The First of July(24)

At the hotel, the porter was in his office. Raised voices could be heard. He emerged almost immediately, apologizing with a curt nod of the head.

“I am sorry. The events of the day have unsettled the staff.”

They took their key. As the lift went up, with an older couple beside them, Marina whispered “What on earth do you think happened?”

He shrugged. The other man said, in an English accent, “Apparently the heir to the Austrian emperor has been assassinated in Sarajevo. Not a young man and it’s hardly likely to affect Italy, but I fear there this may well mean more trouble in the Balkans. However, I wouldn’t let it spoil your vacation.” After a short pause, he added: “Although I believe the waiter is from those parts and is all for taking up arms tonight. The padrone, not unreasonably, wishes him to serve dinner first.”

“Such hotheads,” said his wife, almost affectionately.

The next three weeks had been a leisurely exploration of tiny churches, Renaissance palaces, and bumpy excursions down white roads edged with cypresses. They dispensed with a driver and Harry took control. “Mia moglie,” he would say, introducing her, “la mia adorata moglie.” Signor e Signora Henry Sydenham, he would sign in the register.

In late July, they took an overnight train north to the border at Ventimiglia and onward to Nice, where they had arranged to spend a few days before taking the train to Paris. The French passengers were buzzing over their papers and the scandal and trial of Madame Caillaux, the finance minister’s wife.

“Her brief is claiming it was a crime passionel,” said Harry, picking up a discarded paper. “It looks as if she’ll be acquitted. But she did go to the office of the editor of Le Figaro and shoot him at point-blank range in the head.”

“Her lover?” said Marina.

“Oh, you worldly cynic. She shot him because his paper was attacking her husband. As any decent wife might do.”

“Can you imagine it at home?”

He didn’t answer, his eyes scanning the inside pages. While they had been preoccupied with each other, the European situation seemed to have been getting worse. Was it posturing? Knife-edge diplomacy? He tried not to show his anxiety.

Marina had a headache and was resting in their room with the shutters closed. Harry went out for a brief walk along the promenade. He knew she had hoped she was pregnant, but it was not to be. Briefly, a more subdued mood took ahold of him. In a matter of days, they would be in England. His London lawyers were expecting him. He would change his will, now that he was a married man, but he had yet to break the news of his marriage to his legal advisers or to those at Abbotsgate. How could he begin to explain himself?

He intended to buy some cigarettes but stopped to read the headlines in Nice Soir to see if there was further news on the stories in the paper he’d seen on the train. Even before he paid for it, he was returned abruptly to the world outside the drunken sensuousness of his insular life with Marina, and with that return came unease. AUSTRIA-HUNGARY MOBILIZES, the headline read. He handed over his centimes, took the paper, and read it while standing there. Serbia had been issued with an ultimatum, but imperial troops were already massed on her borders. A grainy photograph showed lines of men in uniform marching to an unknown destination along an unknown road. He wished he could lay his hands on a copy of The Times.

He asked at the hotel, and the porter said he would obtain a paper in the morning.

“Do you think it is bad, sir?” the man said. “For France? We have a rumor now that Austria has declared war on Serbia.”

Harry shook his head. He had no idea. He didn’t want to worry Marina. This was only the Balkans. Austria could suppress Serbia in a day. It seemed as if war was inevitable, but how far could it spread? How many treaties would be honored, how many evaded?

The next morning, he rose early and took into the bathroom the newspaper that had been left outside their room. The Times was relatively sanguine regarding British involvement but reported that Germany and Russia had now mobilized. He found he was reading every word, trying to understand the implications of all the commitments that might lure countries into an unwanted war. According to the Times leader, France would, inevitably, be attacked if Russia declared hostilities against Germany. While Marina slept and they enjoyed freedom and sunshine, they were thousands of miles from home, and the conflict was creeping outward from central Europe.

They needed to go to Paris, he thought, and, rather than linger there as they had planned, head straight on to England so he could complete his legal business and return to New York. He hoped he was not panicking; if he had been traveling alone he would have stayed, might even have found the situation interesting—there was a terrible inevitability in it all; but he needed to protect Marina. Should things quiet down and the belligerence recede, they could always change their minds once they’d reached the French capital.