Four-Part Setting

by Ann Bridge

  But even more than by her memories, Rose was engrossed by Lady Harriet herself. She had been drawn to her from the outset, from the very first moment of seeing her, that night on the roof at the Ch’eng K’wang; having met her, she had very rapidly become attached to her. But then, she now realised, she had been too much engrossed in Henry to be able to take the full measure, so to speak, of what Lady Harriet’s personality had to give. Oh, more than that—something in the very nature of her relationship to Henry had come between her and a full appreciation of the older woman’s quality, as a pane of coloured glass changes and distorts the outer reality. Because though she was now far more absorbed in Antony, nothing in him was a dissonance from the reality of Lady Harriet, stood in the way of her. It struck her as curious, how clearly she was aware of this, for they seldom spoke about either man. It was one of those fundamental things which emerge of themselves. Was it because, in all his pain of love and parting, there was somehow peace at the heart of Antony? There was peace at the heart of Lady Harriet too—of that she was profoundly sure. It was what gave to being with her that extraordinary sense of reassurance, made the great security of that shelter which she constructed so gaily against distress, out of the flimsiest materials—clothes and funny fellow-passengers, and men with big hands, and a past in which ducal grandchildren drove into Oxford to see a man eat rats at a fair. So gaily—yes, Lady Harriet was gay. It was one of her enchantments. And peace was the background of her gaiety—peace and wisdom.

  She was very wise, Rose felt. As peace emerged from the clothes and the rat-eater, so wisdom emerged from her comments on the politicians whose buttons burst off their shoes, who mislaid their throat pastilles. She hardly made judgements—there simply, was wisdom and justice in the way she presented these rather comic great people, whom she had known so well and seen so clearly. This sense of her wisdom made Rose want to hear her opinion on everything—and on a great number of things she did hear it. She began to wish ardently to put her own problem to Lady Harriet, but from day to day some curious shyness restrained her. She was sure that she would get wise advice, be heard with kindness, and yet she did not ask.

  About divorce in general, however, they did talk. The latest illustrated weeklies came aboard at Colombo, and one and all contained portraits of a rather lovely young female scion of a recently ennobled house, who had just applied for her second divorce. The papers also displayed portraits of her former husband, and of the present incumbent; Lady Harriet, with a faint accentuation of the slightly ironic line of her eyebrows, was able to supply the name of his future successor, as she commented on the paper to Rose.

  “You don’t know her? Oh, my dear child, she is a really horrible girl. All those sisters have no chins and no morals! (You don’t notice the chin in this—she always has them taken like that, on purpose.) Poor Lady St. Merrion—I am sorry for her. She hated Ronnie every marrying her. But Ronnie always was rather a fool. He talked to my Helen about this wretched Toni, before she married the first man—he’s very fond of Helen. He quoted some of the remarks—really hair-raising ones!—this creature had made to him, and asked Helen if she thought a nice girl would say things like that? Helen”—Lady Harriet laughed a little—“said she told him that when she was young, even nasty girls wouldn’t have said them.”

  Rose laughed. She liked the sound of Helen—now, she had learned, Lady Beckenham, with a grown-up family. “Do you think divorce is a mistake?” she then asked, a little hesitatingly.

  “My dear, it depends so much on the divorce, doesn’t it? The divorces these Wheatley girls go on getting are nothing but legalised promiscuity. It seems to me that we are getting as bad as American women, who must have a marriage ceremony every time anything happens! Of course all these things are changing so,” Lady Harriet pursued thoughtfully. “When I married a divorce practically damned a woman, either way—so people didn’t get divorced. Now nobody notices whether people are divorced or not—they go everywhere, except to Court, and so of course there are all these divorces.”

  “But do you think that a good thing or a bad thing, that change in public opinion?” Rose asked. “Weren’t there some very—very hard cases, in old days?”

  “My dear, there are always hard cases!” said Lady Harriet. “About a great many things besides marriage and divorce. I think people want life made rather too easy, today. But I do think the present attitude is fairer than ours was.”

  “You mean that in some cases divorce is justifiable, and people shouldn’t be penalised for it?”

  “Yes—I think so.” Lady Harriet didn’t look at her young companion—her remarks flowed on, easy, general, conversational. “In some cases, I don’t think it right that people should be frowned upon in any way because they have been forced to a divorce; and I get very impatient with all this Church business about it! People like Sylvia Rissington, who said her principles wouldn’t allow her to have anything but a separation, so that poor Rissington could never marry the other wretched little woman, are simply being selfish pigs, in my opinion. That is vindictiveness, not Christianity. I can’t understand why the Bishops lend themselves to it. Christianity means loving your neighbour as yourself, I always understood—at least we are told that that is one of the only two great commandments that matter. Women like Sylvia aren’t loving their neighbour as themselves; they are killing two neighbours with one stone!”

  Rose laughed.

  “But it is really exaggerated now, my dear, don’t you think?” Lady Harriet went on. “That is the trouble. People are quite frivolous about it. Marriage means something. We were brought up to expect to sacrifice something to a position which has a great many advantages; we realised that that was fair. But these detestable girls take everything, and then break up their marriage to satisfy any passing fancy. I can’t see that that is more moral than to take a lover, as was done in the old days. In fact I think it is less!”

  Rose thought a good deal afterwards about this conversation. In a way it comforted her a little. Antony was not a passing fancy. But she could not get a full support from Lady Harriet’s views without putting her whole case before her, and when she considered doing that, it—the justification for her seeking a divorce—seemed so sordid, seen as a stranger, as Lady Harriet would see it. So still she did not speak.

  There was no one they knew among the passengers, who as far as Singapore were mostly t’ai-pans (heads of firms) from the Treaty Ports, or their womenfolk; but their acquaintance was of course sought, Lady Harriet’s rather tentatively, Rose’s vigorously, by various people, and they were soon on chatting terms with a fair number. Rose played deck-quoits with the Captain, and deck tennis with naval officers from the China Squadron going home on leave. But on the whole they preferred each other’s company to that of anyone else. Rose was becoming increasingly absorbed by her friendship with the older woman. Lady Harriet had a lighter touch on personal relationships than anyone she had ever met. Between any two people who begin to be fond of one another a particular link comes into being, but Lady Harriet never pulled, as it were, on this link. She didn’t exactly ignore it, but she didn’t stress it—she just most easily assumed its presence, and that it was nice. Anastasia, Rose reflected, was quite right—she was extraordinarily unexacting; unexacting even in the way she expressed her affection. Rose, enjoying and liking her more and more, was full of the happy curiosity about her that a fresh intimacy always brings. All details about her own life were even more fascinating than the Royal Family and the statesmen’s boots. Little bits slipped out here and there, inevitably in the long hours of conversation. Her late husband, Sir George—there was not very much about him. Rose gathered that he had been much older than his wife, and had a passion for travel; he liked her to travel with him; they had travelled a great deal. She also got the impression, she was not quite sure how, that whereas formerly there had been plenty of money, there was now much less. This did not seem to trouble Lady Harriet in the least—it was just a circumstance to be taken int
o account when arranging her life, like the climate. There was absolutely no sense, about that or anything else, of self-pity or even of self-congratulation.

  Then there were her daughters, all married now, with families of their own. About these there was far more detail going than about the late Sir George—Rose soon felt that she was getting to know them. “Helen” appeared to be if anything the favourite—a person of spirit; slightly irresponsible, with a rather drastic run of wit; but with them all, as with the grandchildren, now mostly grown up, it was clear that Lady Harriet was on the happiest, the safest terms. There was her nephew, the present Sir George; not married. Lady Harriet openly wished he were. It would be good for him; he would make an admirable husband—“for someone sensible, not too young.” Rose got an idea of some catch there—some entanglement or devotion which prevented a marriage. It was never stated, there was merely a sense of waste about when he was spoken of; but Rose was beginning to find that the things Lady Harriet didn’t say so often told more than what she did—her silences cried aloud. Which moved her to wonder whether the fact that she herself practically never spoke of Charles told Lady Harriet something? She was forced to conclude that it did in fact tell her quite a lot.

  But as the days passed, and her knowledge of Lady Harriet’s circumstances increased, Rose began to feel vaguely that there was something in this woman that was not fully accounted for by that cheerful life, with daughters and grandchildren, and the courtly unmarried nephew who idled about at race-meetings; not even by the financial loss, however caused and however severe—a sense of some tragedy or distress, something overcome. This too was suggested, if at all, by silence, and by what the lady herself now was. It was all very tenuous and vague—Rose simply felt obscurely that people didn’t generally get to be what Lady Harriet was by an easy successful life. She could not have explained exactly why she felt this, but she did feel it. Pondering it one day as she stood at the rail, watching the blue-and-silver flying-fish scudding in bright arcs from crest to crest of the blue-and-silver waves, the thought came to her—had Lady Harriet at some time lain on the mud at the bottom of a pit? (All the while, of course, going about, admirably dressed, building little shelters of pleasantness in drawing-rooms and at luncheon-tables.) Had she burned some bright happiness, some treasured toy of joy and delight, seen it go up in dark-lit smoky flames, and so now stood eternally possessed of peace and gaiety of heart? No—she was probably being fanciful. Perhaps people of Lady Harriet’s type and character were really born so—just were like that. And people who weren’t born so could probably never hope to get that particular enviable peace, and assurance, and certainty of what they were doing and where they were bound for, that complete freedom and undemanding ease. She sighed. She would have liked to know the secret of it.

  Chapter Twenty-Seven

  At Aden, from the glaring remorseless sunbaked shore, more people came aboard—Army and Oil and their families. Among them was a small harassed-looking woman with a crippled boy, who lay on deck most of the day in a spinal chair lashed in the shade, and had to be carried below at his bed-time. Lady Harriet, generally rather loth to acquire new acquaintances, promptly made friends with the harassed little woman, and with the child—she spent quite a lot of time sitting by him, showing him the picture papers, reading aloud, or playing games of patience on his board. She never fondled him, or spoke in a particularly caressing tone, but the child seemed to like her detached direct kindness.

  All this surprised Rose a little. She had not hitherto imagined Lady Harriet to be a “child-y” person at all; she had taken no notice of the other children on board, in fact had repulsed their first idle and inquisitive intrusions with a civil firmness which caused her corner of the deck to be left alone. Up till the time of the crippled boy’s arrival active altruism, except to friends—Rose now counted herself as a friend—had hardly seemed a feature of Lady Harriet’s character; she did not suffer fools or bores in the least gladly, in fact evaded them with an almost unscrupulous determination, ease and skill. Indeed one of the things which had most struck Rose about her new friend was the number of people—and certain things—which she ruled out. Lady Harriet was Rose’s first specimen of that upper-class arbitrariness which, after centuries of freedom of choice, now so deliberately and lightly chooses what subjects, what people, it can be bothered with, and—perfect with those—contrives that the rest shall not exist, so far as itself is concerned. She was by no means a perfect specimen—her curiosity was too lively, her range of interests too wide; in the less intelligent, this attribute produces the most shattering limitations. If the death of a class eventually overtakes the English aristocracy it will be due far less to death duties, which that class itself fondly blames, than to this rigid limitation of outlook; if it survives, as it is to be hoped it may (for it has many very great and irreplaceable qualities) it will be in virtue of two things:—its traditional and faithful dedication of its energies to the public service, in politics and the army, and a peculiarly English quality of adaptability among some of its members who, under the pressure of changing conditions, are prepared to learn what napkin-rings, the League of Nations, and Trade Unions are for, and what Beethoven and Unemployment Insurance are about. Too much of course cannot be expected of any one class; it is unreasonable to complain that landowners seldom produce works of art (though, Lord Byron apart, it is the fact that they seldom do). To encourage and conserve the art of others, to govern the country, to fight and die for it, is enough; the New English Art Club and the Royal Society of Portrait Painters do not in their turn produce a very high proportion of soldiers and statesmen, nor are the views of their members on foreign policy very illuminating. But a certain adaptability and elasticity there has to be if any order is to survive, from Dukes to dodos.

  The explanation of Lady Harriet’s kindness to the crippled boy only came much later, when they were in the Mediterranean. In the meantime Rose had a great and disturbing shock. At Port Said they paused for a few hours to coal; Lady Harriet, whose cabin was on the starboard side, said that for her part she had seen Port Said so often before that she had no wish to go ashore—they would only get hot. Rose entirely agreed; the very sight of that much of Egypt was troubling to her. But for lack of anything better to do they stood at the rail, watching the amazing swarm of coolies, ant-like in the distance, monkey-like close to, running up and down the narrow gangways to the coal-ports with baskets on their shoulders, while over all, in the hot afternoon sun, hung a dual cloud—of glittering microscopic coal-particles, of inhuman chattering yelling noise. The sound charmed Lady Harriet—“I love the noise they make; don’t you?” she said. “It sounds as if carrying coal on your head was such fun, whereas in fact it must be quite revolting.” But other things were coming on board besides coal—luggage, passengers, and amongst them a General of importance, as the Saloon Steward had already informed Mrs. Pelham and Lady Harriet. And presently on the dock below this personage appeared, short, spare and somehow chiselled in his tropical khaki with the touches of red and gold, among a little group of officers. Rose, from her knowledge of the ways of Generals, had not expected him to come aboard till the last possible moment, and had decided to be in her cabin then; but it seemed that he wished to solve personally some problem in connection with the embarkation of his car—and suddenly, there he was immediately below her, and among the officers surrounding him was Charles, her husband.

  Rose shrank back, involuntarily, when she first saw him. But in her perturbation she could not instantly find an excuse for leaving Lady Harriet, and before she had found one, some strange indefinable curiosity, the pull of some link stronger than she knew caused her to lean forward a little, cautiously, and look at him again. There he stood, tall, soldierly, intelligent, his rather fine face a little foreshortened by her distance above him, talking with his rather abrupt casual vigour to the General. He made some joke, and before the General laughed she knew that it was coming, for she saw Charles draw down the corners of h
is mouth, and tilt his head back slightly, as he always did before producing one of his dry deliberate witticisms. And then looked on, with a perfectly grave face, while the others laughed. It was terrible, strange and cruel, this familiarity with all his tricks and gestures, separated as she now was from him, not only by feet of space and by his unconsciousness of her presence, but by a whole range of thoughts and emotions that had no connection with him at all. For so long, all her thoughts and emotions had been related to Charles; her mind, her heart had hardly functioned apart from him. All that she had seen and felt, for years, had been to a great extent been seen through his eyes, coloured by his attitude. In China, at last, she had moved slowly into a greater independence of thought, and into a strong emotional independence; but now the mere sight of him brought back, in the strangest way, all the old sense of connection and closeness—a thousand links, subtle, small, indefinable, but all-pervading and terrible in their strength drew at her independence, fettered her as the cords of the Lilliputians bound Gulliver.