Five Roundabouts to Heaven Read Free Page B

walking slowly through the woods with her hands clasped in front of her, arms at full length, a smile upon her face.
    Looking back on that visit to the château now, seeing myself as I stood watching the empty house by the light of the dying sun, I agree that, at first, it was a pretty maudlin exhibition. I certainly piled it on a bit thick. I had come for sweet suffering, and I saw to it that I got it.
    But then, though I fought against it, it all changed, and as the shadows lengthened, the suffering was no longer sweet, but grim.

     
    Some of the figures which I imagined once more upon the terrace were blurred, but Philip Bartels was clear enough.
    We used to keep on the terrace one or more long, flexible rods, about six feet tall, which we cut from saplings. A length of thin string was tied to the top of each, and on the other end of the string was a little piece of red flannel. When we had five minutes to while away, we would lean over the side of the terrace and dangle the bit of flannel in front of the numerous frogs which lived in the moat. If a frog bit the flannel, mistaking it for a winged insect, we would whip it out of the water while its mouth was still entangled in the flannel, and then catch it in the grass by the side of the moat.
    It didn’t do the frogs any harm or us any good—only once did we decide to catch and kill enough to eat—and the skill lay in trying to deceive the frog by a lifelike manipulation of the bait.
    Bartels, the keen fisherman, was naturally the most enthusiastic. He would always stroll out in his dinner jacket for a few minutes with the frogs before dinner. He was very good at frog-fishing. Sometimes Ingrid would lean over the terrace wall to watch him; and I would stroll out and join them both, because I was terribly jealous where Ingrid was concerned.
    Bartels was my best friend. But Ingrid was my love. However, I realize now that I need not have worried. Knowing how I felt, Bartels was always scrupulously correct in his attitude to Ingrid.
    All this I remembered, that wonderful summer night when I revisited the château: the château which was so quiet, and yet so alive to me who watched from the shadow of the rhododendron bush. I recalled, too, that the time came, many years later, when I myself was not so punctilious; when I acted craftily towards my best friend, with results which even to this day I find it difficult to assess.
    I saw Bartels clearly that evening.
    He stood out sharp-cut from the rest, leaning over the terrace wall. Once, he looked up and glanced for several long seconds towards where I stood, and so real did he seem that even now there are occasions when I wonder whether he was really summoned to the scene only by my imagination.
    I saw him, a slenderly built figure of nineteen, with a lean face browned by the summer sun. He was not good-looking; indeed, in some ways there was something slightly comical about him. His features were reasonably regular, and the nose was straight and delicately chiselled; but he wore spectacles, of which the frames were of tortoiseshell and the side-pieces of gold; and although he kept his hair fairly well ordered, there were some hairs, on the crown of his head, which insisted upon sticking up. He had, too, a very wide mouth, of which the lips were rather thin and bloodless. So that sometimes, with his unruly hair and big mouth, he bore a faint resemblance to a cross between Donald Duck and one of the frogs he was so keen on catching.
    I think his voice was his most attractive feature, that and his gentle, generous nature and ready sense of humour. His voice was deep and rich, and he always spoke very slowly and deliberately, and, when he looked towards me that evening, I seemed to hear him call to me, as he had often called before: “Come and look here, Pete—there’s a big one here going to bite!”
    Yet although he was keen on gun and rod, I have seen him painstakingly rescue a drowning fly from a glass of wine, and place