has he got to do with it?” he asked, very quietly.
Joyce touched his hand, as though asking for patience and
understanding.
“You’ll get angry, I know. But I can’t help it. These things just
happen. It’s as though we hadn’t any control over them, or over
ourselves. I’ve always thought of Kenneth as nothing more than a
good friend—a nice boy. We’ve known each other since we were
kids. He understands me better than any one in the world. We speak
in shorthand, as it were—the same code of thought and all that. He
didn’t seem to mind when I married you. He thought it was good
fun. It made no difference to our friendship. He’s perfectly straight
and clean. He’d no idea at all, until a few days ago, that he loved me
—in another kind of way. We found out quite suddenly, by accident.
We were laughing—playing the fool, as usual. We were in a boat
together on the lake in the Bois—you know—by the Île des Châlets.
Suddenly he looked up at me with a kind of surprise in his eyes. And
something seemed to fire a spark between us. I leant over him and
kissed him, and he said, ‘What’s up with us?’—in a frightened way.
We found out then that our old friendship had changed. For the first
time I knew the meaning of love.—Never like yours and mine,
Bertram. Kenneth and I were made for each other from the time we
were babies together. It’s just that. Unfortunately we’ve only just
found out. . . . I’m frightfully sorry, Bertram. But there it is, and
nothing can alter it now.”
She had spoken all this quietly, in a matter-of-fact way, but now
she began to cry again, with her hands up to her face.
Bertram had sat very still, with his head bent during her
monologue. A greyness crept into his face, giving him a dead look.
He was dead for a little while. Joyce had killed the spirit in him by
those words of hers. He had nothing to say to himself. Not even
anger stirred in him, nor self-pity. All that came into his mind was a
kind of numbness, and one name reiterated. Kenneth! Kenneth!
Kenneth Murless!
Joyce took her hands down from her face, and wiped her tears
away with a handkerchief. Then she spoke again in the same quiet
tone.
“Kenneth and I want to play the game. He’s fearfully sorry about
you. He likes you immensely and thinks I’ve given you a rough deal.
That’s true. I’ve been beastly to you, but I didn’t know all the time
that it was Kenneth I wanted. You’ve been jolly good to me,
Bertram. I see that now. But it’s impossible to live together after
what I’ve told you. What are we going to do about it? For the
moment I’ve cut and run. It was Kenneth who asked me to do that.
‘You’d better cut and run,’ he said. ‘We’ve got to play the game.’ So
here I am waiting until you think things out. I haven’t told Mother
yet.”
Bertram was still silent, still rather dead in his heart and brain.
But one phrase used by Joyce startled him a little. “I’ve cut and run,”
she said. Where had he heard that before? It was something that
had happened to himself. Some time or other, from some one or
other, he too had “cut and run.” It was old Christy, who had advised
it. “If you’re tempted by disloyalty,” he said, “you’d better cut and
run.” Queer, that Joyce should have been given the same advice.
Rather funny! Damnably funny!
He laughed at the comedy of it. He stood up from the stone seat
and laughed loudly and harshly, frightening the birds again, a jay in
the boughs near by, which flew out with a kind of echo of his laugh
and a quick beat of wings.
“Good God in Heaven!” he said. “So you haven’t told your Mother
yet? I wonder what the Countess of Ottery will think of it. Her sense
of propriety will be a little shocked. She too will want to play the
game according to the rules. I don’t know this kind of game.
Perhaps it’s up to me. I guess the rules will oblige me to give you an
excuse for divorce. I rather fancy that’s the way it’s done in your set.
I commit a technical sin. I indulge in a perfectly painless act of
cruelty. You institute proceedings for restitution of conjugal rights.
Isn’t that one of the rules? I refuse on a post-card. Then you divorce
me. The newspapers print your photograph—the beautiful Lady
Joyce Pollard obtains her decree. I seem to remember that sort of
thing. . . . Joyce! Oh, my dear wife! Joyce, my beloved!”
It was quite suddenly, at the end of his monstrous irony, that he
broke down and wept, and pleaded with her weakly, in a stricken
way.
Several times Joyce said, “I’m sorry, Bertram! I’m frightfully
sorry!”
She too was weeping now, and her slim body shook with sobs.
Under the trees there in the little glade of a French château, this
man and wife, so English, so young, so good to see, if love had been
between them, made a pitiful picture.
“You’ve been very good to me, my dear,” said Joyce again. “I’m
sorry—for everything.”
He went towards her, and took her roughly and drew her close to
him.
“Joyce, this is frightful. It can’t happen. It’s just illusion. You’re
my wife and I’m your lover. Let’s go away together, and forget all
else. That baseness with Kenneth. It was just a moment of
madness. Weakness. I understand! I’ve been tempted like that!”
She drew herself out of his arms.
 “It’s not like that. It’s Kenneth I belong to; and he to me. One
can’t go against revelation.”
He told her that she was murdering him. He’d suffered hell
already because of their separation. He’d been tempted by sheer
weakness and loneliness. Did she intend to send him straight to the
devil?
She said something about his going to “a nice woman.” She
couldn’t complain of that. He would find some one more patient with
him, more in tune with his ideas.
It was that which angered him and broke down any kind of
restraint to which he had clung.
“You’re hellishly immoral,” he told her. “God knows how far
you’ve gone a header with that swine Murless. If there’s truth in
what people say of you in Paris, I’ll wring your neck and blow his
brains out.”
She stiffened at that threat.
“I’ve told you we intend to play the game as far as possible.
Kenneth has played up like a gentleman. I hope you won’t behave
like a savage.”
“I am a savage,” he said, “when it comes to this sort of thing. It
is the primitive right of man to make sure of his mate. D’you think
I’m going to connive at your sin? To play the “mari complaisant?”
Not in your life!”
“Don’t mediævalise,” said Joyce. “We’re in the Twentieth
Century.”
“Human nature doesn’t change,” he answered. “You’re my wife,
and I’ll hold you, if I have to fight for you.”
“You can’t hold me,” she said. “I’ve escaped. You can hold my
dead body, but not my living heart. Kenneth has that. From the
beginning of things, as I see now, he and I were meant for each
other. You were an accident that intervened. It was my mistake, and
yours. And I’ve paid for it already, pretty badly.”
An accident that intervened! That was how she spoke of his love.
That was his position between Joyce Pollard and Kenneth Murless!
The phrase slashed his soul, and stung him into a mad rage. The
man who had come into this glade with love in his heart for this girl
with gold hair and slim white body, strode towards her now with
clenched fists and a fury in his eyes. He meant to do her bodily
harm, and she saw that in his eyes. But she stood very straight and
still, and did not flinch as he came close to her, but smiled with a
strange disdain.
“As you like,” she said.
It was a kind of invitation to hit her, even to kill her, if he thought
well of that, as for a moment he did. But, as once before when he
had raised his hand against her, he was disarmed by her prettiness,
and the fury passed from him.
Down the avenue came the sound of voices, speaking French,
and through the trees Bertram saw Yvonne de Plumoison and her
father, as he had seen them walking arm-in-arm in time of war. On
the other side of the old man was Lady Ottery with her hand on the
arm of Yvonne’s brother.
Bertram took hold of Joyce, and kissed her twice on the lips, with
passionate brutality, and then released her, flinging her away from
him so that she fell on the grass. He hadn’t meant, then, to be as
rough as that. He made his way through the glade, and turned a
moment to look back. Joyce was standing again with her face
towards him. He raised his hand with a tragic gesture of farewell, to
which she made no answer. Then he walked back to the great iron
gates through which he passed, and so towards the village, and so
towards life without the hope of Joyce, in loneliness and desolation
of soul, worse than he had known.
 XLV
He left Paris without calling on Kenneth Murless for the purpose
of indulging in violence. What was the good? To blow Kenneth’s
brains out, or to punch his head, would not bring back Joyce. She
had dismissed him for ever out of her heart and life. He walked
alone upon the road and all that he had felt in loneliness before was
nothing to this certainty of eternal separation. She was dead to him,
and he to her.
He made one last foolish, futile effort to pretend otherwise by
writing her a letter in which he implored her to wait a while at least
before she took the step from which she could never return.

“Wait six months,” [he said]. “My loyalty is yours for that
time, or longer, and perhaps before the end of it you will
realise your horrible mistake—this midsummer madness
that possesses you. . . .”

Stuff like that he wrote, but knew the hopelessness of it, and did
not wait in Paris for an answer. She wouldn’t answer. She had told
him all there was to know. As she had said once before, when as yet
the “something” that had happened had not happened, it was “past
argument.” Perhaps—almost certainly—throughout her married life
her subconsciousness had known what she knew now consciously.
She had been more at ease with Kenneth than ever with him. She
had preferred his conversation, his sense of humour, his point of
view. There was a secret code between them which he had never
learnt. He had been “out of it,” after the first few weeks of sentiment
and passion.
He reasoned all this out with astounding calmness of mind,
between bouts of astounding rage and anguish, in the train from
Paris to Berlin. He was quietly and deliberately rude to a young
British officer in his carriage who tried to enter into conversation on
the way to Cologne, where he belonged to the Army of Occupation.
The boy was surprised by his gruffness, and shrank back into sulky
silence, staring at him now and then with furtive eyes, until Bertram
apologised, and said, “Sorry for being uncivil. I’ve got the devil of a
toothache. You know—a jumping nerve!” One doesn’t tell a travelling
companion that one has the devil of a broken heart, aching horribly.
“Oh, Lord,” said the boy, “what infernal bad luck! No wonder you
don’t want me to jaw to you! There’s nothing worse.”
He offered Bertram a brandy flask and said “it helped
sometimes.” And Bertram, to satisfy him, took a good swig which at
least had the effect of sending him to sleep after a wakeful night. It
was an uneasy sleep, and he wakened once crying out the name of
Joyce. Fortunately the young officer was dozing, or pretending to
doze. He left the carriage at Cologne, and hoped Bertram’s
toothache would be cured by the time he reached Berlin.
A nice boy, like thousands who had been as young as he at the
beginning of the war, and now had been four years, six years, even
seven years, dead. How extraordinary was that! Bertram had been
barely nineteen when he first joined up, in 1914. Now he was
getting on for twenty-six, and felt as old as fifty. Well, he’d crammed
in all the experience of life—war, marriage, failure, complete and
absolute tragedy.
What was life? Nothing but some kind of service, where he could
be of use somewhere. Service to boys younger than himself, like that
kid on the way to Cologne. He might help, by a hairsbreadth in the
balance of fate, to save their lives from another massacre. That
would be worth doing. He was dedicated still to his work for peace.
But first he must get peace within himself. Not easy, with this
conflict tearing inside him. He must get some kind of wisdom,
serenity, quietude of resignation before he could work for peace in
the world. He would “chuck” thinking about his own wound, and
plunge into the study of the world after war. That was the only line
of sanity.
Berlin ought to be interesting. He would meet his sister Dorothy
there, with her German husband. He would get to hear things and
see things. It would be strange to walk about among the Enemy,
without being killed.
Not long ago the Germans were “They.” During the war that was
always the word used. “They” are putting up a strafe along the
Menin Road. “They” are very quiet to-day. “They” are rather active
on the Divisional Front. It would be damn funny to meet them in
shops and restaurants, perhaps in private drawing-rooms—men, very
likely, who had potted at him when he’d shown his cap a second
above the parapet, or fired the five-point-nines which had rattled his
nerves in a rat-haunted dug-out. . . .
Bertram could not get a room in any hotel in Berlin. There was a
waiters’ strike, and all the hotels were closed and picketed except
the Adlon, which paid what the strikers demanded, clapped the
difference on to the bills, and did a roaring business with every room
booked weeks in advance, and crowds of Germans, Austrians,
English, and Jews of all nationalities, clamouring for admittance at
any price, and bribing the head clerk with thousands of marks, to
get their names on the waiting list.
It was the outside porter of the Adlon who saved Bertram from a
night in the streets, by giving him a card to a private lodging-house
somewhere near the Grossspielhaus, where he was able to obtain a
bed-sitting-room in which all his meals would be served.
His landlord came in repeatedly to study his comfort, to explain
the working of the electric light, to ask whether he desired helles or
dunkles beer, and to carry in his tray with the Abend-essen. He was
a tall Prussian of middle-age who had been a Feldwebel, or
sergeant-major, with the Second Prussian Guards, after keeping a
small hotel in Manchester. He spoke very good English, and lingered
to talk while Bertram ate a well-cooked steak.
“You were an officer in the English army?”
Bertram nodded. “In France, all the time.”
“I also. We were opposite the English at Ypres, Cambrai, the
Somme, in ’16. I used to hear your men talking in the trenches.
Sometimes I called out to them, and sometimes they answered
back. ‘How deep are you in mud, Tommy?’ That was in the winter of
’16. ‘Up to our bloody knees,’ said an English Tommy. ‘That’s
nothing,’ I answered, ‘We’re up to our waists.’ ‘Serve you bloody well
right!’ said the English boy.”
He chuckled over the reminiscence, but presently sighed deeply
and said:
“The war was one long horror.”
“What made you begin it?” asked Bertram.
The man shrugged his shoulders.
“It was a war of Capital. We were all silly sheep.”
Bertram went on eating, and wished the man would go. He
wanted to be alone. But the man stood by his chair and was anxious
to talk.
“I suppose they still hate us in England?”
“They’re not fond of you,” said Bertram.
The man sighed again, noisily.
“I was very happy in Manchester. . . . You will find no hate
against the English in Germany. Not much. We know you believe in
‘fair play.’ Not like the French!”
“You don’t like the French?”
The man’s face suddenly deepened in colour, and there came into
his eyes a look of rage.
“The French? They’ve put every insult on us. Make us eat dirt.
One day we’ll go back, and wring their necks—like this!”
He put his big hands together, and gave them a convulsive twist
while he made a noise in his throat like a man choking.
“I thought you’d had enough of war,” said Bertram.
“Not against the French. I’d march again to-morrow to make
them feel the German boot in their backsides.”
“Then it would happen all over again,” said Bertram. “The lousy
trenches, the gun-fire, the massacre of men.”
“With a difference,” said the man, in a low voice, as though
hiding, or half-revealing a secret thought.
“What kind of difference?”
“The French won’t have the English on their side next time. Nicht
wahr?”
Bertram swung round in his chair.
 “If the Germans think that, they’re making the hell of a mistake.
For the second time.”
“So?”
The man had a scared look, as though he had said too much.
“Your dinner was good. It was good meat, nicht wahr? Better
than in the trenches!”
He laughed in a guttural way, desiring to wipe out a bad
impression.
That night Bertram set out to find his sister Dorothy, the Frau von
Arenburg. By a queer coincidence in names, she lived in the
Dorotheenstrasse, somewhere across the Wilhelmstrasse, at the
corner of which was the British Embassy. Unfamiliar with the
geography of Berlin, he lost his way, and found himself in the
Leipzigerstrasse, so that, in halting German, he had to ask for the
direction from a passer-by. It was a tall young man who listened
very patiently to his bad German and then spoke in excellent
English.
“If you will follow me, sir, I shall be very happy to guide you to
the address.”
“Very good of you,” said Bertram.
“A pleasure, believe me.”
By the way he fell into step it was easy to see the man had been
a soldier, and by all his bearing, an officer.
“You are a stranger in Berlin, sir?”
“My first visit,” said Bertram. “I arrived to-day.”
“So? You will find people friendly to you as an Englishman. We
admire your sporting instincts, if I may say so without offence. You
have chivalry to your enemy.”
“I hope so,” said Bertram, coldly, thinking of the propaganda of
hate in some part of the English press, yet resenting a little this
praise of England from a German officer.
“In the war your men bore no grudge after the fight. I was a
prisoner after Cambrai, in ’17. Your ‘Tommies’ gave me cigarettes
when I was captured, and I was generously treated. I am pleased to
acknowledge that.”
“Our prisoners were not well-treated in Germany,” said Bertram.
 “Perhaps that was so, here and there,” said the officer. “We
hadn’t much food to spare. We were all on half-rations towards the
end.”
“There was great brutality in some of the camps,” said Bertram.
“Doubtless some of our prison commandants were brutal. We
have not yet reached the stage of the English in good humour. I
admit that, in spite of our Kultur!”
He laughed frankly, and then halted.
“You are now in Dorotheenstrasse, at Number 20. Good-night
and good luck.”
He saluted ceremoniously, but Bertram held out his hand and
thanked him. The action seemed to touch the young man.
“It’s kind of you—to shake hands! We don’t like the English to
think of us as Huns. We are not so bad as that.”
“A war name!” said Bertram. “Now it’s peace between us.”
“Peace and good will,” said the young man. “We cannot say that
of all our late enemies.”
He hesitated for a moment, as though wishing the excuse of
talking further. But as Bertram was silent, he saluted again, swung
on his heel, and strode down the street.
After all it was a vain walk to Dorotheenstrasse, because when
Bertram rang the bell of his sister’s house, the Mädchen who
answered the door gave him to understand that the Herr Baron von
Arenburg and the gnädige Frau were away in the country, and would
not return until the following afternoon.
It was a disappointment. Bertram felt like all men alone in a
strange city, very lonely in its crowds. And his loneliness was
deepened by a sense of spiritual desolation, and personal
abandonment, because of Joyce.
He was surely, he thought, one of the loneliest men in the whole
world that night, and then fought against the self-pity which
threatened again to overwhelm him. “Keep a stiff upper lip, my lad!”
he said to himself as he wandered about the well-lighted streets with
these Germans on every side of him, seeking amusement in the
“Wein-stube” and dancing halls.
 They seemed happy. There was no visible sign of penury here, or
of unhealed wounds of war, as in London where unemployed men
went begging of the theatre crowds and there was a general air of
depression and anxiety of many faces. These people were alert,
cheerful, apparently prosperous. The only reminder of the agony
they must have suffered was a blind man in soldier’s uniform who
sat selling matches with a drooping head and pale, sad face. Now
and then the passers-by dropped a coin in his tray and he said
“Danke schön!”
Bertram pushed through a swing door into a place where music
was being played. He couldn’t wander about all the time. It was
partly a drinking-place, and partly a dancing-hall. The open space for
dancing was surrounded by little tables all crowded with men and
women drinking wine out of long-necked bottles. In the gallery an
orchestra was playing jazz tunes, with a terrible blare of instruments.
Every now and then men and women rose from the tables and
joined the dancers until they were all densely wedged in one moving
mass, jazzing up and down gracelessly.
Bertram took a seat at a vacant table, and ordered some wine to
pay for his place. He sat there, staring at the dancers and the people
at the tables. Some of the girls were astonishingly pretty in the
German type, with blonde hair and blue eyes. There was one who
reminded him of Joyce, and he felt a sharp touch of pain at the
thought. She had the same kind of gold-spun hair and slim figure,
but her face was painted, which was not a habit of Joyce’s, and it
was plain to see that she was a girl of “easy virtue” by the way her
eyes roved around the group of men, with inviting smiles. She sat
alone, smoking a cigarette, with her elbows on the table. The men
were mostly of a repulsive type. There were several of them with
shaven heads, or so closely cropped that they were nearly bald, as
he had seen Prussian officers when, as prisoners, they had thrown
away their shrapnel helmets.
Other men here were foreigners, a few English, a group of
Americans, a number of Jews of unguessable nationalities. The
women mingled with them, drank with them, ogled them, and they
did not resent these German houris.
 Bertram had never seen such dancing. It was perfectly
respectable, but grotesque because of the stiff way in which the
Germans interpreted the modern steps with a kind of mechanical jig.
The girl like Joyce—horribly like her—came round to Bertram’s
table and sat deliberately in front of him.
“English boy?” she asked.
“English,” he said.
“You do not drink your wine. Shall I help you?”
“As you like.”
She poured herself out a glass of Niersteiner, and touched
Bertram’s glass and said “Prosit!” before taking a sip.
“Why are you sad?” she asked.
“Is it a gay world?”
She shrugged her bare shoulders.
“For the English it should be good. They won the war.”
“I’m not so sure,” said Bertram. “Berlin seems full of rich people,
all drinking and dancing like this.”
The girl looked round on the company, and made a grimace of
disgust.
“Foreigners mostly in these places. Jews. Profiteers,”—she said
the word Schieber for the last class. “This isn’t Germany. It’s the
same hell as in other great cities of the world, London, Paris, New
York.”
“You know London?”
“Very well. I was there as a dancer before the war. At the Empire.
How’s dear old Piccadilly?”
“Still there,” said Bertram.
He wished to God this girl would go away. The line of her neck as
she turned her head reminded him of Joyce again.
“I’d like to get back to London,” she said. “Here one must be
wicked or starve to death. I have a sister who’s good. She’s a
dressmaker. She earns sixty marks a day, sewing on buttons and
hooks. It costs her more than that to buy a chemise. She goes to
bed when she gets her underclothes washed, once a month. Now
she had tuberculosis from unternährung.”
“What’s that?” asked Bertram.
 “What you call under-feeding. Starvation is another name for it.
All the good people suffer from unternährung. My mother died from
it in the war, when none of us had enough to eat, whatever our
virtue. You English made us suffer like that. Your blockade.”
“Yes,” said Bertram.
“It was rather cruel, don’t you think? After the war you kept the
blockade up until Peace was signed. You made war against our
babies and killed thousands, so that we should be starved into
surrender. That wasn’t what you call playing the game.”
“The war game,” said Bertram. “You would have been harder
with us if you had won.”
“That’s true. War is perhaps as cruel as peace. Most men are
devils, and women she-devils.”
“Some of them are pretty decent,” said Bertram. “If they get a
chance. The ordinary crowd.”
“You are not cruel,” she answered. “You are kind. You have kind
eyes, and you talk to me as though I were a good woman. I would
love you very much if you would let me. What do you say, English
boy?”
“I must be going,” said Bertram.
She made a protest, holding his arm, but he called “Ober!” and
paid for the wine, and rose from his chair. She held out her hand,
and he gave her his.
“I expect you’re too good to live,” she said, with a queer little
laugh.
“I ought to have died before,” he said, “but I missed the luck. In
the war.”
“Learn to laugh,” she said. “Laugh at the cruelty of life, like I do.”
“I expect you know its cruelty,” he said, with a little pity in his
voice.
“Down to the bottom of hell,” she answered, and laughed again.
“Well, good-night.”
“Gute Nacht, hübschen!”
She bent down suddenly and kissed his hand.
He went out of the dancing hall strangely perturbed. As the girl
had bent her head to kiss his hand, the glint of her hair was a
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