Singing Waters

by Ann Bridge

  “Mass-standards would ask just that, if they really believed man had a soul,” Nils said, with an ironical grin. “The worst feature of democracy, to me, is this tendency to level education down, not to level it up. There is not only no enthusiasm for genuine education, there is a positive distaste for it.”

  “It’s more than a tendency, it’s a demand,” said the old Doctor. “Though I don’t agree that there is necessarily any connection with democracy. But there is that wish, in the name of democracy, to level down, because high cultural standards are despised and rejected, and even feared, in our Western Democracies. Don’t let anyone else have what I’ve not got, or can’t enjoy!— is the secret theory. A very large number of writers in the British and American popular press profess to be preaching democracy when in fact they are only trying to make envy respectable!”

  The others laughed.

  “Why, Dr. Emmeline, you’re quite ferocious about it!” Gloire exclaimed.

  “Yes, I am ferocious about it,” the old woman said, her dry detachment for once forsaking her. “I see the world, drugged with ignorance and false conceptions and a town-bred passion for the second-rate, sweeping on to the most ignoble of destinies, a future of mediocrity and sham well-being; and jettisoning as It goes along all the things that might save it, all its main sources of strength and virtue—tradition, culture, religion, even beauty. Would you see that gladly, if you did see it? I live here in the old world, with the old graces, for all the poverty and the lack of hygiene—so I do see it. And I see that these things are being scrapped mainly out of ignorance and envy.”

  Nils glanced significantly at Gloire, while the old Doctor spoke, but her eyes were on her work. He felt in his pocket and pulled out the little note-book which she had seen in the train; he turned the pages, and then looked at Miss Glanfield.

  “Do you recognise this?” he asked, and read out—

  “Whatever the method of improving humanity and of raising men to a higher position than they occupy today may be, and whenever and however the millennium may be reached, it is not to be reached by declaring in favour of class consciousness and class antagonism, hatred between one class and another. The problem we have to solve is an educational and moral problem. No political constitution can enfranchise a people, no possessions can enrich them, no rank or title can ennoble them, unless they have solid, manly character and wholesome honesty, as the granite rock upon which they are built.”

  “No, I don’t know that,” Miss Glanfield said. “Who wrote it?”

  “Whoever he was, he was a mighty sensible man,” said Dr. Crowninshield. “If the whole world could be got to grasp that, we might get somewhere. It’s true—and it is the direct opposite of most of what is said and written today. Truth is very rarely popular.”

  “Who did write it?” Miss Glanfield repeated.

  “It is from a speech of Sir Edward Grey, made in 1910,” Nils said, stuffing the book back into his pocket. “So long ago, a great Englishman saw this so clearly, and spoke it. But his nation did not listen.”

  “The press spoke louder,” said Miss Glanfield.

  “Perhaps one day calamity shall speak louder still, and then all mankind must listen,” Nils answered. He went off later to his bed in the hollow, thinking of the writer’s words and the old Doctor’s—they had a potency in some ways exceeding the potency even of green-gold hair and a beautiful way of walking.

  And as the days passed, his initial thrill of pleasure—and it had been a real thrill—at finding Mrs. Thurston so transformed was gradually overlaid by his increasing pleasure and interest in his re-discovered friend, Susan Glanfield. Her great power of communication, the range of her experience, the breadth and fearlessness of her views and her pungent expression of them— all these were deeply satisfying to the Swede. And there was also that sheer uncajoling charm. He spent more and more of his time talking to her. Dr. Crowninshield often sat by, crocheting small garments—not for Mrs. Pieter’s baby, but for those of poorer parents—with a curious rather wry folding of her thin mouth; Mrs. Pieter was much better, she was going to recover, and this left the old woman more at leisure. Gloire also sat there, listening and embroidering, with a faint and, as time passed, increasing expression of a sort of bewilderment which gradually deepened into a quite definite listlessness. Her walks with Larsen in the afternoons became shorter; he made a point of being back in time to share the tea which she made for Miss Glanfield, and then sat with her till the evening meal, and after it. At first, while the other two talked, Gloire occasionally put in a question—rather trite and uninformed little questions—but gradually even these became fewer and fewer.

  Dr. Crowninshield watched all this in silence for some time. Then, one morning when Gloire was out doing the washing with Lisa, she spoke. She had been looking at Miss Glanfield’s leg and pronounced that she might safely start down as soon as they could collect a caravan of men and ponies. Sitting on the bed, she remarked—

  “I guess you’ve forgotten what I said to you about Gloire, the day you came?”

  Miss Glanfield looked up, surprised.

  “I don’t think so—no. I remember that talk vividly. Why?”

  “You asked me then what I meant by saying that you and Gloire might come into conflict—what might come between you.”

  “I know. And I wonder more than ever now, when we’ve become friends.”

  “It hasn’t occurred to you that Mr. Larsen could?”

  “Nils? Good heavens, no.” She was quite clearly astounded by the suggestion. “Dear Dr. Emmeline,” she said earnestly, “I do assure you that there isn’t the smallest emotional thing between me and Mr. Larsen, and never has been—oddly enough,” she said, with her usual disarming candour. “We talk immensely, of course, but that’s all.”

  “And it doesn’t strike you that your talking might put most women’s looks out of court, does it?” the old woman said, with a reluctant half-smile. “You’re pretty naive, for a great grown-up authoress!”

  The colour came into the writer’s square pale face.

  “Actually, it hadn’t occurred to me that Mr. Larsen was likely to fall in love with Gloire,” she said, still with the quiet reasonableness that the old Doctor admired. “That, I suppose, is what you have in mind?”

  “Something like it. I’d have liked her to have her chance, anyway.”

  “But Dr. Emmeline, she has it! Talking politics and falling in love are two quite different things, and they almost invariably happen with different people—except the Webbs, of course.” said Miss Glanfield.

  The old woman laughed outright, at that. But then her face grew grave, and even comminatory, again.

  “Well, I told you you wouldn’t know what you were doing when you broke her,” she said. “You have been warned!” She got up rather wearily and went out.

  This conversation greatly disturbed Miss Glanfield. She thought the old Doctor’s idea unreasonable, actually; it would be madness for Nils to marry anyone like Gloire, and if he wasn’t going to marry her, would either of them be much the better for falling in love? Possibly—she didn’t exclude that; it was unlikely, though. But she was horrified at the bare idea of spoiling any chances that poor child might have, and shied away, as she always had, from entering into rivalry with any woman about any man. (Miss Glanfield had always been very take-it-or-leave-it in her relations with the other sex.) During the next day or two, while messengers went out to arrange for men and horses, and word was sent to the various gendarmerie posts on their homeward route, she tried, whenever Larsen was about, to be less in evidence; talking less and making brief friendly replies, when he started a subject, instead of her usual full and lively come-backs. Privately, she expected this to be useless, and it did not seem to work very well; the Swede merely studied her face solicitously and asked if she felt tired, or had a headache? When this happened she glanced, discreetly, in Dr. Emmeline’s direction, but the old woman went rigidly on with her crochet.

  Indeed t
he chief result of the writer’s retiring from the evening conversations was less to make Larsen talk more with Gloire than greatly to increase his exchanges with the old American. He was eager to hear all that she could tell him about life in Albania, which he knew only as a summer visitor; though his knowledge of the country and its customs was intimate compared with Miss Glanfield’s, it was superficial beside the old Doctor’s, and night after night he drew her out. Feuds, birth customs, marriage customs—out it all came; Miss Glanfield listened enthralled. The accounts had a special interest for her when she could relate them to the Lek-Gionaj household; it enchanted her to hear how Pieter’s wife (now on her feet again; she had been brought in to call on the writer by Mme. Lek-Gionaj) had come as a bride to the Kapidan’s house riding on a white horse decked with garlands of evergreen and red bunting, escorted by her father, her brother, and a woman attendant; how Pieter’s friends, in gala dress, had met her up on the pass, dancing round her in a circle and firing their rifles in salute till the volleys echoed down the valley— while Pieter in accordance with local custom had remained at home, doing his usual work and pretending not to know what all the fuss was about. This decreed coyness on the man’s part delighted her, and she managed to refrain from drawing any of the anthropological parallels which sprang to her mind. The old Doctor had been present at the wedding feast, which lasted from noon one day till the following morning, and had heard all the special marriage songs—for the bride’s ascent of the staircase to her room, for the serving of the various courses at the feast; both Nils and Miss Glanfield were impressed by the combination of ritual music with food and drink on such an occasion.

  On another evening Nils asked about Christmas. “Do they make much of it here, with a tree and gifts, as we do in the North?” he enquired.

  “They do make a great festival of it, but about as differently as possible from the Nordic or Teutonic set-up,” Dr. Crowninshield answered. “There is no Christmas tree, and not much in the way of gifts, and they fast instead of feasting, on Christmas Eve.”

  “They fast? Really?” Nils said.

  “Yes, unless Christmas Eve falls on a Sunday they eat no meat, only fish. The only ones to do any feasting that day are the animals.”

  “The animals! For goodness’ sake!” Gloire exclaimed.

  “Yes, on Christmas Eve the cows and goats and sheep, and even the chickens, are fed just before dark, and given an extra feed,” the old Doctor said, smiling—“because of the Stable at Bethlehem, I guess.”

  Miss Glanfield could not restrain herself.

  “How perfectly golden!” she said. “Do tell us everything they do.”

  “Why, all right. On Christmas Eve,” said the old woman, ‘the housewife sweeps the house right through and white-washes it from end to end. She clears most of the ashes from the hearth, and at twilight she puts on the great log, like the Northern Yule log—that’s pretty well the one thing our customs have in common with yours,” she said, nodding her white head at the Swede. “When everyone has come in from work they dine, sitting in a semicircle round the fire; and after that the house-father lights a candle and says a prayer. Then he takes a spray of juniper and puts it on the fire—I really don’t know what the significance of that is—anyway while it is crackling the family chants. When the chant is done the father pours a libation of wine on the log and on the four corners of the hearth; and for each of the corners he says a letter—K, R, Y, Q—that spells the Albanian name for the Cross. Then they bring an unleavened loaf to the table, and the mother sets an apple with a sprig of olive stuck in it on the bread. The part of the loaf under the apple never gets eaten till three days are past—that’s in memory of the three days in the Tomb.”

  “They seem to muddle Christmas and Easter up a good bit,” Gloire observed.

  “I should not call it a muddle—it seems to me rather profound, that they so recognise that the Birth led to the Death,” the Swede said thoughtfully. Once again Miss Glanfield glanced at the old Doctor and once again the American would not meet her glance.

  “But to my mind, about the nicest thing they do, up here in the mountains, is ‘pledging the trees’, as they call it,” Dr. Emmeline went on.

  “What is that?” from Larsen.

  “Why, fruit up here is pretty precious, they have so few vegetables, so every Christmas Eve, after all those ceremonies round the hearth are over, the father sends two of the sons out to the orchard; one takes an axe, the other hides behind each tree in turn. ‘Will you give fruit this year or shall I cut you down?’ The one who’s hiding answers for the tree—‘Do not cut me down; I shall give you much fruit’—and so they go the round of the orchard.”

  Again Miss Glanfield suppressed a reference to the customs of certain Pacific Islands.

  “And what happens on Christmas Day itself?” Gloire asked—pledging the trees seemed to her a pretty dumb performance.

  “Oh, at the first cock-crow the head of the chief house in each village comes out and cries—‘Awake, oh villagers! Christ is born!’—and then all the men get up and come out and fire a volley for each household, one shot for each man.”

  “They seem mad on firing off their guns,” Gloire observed. “Volleys at weddings, volleys at Christmas.”

  “Yes, that is one of their great ways of registering joy in public,” the old Doctor agreed.

  “Of course the Chinese fire off crackers on every sort of occasion,” Miss Glanfield here put in, irrepressibly; “in theory it’s to scare away the demons, but in practice I believe they like the noise! But do go on about Christmas Day,” she added with a half-guilty glance at the old Doctor.

  “Well, they attend Mass, of course—and then there is the special wheaten food. Overnight the mistress of the house puts a vessel of the finest clean wheat on the fire, and leaves it to cook all night; and at the noonday meal on Christmas Day she pours melted butter over it, and they eat it. That’s in remembrance of Bethlehem too—there is a legend that this was the shepherds’ choicest food, and that they ate it in rejoicing for the Nativity on the first Christmas Day.”

  “On the whole, I do not think one can say they muddle,” Larsen observed to Gloire. “They seem to have the Christmas aspect well in mind.”

  “The wheat reminds one of Buddha’s porridge in China,” said Miss Glanfield.

  “What is that? In China, I never ate it,” Nils said.

  “Oh well, you wouldn’t in hotels, and lots of Europeans don’t know anything about it. But if your servants know you well, on one special day in the Buddhist Calendar they bring you a most extraordinary mixture for breakfast—peas, small beans, millet, lentils, rice, every sort of grain, all boiled together. The legend is that in one village the Buddha was refused food, so he went and sat, hungry, under a tree outside the gates and slept; and while he slept all the birds and insects came and filled his begging-bowl with every sort of grain and seed.”

  “I like that,” said Dr. Emmeline.

  “It sounds rather nasty to eat,” said Gloire.

  “It is, horrible—but we always ate it down to the last chick-pea, because it was so nice of the boys to let us in on it,” said Miss Glanfield.

  The last night came. Larsen was going to escort them down, and in addition the General had sent Fran up again to wait on Miss Glanfield. That night, for the last time, Lek-Gionaj and Pieter dined with their guests, and before the evening meal Mme. Lek-Gionaj came and took coffee and raki with them, accompanied by Lisa and little Marte, and Mrs. Pieter, still looking fragile and big-eyed. It was a much less formal visit than the first evening. Dr. Emmeline acted as interpreter, but this time Miss Glanfield and the Princess had subjects in common—her health, Mrs. Pieter’s health, the baby, the imminent migration of the household to the high pastures (which had been postponed for a few days on the writer’s account), gratitude, pleasure. Gloire for her part spoke and laughed independently with Lisa and Mrs. Pieter; though thumbs were occasionally twiddled, it was all much livelier than on the day the
y arrived. Miss Glanfield had decided to surrender her wrist-watch, a rather charming one with a gold mesh strap, in token of gratitude—this was duly presented and obviously gave great pleasure. It was arranged that Larsen should take it down to Tirana and try to get Mme. Lek-Gionaj’s name and a suitable inscription engraved on it—for a gift without an inscription means little in Albania. Gloire slightly embarrassed everyone by giving Lisa the huge diamond bracelet which Nils had noticed in the train—it was a rather overwhelming present. However, after it had been duly admired on the dark velvet sleeve of the young girl’s jacket, Mme. Lek-Gionaj impounded it, observing that such jewels were only for married women, and that Lisa would be able to wear it later on—at which there was giggling and blushes. The old Doctor, with her usual competence, had caused the messengers who went for the ponies to bring up a large linen bag full of silver leks—these Gloire, on her instructions, gave in handfuls to the children of ail the household servants, the correct and rather pretty method of tipping in High Albania.

  When dinner—a positive farewell banquet—was over, and the Lek-Gionaj men had gone, Larsen lingered a little.

  “How much I wish that you would write a book!” he said to the old Doctor.

  “Now why in the world should you wish that?”

  “So that more of your countrymen could know Europe as you know it. It is beyond price, your knowledge and comprehension.”

  “If you do write one, have an English edition, too!” said Miss Glanfield. “We could do with more of your sort of knowledge.”