Complete works of a e w.., p.660
Complete Works of a E W Mason, page 660
“Who are you going to telephone to?” she demanded.
“Need you ask?” I returned.
“You see, Letty,” Imogen resumed, “you fetched your bag from Jill’s dressing-table and you came back to us in the lounge, not quite yourself. You told us that you found it on a chair in the sitting-room. That wasn’t true. You asked us not to mention your visit to the room. You asked us very urgently, and you gave us a ridiculous reason. When I picked up the bag to admire it I could see you were so nervous that your fingers were twitching. You were afraid that I was going to open it, Letty. When we went in to luncheon you sat on it. When you went away you were clutching it — just as you are now.”
Slowly and very sullenly Letty Ransome came back into the room.
“I didn’t mean to leave the bag behind again,” she answered. “It’s my only one.”
Neither Imogen nor I made any rejoinder. As a matter of fact we were not too comfortable. Now that the police were quite certain that Jill had died from an overdose of cocaine, a drug to which she was addicted, they were not really interested in the theft of the sapphire. No one had moved them to take any action. It had nothing to do with the inquest. A direct threat to raise it at the inquest might be beating the air. Our hope was that Letty dare not run the risk of allowing us to try.
“Why do you want the sapphire?” she asked.
It would, of course, have been too ridiculous to have tried to explain to Letty Ransome the dreams and hopes which had gathered about that stone. She would not have understood them in a thousand years, and when she had understood them she would have thought us all liars. Imogen took the simplest way.
“That’s our affair,” she said, and I saw Letty Ransome’s face change. She looked from one to the other of us with an easiness which she had not shown before. A smile glimmered on her lips and spread. She began to laugh with a real amusement.
“I see,” she remarked. “Birds of a feather, what? I must now have your promise.”
“You’ll have it, but you won’t need it,” I answered. “What can we say, if we’ve got the sapphire?”
Letty Ransome thought that over and it seemed to her reasonable. Thieves betray thieves, certainly, but not to convict themselves. She suddenly opened her bag, took out of it a twist of tissue-paper and laid it on the table. In the twist of paper lay the sapphire and its chain. Imogen’s hand darted out and grasped it — oh, greedily enough to persuade Letty Ransome that she had nothing any longer to fear from us. She shut up her bag with a snap. She looked at us derisively.
“You make me tired, you two,” she said, and she sauntered out of the room.
Chapter 27 The Last
I WAS INDIGNANT. Letty Ransome had hardly closed the door before I cried:
“Did you hear that, Imogen?”
“Of course I did, darling,” she answered.
“She thinks we are a couple of crooks,” I said.
“Well, aren’t we?” she asked, playing with the sapphire.
“We are not. Just listen to me!”
“I will. But, dearest, don’t you think you had better have a whisky and soda first?”
The advice was sound and I always take sound advice. But I was not to be diverted. I had lunched at my club which was conveniently placed between the officialdom of the West and the solid interests of the East. I had sat beside a King’s Counsel to whom I had put our problem; and now reinforced by his judgement, I was prepared to prove to Imogen that my capacities were not limited to cutting down half a dozen old teak trees in a forest. Over my whisky and soda I expounded the law.
“The sapphire is not the property of the Crown. If Jill died intestate and without kin, the property of which she died possessed would belong to the Crown. But the sapphire was taken from her whilst she was alive. Therefore she was not possessed of it when she died.”
Imogen nodded.
“I was always certain that if we went down to the House of Commons and sent for the Chancellor of the Exchequer and told him that there was a sapphire for him to sell, he would be bored to tears,” she said.
“I don’t think you are quite following my argument, Imogen,” I said.
“Word by word, darling,” Imogen insisted.
“Very well.”
I took a drink and Imogen sat with her eyes upon my face and her hands in her lap, suspiciously dutiful.
“The only person really in a position to take action is Jill herself; and she’s dead. The sapphire’s in the air. To establish ownership to it amongst the living would be impossible.”
“I think you’re marvellous, Martin,” said Imogen. “It’s such a comfort to know that we shall not be acting illegally when we do what we are going to do, anyway.”
We took the sapphire with its chain to a jeweller the next day and got him to put a price upon it. Then we sent for Robin Calhoun and persuaded him to take the price. He made a little show of a fight against taking it, but Jill was gone and he had the cost of her burial to discharge and his circumstances were distressful. In the end he took it and went his way. After he had gone:
“I think,” I said, “that we had better buy a passage to Rangoon and give it to Michael with the sapphire, don’t you?”
Imogen agreed.
“So you, too, noticed that his clothes were getting shabby and his shoes wanted heeling, and his face was longer every day,” she said tucking her hand through my arm.
“I shouldn’t think that there’s much to spare in Michael’s pocket nowadays,” I said.
I think that Michael had actually a narrower margin than we imagined. We telephoned to his address in Bayswater the day after the inquest, asking him to call. I shall never forget the look upon his face when Imogen handed to him his sapphire and his steamer-ticket and he knew that his long pilgrimage was at an end. It was like a clean, clear morning after a hopeless night of rain. He could not speak. He made a few little whimpering noises of joy and the water stood in his eyes. I thought that he would burst into tears. He made a forward movement with his head towards Imogen and checked himself.
“You may, Michael,” Imogen said with a smile, and she lifted her cheek to him.
But he passed the privilege by. He stood up straight, although with an effort. His face lost — not all at once but by subtle gradations — the warmer human looks which it had worn during his quest and our endeavours to help him. We saw Galatea returning to stone. He became not stern but aloof, an ecclesiastic set apart amongst his solitary imaginings. So I had seen him twice — once on the steamer at Schwegu and once on the terrace of the Rock Temple at Dhambulla. So Imogen had seen him once. Michael D. had gone long ago. Michael went now. Uncle Sunday remained. He did not thank us. Why should he? The little we had done in obedience to the inexorable Laws would be of immense advantage to ourselves. He just said: “Good-bye!” and went away.
As soon as he had gone Imogen did what was for her the rarest thing. She sat down and cried — really cried, with the great tears rolling down her cheeks.
“I had an idea,” she said between her sobs, “ — I am too ridiculous and I am making myself hideous — I had an idea that we might have gone down to the docks and seen him off. But he doesn’t want us.” She turned and clung to me whilst I slipped an arm about her. “Oh, Martin, you must never go back to Burma. I can’t have you sitting about any old pagoda and perfectly happy. No, I can’t!”
I reassured her as best I could. We did the wise thing we had learnt to do in conditions of stress. We went out and dined together alone in a restaurant gay with lights and lovely people. But in the midst of the gaiety and the lights we had glimpses of another and a distant world — the shadow stretching out over earth and sea from the summit of Adam’s Peak, the bungalow in a glistening jungle where Imogen had crouched against a wall with the terror of death at her heart, and the high terrace above Sigiri where I had first held her in my arms.
THE END
Fire over England (1936)
Published in 1936 by Hodder and Stoughton, Fire over England is an historical adventure novel, set in 1588 and relating the English response to the threat of the Spanish Armada; it is a thinly veiled analogy to the international situation facing Britain in 1936, a point explicitly made by Mason in his Preface to the first edition.
The story was famously adapted for film as Fire over England in 1937 by London Film Productions and the first film in which Laurence Olivier and Vivien Leigh acted opposite each other. Flora Robson played Queen Elizabeth I, with a such a compelling performance that it is still considered to be one of the best depictions of the Tudor Queen on screen (‘by turns charming, earthy and surprisingly vulnerable, with a crackling wit’. The Guardian, 27 June, 2013). Equally, Olivier’s iconic clipped delivery of his lines gives the production a Shakespearean gravitas. It was directed by William K. Howard and the screenplay was by author Clemence Dane, whose famously lively persona is reflected in the brisk dialogue and pace of the film. Leigh’s performance in the film was intended by its producer, Alexander Korda, to showcase her abilities and indeed, it helped to convince David O. Selznick to cast her as Scarlett O’Hara in his production of Gone with the Wind. Korda was also working with Winston Churchill to alert the public to the threat posed by the Third Reich, one of the reasons he undertook this production. With the working title of Glorianna, principal photography took place at Denham Studios, where a large water tank was used to launch the model ships representing the Spanish Armada and the English naval defenders.
Fire over England was the first British film to have its US premiere at Los Angeles. Overall, the picture garnered positive reviews. The review in Variety enthused: ‘This is a handsomely mounted and forcefully dramatic glorification of Queen Bess. It holds a succession of brilliantly played scenes, a wealth of choice diction, pointed excerpts from English history and a series of impressive tableaux.’ The League of Nations Committee on Motion Pictures awarded the 1937 Cinema Medal of Honor to Fire over England.
A portion of the film, including the beacons being lit on the English coast and an armour-clad Queen Elizabeth giving her speech to the surrounding soldiers at Tilbury before the Battle of Gravelines, was used in the 1939 World War II propaganda documentary The Lion Has Wings. It is used to compare the Spanish invasion attempt to a Nazi invasion, demonstrating how Great Britain has survived against great odds in the past and would again.
The story has a colourful opening: Eton College in 1581. One sultry Summer’s day, the school has the most eminent visitor it can hope for — Queen Elizabeth, who is listening attentively to the schoolboys reciting their loyal verses, composed in Latin. She receives their homage graciously and with humour; it is clear that she has a winning way with her subjects due to her simple pride in her nationality, ‘her liking for their sports, her share in their homely humour.’ She has been Queen for twenty-three years and has carefully nurtured – and sometimes disciplined – her nation and its people so that it has expanded and flourished. As she surveys the crowds, she spots a boy being pushed back by his tutor in favour of another boy called Humphrey Bannet, from the front of the spectators, despite the fact that his face glows with adoration for the Queen. That boy is Robin Aubrey, whose father, George, was arrested a few years before for the possession of ‘heretical literature’, while travelling in Spain and who was supposedly executed. He was also a friend of Sir Francis Walsingham, the Queen’s principal secretary. After publicly ridiculing the tutor, she calls Robin to her. He is well groomed, handsome, has a courtier’s knack for a pretty compliment and is clearly devoted to her — one day, he will make a fine servant of the realm. Robin is overwhelmed, but the aftermath is that his friend Humphrey and their tutor, have now been snubbed and he worries about the consequences of that. They are furious and scathing of his apparent ‘conquest’ of the monarch. He is also torn. Should he pursue his studies at Oxford as planned next year, or go to court straight from school and serve his Queen and country?
Robin’s answer comes soon enough. He receives a secret visit from Walsingham, who questions him about his linguistic skills. Are they as good as his late father’s, who could speak several European languages? Robin is confident that they are. Walsingham is particularly interested in his skills in Spanish – the eminent man has lost nearly all his agents in Spain to the Inquisition. Robin is resisting the call to loyal duty, however, due to what happened to his father. Walsingham has to leave with his mission unfulfilled, unaware that Robin has long term plans of his own.
The story then moves on four years and Robin is now a handsome young man, but one with mysterious ways. Abbot’s Gap, his family home in Devon, of which he is now master, is closed up most of the time and he visits fleetingly and for only a few days at a time in order to see to his affairs. There are gaps in his life for which no-one can account. On this occasion, however, he is to ride to the neighbouring Bannet family of whom Humphrey is the son and spend a week of leisure there. It is an important week, because at the end of it he must turn his back on pleasures such as tilting and hunting and redirect his efforts to another secret matter entirely. What he had not expected was to find the house party all out hunting and only one person of rank left in the house — a beautiful young woman, whose blonde hair gleams in the sun and whose face and figure captivate him. Her name is Cynthia Norris and she in turn is immediately attracted to Robin. He must now decide. Should he continue with his secret personal mission, which involves great danger and a sea voyage to Spain; or should he obey his heart and stay in England with the young woman destined to be the love of his life?
Mason is careful to appear even handed in his treatment of the various personalities, including Phillip of Spain and Santa Cruz; the purpose was to show there were men of goodwill on all sides. In another parallel with the political divisions of the 1930’s, the treacherous Bannets are portrayed as a tiny minority, with the vast majority of Englishmen putting aside their religious differences to unite against a common foe. The script of the film and the novel itself have an almost identical ambience, a patriotic fervour and language that is very much of its time, but may grate on the modern reader. Nevertheless, putting such discomfort aside, it is a rollicking read and if taken in the right spirit, an entertaining narrative.
Portrait of Sir Francis Walsingham, c. 1585, was principal secretary to Queen Elizabeth I from 20 December 1573 until his death and who is popularly remembered as her ‘spymaster’.
The first edition
CONTENTS
Preface
CHAPTER I. A Knot of Ribbons for Robin Aubrey
CHAPTER II. The Rehearsal
CHAPTER III. The Secret Visitor
CHAPTER IV. The Signet Ring
CHAPTER V. Not Foreseen in the Plan
CHAPTER VI. Robin Dines in Strange Company
CHAPTER VII. Metamorphosis of Captain Fortescue
CHAPTER VIII. The Better Plan
CHAPTER IX. The Winged Mercury
CHAPTER X. The Gallows’ Mark
CHAPTER XI. The Renunciation
CHAPTER XII. Robin Takes Service
CHAPTER XIII. The Knot of Ribbon Again and a Supper at Barn Elms
CHAPTER XIV. Master and Man
CHAPTER XV. Giuseppe the Valet
CHAPTER XVI. Dangerous Moments
CHAPTER XVII. Death of Santa Cruz
CHAPTER XVIII. Meanwhile
CHAPTER XIX. A Bridport Dagger
CHAPTER XX. Plots and Conspiracies
CHAPTER XXI. On the Edge of the Grass
CHAPTER XXII. The Device of the Italian Singers
CHAPTER XXIII. A Vain Pursuit
CHAPTER XXIV. In the Garden of Abbot’s Gap
CHAPTER XXV. Gregory Becomes Noticeable
CHAPTER XXVI. At the Escorial
CHAPTER XXVII. The Beggar on the Church Steps
CHAPTER XXVIII. George Aubrey
CHAPTER XXIX. Old Tricks are Good Tricks
CHAPTER XXX. Anthony Scarr
CHAPTER XXXI. Robin Pays His Fare
CHAPTER XXXII. Thursday
The 1937 film adaptation
Preface
IN HIS NAPOLEON Monsieur Bainville wrote: “Each generation believes that the world began with it, and yet whoever broods over the past sees that many things were much as they are today.”
This is particularly true of the Elizabethan age. The differences between then and now are in the main superficial — differences of dress, of entertainments, of transport, of government, of machinery. But in the deeper circumstances of character and opinion, and the conduct which springs from them, these two turbulent epochs have much in common which they manifest in the same way. Youth takes to the new element of the air in the same eager and adventurous spirit in which it then took to the new element of the sea. Fear of the introduction of papistical practices rouses Protestant England to the same fervour of refusal as it did then. The same passion for peace is accompanied by the same quiet and staunch belief that if war must come the nation cannot be beaten. There is the same reluctance to meddle with the entanglements of the Continent. And the freedom of the Low Countries is still the chief principle of foreign policy.
Even in minor matters the resemblance stands. The swift and wide expansion of Walsingham’s secret service and its swift contraction when the need was past find a parallel in the history of our late war. At so many other points, such as the love of sport, the revival of music, and the friendly country life, the two ages touch so closely that in writing this book I seemed to be writing a book of our own times — and so have been led to break the reticence of a lifetime and begin it with a preface.
A preface, however, gives me the opportunity of acknowledging a special debt to Mr Conyers Read for his Mr. Secretary Walsingham and to Professor J. E. Neale for his enthralling Queen Elizabeth.
