by Ann Bridge
Rose agreed—no words could express how deeply she agreed with the General about Lady Harriet. This conversation explained a lot—it explained Lady Harriet’s kindness to the crippled boy, and much more besides. So that was what lay behind her cheerfulness, her interest, her gaiety; that was the background to what looked like an easy and successful life, with daughters and grandchildren. Rose thought long, afterwards, about what it must have cost her—to lose not only the child who was the light of her eyes, but the splendid son she might have had in her old age. And to lose him through the foolish wilful obstinacy of her husband. Yes—it was about as bad to bear as anything could be. She tried, looking at Lady Harriet’s calm fine old face, to imagine the inner processes by which she had brought herself to accept it, and to go on being “damned good” to the tiresome Sir George. Was it the “shockin’ sense of duty” alone which had done it, or the philosophy of “men are like that”? Vaguely, dimly, she felt that there was something more, some vigorous and positive act of acceptance which had saved her friend from becoming “bitter as lye”, and brought her out where she now was, with peace at the heart of her wisdom and her gaiety.
It is only very rarely that the problems of a member of one generation become real and poignantly actual to a member of another. The different generations form a series of circles, only very slightly overlapping; each circle is whole in itself. And each generation goes through the whole cycle—of being young, with the incomprehensible old above you; of middle life, with the very old stretching away on one side and the very young on the other—comprehensible enough, but both so incomplete compared to your fullness, your completeness; and last of being old, and seeing the now incomprehensible young striding up into their own zenith, climbing to the place from which you have descended. And in this curious system the old are important to the very young, and the young are important to the old; but the middle life of each generation is curiously self-sufficing, and it is only by some peculiar effort of sympathy or accident of insight that the twenties, thirties and forties ever reach out, touch and enter into the lives of the generation that preceded them. Rose Pelham, by just such an accident—the chance of their sudden friendship, her own need, and the General’s revelations—was now so reaching out and entering into the life of her friend, the pain and the problems of an earlier day.
And while she tried to understand, envied and admired, inevitably she related Lady Harriet’s experience, and how she must have dealt with it, to her own. But here her mind and heart fought, wrestled and resisted still. Her case was different—her whole life, her whole happiness was at stake.. She thought of Charles, cold, negative and impenitent in her cabin; she thought of Antony, racked with tenderness but still just, still unselfish—and she hardened her heart as she walked alone on deck, facing the moist salt airs as they neared the Atlantic. Then she rejoined Lady Harriet, and the whole impact of the older woman’s personality now struck, at last, fully on her own—delightful, satisfying, a little austere, almost majestic in its completeness. And she remembered what lay behind all that, the bright treasure of hope and joy that had gone up in dark flames of misery, the power that had accepted it, and her heart wavered again. Could she do that?
So alternating, in conflict, she was borne through the Straits, across the Bay, up the Channel, to England.
Chapter Twenty-Eight
One afternoon late in January Mrs. Pelham stood inside the outer doorways of the Queen’s Hall, waiting for someone. She had thought that the concert began at three, and in fact it was only at three-fifteen, so she had some time to wait; it was cold, and she stood well inside, leaning against a stretch of photographs of musical celebrities adorning the wall. Even so, the raw foggy air came in through the doors, and with it came the immediate noise of traffic in Langham Place, and the more distant roar of Oxford Street. Mrs; Pelham didn’t notice the noise, and didn’t really realise that she was noticing the cold; she moved her feet now and then, first one and then the other, mechanically, to warm them, but without any change in the position of the upper part of her body, or the absent expression of her face. She was not peering about for her companion, either; they were both tall—they would see one another. Meanwhile she stood unseeing, unaware of the people about her, deep in thought.
Rose always found herself thinking nowadays, when she was alone for a little while—if one can apply the word thought to those rather exhausting processes of interior argument which seemed for ever to go on in her now. She and Lady Harriet had reached England early in December, and if she had known interior conflict on the boat, external conflict had promptly been added to it. Her parents, to whom she went at once, were by this time thoroughly worried at her failure to return to Charles, and applied that gentle half-hurt, half-affectionate pressure against which it is so hard to stand up. Rose felt that she could not talk openly to them—whether she could or not, she in any case didn’t; she shrank from laying bare Charles’s folly with Esther, primarily—and of her own love for Antony she could not bear to speak. So they fenced with half-truths, as parents and children so often do—dissatisfied with themselves and with each other, clinging to their affection though it was wounded, both parties stating views which were based on an incomplete presentation of the facts, and worried and hurt, all three of them.
Christmas had brought her a letter from Antony—a carefully restrained one, describing Asta’s wedding and departure with Roy for Indo-China, telling her about the ponies, quoting Mme. de Brie’s latest remarks—but saying very little about himself, and giving almost nothing of the expressed tenderness for which her heart craved. “Remember what I said at the Princess’s Tomb,” he ended up; and that was practically all. The actual contents of the letter were in sharp contrast to the shocking beating of her heart when she first saw the envelope. But she treasured it all the same—carried it about in her bag by day, kept it under her pillow at night. (These practices continue till much later in life than is sometimes supposed.) She had had a letter from Charles too, soon after she got home, stiffly written and rather argumentative, formally expressing regret about Esther, and equally formally asking her to return to him. How unlucky it was, she had thought, after reading it, that a bad conscience in Charles always produced an appearance of insincerity, even when he almost certainly was sincere. And he had at such times no generosity, no épanchement—he could never let himself go, naturally and humbly and freely, when he felt he had done wrong. After all, that was the only way to purge away one’s own wrong-doing, in oneself or in the other—nothing but open admission and willing regret did any good, or really cleared the thing out of one’s system. That letter had brought home to her the thing in him which even in their happiest days had so often given her a sense of being hemmed in by a high blank wall which nothing, no love or affection or acceptance of his wishes and fulfilment of his demands could penetrate—a blind cold barrier of resistance, set up because he felt himself to have been in the wrong. And for the hundredth time she asked herself how she, how anyone, could spend the rest of their life with that? She had replied non-committally to the letter, thanking him, but saying that she needed more time to come to a decision.
There had been pressure from the old Pelhams, too, when she went, as in duty bound, to stay with them—light cajoling affectionate pressure, accompanied by little pats on the hand, from old Lady Pelham, courtly serious pressure, very elegantly applied, from old Sir Hugo. Again there had been the difficulty of open speech, though with Sir Hugo she went further in that direction than with his wife or her own parents. “Did Charles tell you why I went away?” she had asked him, rather gently. Sir Hugo, h’m-ing, rather embarrassed, murmured something about having heard some story of a—of some young woman or other. “It wasn’t a story,” Rose said quietly. “She was in our house four evenings out of seven, and I was asked by Charles to keep out of the drawing-room after dinner, then. They went about together too, till the whole of Cairo was talking about it. What do you suggest I should have done? Would you have
wished Judith to stay, if Tom had treated her like that?” (Judith was Sir Hugo’s favourite daughter.) Sir Hugo, still more embarrassed, nevertheless had the wisdom to treat it seriously. That was very wrong, he said; unpar—he bit the word back. He quite understood her feelings. But that was all over now; Charles regretted it. Charles wished her, he knew, to return. This absence was also causing talk; it could not fail to injure his career. He, Sir Hugo, wished her to think it over very carefully, and see if the time had not come for generosity, for pardon. And he sent her a diamond brooch at Christmas. This was followed up by another invitation, for New Year—Rose felt obliged to go, and found that the party included the Pelhams’ family lawyer, a charming elderly gentleman of the old school; it was contrived that he twice took her for walks. He too talked to her, with an appearance of great frankness—“Come now, my dear Mrs. Charles”; it was plain to Rose that he was desired to find out what her intentions were, and whether she had evidence to support them. Rose could not feel cross with the dear old boy, though she might, and did, feel rather desperate; with him she was brutally frank—that was what lawyers were for! “I don’t wish to go into details with you, Mr. Lee, but I am advised”—rather to her own surprise she found herself quoting Antony—“that I have evidence enough to hang an Archbishop.” The word “advised” disturbed him, it was clear; would she mind telling him, he asked, if she was consulting her lawyers? Rose pushed up her hair—she was walking without a hat. “Mr. Lee, I want you to understand that I don’t wish to take my decision on those grounds, however useful they might be later, if I had taken a particular decision. I want to make up my own mind in my own way. But I must have time for it.” “Of course; quite right, quite right, Mrs. Charles. But we trust you to remember how much is at stake for the Captain—his career, as well as his happiness.”
All this pressure weighed heavily on her, enervating and discouraging chiefly; it was not wholly without effect, but it was nothing like so potent to achieve its ends as the mere existence of Lady Harriet Downham. Lady Harriet was in London, and they continued to meet; Rose clung to Lady Harriet and to Antony’s Mizpah brooch as to two talismans, all that she had to keep her in touch with Antony and what he stood for, and wished her to stand for too. How curious it was, she thought, that if she did go back to Charles, it would be because, in one way, Antony wished it. Charles would owe his career, and any good he might get out of her, Rose, to Antony; if the old Pelhams got what they wanted, and her parents, they would owe it to Antony too. If she herself in the end did this thing, shaped herself to this attitude to life, Antony would be at the bottom of it. A funny little thought came into her mind—to think of Antony was to think of music, and she remembered what he had said at Pei-t’ai-ho when he was explaining to her about setting an air in four parts, of the bass being the groundwork on which all the other parts rested. He was the bass in this.
Oddly enough she had also seen a good deal of the General. He also was in London, and he produced a wife, much larger than himself, a spirited, lively, cheerful woman, full of an acute worldly wisdom quite untinctured by those other values which were so strong in Lady Harriet. The wife took to Rose, and Rose to her; they went to films together, and laughed at the same things. Films, funny ones, were rather a rest, Rose found; they were an anodyne to her inner pain, the ceaseless gnawing of her interior argument, as detective stories are used as a sedative to patients in nursing-homes. Mrs. Carshalton herself was a rest in rather the same way—she left all problems asleep; though Rose often felt, when with her, that it would be better to be a person like the General’s wife—so decided, full of so strong a commonsense that no muddles or distresses could happen in her life. Even Charles—she giggled a little at the silly, but accurate idea—even Charles, with all his mad wilfulness, would never have asked Mildred Carshalton to keep out of the drawing-room while he talked to a rival! Oh, why had Charles not married someone like that? Even Asta? Or rather why had he insisted on marrying her? Just because she was pliant, idealising, and not in the least hard-headed? Had the motive power that brought about their marriage been not her beauty or anything else, not her at all, but his own vanity?
Such thoughts tormented her—but they would come, now and then. She hated to think them, but now that her eyes were opened at last to Charles’s wilfulness and selfishness, she seemed to meet it everywhere in her experience of him. If she were to go back, how could she live with anyone whose faults she saw so clearly? And yet, more and more it had been coming to her, during those wretched wintry weeks in England, that she would have to go back. Go back, lose Antony, lose happiness and joy and safety; turn into one of those women with sad eyes and set mouths, who were sweet to everybody in a colourless way, whose energy was all drained out of them by the effort of sticking to their job, of putting up with an impossible husband. Oh, it was so negative, so lifeless, she thought, tapping her feet, half with cold and half with impatience, on the floor of the Queen’s Hall entrance. If only she could see it as something positive, something worth doing; if only there were a gain, however bleak and hard and austere, to set against so immense a loss—the loss of Antony.
She was peculiarly hesitant and cast down that day—this feeling of the inevitability of her giving in and returning to her husband was strong in her, induced perhaps by two more letters which had arrived the day before. One was from Asta, written between Aden and Port Said—it described the wonders of Angkor, and mentioned that they would reach Cairo on the 23rd. Today was the 25th—they were there now; talking about her, making plans for reducing her resistance. Oh, not all—she had been so much touched by a tiny note from Roy, tucked into Asta’s letter: “In three days now I face the terrifying Charles, and the tribunal will, I presume, start to sit. Mr. Justice Hillier holds strong views on the excellence of the female defendant’s case. I hope you have had your tail permanently wired. Yours—Roy.” That was nice of him—even if it wasn’t any good. The other letter was from Charles, much kinder, much more natural, asking how her plans were getting on? “I really should like to hear soon.” He spoke of anticipating Asta’s visit with pleasure, but between the phrases Rose thought she detected—she knew him so well—a faint note of disquiet at the prospect of seeing Asta with a husband. “A. says you got to like him in the end. I hope he is up to her; his books would hardly lead one to suppose it.” Oh Charles, Charles!
“Ah, there you are! Have you been waiting long? Isn’t it bitter? Let’s go in as fast as we can—I hope it’s reasonably warm inside.” Mrs. Carshalton’s advent was a relief—they went in and settled down in two stalls. While the hall filled and the instruments gave isolated despairing squeaks and groans, like a quantity of monosyllabic birds, they continued to talk, and that sense of pressure was lifted a little by Mrs. Carshalton’s cheerful remarks; but when the conductor appeared and bowed, the hush succeeded the light rattle of welcoming applause, and the first item began, a Brahms Symphony, Rose’s thoughts came back on her again. In a fortnight Asta would be back, bringing fresh pressure to bear; a few weeks more, and the six months would be up. But that term was losing its relevance; a decision could hardly be put off so long; and if she was going to do it, there was no point in putting it off. If Antony had been at hand, his very presence would have supported her; she would have had him to hold to, even if he had remained as non-committal as he was in China. But he was not at hand; he was so far, so far away, in a place so remote in space and now seeming so distant in time that those weeks in Peking had begun to take on a dream-like quality, as of a tale from some other planet, or a vision of some antique paradise. Her only link with that other world now was Lady Harriet; and still she had not asked her advice. In a way she would love to, she often felt; merely to pour it all out would be a relief. But she had realised for some time now that it would not alter the outcome—she knew what Lady Harriet’s answer would be. She had heard it already. “There are always hard cases”—“People want life made too easy”—or, in the General’s version—“Men are like that.”
Yes—Lady Harriet had done it. In her case, it was true, the bitter choice had not been thrust upon her; but once her heart’s joy had been taken from her, she had accepted it freely, and from that acceptance had emerged what she now was. She saw that woman again, as the Brahms poured in on her unhearing ears—cheerful, gay, interested; leading, on any showing, one of the best possible lives; certain of herself, secure, a rock of strength against any disasters. One could give up one’s heart’s delight, and become that.
She sat staring up into the dome of foggy air overhead, where the clustering lights hurt her eyes. Casually, she noticed the decoration above the orchestra, to the left, and suddenly she remembered Roy’s remarks at Lady Harriet’s dinner-party at the Hotel de Pékin, about the resemblance of that room to the Queen’s Hall. That absurdly small recollection brought the whole evening back to her, and the afternoon that had preceded it—she saw Antony’s face as he leant against the tree in the little wood by the Princess’s Tomb, and murmured over the words from the “Imitation”—“Being weary is not tired, being pressed is not straitened—passeth securely through all.” Oh, she was both weary and tired, both pressed and straitened! Could love do that, without any commerce with the beloved to sustain it, through the long slow years? There must be something, some attitude, some way—Lady Harriet passed securely through everything—some decision or disposition that would give to this thing the positive, active quality that she had wished for as she stood by the door.