Frontier Passage

by Ann Bridge

  “Of course, if you like.”

  He handed her a fattish envelope, with the Hôtel Condestable’s name stamped on the flap, and smiled his rather ingenuous Nordic smile.

  “It’s from the husband,” he said—“he’s back.”

  “Back? The Conde? But he’s in prison—he can’t be back.”

  “No, he’s been exchanged—he is in Burgos. I spoke to him. ‘Meelcomm,’ their good angel, got him out, it seems,” said the young man, still smiling.

  “Cripes!” said Rosemary succinctly.

  “Pardon?” said the young man.

  “Nothing,” the girl said hastily. “O.K.—I’ll give it her.”

  “Thanks—and I’ll eat. Have you ordered, Nils?” he asked his companion, returning to the big table.

  “So that’s it,” the girl said to herself, staring out of the window at the white mushrooms of spray, expanding and disappearing, noiselessly, above the mole. “He knew, and he’s told her. Oh dear!” She went gloomily upstairs.

  Milcom and the Condesa got back from Bayonne about tea-time. The Duquesa, thanks to her position, had been able to arrange for a salvo conducto to be ready within two days, but the exit permit presented difficulties; since the closing of the frontier the French authorities had tightened up their regulations, and it was only by going to Paris in person and having the application made by the Spanish representative there that the Condesa stood any chance of getting it. James, now anxious to put an end to a situation which was merely torturing both of them, urged her to start that very night on the Sud Express, and get it over. He had bought her some suitcases in Bayonne—she had arrived at St.-Jean with no luggage but one suitcase got in Perpignan, and the shabby little despatch-case—and while she packed he went and got her sleeper and tickets. It was the last time, he supposed wretchedly, as he pulled out his pocket-book, that he would be buying anything for her—oh, for this darling woman who was not his wife, but whom he had nevertheless had the sweet privilege of clothing and supporting for more than three months. It had been something of a strain on his resources—James was not a rich man; it had meant a number of minor economies which he had made, how joyfully! It had been the most blissful happiness to order a bad bottle of wine instead of a good, or take a cheap noisy room in an hotel instead of a more comfortable one, because it was for Raquel. Handing over the notes, James felt as if the meaning, the motive power of his life were, with her, being taken from him.

  Rosemary had seen the pair come in on their return from Bayonne, but a delicate instinct prompted her not to hand over the Conde’s letter in the hall, under the eyes of the Archdeacon, the Executioner, and an assortment of Non-Interveners. She waited till she saw Milcom come down in the glass lift and go out again, and then went up and tapped on Raquel’s door. When she went in she found her friend putting her clothes into the new suitcases, with deft movements, but still with those remote eyes. Rosemary was startled—she had not expected any development as sudden as this.

  “You’re not going?” she said, distress in her voice.

  “Yes—to-night.”

  “But where to?”

  “To Paris.”

  “Paris? But why?—I mean, I don’t understand.”

  “Pascual is to be exchanged, and I am going to him; but first I must go to Paris”—and she explained about the exit permit.

  Rosemary was so upset by this announcement that for the moment she forgot all about the letter, which she still held in her hand. She sat down on the edge of the bed and stared distressfully at the Condesa.

  “But you’ll come back again?”

  “Just for a day or two, to pick up my salvo—then I go.”

  “Oh dear!” the young girl said sadly—“I wish you weren’t going.”

  Raquel’s eyes filled with tears; she dropped an armful of clothes on a chair and came and sat down beside Rosemary, putting her arms round her.

  “Oh you dear child, so do I!” she said simply. “I shall miss you very much,” she added, as if to explain her regret, and kissed her.

  Rosemary kissed her in return, warmly.

  “Oh goodness!” she said after a moment, recollecting herself—“I was to give you this. One of the couriers brought it while you were out.” And she handed her the Conde’s letter.

  The Condesa held it in her hand for a little while, staring at it, as if it were some strange and possibly venomous object.

  “Brought it?” she said, stupidly.

  “Yes—from Burgos. What did you hear about Juanito?” the young girl asked, hurriedly changing the subject.

  “Oh—Juanito. Yes. He is well—he is in Spain. I shall see him soon—when I go back,” the Condesa said disjointedly.

  “Oh good—I am glad,” Rosemary said. She jumped up. “I must go,” she said briefly—“Mummie will be wondering where I’ve got to. When do you go?”

  “To-night.”

  “Oh well—I’ll be seeing you,” she said lightly, and scurried away with her usual schoolgirl haste. That was about all she could stand, she muttered to herself savagely as she ran along to her room, of seeing Raquel being put through the hoops like that. And him! God, how bloody life was—and bloodiest, always, for the most darling people. She dashed unwonted tears angrily from her eyes.

  James and Raquel dined that last night at Gaston’s. They felt vaguely that it was more theirs, their place, than anywhere else in the town. James remembered how quietly and sadly they had dined there together the first time, before another farewell, that then had seemed so final and so sad. This was much worse. But one sits through those meals somehow—one even eats some of them.

  On their way to the station, walking side by side, she said, touching her bag—“I had a letter from him to-day.”

  “Pascual?”

  “Yes. And—I think you are right.”

  She spoke quietly enough, but then suddenly she burst into a terrible storm of weeping, as she walked along. James stopped and took her in his arms—her sobs were shaking her body as if they must end by shattering it. It was more than he could stand.

  “Oh my darling, we can’t,” he said. “We really can’t go through with this. It’s altogether too much.” He clung to her, kissing the tears on her wet face, as he had wanted to kiss those two slow tears that morning when he held her undefended face in his hand—and had not.

  “Come back,” he whispered. “Say you missed the train. Why should we throw all this away?”

  For a moment or two she was silent, just resting in his arms, still shaken with gradually lessening sobs. At last she freed her hand and wiped her eyes.

  “No,” she said very slowly—a long soft negative. “It would be no good—I know now how you are. For a little, we should be happy—oh, we should be so happy!—but these ideas that you have would return, and then you would be miserable, and on my account. And that would really kill me. I shall go.”

  She took out her little case and powdered her tear-stained face, there on the windy square under the arc-lights—for some reason that small conventional action was to James the most moving thing he had ever seen.

  But he knew she was right; that was the desolating thing. He would be wretched. There was a thing in him which, combined with her circumstances, made happy love between them impossible. What a hideous trick for Fate to play—that he, who had steered clear of love for so long must at last love, irrevocably, in a quarter where it must all be frustrated, and end in agony and loss. He kissed her for the last time, long and slowly, and led her across the square towards the railway-station.

  So it was after all the station at St.-Jean-de-Luz that was the place in James Milcom’s future where he took his farewell from Raquel de Verdura. Less than forty-eight hours after he had stood at the coach door as the train steamed in, watching her red-gold head under the black lace, and wondering if such a spot could really exist, he stood there again, on the platform this time, looking his last on her lovely archaic face, framed in the window of her sleeper. They were very
quiet now—the whole thing seemed to him completely unreal. This couldn’t really be happening to two people who loved one another as he and Raquel did; it wasn’t possible that he would never see her again, never take her in his arms, never again hear her soft syllables of endearment and rapture. It was just something that they had got to go through with, quietly, formally, like a part in a play. And just so they did go through with it—she at her window, he on the track. Slowly the train steamed out, and long after it had gone he still stood, watching the four sets of rails gleaming under the arc-lights, up towards Paris, where his heart had gone.

  Chapter Ten

  This Side—St.-Jean-de-Luz

  Rosemary had certainly not got much of her anticipated bittersweet happiness out of this visit of Milcom’s. Except for that session with Crumpaun, she had hardly seen him—and it was from Crumpaun that she learned, on the night of Raquel’s departure, that he was going back to Spain next morning on the ten-thirty train. So neither of us will ever see him again! was the desperate thought on which she went to sleep.

  She slept little and restlessly; then towards morning fell into a heavy slumber, and woke late, as the bells in the great church were chiming for eight o’clock Mass. As her habit was, she sprang out of bed, threw on a dressing-gown, and still knotting its girdle, went over to her window and stepped onto the balcony. The great frost which was to afflict Western Europe that Christmas had not yet reached St.-Jean-de-Luz, but it was on its way South—the morning was a cold one, grey and harsh, with an ugly light from a dark sky onto a bitter sea. What a morning for him to wake up to his grief on, she thought, as from habit she craned from the end of her balcony to watch the antics of the Dogs’ Club, whose members, undeterred by the weather, were assiduously playing “This is My Hole.” As she watched, a man’s figure appeared among them on the beach, walking close to the water’s edge in the direction of the new Casino—she knew that long loose stride; it was Milcom. Even at that distance there was something indescribably desolate about his aspect—the set of his shoulders, his very walk, at once rapid and purposeless, beside that leaden uncomforting sea. Suddenly she felt that it was more than she could bear, to have him walking there alone in his misery—and obeying the most preposterous impulse that she had ever known, she ran back into her room, slammed the window, and began flinging on her clothes. She had no definite idea as to what she was going to do, beyond the fact that she was going after him, so that he should not be alone; but she was aware of something new and unknown boiling up in her, a power, an understanding, a resolve. There was none of the usual thirty-five minutes fidgeting with her hair this morning—a scrape with the comb, a coloured handkerchief tied over, and she was gone.

  Quickly as she had dressed, he was already out of sight when she got out of doors. She set off round the bay, keeping to the esplanade above the sea-wall, where she could travel faster and yet watch the beach. Passing through the arcades of the new Casino she ran, rousing echoes; emerging at the other end she saw him far ahead, crossing the sand to the last flight of steps leading up to the end of the sea-wall. She guessed where he must be going—up to the Phare, where they had all three met on the day of his first return to St.-Jean. She began to run again, fast and lightly; whatever happened, she mustn’t lose him. Rosemary was a good runner—she kept it up, swiftly and easily, for a quarter of a mile, till she reached the stone steps under a group of tamarisks, leading up to the Phare. By this time Milcom was out of sight again, vanished over the top of the hill, but she felt certain of where she would find him, and went straight on, pounding up the steep path, over the summit behind the little chapel, and down the narrow track beyond towards the breakwater. And there, sure enough, he was.

  At the sight of him she stopped. He was standing on the path some distance above the breakwater, absently watching the thunderous assault, recoil, return of the great waves; but he seemed hardly to see them, to be aware of anything but his own disastrous thoughts, for when a burst of spray shot up within a few feet of him, spattering his coat with the fringe of its heavy drops, he never stepped back, but remained perfectly still, staring at the tumultuous waters—and again about his whole figure there was a desolation that dealt the young girl an almost physical blow. Breathing heavily from her run, but still borne on by that strange new sense of power, she went up to him and put her hand on his arm.

  He turned and looked at her, without surprise—she was shocked at his ravaged face.

  “Oh—hullo,” he said dully.

  “Good morning,” she said, panting.

  He seemed to rouse himself then sufficiently to notice her odd appearance—out of breath, her clear brown cheeks scarlet with running, the handkerchief fallen back off her undressed curls.

  “What’s up?” he asked. “What have you been running for?”

  “I had to,” she panted out—“I had to catch you.”

  “Why, is something wrong?”

  “Only you,” she said, on a great gulp that was almost a sob. “I saw you on the beach, and I couldn’t bear it—so I came after you.” She gabbled the words out pell-mell; out of breath as she was, they were hardly intelligible.

  Milcom’s attention was fully aroused now. He took her arm, and gave it a little shake.

  “My dear child, what is all this? Talk sensibly, and tell me what’s the matter.” Very pardonably, he did not in the least understand what she was driving at; all he knew was that his last sad meditations were being interrupted by a girl who seemed to be almost hysterical.

  But Rosemary was not hysterical in the least. This was difficult, but she had never expected that it would be easy; she knew now what she had come out to do, and she would do it. She took a couple of deep breaths.

  “Sorry,” she said. “I was so puffed.” She dabbed at her scarlet face with a handkerchief. “There’s nothing whatever the matter,” she went on, “with anyone. Only I know that she is going back to him—she told me last night—so I knew what that must be for you. And just now I saw you from my window, walking on the beach, and you looked so—so frightfully alone, that I simply couldn’t bear it. So I dressed and ran out after you. I knew you would come here.”

  Still holding her arm, the man stood stock still, staring at her. When he spoke, it was her last words that he took up.

  “How did you know that I should come here?”

  “Because you met us—her—here that day, when you came back last time; when you were both so happy.”

  He let go of her arm and sat down on a rock, without taking his eyes from her face.

  “How do you know all this? Did she tell you?” he asked.

  “Oh no—she never said anything. I just saw,” the girl said simply. “And when I took her his letter, she told me that she was going back. So then of course I knew.”

  “Knew what?” Milcom asked. In spite of himself, he was at once astonished and as if fascinated by this recital—these revelations from a person whom he had thought of only as a particularly nice honest-faced child.

  “Oh, just how utterly desperate it was, for both of you,” she said, in an indescribable tone of purest pity. “And I do lave her so, I minded most terribly. But I minded more for you—that’s why I ran after you.”

  Incredulous, quite out of his depth in this improbable scene, Milcom found himself, almost without his own volition, asking the most obvious question—“Why did you mind more for me?”

  He never forgot the expression that came on her face then—the pure poised concentrated look of the swimmer braced for a plunge, or of some primitive Archangel about to stoop in flight to announce a wonder to men.

  “Because I love you, too,” she said, swiftly, with a seraphic swoop of words that matched her face. She held up a hand of authority, enjoining his uninterrupting silence. “Oh, I know you’ll think I’m nuts, that I’m only a schoolgirl with an idiotic crush on someone. But it isn’t like that. I love you, and I always shall, whatever happens. I know that isn’t any good to you now,” she went on—“you
’re full of her, and you can’t even see anyone else. I don’t expect you to. Perhaps you won’t ever—she’s so lovely and so darling. But before you go off alone, I just wanted to say that if you ever do want anyone, either to marry and look after you, or just to be about with, I shall always be there.”

  James heard this declaration with an amazement which, as he listened, turned more and more to a tender and quite unamused respect. Wretched, emotionally exhausted as he was, and incapable of making any sort of response, nevertheless her action had a beauty which moved him very much. While he listened he had remained sitting on his rock, looking up at her as she stood in front of him, the wind blowing out her hair, the spray damping it—now he stood up, and took her hand.

  “Rosemary, I’ll never call you a child again. I see that you understand—well, everything. I’d no idea——” he stopped.

  “Yes?” she said quietly.

  “No idea that you were like that—or that you cared so much about her. She was very fond of you—now I see why. It’s amazing!” he said, passing a hand over his forehead; he seemed almost to have forgotten her. “Quite amazing,” he repeated. She said nothing—she knew that he was thinking now about Raquel and her, trying to get that relation into focus, and she waited quietly. Was not her hand in his?

  He seemed to come to himself again after a moment.

  “It was very good of you to do this,” he said, a little awkwardly. “Thank you. I shan’t forget that you did it.” And now he studied her face, almost curiously.

  “That’s all right,” she said briefly. “I only wanted you to know. You don’t have to worry about me, either. Good-bye.” She bent over the hand that was holding hers, kissed it, and was gone, scudding off up the path like something blown by the wind.

  “Rosemary!” he called after her—“Rosemary!” Suddenly he felt that there were things he ought, wanted to say. But either the thunder of the waves drowned his voice, or she would not hear—she ran on, rounded the bend at the top of the path, and disappeared.