The Morning Gift полностью

But Quin, as he shook hands, was shocked by the change in him. Berger had been a tall, upright figure, dignified in the manner of an Old Testament prophet. Now his face was gaunt and lined and there was a great weariness in his voice.

‘Is it all right to talk German?’

‘Of course.’ Quin shut the door, ushered him to a better chair.

‘I have come about my daughter. About Ruth. I understand there has been some trouble and I wondered if there was anything I could do to put it right.’

Quin picked up a ruler and began to turn it over and over in his hands.

‘She will have told you that I’m arranging to have her transferred to the University of Tonbridge, down in Kent.’

‘Ah. So that’s it. I didn’t know. She only told me that she had to leave.’

‘It’s hardly a secret. Everyone in the university here seems to make it their business.’

‘Could I ask why she is being sent away?’

The old man’s voice was dry and remote, but the distress behind the words was easy to hear and Quin, accustomed to thinking of himself as Berger’s underling, found himself increasingly uncomfortable.

‘I thought it was inadvisable that I should teach someone whose family I knew so well. It would lay your daughter open to charges that she was being favoured.’

The Professor smoothed his black hat. ‘Really? I have to say that if I had refused to teach the children of men I knew well in Vienna, I would have had many empty seats at my lectures.’

‘Perhaps. But British colleges are different. There is more gossip; they’re smaller.’

‘Professor Somerville, please tell me the truth,’ said Berger, and it was not till he heard this man, thirty years his senior, address him by his rank, that Quin realized how hurt the old man was. ‘Has Ruth done something wrong? Is she not equal to the course? We tried to teach her well, but –’

‘No, absolutely not. Ruth is an excellent student.’

‘Is it her manner then? Do you find her too forward? Reared among academics she perhaps appears lacking in respect?’

‘Not at all. She has already made more friends than one would have believed possible, both among the students and the staff.’

‘Then . . . can there have been . . . some kind of scandal? She is pretty, I know, but I would swear that she –’

Quin leant across his desk to speak with suitable emphasis. ‘Please believe me, sir, when I tell you that I am sending her away only because I think that the connection with your family, the debt I owe you –’

‘What debt?’ the other man interrupted sternly.

‘The symposium in Vienna, your hospitality. And the honorary degree.’

‘Yes, the degree. We heard from colleagues that you went to the ceremony, but not to the dinner.’

‘That’s correct. When I heard that you were not there –’ began Quin, and broke off. ‘I should have thanked you for arranging it, but I went straight up to Bowmont.’

There was a pause. Then Professor Berger, speaking slowly, looking at the ground, said: ‘My wife believes that it was you who helped Ruth in Vienna.’

Quin’s silence lasted a fraction too long. ‘Oh really? Why does she believe that?’

‘You may well ask,’ said the Professor, a trifle bitterly. ‘Normal thought processes are entirely foreign to Leonie’s nature. As far as I can gather it is because you dived into the Grundlsee to retrieve her sister-in-law’s monograph on the Mi-Mi. Also because you danced twice with her god-daughter, Franzi, at the University Ball. Franzi had very bad acne and a squint and it was because you singled her out and were kind to her that she agreed to have her eye operated on, and the acne disappeared of itself, and now she is married and has two abominably behaved children and has fortunately settled in New York.’

‘I’m afraid I don’t entirely follow you,’ said Quin apologetically.

‘There were other reasons with which I won’t bore you. Apparently you threw your hat over a Herrenpilz which Mishak was stalking, thereby preventing Frau Pollack from getting it. We always regarded the mushrooms near the house as ours and . . .’ He shook his head. ‘What a lost world that seems. But anyway, the gist of Leonie’s argument is that people don’t change; if you were kind then you would be kind now. If you found out that I was not at the university, you would look me up and find Ruth. That is what my wife thinks, not what I think, and I don’t want you to say anything you would like to keep to yourself. But it is possible that if Leonie is correct you might feel worried about having Ruth here. You might feel that she would become too attached to you.’

‘No, I don’t feel that.’

‘It would be natural, however. She has a very warm heart and she was always talking about you after you left us that summer. Not to mention the blue rabbit.’ And as Quin frowned in puzzlement: ‘The one you shot for her in the Prater. She went to bed with it for years and when its ear came off, we had to call in Dr Levy to perform surgery.’

‘I’d forgotten.’