Frontier Passage

by Ann Bridge

  “Yes,” he said. “And when they were children they used to get up early and each put flowers on the other’s bed—the great excitement was to do it before the other waked.” He paused again. “Well, he won’t wake this time,” he said, in a tone of unutterable sadness—“but I thought we might put some flowers over him for his birthday—for her.”

  “Yes—oh yes.” She stood for a moment, her brow wrinkled in thought. “I know,” she exclaimed suddenly—“I remember! Come on—let’s go and get the Car.”

  They went down again to the square outside the main gate, leaving a note at the inn on the way for the Capitaine, who was taking his siesta, asking for the names and addresses of the Doctor who had attended Manuel Jereda, and the nurse, if any. Then they took the car, and under Rosemary’s instructions James drove out beyond the camp, and parked. She led him up over the grassy slopes above the road to the edge of the woods—tucked into the fringe of the trees were curious little dark green huts built of box branches, used by the Gardes Mobiles on cold nights of sentry-duty. Within the wood itself the ground was a shadowy blue with trailing periwinkles, and here and there blue wind-flowers were coming into bloom.

  “How did you know these were here?” James asked, startled and pleased.

  “They were just in bud that day we came to the camp, and I pottered about up here while I was waiting for you,” she answered, stooping and beginning to gather the small bright things. “Were you asking about him, too?” she asked, pausing in her task and sitting back on her heels to look up at him, “as well as the Mexico racket, when you went to all the camps?”

  “Yes, I was.”

  “Oh dear—how silly that we didn’t both know.” She bent down again and went on gathering the wind-flowers. James helped a little, but mostly he leaned against a tree and watched her slender figure bent over her task, and her tender absorbed face. What an excellent little thing she was, he thought—so quick of sympathy, so prompt and practical in action.

  “You are a good friend!” he said suddenly.

  The warm tone of liking made the girls heart give a great bound. She was at that moment in a rather exalted state. The sudden revelation of Juanito’s death had been a considerable shock to her, and she had been greatly moved by discovering it with James, and by the story of the birthday flowers. (That one thing Raquel, in all her many trivial confidences, had never told her—she had kept that for him.) And now, too, she and James, together, were doing this last thing for them, for Raquel and Juanito. Every tender and fine and gentle chord in her was quivering under these happenings, vibrating with a sort of passionate sensitiveness, so that the beauty of the afternoon, of the place, and his presence made a sort of music in her that could hardly be borne, so deep was the bliss. She said nothing when he spoke—she bent her head lower over the flower-starred earth, to hide the colour that flooded up over her clear brown skin. She was remembering another late afternoon, up in Pierre Loti’s orchard outside the Grotte de Sare, when she had sat and dreamed about Milcom, till her dreams were interrupted by the advent of Juanito. She had dreamed then without hope; now, hope was unfolding and expanding in her heart, as delicately and silently as these blue wind-flowers in the still-wintry wood. For that had been autumn, and this, some deep secret knowledge cried in her, was spring, was spring.

  Tragedies are often surprising in their suddenness, trivial, even minute, in their outward form. When her hands were full Rosemary asked James for his hat, lined it neatly with a clean pocket-handkerchief, and put the blue flowers in it. “Now let’s get some of the pink ones,” she said.

  They went out onto the slopes under the wood. Below, the smoke from the evening fires of the camp down by the river was rising very straight, the air was so still, into the last sunlight—the camp itself was already in shadow; beyond, the slopes of the Col d’Ares caught the rich light. Rosemary began to pick the single pink anemones which, out here, waved slender and free among the pale dead grasses; when she had gathered a few she took them over to him. “Aren’t they lovely?” she said, confidently putting them into his hands.

  He took them, and looked at them thoughtfully. The clear delicate mauve-pink of the slender-starred fragile things was precisely the same odd note of colour as that of the crocuses which Raquel had picked on the knoll under the oak trees by the Ascain road. And because he too was sensitised by the day’s events, was so much stirred and moved as to be quite unguarded, he spoke of this—“They’re exactly the same colour as those little crocuses that used to grow near St.-Jean, up behind that chapel, near some oak trees.”

  The tone of his voice, lingering very slightly on some of the words, told Rosemary a lot. She guessed that he must have found the crocuses with Raquel, for when, by himself, did Milcom ever bother with wild-flowers? Some swift recognition, some awareness, still unformulated, fell like a cold shadow across her lyrical mood of bliss. On a characteristic impulse to grasp the still invisible nettle she said, lightly, gently—

  “Oh yes—and Raquel was so fond of those.”

  He fell straight into the trap. Still holding the pink anemones, regarding them consideringly, he said, “Oh—did you pick them with her, too?”

  Now his voice and words told her still more; the shadow grew deeper and colder. She managed to say, “Oh yes—often”—and again to say it lightly and evenly.

  And he, because he liked her so much, because she was such a good little friend, and so devoted to Raquel, in his unguarded mood was moved to allow himself the sweet comfort of speaking a little of what was constantly in his heart.

  “It was extraordinary how much she loved wild-flowers,” he said, with a sort of luxurious slowness. “She was one of the last people you’d have expected to, somehow, with the life she had to lead. But she did; she always remembered what flowers grew in every place she ever talked about—cyclamens and things. Did you know that cyclamens grew wild? I didn’t. Quite little ones, pinkish—they grow near cypresses.” He paused, a faint smile bringing that sudden charm to his dark face.

  “It’s funny,” he went on—“I got to know more about what wild-flowers grow where in Spain, in Madrid of all places, than I ever knew before, just from listening to her.”

  The tone of his voice on that “her”, the whole tone—and that faint secret smile—oh no, there was no place for hope here! A sort of deep surrender of his whole being somehow breathed from the way he spoke of Raquel then. He went on, still in that happy recollecting voice—

  “She liked talking about things like that, little things and places—more than about books or people. And you know the odd thing was that I really got to know her quite well just by talking about absurd things like that. Queer, isn’t it?”.

  Oh no, Rosemary thought, passionately, despairingly—it wasn’t a bit queer. He was only talking about flowers now, Raquel and flowers, but she had got to know quite a lot too, just from the way he talked! That was the end of that. He was Raquel’s, still, body and soul; probably would be forever. She had just been a fool, a complete idiot. But for once her usual hardy capacity for lambasting herself, and for meeting any situation head-on, failed the girl. Shaken by what had gone before, overwhelmed by this sudden comprehension, which blasted all her shy secret hopes, she just managed to say: “Oh no—not really. It’s the way——” She meant to say, “It’s the way things happen,” but that was more than she could manage; she turned her head aside, moved away across the dried wintry grass, and stooped and went on gathering the pink anemones, their fragile starry heads swimming, enormous, in the tears that slowly gathered in her eyes. Oh, stop it!—she adjured herself, shaking her head angrily, as she wandered on down the slopes; the tears splashed down on the flowers in her hands. Do stop being such an ass! But it isn’t so easy to stop being an ass when one is very young and desperately in love—and has been bumped down, within the space of five minutes, from the very pinnacle of bliss to a realisation such as she faced then. By a tremendous effort at self-control she did, quite quickly, stop crying;
at a safe distance from Milcom, her back to him, she wiped her eyes and powdered her face. But she could not control everything. She went on down towards the road, calling to him over her shoulder to follow, she had got enough flowers. But when he rejoined her by the car he noticed that she was very white.

  “Are you cold?” he asked her, for the second, time that day.

  “Not a bit!” she almost snapped—and again turned her head aside. She was remembering how she had felt when he asked her that a few hours before, up on the col. She got into the car, holding the hat-ful of flowers, slammed the door, and sat with averted head as they drove back to the Square outside Prats.

  As before, they left the car there and went into the town on foot. At the inn door in the little Place stood the Captain of the Gardes Mobiles, in conversation with a middle-aged man in civilian dress.

  “Ah, Monsieur,” the Captain said as they approached—“I hoped that we should catch you. I received your note. This is Doctor Fouchaux, who attended your poor friend.”

  They all went into the inn together and upstairs to the restaurant. There, over coffee, the two English heard the story of Juanito’s end. Yes, it was an amputation, Dr. Fouchaux said; the right leg. It had been skilfully done, evidently, at the time, but with the jolting journey in the ambulance mortification had set in, causing fever; and then that affair up there, waiting in the snow for many hours—que voulez-vous? Of course there had supervened a congestion of the lungs as well. He had arrived at Prats in violent delirium. But he was always patient, courteous—stoical, enfin, like all Spaniards. He had one only name always on his lips—Raquel; his wife, without doubt. Rosemary and Milcom exchanged a pregnant glance. “Believe me, Monsieur,” the Doctor said, “we have done the possible and the impossible, but there was no means of saving him; the case was already hopeless when he arrived here.”

  James assured the Doctor of his conviction that this was so, and thanked him for his information. “He left no message, no letter?” he asked.

  “Monsieur, from his arrival, he was far beyond that. He was in delirium, as I have said—there was only his ceaseless talk of Raquel—and of flowers.” Again Rosemary and James exchanged glances—deep ones, from heart to heart. “But never a word of complaint, though he was certainly in agony. And at the last, when I brought the priest, his mind was clear—he was sinking, you understand—and he understood, and made a Catholic end, in the Faith.”

  “Ah, c’est bien,” said the Captain, crossing himself. James felt a moment’s envy of this universalism of the Catholics, which transcends all boundaries of race and language, linking the busy living and the helpless dying in one certainty, one security, of an established order, of faith and hope. He would have liked to be able to make the sign of the Cross, at those words, with the unself-conscious inevitableness of the blunt cheerful Captain of the Gardes Mobiles.

  But the Captain had another témoin, as he called him, of Juanito’s last days; when Dr. Fouchaux had taken his leave a lieutenant, who had been hovering in the background, received a brief command, and ushered in the big fair-haired fair-skinned Norman whom they had seen up on the Col d’Ares, being ragged by the Sergeant for giving a pick-a-back to an old Spanish peasant woman. Yes, he had carried the Spanish gentleman down, Georges said—he and his comrade, on the end of a bed, as there were no stretchers. No, not immediately; the Spanish officer spoke a perfect French, and when they came to him the first time, and the second, he gave them the command to take first the common soldiers who were also wounded. A real gentilhomme, he was. And when at the end they took him, no crying out at the bumping over the rocks—for the way was rough, Monsieur would understand, and long—but such gracious thanks for their trouble. Ah, a real gentilhomme, such as there are few now, Georges said, breathing heavily, and expanding in this his hour of importance and self-expression. For himself, he would have carried that officer a hundred miles, and gladly. He was thanked, saluted, and went out.

  That completed their task of enquiry. The nursing nuns had gone back to their convent in Perpigan, whence they had come for the emergency, but it was doubtful if they could have added much to the Doctor’s testimony. James thanked the Captain warmly for his kindness, and then they went up to the cemetery again. It was getting late—the sun, sinking behind the Col d’Ares, had left the valley, and blue shadows filled it; only the great ridge still caught the last rays, and burned with a steadfast rosy glow; a fresh breeze blew up from the river, whispering in the two cypresses, and rustling the ivy and small plants that clung to the churchyard wall. Together they strewed their flowers, lightly and gently, over the grave, and then stood looking down at it in silence. Rosemary drew a deep breath.

  “It’s a lovely place to lie,” she said at last.

  “Yes.”

  He said no more for some time, but they lingered in a quiet sadness, reluctant to go away.

  “It is a most peculiar business,” James said at length, “that we should find him here like this, together, when I’ve been combing the camps for him all these weeks. Of course I had no idea you knew, or I would have told you. But the whole thing is so extraordinary—that while I heard about him from Paquita, you should have found it all out independently, and met him! Twice! And then that our two separate lines should join here at last, at his grave.”

  “Yes,” she said, and was silent for a little while. She had had time now to recover herself a little, and the account of Juanito’s illness and death had as it were taken the edge off her immediate unhappiness, lifted her emotion onto a higher plane, where her personal feelings counted for less. She was thinking now chiefly of Raquel, and of James in connection with her. At last she shook back her hair with an air of resolution, and spoke.

  “James, which of us is going to write to her? Are you writing to her?”

  He so much liked the direct way in which she said that.

  “Well, yes and no,” he answered. “We settled not to write, of course. But she did write to me in January, when he didn’t turn up, asking me to hunt for him—and I answered that, and said that I would. I haven’t written since, because there was nothing to say. I was just thinking about that myself, as a matter of fact.”

  She looked thoughtful.

  “I think you’d better write,” she said at last. “I will too, later on. But she had better hear it from you. I think she would rather.”

  “Very well, I will,” he said. He was relieved by her definiteness, and it never occurred to him to doubt her judgement—young as she was, on such matters he felt instinctively that she would be right.

  And then, at that hour, quite naturally he found himself putting to her the problem that had been tormenting him at intervals ever since he parted from Raquel de Verdura—whether he had been right not to accept her suggestion that they should make Pascual arrange a divorce? He told her—with the most extreme sense of relief, of easement, that now at last he could speak of it to someone—the situation as it had presented itself to him, as he had tried to present it to Raquel. “I was nearly done, when she suggested that,” he said simply. “For a bit, I couldn’t say anything at all. It seemed so obvious, in one way—after the way he’d treated her he hadn’t any rights, from her point of view. But then I’d seen him.” He paused, staring in front of him, as if he were at that moment seeing the Conde. “All the same, it nearly finished me,” he went on—“When you’re all keyed up to something you know will be Hades, and you see Heaven open, it’s a frightful temptation to walk in. And it’s being such hell for her——” he broke off, his face changing. “I felt a fool and a cad,” he went on after a second’s pause. “But—I don’t know. I’d seen him, you see,” he said again.

  Rosemary listened to this recital with a curiously mixed emotion—a mixture to which the poor child had become accustomed in all her relations with both the Condesa and Milcom, till these last few days. There was pain in it; and yet there was also a deep satisfaction in the thought that he trusted her enough to make her his confidante on this,
of all subjects. She had listened as usual in complete silence—a silence that for him was somehow charged with sympathy by her eyes, by her questioning brow, by the expression of her big mobile mouth. When he had finished she did not speak at once—she looked away down the shadowed valley, musingly.

  “Oh yes, I think you were right,” she said at last. “Darling Raquel—I see how it seemed to her. She hadn’t seen him. But in the end she would have been miserable if she hadn’t gone back. Oh no——” she paused, and pushed up her hair. “She had to go back,” she said again. “I suppose you told her that day that you sat on the grass above the cliff, before you went in to Bayonne?”

  He stared at her—was there nothing she didn’t know?

  “Yes—but how did you know that?”

  “I saw you—I was sailing with Count de Barrial and I saw her run down, in black; and you running after her—in this suit.” He was in fact wearing the Lovat tweed at that moment.

  “Sailing in a boat with a white sail?” he asked. He remembered the white sail—every detail of that scene was burnt into his mind.

  “Yes.”

  It occurred to James at that moment, standing beside Juanito’s grave with her, that there was something more than strange, something almost uncanny, about the way in which this child, Rosemary, who was so much more than a child in all but years, had been involved, or present, or aware at every single point of his curious tangled association with Raquel and Juanito Torre de Modero, from the moment of his first arrival at St.-Jean-de-Luz. Nothing had escaped her; she was always there—comprehending, silent, self-effacing: except when she could extend a hand in mercy or pity or help. On his Irish mind this struck with a peculiar force—for to the Irish the uncanny is also always the significant. But he made no search for the significance of this; he looked at her for a long while, in a kind of considering silence that was full of respect and liking. She would, he thought, make some man a wonderful wife, some day. Her own love, extended to him that morning below the Phare came back into his mind now—and for the first time, in all these days spent together, it occurred to him to wonder about that. Had he really been right in assuming that that was only an emotional outburst, quickly spent? Her face, as he watched it in the fading light, was still, quiet, sad—and of an cad nobility. But it gave no answer to his questioning. Anyhow, he thought, whatever the answer was, it could make no difference—not to him, and therefore not to her. Love, for him, had come and gone—or rather it hadn’t gone, it would never go. He sighed and said—