Four-Part Setting

by Ann Bridge

  “Charles is in the Guards,” Anastasia said, with finality. She was beginning to hate those words.

  “An admirable place to be, I’ve always heard. But what has that got to do with it?”

  She frowned. Again this explanation. Why did no one ever know anything? Briefly, she told Roy what being in the Guards meant with regard to divorce.

  “I see. Umm. It’s as bad as being in the Church, isn’t it?” he said, when she had finished.

  She looked away. “Roy, this is serious to me,” she said.

  “I’m sorry,” he said quickly. “I know it is. I’m really only trying to master it all. And how much does Charles care about being a soldier? A lot?”

  “It’s his life,”she said. “The one thing in the world he cares about.”

  The comment “That’s rough on his wife” rose to Roy’s lips, but he checked it in time.

  “That is awkward,” he said. “Damned awkward all round.” He considered. “Has she got grounds for a divorce?”

  “Antony thinks so—ample. I don’t know about the details.”

  Roy rose and walked up and down the room, humming a little.

  “Yes. So really it’s him or her, isn’t it?” he said, stopping in front of her. “One of them is bound to be for it.”

  She winced a little.

  “I suppose so.”

  “And you think it ought to be her, and Antony thinks it ought to be him, I take it?”

  “I’m not sure that he is as definite, as that. He says—”she checked herself, and thought for a moment. She mustn’t give Rose away, either. “Antony says he has more or less promised her that if she insists, in the end, on pushing it to a divorce, and wants him to marry her, he will,” she said, with a distressful face.

  “That seems perfectly correct. Of course she will want to.”

  “I don’t see that it is of course. Don’t you think wives have any obligations to the men they marry—their careers and so on?”

  “Yes—heavy ones. Only you said yourself the other day that you thought Charles more or less began it, in this case. If he did, it seems to me he’ll only be getting what was coming to him. I’m sorry, Asta—but I do feel rather strongly about men’s obligations to their wives, too, actually.”

  Those last words were like getting out of the wind on a cold day to Anastasia. So far this talk with Roy had brought her very little comfort; and somehow there was comfort, warmth, in them. But they put another idea into her head too. Before she could speak, however, Hillier went on—

  “As for her wanting Antony to marry her, if she could get free, surely any woman would? Can you imagine anyone who had secured his love, being willing to give it up?”

  That again warmed her—that he should value Antony so. But now there was pain mixed even with that—pain in every thought of Antony.

  “I can imagine it being hard. But there is such a thing as right and wrong,” she said slowly.

  “How does that come in? If he has really done her down? It seems to me that not to take her freedom and marry Ant would be fantastic generosity on her part, but I can’t see that to take it, if the circumstances are what we think, could be called particularly wrong. Do you?” he asked, as she didn’t answer.

  “Yes. I don’t recognise divorce—not as a means to remarriage. If people can’t live together, let them get a separation, and stay apart. But not have a divorce and begin all over again. That isn’t my idea of marriage.” A curious sort of rigidity came into her face as she said that.

  Roy, who was still standing, looked long at her, with an inscrutable face. Then he turned away and walked up and down the room again. She watched him; a fresh pain, quite independent of Antony, took hold of her, surprising her by its sharpness. Did this mean losing Roy too? Well, if it did, she couldn’t help it. Those were her principles, and she meant to hold by them.

  “It’s just as well you should know that at once,” she said at last, as he continued to walk up and down in silence.

  He turned back to her, and looked down at her again. Her mouth was set in that powerful line which Rose had so often noticed.

  “Yes,” he said at last. “It’s as well to know. Thank you for telling me.” He sat down in the chair next to hers, and continued to survey her in silence. The prolonged wordless scrutiny troubled Anastasia, but she did not move. It seemed a very long time before he spoke.

  “Well, I still want to marry you, even now that I do know you will never divorce me,” he said, rather slowly. “It’s a big risk, and I don’t share those ideas of yours at all. You’d better know that too. But one must take some risks—and as far as I’m concerned, I’m prepared to take you on for life.” He looked rather glumly at her. “You’ll probably say that this is a very odd time for a proposal,” he pursued, “and I know you haven’t had quite your three weeks. But I can’t help that. Asta, will you marry me?” He leant forward and took her hands.

  For once her mind did not succeed in exerting its usual control. There were a lot of questions still to be settled, she confusedly knew, that she hadn’t settled—Ant, and how far Roy really understood how firmly she held to her principles; the future. But instead of prudently mentioning them, she heard her voice speaking.

  “Yes, I will,” it said. And at once she knew, with an intense relief, that her voice was right.

  Hillier seemed to think so too. Still holding her hands, he stood up, and drew her out of her chair.

  “Good,” he said, looking into her face. “Oh, very, very good. Good beyond all expression!” Then, very deliberately, he put his arms round her, gathered her close against him, and began to kiss her. Anastasia had expected to be kissed at this point, and was glad; but the fervour and passion of his embrace startled her. This was like being kissed by a typhoon. No—as her body began to tremble, and then to respond, it was like being a typhoon. For a time everything else was blotted out—there was only Roy, his hands, his mouth, and in herself a multitude of whirling sensations such as the regrettable kissers in taxis had never evoked. It was a new world, in which she was a new creature, full of powers and feelings such as she had never known and but dimly guessed at.

  Roy at last released her. He studied her face for a moment, gave her another quick, friendly kiss, and lowered her into a chair, saying—“Sit down.” He brought over a box and said—“Have a gasper?”

  “Yes,” she said, a little dazed. “Yes.” She did want a cigarette—how did he know?

  He went to the bell and rang it. “Cocktails, I think,” he said. Anastasia said nothing—she found she would like a cocktail too; she said “Tuey-cho,” rather faintly, when Wu came.

  Roy sat and looked at her. He looked very happy—more alive, more a person than she had ever seen him, except on that morning outside the hut above La Trappe.

  “Asta, my dear, this is going to be all right,” he said; and there was an extraordinary gladness in his voice.

  “Yes,” she said—still rather faintly.

  He leant over and gave her another of those quick, amicable kisses.

  “It is,” he said. “Bless you.” His gladness filled the very air round him. Then his face changed for a moment. “Poor Antony,” he said.

  She knew what he felt, and her heart loved him for feeling it. In her present happiness—and she was deeply happy, though still without the power to do more than be confusedly aware of it—the elements of disapprobation, of wounded moral sentiments were melting out of her attitude to Antony; little remained but affection and distress on his account, that his love could not enjoy what they were now enjoying. For Anastasia, as she sat sipping her cocktail and looking at Roy—his fair head, and the new firm triumphant happy look in his face—was just beginning to experience that extraordinary emotion, compounded of relief, peace, satisfaction and reassurance, which commonly follows on the decision to marry somebody. There is a curious sense of achievement about getting engaged to be married—a sense so irrational (for all is still to do!) and yet so universal that one
must suppose it to spring from some very profound layer of being, some racial instinct deeper than knowledge or reason. And there is the glad and solemn sense of a new life beginning—and bearing it company, a new sense of power. Asta as we know had theories in plenty about marriage, and very sound ones too—what was new to her, and was filling her at that moment with a glad surprise was just the realisation that something was springing up in herself, unsummoned by her will or her reason, that was going to support those theories with a great natural strength.

  Hillier, after a considerable pause, during which he sat looking at her with a happiness which she did not find foolish, said—

  “Well, now we’re engaged. What will Antony say?”

  A disturbed look came into her face, till then happily thoughtful.

  “It seems rather cruel to say we’re engaged just now, don’t you think?” she said. “Hadn’t we better, put it off a bit?”

  “Nonsense,” said Roy firmly. “Antony isn’t as small as that. He may very well disapprove of me as a husband for you, but he won’t mind for himself, if you take me. And I presume we aren’t going to get disengaged again if he should disapprove?”

  She smiled.

  “No—I don’t think so.”

  “Very well—I hoped not. Then I want to go and get a ring. Do you like jade?”

  His active conception of being engaged, amused, touched, pleased her.

  “Good jade is terrific; it costs as much as emeralds,” she said.

  “Would you rather have emeralds?”

  She had to laugh, and her laughter made him come over to kiss her again. As he approached, involuntarily she put up her hand, almost defensively; it was a tiny movement, but he understood it, and an extraordinary look came into his face—pride, tenderness, a very deep love, a sort of merry delight. It was unseen by her—had she seen it, she too would have understood, and her contentment with this new venture been even greater. He said “All right” before he kissed her a little; then he settled on the arm of her chair.

  “I want to be engaged partly because it will give me more status,” he said. “I want to talk to Ant. It seems to me that you’re all quite mad not to have done one obvious thing—as I gather you haven’t done: to find out Charles’s views on this mess. To me, at present, he’s simply a silent monster in the background—sorry, darling! But I think he should be written to.”

  She was startled.

  “Oh—I don’t know. I’m not sure that that would be a good plan. It might upset him,” she said, without choosing her words.

  “Well, let him be upset, then. Rose and Ant are. Dearest, you must see that that’s the first thing to do.”

  “It would be better to see him,” she said reflectively.

  “Well, go and see him then, if you’ve the time and the money to go cantering off to Cairo.” He considered. “Or we might get married here, pretty soon, and go on our way home. Are you set on an English wedding? Say if you are.”

  She laughed again.

  “Not particularly, I don’t think. I haven’t thought. When do you have to be at home?”

  “Not necessarily till February—I want to see Yunnan and Indo-China and Angkor-Wat on the way back. Asta! We could do all that together. Do you realise? Think of the flowers!”

  She had risen to put down her glass as he spoke.

  “Oh Roy!” she said, on a lingering startled note—“yes—if we could.”

  “We can,” he said, rising too. “Oh my dear, we are going to have fun!” And now he took her in his arms and kissed her again in earnest.

  In the middle of this Antony came in. Startled, he stood in the door and said—

  “Hullo!”

  Roy looked round—without releasing Asta he said, “Yes, Antony—this is the situation.”

  Antony came over to them, put one hand on Roy’s shoulder, and stooped and kissed his sister as she stood, still in Hillier’s arms.

  “I’m very glad,” he said.

  “You’re sure you don’t mind?” Roy asked. “Believe me, Ant, I know all there is to be said against it!”

  Antony smiled.

  “Asta never makes a serious mistake,” he said, and kissed her again. He went over to the tray, took a cocktail and went out, saying from the door—“I’ll leave you young lovers to finish. Lunch is in”—he looked at his watch—“fourteen minutes.”

  In the courtyard outside he met Rose. She was in outdoor clothes, obviously returning from some expedition; she stopped him and said, a little hurriedly—“Oh Ant, I’ve fixed up to go home—with Lady Harriet. She’s going on the Polynesia, and I’ve got a berth too.”

  “Oh, that’s good,” he said. “I’m very glad of that—it will be nice for you to be with her. When do you go?”

  “We start down next Thursday to Tientsin, and the Polynesia sails on Tuesday, of course. We shall have a night or two in Shanghai.”

  “I see.”

  At that moment Wu’s white figure appeared, crossing the court towards the dining-room, a tray in his hands.

  “Hi Lao-yeh here for lunch today, Wu,” Antony called to him.

  Wu nodded at the tray, on which tumblers and other effects were neatly arranged in fours.

  “Know—I fix,” he said. Antony laughed.

  “What is it?” Rose asked.

  “Only Wu’s omniscience. They’re engaged,” he said, glancing towards the drawing-room.

  “Gosh!”

  “I’m sure it’s all right, Rose.”

  “Yes. I—I think it will be. Oh yes—she can do anything!” she said. “I—I’m glad” She turned and ran off into the courtyard where her room lay. Antony stood looking after her for a moment, then went slowly towards his. He had forgotten the cocktail in his hand—it spilled as he went. He set it down on a step and left it there.

  During the next few days Antony was half-pleased, half touched to pain and pity by Rose’s demeanour. Asta’s marriage was almost immediately settled for a month ahead, as soon as the banns could be called; the Bishop (North China) would marry them in the Legation Chapel. Rose was nice to Roy, warmly affectionate to Asta, helpful over the trousseau. The usual active preparations at once began—the house was full of Chinese tailors at all hours; Korean cloth in greens and yellows and pinks, silks and white drill lay about everywhere. Rose was full of ideas—about clothes, better ones than Anastasia’s; she made lists, she lent French underclothes for the tailor to copy. (All sewing, even fine lingerie, is done by men in China, except in the foreign convents.) Antony, seeing Rose one day look up from a list over which, pencil in hand, she was bending absorbedly, to say—“Asta why not six dozen plain hankies? You’ll never get the monograms done so cheap anywhere else”—suddenly found his eyes moist. Words came into his mind—perhaps the most moving words of praise ever uttered: She hath done what she could. What Rose was doing for Asta was not very lofty or noble; the things she was so busy over were in themselves mundane and trivial ones. But the mundane and the trivial can be, sometimes, the vessels for an almost unbearable glory. In her own pain and uncertainty, Rose was engrossing herself in the happiness and concerns of another—concerns moreover which must inevitably carry pitiful memories out of her own past, and put barbs to the difficulties of her own future. And since that was the thing she could do, she was doing it, with a beautiful engrossed eagerness. No wonder, Antony thought, watching her, that the Lord was reputed to love a cheerful giver—who could help loving that particular thing?

  On the following Wednesday, her last day, he asked her to ride with him. Her riding things were packed, but she borrowed a pair of his jodhpurs, hitching them round her with a leather belt; the mannish cut and the loose fall of them gave her a peculiarly careless grace, emphasised her boyish aspect. But her face was no longer so boyish as when, six months earlier, Antony had compared her to Luca Signorelli’s yellow boys; it was grave and quiet, a little sad, as they rode out towards the Ch’iang-tso-mên along the dusty solitary tracks of the Chinese City, here a plac
e of open fields, even of small woods and a reedy lake, in which the grey line of the wall quivered back in a lucent reflection. A gallop, though it brought the delicate colour to her cheeks, brought no glow to her eyes—Antony, watching her, so beautiful in her gravity, felt a fresh pain tighten about his heart, remembering her face after other gallops, turned with such ardent pleasure to his.

  There is a temple in this south-eastern corner of the Chinese City where in spring the courtyards are a wonder of lilacs in bloom, of white and mauve blossom and that miraculous scent, piercing and yet reserved. At its gate they left the ponies with the mafoos and went in; Antony spoke with the priest at the entrance, and then they wandered alone through the empty courts, among the scarlet pillars, the white marble footings to weather-stained red walls, the soft greyish-green of bronze incense-burners. At length they sat down on the weed-grown marble steps of a shrine, where the stone was faintly warmed by the autumn sunshine; the lilacs rising from the flagged pavement were bare now, save for a yellow leaf or two which clung, spotted with black, to the triangular pattern of the empty stems. It was very still, very quiet; the temple seemed to have annexed silence, in the way Chinese temples do. They were silent too. There was so much to say that speech was almost impossible. Antony glanced once or twice at her face, grave and beautiful, and looked away again—his love and longing were now so immense that he began to think that he would never be able to school himself to speak. It was with lips and hands and breath that he wanted to commune with her now. That would have been easy, and that was forbidden—at least to begin with; his promise to kiss her before she went hung over them both with the electric heavy threat of a thundercloud.

  At last it was Rose who spoke.

  “The other day, at the Princess’s Tomb, you quoted something—about love,” she began very quietly. “Something about its being like a flame, and passing up through everything. Could you say it again? I should like to remember it.”