THE DEATH OF CHILDREN.
Maurice Rowdon.


gemitd
There was a black floor
and almost bare white walls, with yellow and pink flowers amid green
spray standing in earthenware jars. The room was at the top floor
of the building, and one af its windows, which ran the whole length
of the wall, looked over the ripped and broken roofs. The night
was not still yet, and the last of the traffic from the theat res
was going swiftly, with a deep humming, along the wide street far
below, towards the expensive districts in the west. This street
below had bright lights coloured blood-red and green.
Most people were sitting on the floor or half-lying across
the two divans. On the long table were dozens and dozens of
shining wine-glasses, and bottles of brandy, gin, vermouth, white
and red wine. Above the table there were coloured designs for
stege-sets done in crayon, nest of them on black paper, so that
the colours were brilliant and striking. There were pierrots in
white, ballerinas, men in tail-coats with pink flowers in thei r
buttonholes, creatures in great knarled masks under spotlights,
acrobats in tights with leather bands round their wr ists, women
with wide bustles and dresess which flowed back from their waists
in magnificent half-trains, and then slanting white columns,
crobked arches, and dim, flashing interiors. On the table ne ar
the glasses there was a white plaster hand, with the nails painted
green, and between the middle and the index finger there was an
unlighted cigarette. Leaning again st the wall, mounted on card-
board, there were flashlight photographs taken at the film-studios,
during a break in the Work, at tables of tubular steel, by cheaply
painted backoltths, on planks, by imprévised dressing-rooms, and
all these photogrpahs were signed, by actors or producers.


Charlotte, who sat by the window overlooking the broken roofs,
wasn't an actress but was connécted with the theatre through her
husband, the manager of one of the most prosperous houses in the
city, where the overheads were 8mall bec ause of its situation.
Hundreds and hundreds of people were prépared every evening to
drive out across the dark, silent places where ghosts walked, to
see his shows.
She had grey hair, which was tinted the slightest blue, making
her seem cool and withdrawn. She was plump, with heavy, white arms 3
and her face had onc e been very beautiful. Her eyes were oféen
lost, gazing right out beyond people, arrogantly, as if she were
coming to amusing and ruthless conclusions. Her usual colour
was black, for ay little gaiety of colour in her dress would have
spoiled her. There was never any hesitation in her voice, vhich
was rich, deep in the throat, hugged down into her, not disembodied
or tense as it sometimes is in city-people. Always when she spoke
there was a half-smile on her lips, and always she looked away
from the person she was addressing, gazing up ar sideways, never
down; then suddenly she WO uld give the other person a quick,
brilliant glance, so shining that there could be tears in her eyes.
Then she said hullo to a friend she always called her 'meine
Susse' in a kind of longing, vouptuous, adoring way. She often
used these expressions---'my sweet', *my little one', 'my own
darling', ', pretty'. Shy women who went to few parties recoiled
from these suave, too-ezpert compliments, and many women,
especially young ones, blushed under her gaze. People said she
was leebian, but no one was sure.
Outaide, in the deep black of the city, now almbst still
from the nervous day, there were chasms, unwholesome pits, and
sudden grey hills mounting up and up,mixed and angrily pushed


together, sharp monsters which cut and tore across. the sweet,
accomodating sky. Then there'were flatter places, more clement
wounds that flowed out as far as the eye could see, with the wind
coming quietly across them; unvisited and silént places, warning
the hot, fleshy passer-by, the fool who came clothed in his living
flesh, crying to him in the stillness, 'Go back, go back." Under
these terrible mounds and hills lay a cammunity of people, deep
now after the passing of years, and children who had never so much
as sighed against the world, their grabbing hands now wrapped in
a mantle of cascading wall, rock crammed in rock. In this city
no living man believed in heroism.
Koelner came into the room later than most of the others.
He stood at the door and stared at everybody with hard eyes. Yet
he wasn't a hard man.
He was tall, silim, with a balding head and a very white face;
his eyes were dark, never looking at a thing deeply or for long.
His gaze was like that of a. man working over a desk, dealing with
papers and urgen t telephoné calls. He spoke crisply, in careful
sentences, dedicating himself only to what was said, without foible
or mannerism or anything personal at all. He seldom glanced at
other people, and when he did so it was a quick glance, expénding
nothing in charm or pity, much less interest, but closed in,
refusing any communication.
The hostess took him across to the Window and showed him a
seat near Charlotte, who had watched him come into the room and
stand for a moment near the entrance, erect and unmoved. He
nodded to her and sat down, then carefully took out a cigarette
from a shining silver case. She looked at him while he did this,
then, as if she had arrived at an exciting conslusion about so me-
thing, she leaned forwardx and began talking to him. He glanced


up, a little surprised, with a slight smile. She began aski ing him
question after question, and slowly he began to talk, until he also
was leaning forward in his chair. L moment ago she'd been half-
lying on the divan, gazing up at the ceiding, her eyes full of a
cruel secret, it seemed, talking so1 ftly to the young woman at her
side; and now she was quick, filling every pause in this man's
speech, her:eyes absolutely concentrated.
The maid brought them a second drink, and they touched glasses.
The room was noisy now, and a slowly moving layer of blue smoke
drifted across from one wall to the other. Someone by the door
slipped, half-fell against the table, shaking the thin glasses,
them managed to right himself and leave the roon.
Koelner explained to her the difficulties of his last product-
ion, how someone had rallen from a piece of scaffolding and wauld
put in a heavy claim for compensation, how the designer had created
a set which was in the poorest taste and how they'd had to take it
down and re-build it again in the space of a few hours, between
nine in. the evening and give the following morning. She listened
to him closely, her glass in her hand, sipping every now and then,
and she would nod, saying, 'My God!', 'No!', (But really!' And
with each encouraging exclamation he thought of more and more
things to tell her. He still sat rather erect in his ohair, but
he gesticulated a little more, his white, delicate, rather feminine
hands hald up in front of him, the tips of the fingers touching
and parting, touching and parting as he talked.
He paused, and She .atched him for a moment.
1 The war can't have helped,' she said.
At first he didn't understand her, so she quickly added,
*These wars are always for freedom.' She spoke with a bitterness
which acquitted only him. "After every war we're supposed to be


thankful, aren't we?'
It wasn't at all connected with what he'd been saying,
with the plays his wife had starred in, with his own fall,
many months before, from a height of fifty feet while directing
a film, with the contract he'd almost torn up; but at the same
time it seemed to summarise all he had said. For improvised
studios, too few cameras, scaffolding which collapsed, st ages
far too small, these were the results of the war; and the actors
were inferior, for the best people preferred working in quieter
towns, not in this city of pits and ghosts.
He nodded quickly and siadd 'Ah, the wart' He leaned
forward: 'I could work better without these headaches every day.
Look---' He lowered his head, to show her. 'Right across
here, it seems to clamp right down on my brain, and I just have
to sit and wait until it goes away.' He drew his finger along
the top of his skull, where it was bare, showing her the wide
line which ran from the back of his head, a livid colour.
'AS you say,' he went on, 'for freedom!
It was all for freedom!
And I have to be thankful!* His lips were thin as he spoke.
The bitterness was rising in him. His eyes were harder and
tighter. He went on to speak about the pains in his stomach
which were the result of a burst of machine-gunfire, the rheum-
atism caused by lying out all night in the wet with these growing
wounds in his body, and as he spoke his face grew redder,
flushing above the collar, and sweat began to appear on his brow,
while Charlotte, her eyes a little narrowed, drew from him more
and more of his terrible confession.
They filled their glasses again, this time without the maid.
There was a great jug of punch at the table, and Koelner leaned
back and took it. He picked out the nicest fruit for her, and


she made soft grateful noises as he dropped the cherries into
her glass with a wooden spoon. He was so aware of outrage, his
wounds and pain, that he couldn't bear to look at anyone else in
the room apart from Cherlotte. It almost seemed that the other
people in the room were responsible, and that :while he talked
rapidly and passionately, the red rising up from his collar,
he was blaming them all, .and Charlotte was calmly helping him to
do this, her face quite unflushed, her hair still in place, the
lightest shade of blue, and her cool hands resting just as they
had done before on her knees.
Someone opened the window and at once there came the
shuddering and swooning sound of the huge church-bells hear by,
in a tower not so many yerds away in the darkness. They were
banging furiously together, in chord end discord, hushed and
then beldowing on the slight wind, .asserting eternity above ruins,
above the dead and lying children, above the pains of living
people, above anything t hat could happen on the éarth.
The blue smoke ent rolling and turning out of the window,
and no one looked up when : the sound of the bells came into the
room. The talk was very loud, a woman was shouting at the top
of her voice, 'But you mustn't, you mustn't!', while her friends
laughed, sprawling on the floor. Most people were drinking the
strong punch now, in long wine glasses, with cherries, pieces of
apple and apricot near the rims.
'Are you uncomfortable there?* Charlotte asked him, frown-
ing sl ightly as she did 8o, looking at him from un der her eye-
brows, to sho her concern. He glanced down at the wooden sides
of his chair, and then he smiled. His lips were vet and fuller.
now, and when he opened his mouth he showed good teeth: it vas
a most gentle smile, altogether unlike the stiffness of his
Extraree


entrance not long before. He nodded, murmured, A little', and
she at once got up from the divan. She stood for a moment look-
ing at the other people in the room, her eyes with their special
amused insight, and then she touched him on the arm; she spoke
to him intimately, 'Let's move across to the other side, then.
It looks more interesting.'
They vent beyond the table, their glasses in their hands,
and sat down on the floor by the hearth, against cushions, still
a little away from the other people. They sat close together,
their hips touching. She offered him her right hand and said,
'Read me my life.' He took it lightly in his own and traced
the life-line with the very tips of his fingers. She drew her
hand over his, and for a moment, so that no one else in the room
could have noticed, they gripped each other, in the briefest under-
standing. Now all the room was noise, no longer were there bells,
and the street below with the red lights was silent. He leaned
towards her and asked her when she would leave, adding immediately,
before she could reply, We mustn't separate.'
'I'll be going soon,' she said. He looked at her suddenly,
the light fallen from his eyes, and she .atched him for some time
before she added in a lower voice, 'I'll laye you my phone-
number. Call me just before you leave here.f Then they looked
away from each other, resting, the decision having been made.
A cat came into the room, paused near the entrance, smelling
and staring about, then ran quickly to one of the chairs and hid
underneath it, alarmed by the noise. Koelner watched this.
He was absolutely absorbed for a moment in the creature's sofy,
long, silent mov ements, and he chuckle d when he saw it disappear
under the chair. Charlotte was now talking to someone else
behind her, leaning langorously back; she had a fine stra ight


nose, a warm mouth, and her body was in that richness which
just precedes decline, the flesh's epoch of choice. Sometimes,
when pec ople looked at her, they felt that nothing in the world
was strong enough to resist her will.
Koelner jumped up, in sudden glad abandon.
He went carefully
and slowly towards the chair. In all his movements now he was
casual and easy. He watched the chair for a little time, then
bent down and made a scratching noise with his nails against the
baok. He waited patiently. There was a slight movement behind
the chair-cover, at the foot, then the cat's head appeared, black,
her great astonished eyes staring upwards.
The soratch ing nail
was discovered. Koelner smiled, bending further down. Under the
ohair the creature's tati tail swished and swished, her back low
and arohed, then suddenly she leapt out, turning as she did so,
and made a clawing wild jump at his hand. He hopped back, roar-
ing with laughter, and one or two people came closer, to watch him.
He put his hand higher, again there was a tense leap, with the ears
flat back, and again he drew his hand away. The game quickened.
The cat jumped up on to the chair, Koelner moved his arm quickly,
upand sideways and down, then at last she was full a her prey and
they wrestled together, until Koelner took her up into his arms
and began stroking her head softly. The spectators also put out
their hands and touched her, as she lay proudly against his W aist-
coat.
Later, when Charlot te left the room, her fur wrap over her
arm, he turned suddenly, at the momen t she happened to be look-
ing in his direction, and smiled at her as if he found extraordinar-
ily and dazzlingly beautiful.
After sheta gone he began talking to other people, standing
saxttr


easily at their sides. He listened to them with his head
slightly bowed, and laughed frequently. He even called out to
an acquaintance on the other side of the room in an odd, mildly
mooking way, and this cry of his made several paople laugh. But
for all that he was still alone, and never glanced fully at eny-
one. An hour later he went into the hall and telephoned the
number she'd given him. She answered him almost at once, in
a soft voice, her lips very close to the mouthpiece,
1p Where are you?* he asked.
t At home.'
'Let' s go to a club.*
*I'm leaving home now. Go down to your car,' she said,
'and I'll be there in a few minutes, * I'm leaving this very
momen t.'
He left the party without saying goodbye to anyone, and went
down the chipped stairs. There was only the dimmest light on
each floor, and up from beneath came a chill flow ofair, like
that from a tomb. His eyes were no longer cheerful but wond ering,
bereft of any guile. He reached the doorway downstairs and
walked between two long piles of rubble to where the cars were
parked. He saw the spire of thecathedral, pushed right up into
the sky, and at its side a long street of huge buildings, all
of them silently grieving the dead, ithout windows, roofs or
floors. Sometimes the moon could be seen gleaming through these
shells, but tonight there was none. He waited and in a few
moments a car turned the corner and came towards him. Charlotte
leaned from the driver, 8s seat, her head wrapped round with black
lace in the Spanish s tyle. He took her hand, which she offered,
and kissed it.


'Look, T she said, 1 follow behind me e I know where to go.*
He started his own car and followed close behind her, going
slowly over the dusty, uneven road. When they were out into
the main street, past the lighted corner where whores were stand-
ing, they speeded forward.
Then Charlotte guided him off the
main road, to a street where most of the houses were intact. At
the end there was a great lighted sign, HOTEL, and here she pulled
up. She didn't wait for him to get out but walked straight into
the foyer. He came in just as a page-boy and the hall-porter
were bowing to her. The page-boy took her fur-wrap and walked
before her up the main stairs. Koelner stood Where he was,
with the hall-porter's eye on him. Just before a turn in the
staircase Charlotte stopped and looked back, and when she saw him
standing there, his eyes round and Wondering, she burst out laughing.
*Well,' she cried, taren't you coming?t, and just befcre she
turned back to the stairs again she gave the hall-porter below a
brief, collected glance.
Koelner followed behind her, astonished, his mouth half-open.
They reached the second floor and walked along a corridor. At
the end the page-boy unlocked one of the doors, pushed it so ftly
open, switohed the light on inside, then stood back to let t hem
pass. They walked in to the soft, pink and silver room, their
shoes making no sound what soever on the carpet, and the page-boy
murmured, 'Gute Nacht, gn'adige Frau,' as he closed the door again.
The light in the room was very dim, shining from one side of
the bed. Charlot te threw her wrap on to a chair and wal ked across
to the window, where white lace and chintz curtains were stirring
slightly.
There were no other houses in sight.
Koelner hadn't moved since he came into the room. He was
simply staring at her, and slowly she became aware of this, and


avare of the room's terrible silence. So she turne d and asked
softly, I Well, what s the matter?'
He looked into her eyes,
searching her, and then he almost shook his head; in that moment
he could discover none of the signs by which she'd become known to
him at the party. She turned back to the window, looking out.
He put his hand up to his eyes and then, just as if a kind
of fever had suddenly got hold of him, so that there was no question
of his using control, a kind of shuddering fever, he bent his head
forward and began to weep, his face screwed up, his mouth open,
uttering long, dim, throttled ories from under his hand. He stood
in the middle of the room quite broken, his legs bent a little
at the knees, his shoulders trembling: his clothes seemed old
now, those of a begg gar, because of the way he was st anding there in
the dim light. The moment she heard his first cry she turned her
head with a sudden, astonished movement, her eyes widening slightly;
she stood looking at him, fascinated, unable to believe it. His
lips were shivering so that she could hardly hear him when he
spoke, so lightly and childishly, 'No... No! We must talk!*
But there was no softness in her eyes to receive him, only a
troubled stare. Nothing encouraging came from her. She wasn't
the woman who had gripped his hand that evening.
At first she shrugged and began to smile. But the cries
behind her were so dreaddul, and so unexpected, reminding her for
And at
some reason of the death of children, that she paused. Txaxxx**
last, in a terrible
tmxxx*urxkeat
weariness, she leaned her head against the
white ledge of the window, her eyes turned away, and began to
feel the approadh, though she tried to keep her amused secret,
of shame.
She looked up for a moment beyond the piles outside where
the dead lay, but all the dusky stillness of the sky gave her


no message back, only receded further and further into its own
eddying, dusty vagueness, offering no complaint, and neither she
nor the sobbing man behind her could understand.