by Ann Bridge
No—with herself and Larsen the thing between them had been that they were acutely in sympathy about almost everything, but about mountains and the meaning of mountains above all. And since for her, for many many years, mountains had taken the place of religion, had satisfied her religious sense, her need for adoration and worship as no service in any Cathedral, however sublime, had been able to do, he had come to take an almost hieratical place in her mind. You could not call this love in the ordinary sense; and she had not, and did not now call it that—but looking back over the other men with whom, awakened by marriage, she had been avowedly and specifically in love, she realised, as she too lay awake under that tree in Kthellë, how much more important Nils Larsen had been to her interior life than any of those others. They had become dim in her mind. Nils had never become dim; the idea and the picture and the atmosphere of him had always remained vivid and potent to her.
This seemed to her queer, and very interesting; she lit a cigarette to consider it. This was a thing you couldn’t put into a book and get away with, she thought (the unloved and unwished-for writer in her butting undesired into her thoughts as she so often did)—because people just wouldn’t believe it, the importance a man and a woman could have for one another, without any question of love entering. And yet it was true; and fascinating, the strange durability of such a relationship, lasting on and on through the years—through separation, through other most searching experiences, like marriage and children. It almost looked as if a relationship upon which the physical had never so much as breathed were the most perdurable of all. One returned to it, as she and Larsen had returned, to find it untouched—only enriched and deepened by their separate experience; one began again where one had left off, with no sense of the lapse of time, and no need to feel one’s way or pick up threads. When they were together, at once there they were, their old selves.
This struck her as being immensely reassuring and she lay quiet, thinking how rich and satisfying and strange life was, and how it went on and on, always producing some new facet or aspect, some fresh revelation of an unguessed-at experience. She fell asleep on this note, without so much as thinking again of Gloire. Larsen, healthily fatigued, had fallen asleep some time before, without thinking of either of them.
The fact was that Larsen, as a rule, thought chiefly about politics and social problems; he did very little thinking about individual people unless they confronted him with a problem of some sort. Mrs. Thurston, in the train, had so confronted him, but now he regarded her problem as practically solved—Susan Glanfield and Albania had done it between them. He had been pleased with what she told him, and with what he could see for himself, but the thing was done. To what use she would put her revised outlook he had no idea; it would mean a long struggle with habit and circumstance, but time would make some issue to that clear, and he had no doubt any more but that she would win. Poor Gloire!—her very struggle to tell him where she now stood had only served, so to speak, to put her on the shelf in his thoughts. He recognised his initial share, of course, and that to some extent it would be a continuing share in her mind; but—again perhaps a little perversely, a little deliberately—he limited that share to the original impulse. He did not allow his mind to recognise how much more than that his share could have been.
He was in fact much more interested in Susan Glanfield, the ardent, poetical girl of his youthful admiration, turned by time into such a mature and satisfying and entertaining person. Like her, he was happily impressed by the ease and permanence of their renewed relationship. But he was beginning to be in a hurry, now, to get back to civilisation—to hear what the Italians were up to and what line England was going to take over the Abyssinian fait accompli. As he shaved outside his tent next morning, his bare feet on turf agreeably cool with dew, he thought with great satisfaction that he would be in Tirana that evening, able to go round to the Scandinavian Legation and hear the latest news, and perhaps on to see that nice American, Warren Langdon, and discuss it all with him.
The track down from Upper Kthellë to Rësheni is long, hot, and dry; much of it passes over stairlike blocks of granite, on stretches of path so narrow that Nils found it extremely difficult to squeeze down them alongside the shoulders of Miss Glanfield’s pony while he supported the sling. At one point the teamsters clustered round the gendarmes with a great chattering and gesticulation, and the interpreter showed Nils a dark stain on a rock beside the path—blood from the murder of yesterday. Shortly before noon they reached the first houses of Rësheni, which is a long straggling parish, and by the church they encountered the priest, a curious figure to Western eyes in the sort of black yachting-cap which Albanian Catholic priests wear out of doors—it looked so odd above a soutane. The priest invited them to inspect his church, and Gloire and Larsen did so, while Miss Glanfield rested in the shade. It was large, and in surprisingly good order: fresh paint and gilding and white-wash, fresh flowers in the chapels and before the images. But the Swede was almost painfully moved by the offerings at the various shrines, they afforded such touching evidence at once of piety and of poverty. On the ledge below one statue lay a single egg, before another a sock, skilfully knitted in black and white wool; in front of a third, two lumps of sugar on a green leaf. Larsen commented on this to the priest, a rather simple man with a charming rugged face, who had been educated at Ulm and spoke excellent German. Yes, his people were poor, the priest said—bitterly poor; under-nourishment was chronic and acute. Larsen asked how he managed to keep his church so fine? The priest smiled with unaffected pleasure. Ah, it looked nice, did it not? Well, he saved and scraped, and his one or two rich parishioners made presents; and he had written to friends in Germany—and now the church was “worthy”. Nils was struck by the happy devotion with which he pronounced the word.
The saving and scraping was acutely in evidence when he took them into his presbytery for coffee. They climbed a ladder-like wooden stair to a very poor dwelling indeed: one rough wooden armchair with a worn and faded cushion, a little shelf of books, a deal table and two or three kitchen chairs, a crucifix. No carpet, rug, or curtains—and no other furniture save a pair of wooden sugar-boxes nailed together, with a piece of figured cotton hanging in front, which served as a cupboard; from this the priest took a supply of the local hairy tobacco and handed it to his servant, with some coffee, for the entertainment of the caravan men downstairs. The walls stood in sore need of a fresh coat of whitewash; they were fly-spotted and stained with damp. Even Gloire was struck by the contrast between the dinginess of the priest’s house and the freshness and smartness of his God’s. The only beautiful thing in the room was a line engraving of Ulm, and even that was neither expensive nor valuable; only the grace of the city’s profile, spire and tower and high-pitched roofs, gave it beauty. The priest eyed it wistfully, as he sat and talked. Did they know Ulm? Ah, a beautiful city! And such cultivated people—one never lacked for conversation, there. And the music! Glorious services; concerts! His tired eyes glowed. An old lady whom he had known during his student days there had sent him that picture; she would never know the pleasure she had given. “I return,”—he said, gazing, “when I look at it.” Loneliness, he admitted, mental isolation, was his worst trial.
Nils, always practical, asked if nothing could be done to raise the level of subsistence? Was the soil actually too poor? It didn’t look so, down here in the valley.
No, the priest said, the soil was not the crux; it was poor, but not as poor as all that. It was the habits and preferences of his flock that kept them so ill-fed. And he related the lamentable story of his attempt to introduce the potato into his parish as an article of food. He had procured seed potatoes, dug a plot outside the Presbytery, planted them, hoed them up, showing his parishioners each stage of the process. Finally he summoned them to be present at the lifting and they exclaimed with delighted wonder at the numbers of tubers where but one had so recently been planted before their eyes—1200 per cent, at least! they said. Then he gave them
a banquet of potatoes—boiled potatoes, baked potatoes, potatoes fried and stewed in milk; and they ate them with relish. Yes, this was excellent food, and they would greatly like to have some themselves. Accordingly the following spring the enterprising little priest procured, with immense trouble, seed potatoes in bulk from Bari, and distributed them to each household in the village—and each household cooked and ate them forthwith!
Gloire and Larsen laughed, in spite of the priest’s distressful face; but they agreed that the Albanians were not an easy people to help. “Capital is what’s wanted here,” Gloire observed as they went away; “obviously he can’t do much alone, poor little thing. It needs a whole team of people, with lots of cash, to keep on and on giving them potatoes, and to sit over them and just make them plant them! Dr. Emmeline could, if she had the time. Goodness, how I should like to fix that priest’s house for him; get it painted up, like his church, and give him a decent armchair, and more books, and a good radiogram with plenty of records. It wouldn’t cost anything, really.”
“No. For the price of two of your dresses, you could do that,” Nils said.
The colour came into her face.
“Well, maybe I will,” she said.
An ambulance was waiting when they reached the end of the motor road at Rësheni, but not the car for Larsen and Mrs. Thurston. While Fran paid off the caravan men Gloire strolled across the meadow towards the little wood of oaks which hid the Fani Vogel. It was well into June now, and mid-afternoon; the nightingales were silent. She stood still, remembering her unexpected happiness as she rode across that meadow six weeks before, and her sense of expectation. Well, a lot of things had happened, but not the one wonderful thing. When she met Larsen on the bridge at Torosh, she had thought maybe it would happen—but it hadn’t. Rather bitterly, she wondered why. And then she remembered how on that other morning, so cool, so fresh with birdsong and dew and anticipation, she had heard her first Albanian proverb—“Don’t measure your importance by your morning shadow”. She smiled a wry little smile. “That’s a pretty smart proverb,” she muttered to herself, as she walked back towards the cloud of white dust which heralded the car.
Chapter Seventeen
Now don’t talk in that perfectly dumb way! Of course you’re staying here!”
Thus Warren Langdon, a few hours later, to Larsen, in the garden-room over drinks. Gloire and the Swede had shepherded Miss Glanfield into the Legation at Durazzo, and handed her over to Lady Carruthers’ competent care; and Larsen had of course taken Gloire to the Langdons before going to the hotel, and had been hailed in by Warren.
“Go along and collect up your traps, if you won’t let Cyril do it,” Warren continued—“but you’re staying here! Anything else just doesn’t make sense.”
Larsen was rather touched by the warmth of this invitation. And certainly the Langdon ménage offered a good deal more comfort than the Continental. He did as he was bidden; returned with his effects, revelled—grinning to himself—in a hot bath in his own bathroom, and reappeared before dinner in the garden-room fresh, hungry, and to Gloire’s eyes startlingly sophisticated in a dinner-jacket. She was there alone, mixing cocktails.
“My, you look clean!” she exclaimed.
“I feel it. Almost surgically clean. What do you make, there?”
“A Smiling Duchess. I thought it would be a change from. Taki.”
Gloire herself had paid a flying visit to the hairdresser, and was dressed once again in her old exquisite clothes; there was lacquer on her nails and make-up over her tan. She looked very lovely. Warren, fussing in, calling instructions about the icing of the champagne over his shoulder to his Swiss butler, eyed the pair of them. Yes, she looked grand, did Gloire; that sunburn suited her; but she had changed somehow. Warren didn’t stop to analyse his impression; he just said to himself that she looked, someway, like an orphan-school child all dressed up.
The drinks were admirable, the dinner excellent. Warren had the passionate hospitality of the Bostonian host (once he has decided to receive you into his home at all) and had decided, happily, to make a little celebration of Gloire’s return. He did it all so nicely, Nils thought—even his fussing was a welcome in itself, untiresome. How nice nice Americans were! That warmth—of interest, of affection, of benevolence—was a quite precious trait. Surely they must, in time, abandon their false gods and grow up into the maturer virtues and qualities too. It could only be a question of time, he thought, warmed by the champagne and the intelligent kindliness. And then was chilled by his mind’s sudden question—will there be time? Can the world wait for them?
The beginning of dinner was devoted to Torosh, the Lek-Gionaj family, and all the adventures there. Warren knew of Lek-Gionaj as an important figure in local administration, and was interested to learn about the man himself, and his family life. Nils and Gloire supplied details in strophe and anti-strophe—both stressing the personality of the Princess. “She’s great!” Gloire said more than once, with unaffected warmth. But presently Nils turned to his host with a question about the external situation—“I have heard nothing for ten days. Does anything happen?”
Warren’s face grew gloomy.
“Oh, there’s the most appalling mess-up in Abyssinia. The Italians are cruel bastards, as well as being pretty mean citizens.”
“What has happened?”
“Well, they’re using mustard gas all over the place, and burning the villages with incendiaries from the air. The Ethiops have no defence, of course. Oh God, how I despise and hate the Wops!” Warren exploded. “They put on a show like this, just an exhibition of pure beastliness, about once every decade. In 1911 it was the Massacre of the Oases, when they were invading Tripoli; in 1926 it was the Massacre of the Senussi, when Graziani had the sheiks dropped alive out of planes, to burst like a bag of flour in their own villages. They’re a mean, trumpery, wicked nation. Do you know that the Italian Minister here bribed two chieftains to murder Zahg? Sent them the money, with instructions!”
“Good Heavens! And what happened?”
“Oh, the pair of them came hustling down to Tirana, bribe in hand, and told the King all about it, and asked what they should do with the cash? The King laughed a great deal, and told them to put it in the poor-box.”
“This is fantastic.”
“The Italians are fantastic. Oh yes, and—to go back to Abyssinia—they’re shooting up the Red Cross units that go to help the poor wretched blacks—flying low and pouring fire into them at point-blank range, so no one shall live to report on what they’ve done.”
Nils was horrified, asked questions.
“I’ll tell you some more later,” Warren said, with a significant glance at his sister—“but they’ve touched a new low this time.”
“And what does England say?—and France?”’
Warren shrugged.
“Pious horror—no action. The British seem to be weakening on sanctions anyway—what was left of them.”
“This is true?”
“Sure. Mr. Chamberlain, their Chancellor of the Exchequer, went down to the city the other day and made a speech to British Business at the Guildhall, and referred to sanctions as ‘this midsummer of madness’.”
“Sanctions are no longer the policy of the British Government, then? But this is a most important change.”
“It’s the first intimation we’ve had of it, anyway. I don’t know for sure if the Government have changed their minds. Maybe Chamberlain just meant to kill sanctions on his own.”
“But this is distressing,” the Swede said. He was deeply concerned. “I cannot conceive the need for such a change. Why should Chamberlain make such a démarche?”
Warren shrugged again.
“He’s a business man. They don’t always make the best statesmen. We should know,” he added, smiling a sour little smile.
Politics dominated the conversation for the rest of the evening—Gloire and Miss Anne for the most part listened in silence. But Warren frequently glanced acros
s at Gloire, languid and graceful in her swing, listening—with a slightly puzzled expression often—on her pretty tanned face. And again he had that curious fancy about a dressed-up orphan.
When Gloire went to bed, leaving the two men to their highballs, she opened the old Doctor’s letter; she had been too hurried with unpacking and the hairdresser and her toilet to do so before. She sat on the edge of the bed and read it. It was long, in a pointed spidery old hand, on fine paper—the handwriting was much older than Dr. Emmeline herself ever appeared to be, except when she was very tired; it gave her age away. Most of the letter consisted of a formidable list of medicines and dressings, which Gloire didn’t even skim through; she was appalled by its length and by the long difficult words. But there were two sentences, one at the beginning and one at the end, which claimed her full attention.
My dear gloire [the letter began],—If you can and will procure these things for me promptly, either in Tirana or from Bari or Rome—and some will certainly have to come from Italy—you will be doing a real service to people for whom, I think, you have begun to feel some affection, as well as helping a very tired old woman!—I get more and more oppressed by the extent of the need höre, and my own inadequacy to cope with it.
And at the end, above the delicate wavering old signature, were these words:
Thank you in advance; and if you should feel inclined, any time, to come back to High Albania, remember that I can always do with an assistant!—you are not a doctor, I know, but you have a number of different sorts of wealth—energy and health and capacity—that you could harness to anything you had a mind to, I guess—and there is a need for just those things here.
Gloire sat for a long time with the letter in her hand, after reading that. Then she read both sentences again. Curiously enough, it was the priest at Rësheni and his bare shabby room which came most sharply into her mind. Oh yes, there was a need here, right enough—and she had the health and strength and she had money too. And Nils was going down to Corinth next week to go across to look at the silk mills at Broussa—she had heard him tell Warren so; and anyway he would never think much about anything but politics—and Susan. She put the letter down and began to undress; but by the time she had thrown off her clothes, creamed the unwonted make-up off her face and got into bed, the question which had been unresolved only the night before, under the tree in Kthellë, was suddenly settled. The next step, at least, on the road along which she must travel alone was clear.