Four-Part Setting

by Ann Bridge

  “I expect you’re right,” he said. “Ought you ever to have begun?” He was thinking as he spoke that though she was probably not in a fit state to talk of this, nothing but getting it all out would make her quiet—the cause of her peculiar manner was plain enough, at last.

  “No,” she said slowly. “It was a muddle—and a mistake. But in a way it made me very happy.” She shut her eyes—Antony said nothing; an extraordinary pain had taken hold of him at her words. She opened her eyes again. “Very happy,” she repeated. “There was someone who cared—and whom I was allowed to care for.” Suddenly she covered her face with her hands. “Now I shall be like I was before—I shan’t have anyone!” she said, with a great sob.

  Antony, looking at her brown hands childishly covering her face, under the tangle of soft hair, felt an impulse of extraordinary strength to go over to her, and say, “You’ll have me—I will love you and take care of you.” The impulse took him by surprise—it was loosed by her evident pain, by those forlorn words and the sob; but it told him with devastating clearness something that he had half-guessed that night when he found her at the Tu village, and had been trying ever since not to realise or admit. He sat quite still, appalled. His mind, his will, his conscience all resisted the idea of loving Rose; but for the moment they were all weakened, as if numbed by the tremendous movement of his heart. In those moments of struggle there darted into his mind, inconsequently, the memory of his words to her as she stood just now in his room, repeating that she thought he was out—“I don’t mind your coming in.” Oh, how little he had minded her coming in! Distraught and unkempt as she was, when he had turned from the rather miserable outpouring of his letter to Laurence and saw her there, it was to his heart as if light and life had come into the room. Probably he had known then—certainly his heart had known, even if his consciousness closed its ears, and occupied itself with her cold, and the medicines in his box. But his consciousness was beaten now—it was flooded with this knowledge that he had resisted so long.

  He got up, as if movement would shake it off, and went over to the window. He had got to say something to her—something sensible, something possible. He stood staring out at the regular shapes of the espaliers along the sanded path, as if their pruned trained firm growth could give him help. But before he had found those possible and sensible words a tall figure came into sight between the espaliers—Henry Hargreaves, strolling at ease, smoking a cigarette; he moved, as he always did, a little as if he owned the earth—he smiled complacently as he walked, as though his thoughts were pleasant. At the sight a whirling storm of confused feelings rose in Lydiard—a sort of emotional typhoon. H.H., who took everything so easily—who had taken Rose in his stride, one of a whole string of conquests! Who had no scruples, no spiritual complications, no other mental and moral life which must always first be satisfied, in any relationship—no difficult sense of responsibility. He was aware at the same moment of feelings of affection, of envy, of something very like hatred of the cheerful unconscious destroyer, of terrifying possibilities of a jealousy that could drive one mad, as he watched the unconscious figure of his friend. The storm was so violent that it was its own antidote—he could not feel like that!—and he made the effort necessary to overcome a set of emotions that had no beauty or tenderness in them.

  But the effort exhausted him—and curiously enough, as such an out-putting of the will sometimes does, it expunged from his mind what had gone immediately before. What had Rose said, that had moved him so? He had no idea—he could only remember her hands covering her face, under her hair. He no longer knew what it was that he had to answer. He turned then, and said quite simply—

  “What did you say, Rose?”

  She took her hands down.

  “I said I shouldn’t have, anybody now,” she said. “I suppose that’s silly—but it’s how I feel. Henry was someone I could love, and who loved me. I shall miss him.”

  “Yes,” he said slowly—“you will, I’m sure. But you may have to. I mean, that may be exactly what you need.”

  “May it? How?”

  “I don’t think,” he said slowly, “that you have ever troubled quite to understand yourself, and to come to terms with the person that you are. It’s hard to do that when everything is made too easy for one. But when you are really alone, lying at the bottom of a pit on the mud, stripped of everything—there is nothing left but yourself, and the bit of sky overhead; and then you do learn what you are and what is of value—or you have a chance to—and begin to live as a, whole person, and not just as a bundle of tastes and preferences and successes, hopping from one emergency to the next. You’ve led an outward life, not an inward one, till now; you’ve been living morally from hand to mouth, propping yourself up on whatever came to hand: Charles and his moral ideas—which were good ones; Asta’s before that; and now Henry and your relation with him. You’ve been living on people, not living with them, as a whole person in yourself.”

  He stopped, a little surprised that he had found so much to say. He had not known himself that he could formulate his view of her needs so drastically—the words seemed to have come not from his mind, but from somewhere else. Probably that was so; his agony of a few moments before had released that knowledge, as Rose’s pain had suddenly released the knowledge of his love for her—it is true that at such a moment the mouth speaks out of the abundance of the heart.

  Rose said nothing when he stopped—she lay for a time looking past him, out of the window. His words were harsh and painful, or at least told her harsh and painful things; but something in her responded to them, said “Yes, this is true.” At last she said—

  “Then what do I do?”

  “Nothing. You don’t need to do things—keep still, and try to understand.”

  “Stay in the pit?”

  He smiled at that, a sudden smile of extreme sweetness—it reminded her of the smile of the silent lay-brother, as he helped her to iron the shirts. Oh yes—it was the same; there was no strife between this smile and the monk’s! And in her consciousness too a new idea opened, like a flower; spread like light from a sudden breaking-through of the sun—what it would be like to be loved by Antony! No blank walls there, and dead ends; no putting the physical first, because there was so little else to put; but this comprehension, this wisdom, the goodness that had frightened her when she saw him treating the sick people at Ch’ang Tsao—and love added! It would be very Heaven. But of course it was only an idea—it was waiting perhaps for someone, but not for her. And Antony was speaking again.

  “Yes, stay in the pit for the moment. If you look up, you may see a star.”

  He spoke half playfully, to make it possible to say that; but she turned her head away towards the wall, to hide the tears that suddenly overflowed. See a star? Of course she would—she had seen it already, a second before, when he smiled.

  “There’s one thing you will have to do,” he said after a moment, in a different tone. “You must tell Henry.”

  She wiped her eyes on the sheet, and turned back towards him, with an almost violent movement.

  “Yes, but not now!” she said, with a sort of desperation. “I really can’t do that now, Ant—not on this trip, and with my cold! It’ll mean explaining and explaining, and there’s never a chance to talk—I can’t yell it out as we ride along! And then when I have told him, to go on seeing him every minute of the day—even at night, he’s practically sleeping beside one, and hears if one wakes or coughs! It’s impossible! I’ll tell him the moment we get back to Peking. I really can’t before.”

  “All right,” he said soothingly—“Yes, I see all that. I daresay that will do.”

  “And when I have——” she said, and stopped.

  “Yes—when you have?” he helped her out.

  “When I have, you will go on helping me a bit?” she brought out, with a sort of gulp. “I see what you say about me, and I think it’s true—I expect it had to be like this, though I don’t quite see what for. And I will
stay on the mud, and try to understand. But I shan’t get very far unless you help me. It’s all rather new to me, this.”

  “Yes,” said Antony. “I’ll do whatever I can to help.” That was what he said—the sensible, the possible thing; while all the time his insurgent heart within was crying out that he would do anything for her, was trying to make him stretch out his arms to her, in comfort and support. But it was not only the habit of self-discipline that restrained him—his mind and his whole being knew, beyond argument, that she must do most of it herself; that there are certain battles that must be fought alone. And that made him say something else. “As to what it’s for,” he went on, “wouldn’t it be reason enough if it turned you into a real person?”

  “Who could live with people instead of on them?” she asked.

  “Yes—and knew what she was, and where she was going. It seems to me that you’ve been trying to run along a track that wasn’t your gauge—so of course. you’ve come rather a mucker.”

  She said something that rather surprised him then.

  “I wonder if I’m worth it? Just one person getting put right, I mean, hardly seems worth all this bother, does it?”

  “Hasn’t this place taught you the answer, to that?” he said.

  She was silent for a moment or two, her hands pushing up the cloudy mass of hair.

  “Yes,” she said at last. “That’s true.” She paused again for a little while, and then said suddenly—“Dear Ant, has it been very bad for you, being here? Because of Laurence, I mean? I was afraid it might be.”

  For some reason that moved him extraordinarily. He waited for some time before he answered—before he felt he could answer rationally. If he had felt the need of asking himself his reasons for loving her, that particular perception of hers would almost have been enough.

  “It has, a bit,” he said at last. “It’s brought it all back, rather. And though he’s a Benedictine, and it isn’t the same rule, it has rather rubbed one’s nose in it, seeing so clearly what is involved. But I think it has helped me to understand, too.” He paused. “I was writing to him about it when you came in.”

  “I thought so—I mean I thought you were unhappy, then,” she said. “Damn! I wish I hadn’t interrupted you.”

  He got up. “I didn’t mind your coming in,” he said, for the second time that afternoon. He stood looking down at her. “I’m glad you came,” he said. “I always am glad when you come.” He opened the door and went out.

  Captain Hargreaves meanwhile was enjoying himself in his own way. When Lydiard saw him strolling down the espalier path he was feeling a faint need of some form of human companionship, his party having somehow melted away from round him, and he decided to seek it in the monastery. Rose, poor sweet, would be wretched if she had a head, and old Antony was just the person to cope, with his pills and things. Captain Hargreaves had no feelings of jealousy at Lydiard’s ministrations—he regarded old Antony as as good as a monk already. So he wandered down the sanded path and round to the main gate.

  A Trappist monastery might seem to some a curious place in which to look for conversation. But Captain Hargreaves, as always, had his own very definite and sound ideas as to what he wanted and how to obtain it. He did not in the least wish to talk with the Père de Réception, whom he considered a Dismal Jimmy of the worst sort and who, moreover, smelt dreadfully of garlic. But the Abbot, whom he had met in the morning, had seemed a thoroughly sound man, and the Father Prior a jolly old fellow—with either of these he would like to talk for an hour, and ask some of the questions he wanted to ask, and couldn’t with old Ant there. Not only because old Ant did most of the talking, but because of that business about his brother—you couldn’t in front of him ask, as Captain Hargreaves, if circumstances permitted, intended confidentially to ask, for instance, how many of the speechless old fish there ultimately went batty? And Captain Hargreaves had further formed the very practical and soldierly view that the heads of masculine institutions of any sort were nearly always sensible men—otherwise they would not be the heads; and sensible men, in his experience, generally gave you a drink—otherwise they would not be sensible men. So, thus reasoning, he unbuttoned the breast pocket of his tropical twill shirt at the main gate, took out a card, and handed it to the porter, with a request to speak to the Abbot.

  All went as he had wished—Henry Hargreaves’ private plans were usually so moderate, sensible and well-executed that they seldom miscarried. After the usual pause he was led to the Abbot’s lodgings, where the Abbot courteously explained to him that Benediction would be sung in ten minutes, and that he could either be present at it, or wait till his, the Abbot’s return, when they could talk at leisure. Henry opted for the service (“always try anything once, you know”) and accompanied his host to the chapel, where he heard some very beautiful singing from the brown-and-white-cowled company; then they returned to the Abbot’s lodging, where sure enough he enjoyed, as he had intended to do, some agreeable conversation and a couple of very good drinks. He found the Abbot, as he had expected, a civilised, agreeable and intelligent person, to a considerable degree a man of the world (as Abbots are apt to be) extremely well-informed on Chinese politics, and prepared to be delicately witty at the expense of War-Lords; he was also practical, direct and broad-minded about the community under his rule, though he would not admit to any serious prevalence of “pottiness” among the brethren, except in the case of two or three who were, he said, practically “des innocents” when they came in. When Henry asked him why he took innocents as brothers, he said that they were certainly safer inside than out, much less trouble to their relations, and probably happier—a point of view with which no one could quarrel.

  Returning, warmed and cheerful, from this highly successful visit, Captain Hargreaves found the rest about to sit down to supper. Antony was rather silent, Rose Pelham subdued—but Hillier and Anastasia were considerably exhilarated by their afternoon’s adventures. They had, it transpired when the party reassembled after supper in the sitting-room, eventually walked as far as the home farm of the monastery, lying up on the north slope of the valley—the Father Prior, who ran the farm-work as well as the hospital, had recognised Hillier, asked them in, showed them round and given them a cup of tea.

  “It was the most fascinating little place,” Anastasia said. “The room where we had tea was really the whole house, except for a sort of lean-to kitchen, and it was everything! There was a bed in one corner, and bookshelves, and a sideboard with fruit and china, and the table filling up the middle; and one end was a sort of shrine, with a statue of Our Lady smothered in paper flowers, and candles burning, and a prie-dieu in front.”

  “How big was this, er, omnibus apartment?” Henry asked.

  “Oh, minute—the chairs round the table were bumping the prie-dieu at one end, and the bed at the other. But somehow it was very charming—gay and devout, like the Romans are. And the Père Prieur is a charmer.”

  “That impression was mutual,” Hillier observed. “She vamped the old boy completely.”

  “Trappists prefer brunettes, ha-ha!” Hargreaves interjected.

  “Owl!” Anastasia briefly dismissed him. “But Ant, he showed me his bees! That’s where all the lovely honey comes from, that they sell in that little shop behind the Club. They have the most immense hives, that Dutch sort, I think they are—anyhow as big as dog-kennels, practically, with iron roofs” —she went off into technicalities about supering, and the honey-flow only lasting three months, and so on.

  Antony was interested—the Lydiards, it seemed, kept bees themselves in England, and knew about them.

  “Anastasia was most impressive,” Hillier pursued when he got the chance; “she put a sort of small meat-safe on her head, and went and watched him take the lids off the hives, and lift whole racks of the creatures out—astonishing! And she poked them about with her bare hands in the most horrifying way. I kept my distance! But the old gentleman was charmed—he said she was a real master and had t
he touch, I thought at first he was getting it mixed up with the piano—but no! Bees too have a touch, it seems.”

  Anastasia laughed. “You weren’t very brave, Roy, were you?”

  “I? My dear Anastasia, I was terrified! It’s the bravest thing I’ve seen since the War. I wouldn’t have done what you and the old holiness did for a thousand pounds! Well no—not that, perhaps; but certainly not for less than two hundred and fifty pounds.”

  To Rose, listening in silence to this conversation, it occurred for the first time that Hillier and Anastasia were getting onto rather good terms. She had observed before that they now called one another by their Christian names—indeed Roy had more or less become Roy to the whole party. It was one of those brief impressions; but it did not lead on, as such impressions often do, to the compilation of a sort of matrimonial balance-sheet in the mind. She felt too unwell, and she was too unhappy. Very soon she asked Tasia if she could have a hot whisky, and crept off to bed.

  Chapter Sixteen

  They left La Trappe at seven the next morning, laden with Trappist bread, cheese, wine and honey, thrust on them by the hospitable Fathers. It is a tradition of the place, if not of the whole order, that the poorer traveller shall be given free entertainment; but Lydiard had contrived to leave funds with the Abbot for the purchase of the music of a particular Mass for the chapel, and of some philosophical works for the Library; and Hillier, who was seen in close conference with the Father Prior, subsequently admitted rather shamefacedly to Anastasia that he had likewise deposited a sum with “Old Holy” to go towards the X-ray apparatus for which the latter’s soul craved. “They’re damned scientific, oddly enough,” he said, in explanation—“one likes that.”

  Furthermore, the Abbot thoughtfully provided them with what Hargreaves called “a helot”, in the shape of a Chinese farm hand, to show them the correct track up to the pass which crossed the water-shed on their return journey. This was shorter and much less steep than the route by which they had descended two days before, and they made good progress. From the col they had a superb view of the Old Great Wall crossing the valley to the south-west of them—here it was not ruinous, as it had been up at the Small Dragon Gate, but presented the traditional picture of a white ribbon of masonry, running up hill and down dale, dipping to cross the valley, rising again, and disappearing over the ridge on the further side. The Trappist Monastery had been the outward limit of their expedition, and they now had their faces set towards home—they were to sleep that night at Tu Chia Chuang or some other suitable spot, and then go on, not by the way they had come, over Por Hua Shan, but down the Ch’ing Hsui Valley and so to Men-t’ou-k’ou and Peking. At the col the helot left them, saying to Lydiard that now they could not miss their way; nor did they—following the track down hill, they presently found themselves back in the long strath or valley up which they had passed on the outward journey, where Rose and Hillier got lost. No one had noticed the precise spot where their new track joined the old one. This rather vexed Antony, who had a topographical mind; when he realised where he was he checked, looked about him, and tried to verify the place, but it was no good—they had already come too far. (Antony was wont to write up all such details in his journal for future use, his own or that of other travellers.) Anyhow, it didn’t really matter, Anastasia told him—it was the most unlikely thing in the world that any of them would ever come through the Small Dragon Gate again. How wrong she was in this prediction, she was to learn before twelve hours were out.