by Sarban
The technique of the carving fascinated Frances but the feeling that infused it repelled her. She withdrew her eyes slowly from the prolific stone with something of the same mixture of pity and disgust with which she had turned from the frog that sprawled so nakedly, half-pathetic, half-obscene, in the grass on the bank. She stepped back a pace and looked with relief at the bronze boy once again. He seemed to leap up there in extraordinary contrast to the teeming, tortured things below his feet. He was poised there, alone and free, independent and self-controlled in his dance; no less a skill had modelled him than the stone figures below him, but the feeling of the two works was a world apart. But for that one Oriental touch in the conventional treatment of the hands which brought all the fingers tapering together to a sharp point and turned the hand into something suggesting another category of forms—leaves or weapon-blades—apart from that there was nothing in the boy’s figure that Frances did not immediately recognise and understand. The man who made him had inherited, however indirectly, a Grecian understanding of the human body and the human soul.
The juxtaposition of the two works, the bronze and the stone, stimulated Frances’s curiosity as much as the execution of each interested her. The person who had set them up had seen, she could not doubt, as clearly as she had herself, the sharp, significant contrast. There was something of philosophy and an imaginative grasp of history, she felt, in the gesture that set the Greek above the Barbarian and let the Hellenic taut simplicity leap up away from the Oriental, voluptuous complexity. A hint also, perhaps, of cynicism in the placing of those two works of genius in a nook of the tangled English wood, leaving them, as it were, to continue the ancient conflict, to give them privacy and endless, undisturbed time in which to try to reconcile the old, irreconcilable opposites. She must learn who had put them there and why.
She had forgotten all about her fretfulness of the morning. That was, no doubt, the efficacy of the cool water. Now, the storm was very near breaking as she swam back to where she had left her things, and just before she reached the door of Chevrel House, the dark heavens volleyed and the rain rushed down on the breathless trees.
It was not until after tea that she had a chance to ask Miss Dorfray about the statue. They had had tea in a sitting-room that Frances had not before been in: a small room looking out over the lawn, encumbered with heavy old furniture that might have suited a men’s club or a regimental mess ante-room. It was all sadly worn and untidy; the springs had gone in the hide chairs and couch; their seams had split and the wadding protruded here and there. A leather-topped fender like a fence guarded the fireplace; the mantelpiece and two or three mahogany stands and tables were crowded with Eastern knick-knacks in brass and ivory and a panoply of barbaric scimitars and old-fashioned cavalry sabres rusted on the chimney-breast. On the wall an enlarged tinted photograph, much faded, of a very young man in the stiff military tunic of former days looked down and invited comparison with a more recent half-plate portrait that stood in a silver frame among a herd of little elephants on a table at Frances’s elbow.
‘This was our father’s room,’ said Miss Dorfray, seeing Frances’s eyes shift from the young officer on the wall to the old man on the table beside her. ‘We’ve kept on using it since he died. We—we don’t seem to be quite so far away from him, here, among his things.’
Frances liked the fine old face in the silver frame: she liked the mingled sternness and humour of the eyes and mouth; there was some fibre there, some courage and pride and keen understanding. It was while she looked at the old soldier that she made her guess about the statue, and promptly asked Miss Dorfray if it was so.
The heavy storm was over. Thunder still growled and crackled distantly, but the leaf-green world outside the window was lit with gold again; with gold, and a rare sparkle of rain-drops. Miss Dorfray had opened the window and the sweet smell of the newly refreshed garden and woodland came strongly to them.
‘Yes,’ Miss Dorfray said quietly after a long pause. ‘Yes, our father brought them back when we came from Myaldaung. They are quite valuable. I mean not—not perhaps in a money sense, but as works of art. At least, we were always told so. I really don’t know much about those things.’
‘You mean your father actually brought them back from India —that great stone—in his luggage, so to speak?’ asked Frances.
‘Oh yes. The stone and the statue.’ Miss Dorfray was slow to understand what surprised Frances about that. ‘We were leaving for good. It was in 1905. Dear me! How long ago it seems. Thirty years ago! And it’s ten years since father died.’
She mused, looking out of the window, seemingly lost in old, private griefs. Frances found herself wondering how much real affection and understanding there could have been between the hardy-looking, proud and determined old soldier and this rather pathetic, shrinking and ineffectual creature. The daughter had revered him, that was plain from her tone. He had probably pitied her. Miss Dorfray seemed not to treat Frances as a complete stranger any longer. Frances did not want to appear inquisitive about the family, but she did want to know more about the statue. She asked another question.
‘Well, I’m afraid there’s really very little I can tell you,’ Miss Dorfray replied. ‘Our father knew a great deal about such things. He could have told you. We—I’m afraid we are not very learned. We, Emily and I, were brought up in Myaldaung and we could speak the language, of course, but I don’t think we bothered much about the—the art and culture of the country. I suppose we took it for granted: children do, you know. Or else we were more interested in English things—English books and pictures that we got out. David knew all about their art and religion, of course. David was our brother. He was the eldest.’
‘It is a religious piece, then?’ Frances asked. ‘I mean, an image of a god, or something like that? It’s odd, because it doesn’t look Indian. I suppose Mya—the place it came from is in India?’
‘Well, yes. It is now. It was an independent state when we first went there. Emily was quite tiny there. Our father resigned from the Indian Army to take the post of Inspector of the Myaldaung Forces. He went there first when he was still a Major. The Government sent a mission to the Raja and he was sent in command of an escort. He became quite a favorite with the Raja and later he offered him the post of Inspector and our father took it. The Government approved, of course, though as Myaldaung was a sovereign state they couldn’t give him any official help. He was there twenty years. Until the revolution. After that, when the Government sent in troops and appointed a British Resident, we couldn’t stay. We came home then. Our mother had been dead many years. We brought everything with us—that is, everything we could recover, because the house had been looted in the revolution. It was then that our father got the statue. The Balikh temple had been broken into and looted and when the new Raja was restored he gave our father the statue that had been in it.’
‘Gave him a statue from the temple? But wasn’t it sacred to them?’
‘Oh dear no! Not to the Raja. It was the Balikhs who murdered his father—the old Raja. The ruling family are Hindus, you see. They had conquered the country in ancient times, but I suppose they had become degenerate and gradually all the power passed into the hands of the hereditary minister and his family, and they belonged to a sect called Balikh which I think was the ancient religion of the country—though in our time the majority of the people were Budhists, with a few Muslims and high-caste Hindus among the townspeople. The Balikh sect were nearly all nobles of the Minister’s family and they were very wealthy and very powerful. The old Raja, our father’s friend, wanted to break them. He wanted to be a real ruler like his ancestors and turn out the Balikhs who held all the posts in the State and controlled all the finances. That is why he wanted our father to train his bodyguard.’
‘But the Balikhs got in first?’
Miss Dorfray squeezed her hands together.
‘It was a very unhappy time for us all. You see—’ she sighed deeply—‘Ah, it brings back all
those old unhappinesses. We don’t often talk about it now, Emily and I. We don’t talk about it in front of Jamar—our niece, that is. But I think about it often—often when I’m alone. In a way it’s all so far off and long, long ago, and yet it’s here too.’ She pressed her hands against her breast and looked at Frances. Frances did not know what to say.
‘Here,’ she repeated, a little suddenly.
Miss Dorfray nodded.
‘You see, you’ve seen the statue and you can’t help asking about it and I must tell you. I can’t let you not know—’
‘Oh, but if there’s something personal—if you’d rather not—’ Frances interrupted her.
‘I must,’ Miss Dorfray said with surprising energy. ‘I know that you can see what things mean. Some people can. Things—things like that are made with a purpose. They come from people’s beliefs. An artist can feel the life that has flowed into them.’
‘I can guess,’ said Frances, doubtfully and wonderingly. ‘I mean, the carving on the stone—it must have some religious meaning, I suppose. But the boy is different. . . .’
‘Yes, yes, he is different.’
‘Not Indian?’
‘No. Well, not quite.’
‘Do you know who made him?’
‘Well, it is known. Or there is a story. It was in the seventeenth century. It was a time when Europeans were first finding their way to the courts of princes in India. There was an Italian, or Venetian, called Argosino, who came into the hills in eastern India. He was an architect and an artist. The Minister of Myaldaung of that time brought him in to build the Balikh temple after it had been destroyed in an earthquake, and when the temple was finished, the Minister was so delighted with the Venetian’s work that he ordered him to make a new image of the god, but the Venetian said he could not do that without having seen the rites of their sect. Of course, that was unthinkable to the Balikhs, but Argosino was firm and the Minister so desired to have an image made by his wonderful Western artist that he smuggled him in to the new temple and placed him where he could watch the dedication ceremonies. The next day Argosino set to work. The Minister surrounded his house and foundry with his own guards and the artist was not allowed to have any communication with anyone other than his servants and assistants who were all of the Balikh sect, until the new statue was finished and set up on the same base where the old one had stood. The story goes then that when the minister, who was also the head of the sect, lifted up his eyes to the new image he fell into a wild rage because Argosino had not made a figure of the god at all, as he had been commanded, but had modelled a handsome young acolyte of the sect who had been assigned to watch him while he worked. The Minister at once ordered both Argosino and the boy to be put to death for the sacrilege. That is the story, but David, our brother, used to say that it was not true, because then they would have destroyed the image, whereas they kept it as their greatest treasure and all the rites were performed before it for ever after. The truth, he used to say, was that the Minister put Argosino to death because he had seen the secret rites and he had the boy killed for fear that the worshippers, recognising him in the god, should attribute divinity to him.’
Frances was delighted with the story. Delighted and amazed that so poor a creature as Miss Dorfray should be able to bring such a fable forth.
‘But that’s exactly the kind of legend that there ought to be behind the bronze boy. I knew it must be Italian work. And if it was done for an Indian god, that explains the hands. Tell me, though—of course your father would know the value of the work, but why did he have it set up there, by the pond, I mean, where it’s so difficult to see? Surely other people would be interested in it: collectors—’
‘Oh no!’ Miss Dorfray exclaimed very hastily as though fearing that Frances might be about to suggest that the piece could be sold. ‘Oh no! It—it wouldn’t have done. You see, for him, for us, it was different. Because of David.’
‘David?’
‘Our brother. A very sad thing happened. David married in Myaldaung, you see. His bride was a Balikh lady related to the Minister. We wished her to be baptised but David would not see it quite in the same light as we did. Then, when the trouble broke out between the Minister’s family and the Raja, David and our father had a serious difference. Of course, our father’s duty was to the Raja, and though he was not able to save the old man he did get his son away. We went to an old fort in the hills towards the Indian frontier. Emily and I, I mean. David stayed in Myaldaung. His wife would not leave and he would not leave her and the baby.’
She paused, and Frances found herself looking again at the photograph of the old soldier while she waited for Miss Dorfray to go on. The sternness of Major Dorfray’s mouth, the proud carriage of his head told, perhaps, all of the unhappy story that need be told now. He would have done his duty in all circumstances, Frances thought.
‘Yes,’ said Miss Dorfray, gently. ‘They were safe while the Balikhs were victorious, but it was father’s duty to take the capital again. The peasants and townspeople rose against the Minister’s people before the Raja’s troops could reach the town. The Minister’s family took refuge in the Balikh temple—all their women and children, and David’s wife with them. The people set fire to the temple. David tried to save his wife but they were both murdered. If our father had been able to get the troops there a day sooner there would not have been a massacre of the Balikhs. Very few escaped. But two weeks later David’s Ayah came to us in the fort. She had brought the little girl, only eighteen months old, on foot, through the jungle and over the hills. It was a dreadful journey. She had not dared go near the villages for fear of the peasants, because she was a Balikh and they would probably have murdered her. We never knew, really, how she had got food on the way. The poor little child had suffered terribly and we did not think it would live. We questioned the Ayah, of course, poor thing, but we thought she was deranged by the shocking things she had seen when they burned the temple. She told us that David and his wife had been killed, but we never knew how she had escaped with the baby. She would only say that she had sworn to their god to give him the child if he would save her alive, and in her heathen mind she believed that the god had done that, because David’s wife was a noble lady of the Balikhs and would have entered the temple in the service of their god but for her marriage.’
‘And the god kept faith?’ Francis said, and was immediately ashamed of the lightness with which she spoke. It had seemed so incredible that this timid lady, sitting in a quiet country house in a drowsy English hamlet could be telling so strange a story about herself and her own flesh and blood.
‘It seemed so to the Ayah,’ said Miss Dorfray. ‘We could never approve of their beliefs, but we learned to respect their faith. It was the poor creature’s faith that sustained her own journey to us.’ Frances felt reproved.
‘It was wonderful loyalty,’ she said. ‘Poor little child! But she would be too young to—to know anything about what happened?’
Miss Dorfray looked away and sighed.
‘Too young to know, yes,’ she said, ‘but she had suffered so from the hardships of the journey. She grew up—not strong. I—we, Emily and I, have had to look after her. It has been a great responsibility for us and—and a great sorrow.’
‘Oh dear,’ Frances exclaimed, momentarily wrung by Miss Dorfray’s desolate tone and resigned, hopeless gesture. ‘I am so sorry. But you must be able to get treatment for her; she’s not—not incurable. . . ?’
‘I’m afraid they’ll never be able to do much for her now,’ Miss Dorfray replied. ‘You see she’s over thirty and there’s never been much improvement since she was fifteen. There was some hope for her when she was a child, being here in England, they told us. But our Father said the specialist didn’t know. He said that when she was fifteen we should lose her.’
‘But you didn’t!’
Miss Dorfray slowly shook her head.
‘We still hope. We, my sister or myself, we take her to London to the spec
ialist every six months and he has her under observation for two or three weeks. Emily is there now with her. He thinks now that the only treatment is rest and quiet and the country air, that is why we try to manage here, for her sake.’
Miss Dorfray sat in silence, looking out into the garden. To Frances it seemed that the talk had come a long way from the gay bronze boy by the pond. There were more questions she would have liked to ask, but now they would have been importunate. She could only say some conventional words of sympathy and express some general encouragement, as we do about other people’s invalids.
***
A few days passed by without affording Frances a suitable opportunity to revert to the history of the statue. She thought a good deal about it, and little by little came to the conclusion that Miss Dorfray’s story might in fact have answered her still unasked questions. She had probably heard all that the Dorfrays knew about the boy.
The thunderstorm had cleared the air; the weather was sunny and hot, but the sense of oppression had gone. She worked hard at her painting, combining it with botanical study for which she used an old Flora which she discovered among the books in the house. It was a new study to her and a fascinating one. Absorbed in her work, she felt she was learning—making real progress—and she was happier, she believed, than she had ever been in her life. By a stroke of pure luck, by simply following her nose, she had been led to exactly the sort of thing she wanted. No—not by pure luck: by an act of decision and courage also. If she had not had the firmness to end the unhappy affair with Eric she would never have found Chevrel House. Her happiness now was in her freedom, in her escape from the meshes of complexity.