On that occasion, much of the room was in darkness, and the two gentlemen were

sitting side by side midway down the table - it being much too broad to allow

them to sit facing one another - within the pool of light cast by the candles on

the table and the crackling hearth opposite. I decided to minimize my presence

by standing in the shadows much further away from table than ~ might usually

have done. Of course, this strategy had a distinct disadvantage in that each

time I moved towards the light to serve the gentlemen, my advancing footsteps

would echo long and loud before I reached the table, drawing attention to my

impending arrival in the most ostentatious manner; but it did have the great

merit of making my person only partially visible while I remained stationary.

And it was as I was standing like that, in the shadows some distance from where

the two gentlemen sat amidst those rows of empty chairs, that I heard Lord

Darlington talk about Herr Bremann, his voice as calm and, gentle as usual,

somehow resounding with intensity around those great walls ..

 

"He was my enemy," he was saying, "but he always behaved like a gentleman. We

treated each other decently over six months of shelling each other. He was a

gentleman doing his job and I bore him no malice. I said to him: 'Look here,

we're enemies now and I'll fight you with all I've got. But when this wretched

business is over, we shan't have to be enemies any more and we'll have a drink

together.' Wretched thing is, this treaty is making a liar out of me. I mean to

say, I told him we wouldn't be enemies once it was all over. But how can I look

him in the face and tell him that's turned out to be true?"

 

And it was a little later that same night that his lordship said with some