Close Up (Jul-Dec 1928)

CLOSE UP anxiety. A heavy suitcase falls. The pup has been killed. But there is no time to waste. The old caretaker watches the car vanish, then picks up the dead animal, and takes it to a coppice in the grounds and buries it. He returns to the house. The departure has been abrupt and many personal effects remain about the rooms. He goes from room to room closing and putting away cigar boxes, trinkets, locking doors and windows, pulling blinds. The family plate he has also carried to the coppice and buried it too. The house assumes more and more an air of desertion and gloom. Night falls early, and the old caretaker is in his room. His own effects too must be safeguarded. Letters. Gay letters from his son. He looks at the small photograph in gaudy frame of a young man, smiling and handsome. His manner is sad and bewildered. He seems very alone in an atmosphere of heavy quiet and darkness and foreboding. A figure rushes in the road, and stops, beating and shaking the great iron gates of the garden. The caretaker goes to the window. He sees a youth frantic and desperate, apparently pursued, and in imminent danger. He goes down through the dark house with his candle. The youth beats wildly and frenziedly. Presently he is admitted. It is the son of the house, one of the fleeing family of that same morning. He is distraught and half dead with terror. The Reds are at his heels. The old man locks the gates again, and hurries him into the house, and upstairs to his room. The boy is in a terrible state and almost unconscious. In the coppice outside the mother dog is howling without ceasing. Her mournful howls fill the night. Almost immediately the Bolsheviks are at the gates, knock 39