The Europe That Was by Geoffrey Household

pocket.
    The SS men were grinning at him as if he were a circus clown in policeman’s uniform. He had a wide-open escape route from the deadlock if he merely pointed out that Miss Titterton was British and that he washed his hands of her. The Family doubted if it ever occurred to him. He was used to thinking of her as one of the town’s old ladies. The only officials likely to remember her nationality off-hand were those of the former British Legation where she appeared once a year for the party on the King’s Birthday in some astonishing confection twenty years out of date and carefully pressed and ornamented.
    Having decided that his customer’s complaint was justified, Sergeant Bacso pulled his splendid moustache and awaited an invitation to act. He got it.
    â€˜Sergeant,’ said Miss Titterton, ‘is it not your duty to tell these men to go away?’
    It was a gentle inquiry rather than a command. But there was no disobeying. Miss Titterton had developed her confident manner through taking over two generations of spoilt children from dear old peasant nannies who—regrettably but so very naturally—had no idea at all of discipline. Her voice was sufficient. Unlike the SS she had never been compelled to use corporal punishment.
    Sergeant Bacso settled his gleaming shako on his head and joined Miss Titterton at the front door. What really bothered him was not so much standing up to a detachment of the most conscienceless thugs in the German Army as giving orders to an officer. Hungarians of his generation had a very great respect for officers.
    He saluted and apologized with every second sentence, but he was firm. Miss Titterton’s furniture could not be requisitioned without payment, and it was not going to leave her house until he had referred the matter to his superiors.
    By this time a small crowd had gathered. They probably did not cheer, but looked as if they wanted to. The two SS men who were stillcarrying the dressing-table put it down. Their comrades stood by the truck, lounging and contemptuously interested. The unconscious arrogance of an old lady and a town policeman had surpassed their own.
    The officer called them to attention and began to storm at Bacso. The foaming, emphatic German was a little too fast for the sergeant, but not for Miss Titterton—though there were words the meaning of which she preferred to ignore. She stopped the flow with a slight gesture of her hand and remarked that in the great days of the German Army the officers she met were always gentlemen. Women had been slung across the street for less. But Miss Titterton’s rebukes were always unanswerable. That phrase ‘the great days’ made any violent retort extremely difficult.
    The SS were almost about to climb into their truck and visit other free contributors. Afterwards, of course, they would have returned and had the furniture of the whole house off her. But for the moment they were on the defensive. They were back in school with the copybook maxims of truth, courage and good manners.
    Sergeant Bacso, triumphant and peaceable, invited his country’s allies to accompany him to the police station; he meant that he was only too willing to refer the question of Miss Titterton’s bedroom to higher authority if they would be good enough to come with him. But the SS officer, ready for any excuse to reimpose himself on the situation, pretended to believe that the sergeant was threatening arrest. He nodded to his bullies around the truck who intimidatingly strolled forward.
    Bacso in a noble access of Magyar defiance drew his pistol. The illusion of civic law and order was destroyed. By resorting to violence he immediately removed himself from the fantastic world which Miss Titterton had created.
    It could easily have been his last act; but the Herrenvolk, relieved of unwelcome memories of civilization and back in their familiar environment, decided that he and his pop-gun were merely