by Ann Bridge
Whether Harry really could have found the way soon became a matter of academic interest to Rupert and Amber, since he walked so fast that they lost him in the first mile. After interminable wanderings through the valley, which seemed, and is, a vast place, during which they both got more and more worried and cross, they found themselves, at two o’clock, hungry, thirsty and exhausted, at the P’ai-lou; where, however, there was no car, no friends and no lunch. A peasant, who was quietly rolling the newly ploughed earth round the very foot of the marble pediment of that marvellous five-arched structure, with a stone roller hitched behind a donkey, was persuaded to unharness his ass and trot off on it to the Yung-lou, bearing a note for Leroy scrawled on the back of an envelope, after he had testified to seeing foreign devils in a gas-cart pass that way. And at three-thirty gas-cart and T’ai-t’ais reappeared. They had gone straight to the Yung-lou; one always did, Leroy said so; Rupert and Amber were their poor dears, but they were clearly made to feel that they were also very foolish ones; Harry had not turned up at all, and was so excessively foolish as not even to be a poor dear—he was merely tiresome. Rupert was to hurry up and go on to join the others—he could not miss the way, there was an avenue of marble animals. And after hastily devouring some lunch he did so, with a cheerfulness which in the circumstances Amber felt to be quite heavenly minded. She found it hard to emulate this serenity, or Mrs. Leicester’s extreme calm over the temporary loss of her husband; she had looked forward for weeks to seeing the Tombs, and was bitterly disappointed.
On their return to Peking, however, all disappointment was swallowed up in a fresh excitement. Joe came round to the Hei Lung Hu-t’ung after dinner, still in riding clothes and looking darkly mysterious, and demanded to see Amber alone. Her two griffins had arrived, and he had just returned from settling them in at P’ao-ma-ch’ang. There was also a letter, rather grubby from travelling in the underclothing of a mafoo, from Johansen to Amber. The American regretted that he could not leave Tientsin at the moment to bring them himself, but he hoped she would find them “O.K.” “I think they are a good pair. I told you I should ‘send a horse to match the girl, and I think he is the best.” Joe began to laugh when Amber read this out. “What is it?” the girl asked. But Joe would not tell her—he would only giggle and say that she would see tomorrow, and that her Yankee friend was quite a wit.
Amber did see next day, when Joe drove her out to P’ao-ma-ch’ang, where he had taken a stable, not from Harry Leicester, but from a business man called Miles who was going home for a year. Joe’s head mafoo was already installed there with his griffins, which had arrived some weeks previously, a dark bay and a white—pending better names Joe called them Port and Folio respectively, but the mafoos called them simply the hung ma and the pai ma (the red pony and the white pony). With thirsty curiosity Amber gazed at her new possessions, as Li paraded them in the stable-yard before her. One was a pale smoky grey, what the Chinese always call a ch’ing, or bright pony; the other, as Hawtrey delightedly pointed out, was “the horse to match the girl”—a red chestnut, whose thick furry coat was “just the colour of your nice thatch, Amber.” They were both big, for China ponies, thirteen hands three, the maximum allowed by the Peking Club rules. Little else could be seen of them, clad as they were in their bear-like overcoats of long soft hair, but both had good heads. The grey showed temper—he lashed out wildly; “Yu chin,” said Li, grinning. Chin (pronounced jin) is an almost untranslateable Chinese word, meaning both strength and violence—a powerful man or a vicious pony are alike said to “have chin.”
And “chin” the grey pony continued to show. Clipped and groomed, he proved a shapely creature; so did the chestnut. But whereas after a certain amount of training the latter could easily be handled and ridden, the grey pony remained very intractable; his head had to be put in a sack before any European could hope to mount him. Mr. Hawtrey’s turn of mind being what it was, it was not surprising that he soon christened Amber’s two griffins Gin and Ginger. Their official names were to be Minister of Finance and Minister of Marine, because one was copper-colour and the other a battleship grey—but Joe and Amber and Mulholland (who had been retained as jockey and was privy to the whole scheme) always called them Gin and Ginger and nothing else.
These two animals now absorbed a vast amount of Amber’s time and thoughts. Griffins arrive rather low, after the long trek down from Mongolia, but gradually they were got into condition. There was no violent hurry, since Joe had decided that the Portfolio stable should not make a start at the autumn race-meeting, for which Johansen’s griffins were in any case too late, and serious training would not start till the spring. But both he and Amber, to say nothing of Li and Mulholland, had the utmost curiosity to see what the four new acquisitions were “good for,” and for this purpose they were steadily trained up to ordinary paper hunt standard. It very soon appeared that Johansen had done Amber pretty well. Both Gin and Ginger were fast, much faster than Joe’s new pair; and the more speed they showed, the more secretive and cunning Mr. Hawtrey became about them. Joe had a child’s love of secrecy for its own sake, and here there was a real interest involved. He would not allow Amber to ride either of them in the drag-hunts, and for training gallops he chose the most unfrequented spots he could find—out beyond the Eunuch’s Temple, perched on a crag above its persimmon orchards, or away to the north of Maude’s bridge. It became increasingly evident that nothing in Joe’s stable, Pertinax or any other, could touch the Ginger Griffin for speed; nor could Bananas or Curaçao, a pretty pony which M. Rothstein had presented to Amber. But none of these were real race-ponies, and the great desire of the owners of the Portfolio stable now was to try out Ginger against a pony whose speed was known.
Here Amber came in. Besides training her own ponies, she was doing a lot of riding with and for Uncle Bill, who was preparing for the paper-hunting season. Her light weight, good hands and hunting experience made her a useful, even an ideal person to put up on ponies who were being taught to jump, and she spent hours on the field behind Uncle Bill’s temple, controlling the wild and stag-like leapings of some ponies, and discouraging in others, less mercurial, a tendency to butt the jumps down with their chests. In her privileged position, it was easy for her to borrow a pony, even a race-pony, from Uncle Bill, and she borrowed Berry, who had just won two races in the autumn meeting and was still fairly hot. They took him out to a flat sandy stretch ot country beyond Maude’s bridge, where reasonably smooth going could be obtained for nearly a mile; and there, Mulholland riding Berry and Amber the Ginger Griffin, they tried them out. The result was astonishing. Ginger was not trained to a flying start, and Berry left him at first; but presently the griffin came up, and ride Berry as he would, Mulholland only won by a neck. The Portfolio owners were enchanted. It was clear that in the Ginger Griffin they had a pony with an amazing turn of speed. “If he’ll do that when he’s not even half trained, what will he do when he is?” said Joe triumphantly.
So far they had kept their stable a secret from everyone but Mulholland. But certain difficulties beset the path of pretty young women when they embark on a partnership, even of the most businesslike character, with handsome young men. And these difficulties were not long in forcing themselves on Amber’s notice. That connected with the attitude of other people arose first. Aunt Bessie, absent-minded and absorbed in her bridge, was slow to notice anything, but Uncle Bill had sharper eyes. He observed that Amber, instead of riding impartially, as before, with Hawtrey, La Touche, Leopardi, Mulholland and the Leicesters, now rode perpetually with Joe. He mentioned it to Bessie. “The child is sensible enough, but people will talk. You’d better keep an eye on her.” Aunt Bessie, thus admonished by the infallible Bill, kept an eye; she saw, and then she spoke. “My dear child, I think—you are very young, you know; don’t think I think any harm, but young people—your Uncle thought——” It emerged gradually from such utterances as these that what Aunt Bessie and Uncle Bill thought was that Amber rode rather too much with
Mr. George Hawtrey. Blushing, a little distressed, Amber greatly relieved her Aunt by bursting out laughing. “Oh Aunt Bessie dear, it isn’t that; there isn’t anything in that. Don’t worry.” But she had to explain—swearing Aunt Bessie to secrecy, she did so: “Joe and I have got a stable. I’ve bought two griffins and he’s bought two. And of course we’ve got to ride them, you see. That’s all it is.” To make matters more secure (for Amber knew quite well where the directing mind lay in the Hei Lung Hu-t’ung), she tackled Uncle Bill as he sat in his “den.” “Uncle Bill, will you keep a secret? I know you can.”
“Oh, I can? Thank you, Amber. Well, I might, if it’s a good one,” said Uncle Bill, swinging round from his roll-top desk. Actually he imagined for a moment that he was to hear of an engagement that he would have welcomed; he had a great respect and liking for Joe. “All right—carry on,” he said.
“Joe and I,” began Amber—and Uncle Bill smiled expectantly—“have got a stable,” she said, and Uncle Bill frowned.
“A stable! What the devil do you want with a stable? Can’t you get riding enough at the Temple?”
“Oh yes, yes, masses, Uncle Bill darling! Don’t be hateful! But I wanted to race ponies of my own. That’s quite different, don’t you see? So I’ve got some, and so has Joe. We’re partners,” said Amber eagerly. “We meant to keep it quite a secret, till the spring—but Aunt Bessie is worrying because I’m with Joe so much, so I thought I must tell you both why I am.”
“H’m,” said Bill, and nothing else. After a moment, “Where did you get your griffins?” he asked; there being no satisfactory engagement, his mind turned naturally to the practical and ever-absorbing subject of the horses themselves.
“Joe’s came from someone in Tientsin, but an American called Johansen brought me down mine, specially,” said Amber.
“Johansen? How in the world did you get Johansen to bring you down ponies? He’s as sticky as Hell about selling to anyone but his Yankees,” said Bill in great astonishment.
Amber explained. She made Old Bill laugh with the story, and then laid an embargo on him. He was not to see her griffins, or ask about them, or anything—“else it will just be you training them. Everyone knows you can train, but I do so want to have a try, by myself.”
“But I thought Joe was helping you?” said Uncle Bill.
“Oh, Joe!” said Amber.
As she was leaving the room, Uncle Bill called her back. “I say, Amber—was that what you wanted Berry for, to try out your new Bengals?”
“Yes—and you’re not even to wonder how they stood up to him!” the girl said, coming back and standing beside him. “Promise!” she said, and stooped and gave him an unwonted kiss on his bald patch. Uncle Bill carefully and insultingly wiped his head with a bandana. “You’re asking the impossible,” he boomed after her, as she ran out.
The other type of difficulty is a more personal one. Amber’s reassuring statement to Aunt Bessie was rapidly falsified. A few days later she and Joe took a long ride out beyond the Eunuch’s Temple, into the rough stony uncultivated country where the sparse pale bents of wild grass make a sort of veil over the thankless yellow soil, and where sometimes you may see a bustard run, swift as a dog though ungainly as a turkey. Amber was riding Gin; she was anxious to handle him into a more reasonable shape, for he was fast enough to be worth training, though not the equal of Ginger. They were galloping along a track where the ground on both sides was pock-marked with deep pits and hollows, when a crow arose suddenly from a heap of carrion, almost from under their horses’ feet. With a loud “Cark!” it spread its black wings like sails, and flapped off. The grey pony took fright—shied wildly, and bolted sideways; the next moment, to Joe’s horror, horse and rider plunged together into one of the deep stony pits.
For a wonder, when they were pulled out neither was seriously hurt. The pony had a tear down his shoulder, unsightly but not deep, from a sharp stone, but he was not lame; Amber was limping from what she imagined was a kick on her knee, and had a nasty broken bruise near her right temple—but, though sore and shaken, she declared herself quite able to ride home. Joe really fared the worst—even when the extent of the damage had been fully examined and proved to be slight, he was curiously white, his voice high and unsteady. Nothing would induce him to allow Amber to ride the Ch’ing Ma back to P’ao-ma-ch’ang, though the shock and fright had reduced the pony’s chin considerably—he was temporarily quite docile; she was made to ride Folio, and the little party trotted home very soberly, the mafoos in the rear, Joe asking the girl every other minute if she was sure she felt all right? He was experiencing for the first time in his life that desperate and agonising concern with the welfare of another human being which love first reveals to most people, and to some first reveals love. He could not forget the horror of the moment when he saw the pony falling sideways into the pit, and Amber along with him—in that instant, in a flash of knowledge, he realised how completely all happiness, for him, was bound up with that bright head which went down among the stones. And in the car, driving home slowly (as he had bidden the chauffeur to do), he told Amber so. He didn’t do it very well—Joe’s glib phrases deserted him in moments of crisis. “Amber darling, you know you were angry when I kissed you, but this isn’t kissing. I—I—I wish you would marry me—I do love you so. Won’t you? I’m sure I could make you happy—I would take care of you for ever.”
Poor human love, so eager and so self-convinced!—poor words with which we dim its glow! Pathetic belief in our own competence at the great task of loving! Mr. Hawtrey, like the rest of us, exemplified all these things when his turn came. But his sincerity was for once evident, and the refusal which Amber had to give caused her some genuine distress. “Oh no, dear Joe, I couldn’t, possibly. No, don’t—I know I couldn’t.” And when Joe pressed her, still, even in this moment of clearsightedness, slightly under the influence of his theories about how to deal with women, she turned him off with the practical. “Do let it alone, please, or I shall have to chuck the stable. I told Aunt Bessie there was nothing in us, when she fussed.” Joe had to laugh. “But there is something in us, Amber, mein liebstes Herz.”
“Not unless you make it! No really, Joe. Promise to let it all alone till after the races, anyhow. Do please.”
And Mr. Hawtrey, thinking that this sounded rather like hope, but still more under the influence of his strong desire to let his dearest heart have what she wished, promised.
Amber was a good deal disconcerted by this episode for several reasons. It disturbed her theory of Joe as a person who, though kind, though devoted to her, and of whom she was very fond, was in some way emotionally negligible. His white face, his uncertain voice, the un-mistakeable accent of deep feeling when he proposed to her, all went to disprove this idea. And that fact made it both unfair and unsafe to use her friendship with him as a sort of smoke-screen for her love for Rupert, as she had tended to do. But on the other hand she couldn’t give up the stable. It was all very difficult. For her own part she cared hardly at all for public comment on herself and Joe, while she shivered under the very thought of it in connection with Rupert; but she was honest and generous enough to credit Mr. Hawtrey with feelings as sensitive as her own (in which she was to some extent mistaken) and felt that she must protect his secret too. She must no longer say airily, on a day when she had had a stroll with Benenden and a ride with Hawtrey, that she and Joe had had “such a ride to So-and-so”—she must mention both, or neither.
And it was just at the moment of its removal that she was forced to realise how much she needed a smoke-screen to hide herself and Rupert from the hard amused curiosity about any form of love-affair which is the breath of life to the bulk of Peking society. A few days after her tumble she was bidden to a party at M. Bruno’s. It was a “cocktail and zakouska party,” with two forms of invitation card; which began as an ordinary At Home at six, but continued, for those who received invitations to that effect, as an evening entertainment nourished by a cold-supper bar
. Amber and Rupert were among the privileged few who received such an invitation. The Bessarabian had a house in the East City, small, but decorated and furnished with real virtuosity; his walls of golden silk, his ivories, his jade and bronzes were famous even among Chinese collectors, whose icily artificial politeness about the artistic acquisitions of foreigners is normally the most crushing of social experiences. His food and drink matched his dwelling—people usually found it convenient to accept M. Bruno’s invitations.
But the evening brought Amber a double shock. When the earlier guests had filtered away, Joe and the Grant-Howards along with them, the remainder assembled round the zakouska tables, with a pleasant and rather conspiratorial sense of selectness, to eat caviare just come in by the Trans-Siberian railway, vol-au-vent of quail and white truffles, great helpings of Strasbourg pâté, and Bosnian figs in ginger syrup—and to drink vodka, champagne and Russian brandy from the Imperial vineyards at Erzerum. Afterwards they drank coffee in a room furnished with low opium-tables and piles of cushions on the floor. The company consisted mainly of what even Amber’s inexperience recognised as the less rangé elements of Peking society, and in a mood of peculiar recklessness at that—the scraps of conversation which she caught from time to time were in a vein not usually to be heard at Legation entertainments. She was slightly discomfited at finding herself in such a gathering with no support but Rupert’s. And it was then that she got her shock. She was sitting with Rupert when Mme. de Bulle came by. The lady greeted them with her usual crude archness— “Vous voilà très bien installés, tous les deux!” Then, with a glance of evident intention— “Plus ça change, plus c’est la mêrne chose, hein?” she said to Rupert. Amber followed the direction of her glance and saw Mrs. Leicester standing a few paces away. And in a flash the meaning of Mimi’s gibe broke on her. Perhaps in England she might not have taken the point, but in this gathering she could not miss it. Of course!—and while Rupert, admirably collected, drawled out some casual reply, the girl’s mind went flying back over the past, finding incident after incident which bore out this new discovery. Mrs. Leicester’s strange remarks to her at that first luncheon with Hawtrey, and her advice to stick to people like Joe; the way Rupert sighed and said “Poor Lydia!” the day she quoted her to him, at tea in his room—and other small things, looks and words and avoidances, unnoticed at the time, but which now took on a fresh significance. She was thankful when Rupert soon afterwards took her home. Bowling through the cold starlit lanes and hut’ungs, past draughty open spaces where the marble ot temple gateways glimmered faintly across the grey ground, Benenden was silent—no cheerful words, called forward and back, broke the steady patter of the coolies’ feet. Even when he dropped her before the red door in the Hei Lung Hu-t’ung Rupert did not speak; but she heard him shout a final “God Bless!” as the red doors slammed.