by Ann Bridge
“They have not felt this,” Nils said. “Hospitality is second nature here. And they have especially enjoyed having Mrs. Thurston among them, so much like one of themselves; this rarely happens. They think it has been of benefit to Lisa to have her company—the Prince told me so.”
“It’s certainly been of benefit to Gloire to have Lisa’s!” Miss Glanfield said. “Do tell me, what do you think of her now?”
Nils did not reply at once. He was a most unhurried person. He gave Miss Glanfield a cigarette, and lit one himself—while he did so, he was thinking of his encounter with Gloire that morning in the dairy. Coming up into the yard, cup in hand, from the fragrant hollow where he had slept under the stars among the dwarf pines and junipers, he had seen her standing among the particoloured throng of girls and women, smiling, and talking in her few words of Albanian; and the profoundest part of him had rejoiced at the sight. He stood by the door when she went in, and watched her receiving bread and milk from the hands of Mme. Lek-Gionaj. She seemed slender beside that mountainous woman, but surely she was stouter—or was it just those full skirts? When she came out—“How do you like this sort of breakfast?” he had asked her, gaily.
“Fine. I’m putting on weight up here.”
“You have a good way to go before you match her!” he said, grinning in the direction of their hostess.
“Yes, isn’t she grand? Her hips must be a yard across!”
“And you do not despise her for that?”
“I don’t despise her for anything—why should I? Do lay off that!” she had said impatiently. “I’ve told you I like the way she does things.”
“I am glad,” he said. “Yes, she has a splendour that the women in London and Paris, pulling rubber harness over their sterile pel vises to control their hips, can never have! I am glad that you are here to see it.”
“Oh, I see quite a bit, for all you think me such a dumb cluck!” Gloire had replied and floated off with her cups and her slabs of dry bread. Formidable!
Now, to Miss Glanfield—
“I think well of her,” he said, in his sober way. “She is happy, and this makes her charming.”
The old Nilsian bromides, Miss Glanfield thought. But as usual she pursued her main theme.
“Do you think it’s really made a difference? Will it last, should you say? I’ve tried—we talked about her husband; I knew him, you know, as quite a boy—to make her see that just hating the world because of his death won’t get her anywhere.”
“Of course not. I am glad you spoke of that. For her, this particular trial was peculiarly disabling because he was all the real hold on life she had. Women who have duties and obligations which they recognise have these as a stable framework to support them, when such a blow falls. But she had not. Of all that by which most women live she had nothing! Do you realise the fearful vacancy, the emptiness, of the lives of these rich cosmopolitans, divorced from the land and from all duties?”
“My God yes, I do realise it!” Miss Glanfield said, with her customary vigour. “I couldn’t agree more. It’s something else, too—the frustrating of the creative impulse. Most women have that, lots of it, and the normal outlet, besides bearing and bringing up children, is all the work connected with a home: making clothes, making things for the house, making food—delicious food, so often! If a woman does all those things with her own two hands, the creative side of her life is nourished and strong and satisfied; but if she does none of them—and till she came here, Gloire Thurston never has—her only real outlet is the emotional one.”
“That is true,” Nils said thoughtfully. “I hadn’t thought of the creative aspect. But through the emotional life people can also be led to other activities and outlets.”
“Of course they can. And that poor child feels that. She said as much—she told me she felt that in losing her husband she had lost herself too.”
“She said that? Most interesting! Then Miss Langdon was right,” Larsen said.
“Oh, was she onto that? She’s a very bright old bird,” said Miss Glanfield appreciatively.
Larsen smiled at the phrase.
“She is—a splendid American of the old school. There are too few now like her.” He paused—his mind had gone back ta her remarks about the creative faculty. “Do you know the U.S.A.?” he asked. “You and I have not spoken of it yet.”
“Yes, I’ve been in the States a good deal. Why?”
“Do you think there is a connection between the instability of family life there, the emphasis placed on the emotions, the constant divorces, and this lack of a creative outlet for women? For in America, though there are few servants, most of the work in houses is done by machines, food comes out of tins, and clothes are bought, not made, as a rule. The American woman very seldom runs down the garden to gather a handful of herbs to flavour her soups and salads, as our housewives do—nor are they constantly knitting socks for their men, as in Scotland and Sweden. I had not thought of it, but might there not be a connection?”
“Oh Lord yes—personally I feel sure there is. I would say that the way American women—in all classes—go on about their ‘love-life’ derives directly from the mail-order system and the can-opener,” said Miss Glanfield briefly. “Even if they do make their ‘drapes’ themselves, they copy them from a picture in Vogue; so that you’ll see identical curtains in thirty thousand homes in any given year. That terriblp uniformity of mass-production that Red Lewis wrote of so scathingly in Babbitt and Main Street helps to atrophy the creative faculty too.” She paused, and then added—“You know, I believe Gloire has got onto that, at last. I think she sees the point of the way the people here live, for all their lack of plumbing, and that she’s genuinely enjoyed doing a little real work herself.”
“Yes, this is so.”
“Oh, she told you?” Miss Glanfield eyed him with interest.
“Yes.”
“Well, that’s something positive, anyway.”
Larsen lunched with them, and afterwards sat on, talking—chiefly to Miss Glanfield who, stimulated by a new person, was pouring out ideas and theories at a great rate. Gloire listened, working at her embroidery, and wondering when they were to go for their walk; the old Doctor smoked. But Larsen showed no sign of moving, nor Miss Glanfield of flagging, and at last Dr. Crowninshield took action.
“My patient has to rest in the afternoon, Mr. Larsen,” she said.
Nils got up at once.
“Oh, I really don’t need to always, Dr. Emmeline,” the writer protested.
“That’s for me to decide,” the old woman said, smiling but decisive. “Anyway I want my nap.”
“But of course—you should rest,” Larsen said. He turned to Miss Glanfield—“We will talk later,”—and then to Gloire— “Do you rest also? or shall we take a little walk?”
Gloire was all for a walk, hot as it was, and they went off together. Her pleasure in his company had become great since his return; the mental alchemy which so often takes place in absence had worked more powerfully than usual because he was linked in her mind with this new conception of life, this revolution in her scale of values. He must have been important to her from the outset, she realised, or she would not have heeded his words to the very drastic point of leaving the train at Zagreb—but now she found him also enormously attractive. Her relations with men were the one thing—besides clothes—about which Gloire’s mind was thoroughly alert, and she knew that she liked Larsen and might at any moment be in love with him; she also, out of her experience, recognised that he was interested to a considerable degree in her. But in this one case, all the familiar technique of recognition of that fact and the corresponding moves was confused by his being and meaning so much more than the usual run of men who fell for her; she couldn’t apply the normal methods with him, she felt. The word desecration was not in Gloire’s vocabulary, except as something in history books that happened to churches—but her instinct knew the thing it stood for, and avoided it.
This left h
er curiously shy and inhibited, as they climbed up through the woods below Mali Shenjt, treading paths down which the flocks poured at sundown; a faint goaty smell hung about them, penetrating even through the hot resinous fragrance of the pines. Tits zipped and chipped among the branches; the pine-cones were opening in the heat with a tiny dry popping sound, like a series of minute explosions. She walked in silence, unable to think of anything to say; nor did Nils talk much. He was watching her with immense pleasure—sun and shadow splashed her white trousers and tunic, against the reddish background of the tree-trunks, and struck brilliant as an emerald on her jacket, as she moved ahead of him, graceful and strong. His pleasure, silent as it was, communicated itself to her sharpened instincts; her usual delight in the movement of her muscles became keener, because she knew that he was liking the way she walked. In this silent pleasure and recognition, in great heat, they mounted to the limit of trees, and emerged onto the blazing splendour of open pastures and white rocks, where a breeze, cool and tonic even under the tremendous South European sun, fanned their faces, bringing the delicate fragrance of mountain flowers. At Nils’ suggestion they sat down. Below them, a white speck, was Lek-Gionaj’s house; down to the right the tower of the Abbey Church was visible, an elegant buff rococo pillar against a pink and white background of hillside; across the valley, the white slopes of the further ranges shimmered in the heat. Nils took off his hat and mopped his face; Gloire pulled out a handkerchief and fanned hers.
He watched her.
“You use no powder, now?” he asked curiously.
“No. I ran out. Anyway it would look funny with this get-up.”
He was pleased at that—it showed a sense of the fitness of things. He studied her as they sat. He was interested to realise that her charm did not depend purely on a fashionable perfection of appearance; he had thought that it probably did, but he was wrong. It was based on something healthier, more fundamental.
Presently she pulled the black shawl off her head, complaining of the heat, and that remarkable heather-honey hair came down with it, a great coil of the dark-gold stuff falling over that green velvet jacket.
“I did not know you had long hair,” he exclaimed in surprise.
She glanced at him sidelong under her lashes.
“My God, you are unobservant! I should have thought you’d have seen that in the train.”
“The colour, I noticed,” Nils said; “but not that it is long.”
She laughed. She didn’t bother to put the hair up again; Nils was aware of a very definite desire to shake the coil loose and plunge his hands in the deeply golden stuff. He changed the subject. Glancing down at the pine-trees through which they had walked up—
“That is surely Pinus pinaster,” he said; “with the very large cones, and the rough bark. This is within its range.”
“This range of mountains, do you mean?”
He smiled. “No, its geographical range. It is not unlike Picea omorica, but that has a very small range; in all the world it is only found within a few miles of Serajevo. It is one of the only two European spruces—and the other, the Norway spruce, covers the whole of Northern Europe. Strange, is it not?”
Gloire didn’t really think it either strange or normal—spruces were definitely not within her range.
“Do you know a lot about trees and all that?” she asked, thinking how much she liked his face even when it was hot and shiny.
“Not a lot—a little. In any country, I like to know what grows, and why—the geological formations, the climate, that give it its vegetation. Does this not interest you?”
“I’ve never thought about it,” she said. “I don’t know the first thing about trees, or geology either—and I’ve never met anyone that did, except Susan. I’ve learned the names of a few of the flowers here, because I bring them in for her to look out—and of course she always tells one their names,” she added, looking amused.
But Nils too was thinking how delicious she looked, without powder, sitting there in the sun with her hair down her back, talking away about the Lek-Gionajs and Miss Glanfield and Dr. Crowninshield. About people she was quite observant and shrewd. She made it clear that she had never before met womerr like these two, and that she enjoyed them, though quite aware of their little foibles. Oh yes, she was nice—and alarmingly attractive, now that she was happy, whatever she wore! As they walked down, Gloire again in front, Nils found it necessary to exhort himself. I must be careful! he thought. She is the sort of person one falls in love with. This could happen—and then, for thirty years, what on earth should we talk about? She will never have much mind, nor care for the things of the mind—though her character might become charming. It would be: a mistake to fall in love with her.
Such precautionary meditations are sometimes efficacious, and sometimes, by themselves, they are not. Possibly Paris used some such language to himself about Helen—unavailingly. But in Larsen’s case they were reinforced from without by another element—the presence of Miss Glanfield.
He dined with the women that night, and sat with them afterwards, perched on one of the upright chairs; Gloire sat with her embroidery on the foot of Miss Glanfield’s mattress; the old Doctor lay propped on the brass bed. As always, when foreigners met in Albania, the talk at dinner had turned on the future of the Albanian nation—what they needed, what could be done for them, what they must do for themselves. The subject was pursued when they had settled down.
“They seem very anxious to have more education,” Nils said. “Every man I speak to always talks of the need for education, here.”
“They talk of the need for it, but when they get it, they don’t use it,” Dr. Crowninshield said rather tartly. She was tired—her old face looked pinched. “Any man here will gladly send his son to an agricultural college; but when he comes home, will he let him change the methods on the farm? No sir!”
“But that’s only technical education, after all, and that hardly counts as education really,” Miss Glanfield put in. “Is there a desire here for true education, for the humanities?—I mean as an end in itself and not as a means to a livelihood? If there is, something could be done.” She looked towards Dr. Crowninshield.
“That’s hard to answer,” the old woman said, rolling another of her little cigarettes. “It’s difficult for people who’ve only been allowed any education at all for less than a generation to be very precise about what they do want. Any sort of knowledge is education to them, and valuable—they don’t differentiate.”
“Miss Glanfield’s point is important, though,” Nils said, leaning forward. “There is that confusion between true education and mere technology in England and America as well as here, and on the whole the emphasis is laid on technology. Whereas in France, say—or in Poland or Hungary—the emphasis is on education in the true sense. But the laws of supply and demand operate quite as inevitably in the educational sphere as in the economic! The educational problem is not a question of schools or colleges, but of the social structure—of the esteem in which culture and learning are held, regardless of economic rewards. Where they are held in high esteem, even few and poor schools will supply a true education—where they are not desired or esteemed, hundreds of colleges, splendidly equipped, with Vita-glass in the windows!”—he grinned rather maliciously—“will not supply education in the sense in which Europe has always understood it. One has only to look at America and some of the British Dominions to see how little the multiplication of Universities can do towards the creation of a cultivated society!—unless that society itself, in its most influential centres, really desires cultivation.” He too looked towards Dr. Crowninshield. “Do you agree?”
The old woman sighed.
“Yes, I do,” she said. “Culture isn’t valued in the States much, today—not even in New England. When a Harvard student tells me, as one did two years back, that he is ‘majoring in Accountancy and Music’, I know what to think! It’s a complete confusion of standards.”
“Europe used
to differentiate, of course, and call technical education apprenticeship,” said Miss Glanfield.
“That was right. And valued both, but did not confuse them,” Nils said. “Also in apprenticeship a youth learnt not only the details of his trade, but the discipline of it. Today, discipline is gone out of fashion.”
“Yes, the fashion is all for technology,” said Miss Glanfield rapidly. “Commercial values are dominating the public views on education today, even in England. Mass standards are becoming the ideal aimed at—and mass democratic standards are commercial and debased. Fifty years ago the most altruistic and high-minded reformers believed that universal education and provincial Universities would produce a flood of hidden talent, and raise the intellectual standard of England. But it hasn’t worked out like that. The standard of cultivation in the liberal professions hasn’t risen, it has fallen.”
“How do you judge that?” Gloire asked.
“Well, in one very direct way, by comparing the books written by leading men in the liberal professions today, Bishops and Judges, for instance, with those the same type of men published fifty years ago. They’ve gone back.”
“But does that matter? I mean, why is it important that people should be so terribly well educated? Does it really make all that difference?”
“Yes,” Nils said with emphasis. “And for this reason. Questions constantly arise and confront a nation to which it is vitally important to find the right answers. But if the men in leading positions in that nation have not a wide philosophic outlook, if they are men of little intellectual ballast or anchorage, who tend to be swept away by the moods and catchwords of the moment—like the general mass of men who derive their cultivation from the public prints—the wrong answer is found. And this is a great loss, and peril, to any nation.”
“It’s more than that, isn’t it?” said Miss Glanfield. “I don’t mean that that isn’t true; it’s appallingly true. But—do you remember what Matthew Arnold said? That when in any nation ‘the free play of the mind on all subjects’—isn’t it a glorious phrase?—‘ceases to be valued, ceases to be an object of desire’, the soul of that nation must perish of inanition?” She turned to Gloire. “Your question is difficult to answer, because it turns the position. As soon as you start asking what education is for, what the use of it is, you’re abandoning the basic assumption of any true culture, that education is worth while for its own sake. It’s like asking what the soul of man is for.”