by Bridge, Ann;
The line of mountains grew more shadowy, wavered, and swam before her, as the tears of depression started to her eyes. And at that moment a near living voice hailed her cheerfully with, ‘Good morning, Mrs Leroy.’ She looked round, and there on the narrow saddle stood the Professor, as much like Bond Street as ever in his neat suit.
Margery Brown on the top of the hill,
Why are you standing, idle still?
he declaimed as he came up to her. ‘Do you know that?’ he went on, after a glance at her face. ‘I always think it stamps Kate Greenaway as one of our better poets. You remember how it goes on?
Oh, the night is come, but I can’t go down,
For the bells ring strangely in London Town.
There’s a marvellous sense of mystery in that. You put me in mind of Margery Brown when I saw you standing here.’
Laura smiled. In spite of her natural irritation at being found in tears (which would have been even greater if she had known that it was for the second time) Vinstead brought her a curious feeling of relief; she had a sudden sense that in a way he rather combined her two worlds, bringing the ‘home-side’ fashion of easy intercourse out on to this Chinese hill.
‘I think I was really listening to the bells of London Town,’ she said, falling in with his whim.
‘You looked as though you were listening to something. You very often do, do you know? I have noticed you several times; you look as though you were hearing something a long way off, and were quite unaware of us all about you. Is it always the bells of London Town you are listening to?’ he asked her, as they strolled back along the saddle towards the ridge. ‘Are you very homesick?’
The simple question, the direct tone of kindness, increased Laura’s sense of comfort.
‘It isn’t really homesickness,’ she said; ‘it’s being one person in two lives. You see I go home fairly often – the children are there.’ He noticed that her voice sank a tone or two on the last words. ‘So I can’t really settle down in this life, though I love it in a way – and of course I can’t settle down in the other, because I live mostly in this one. So I am in two halves all the time.’ It sounded extraordinarily lame and foolish to her as she said it, and she wished she hadn’t tried – she felt suddenly tired, and more than ever inclined to cry.
‘Did you have anything to eat before you came out?’ Vinstead asked abruptly.
‘No.’
‘Well, have some chocolate now.’ He produced some from his pocket. ‘Let’s sit on this rock.’ They sat. ‘Your admirable servant brought me some tea when he saw me stirring,’ he went on. ‘Why didn’t you have some?’
‘I came out at six,’ said Mrs Leroy.
‘Good heavens! It’s eight o’clock now. You must be fainting. I wish you would tell me more about your inhalfness,’ he went on, as he plied her with chocolate. ‘I think I can understand it. It struck me as I walked out this morning that the mere physical and visual strangeness of all one’s surroundings out here, though it is stimulating, must in a way put an unconscious strain on Europeans who are sensitive to such things. And most of us are sensitive to them to some extent. Do you feel that? Or does one get over it after years?’
‘I did at first, tremendously,’ said Laura, startled at his comprehension; she remembered how only the day before, on the bluff above the river, she had been thinking of this very thing.
‘That oak tree!’ he went on, pointing to another of the dwarf oaks which stood in front of them. ‘Look at those leaves! They’re so portentous as to be almost sinister. There isn’t a single familiar thing here for the eye to rest on, or the mind to anchor by. I find it very tiring; I feel like a specimen suspended in a bottle, cut off from everything that is my natural habitat. But you get over that, do you, in time?’
‘Yes, I think one does – I have even got to love all this, and to – oh, live on it, you know.’ He nodded. ‘In fact, when I do go home …’ She went on to tell him how in England China seemed the reality, and she became homesick for that, irrational as it must seem. But to the Professor it appeared that it did not seem irrational, but quite normal, and to her surprise she found herself telling him about all the aspects of this duality in her life, including the aridity of social intercourse and how she missed her friends. He was so sympathetic, and the relief of expressing herself was so great that it was some time before the thought darted into her mind that he might be studying her as a ‘case’. When it did, she had recovered her tone, and turned round on him merrily with, ‘As a psychologist, you ought to be able to suggest a cure!’
‘I don’t think there is a full cure,’ he said, smiling back at her, but his voice was sober. ‘Of course to sit lightly to life always helps, and in your case you have to sit lightly to two lives – but I rather think you do that.’
Too lightly, Laura said – one of her complaints was that she tended to become absent-minded about her daily occupations.
‘Yes, perhaps, but never about essentials, I feel sure,’ he said. ‘You see,’ he went on, ‘the only unifying point in your two lives is you yourself. That is inevitable. And the more you can – do you know what I mean by integrate? – well, the more you can unify yourself, the nearer you bring your two lives together, and the easier it becomes to live them both harmoniously. There is no other way.’ He stopped, and lit for her the cigarette she had taken from her case. ‘Of course,’ he went on, ‘some overwhelming compulsion, either of emotion or conviction, will sometimes do the unifying trick completely – a great faith or a great passion. But in any case, the point where the stresses of contending forces meet will always be in yourself, like the point in a building where two opposite thrusts meet. And like a good architect, you must just make that point strong.’ He rose, and stood looking down at her with a very pleasant expression on his face. ‘I am sure it is pretty strong,’ he said. ‘But in the interests of strength I think you ought to come and have some breakfast,’ he added. ‘It’s after half past eight.’
As they walked back to the temple they caught sight, on the terrace below them, of Derek and Judith strolling along together.
‘I don’t think that young man is so deeply asleep but what he might wake up one of these days,’ observed Vinstead, indicating Derek with his walking stick. ‘I was looking at him last night, and thinking of what you said. Did you notice him while Miss Milne was singing?’
‘No – I mean yes,’ said Laura vaguely – she had been thinking of the Professor’s words on her own problem, and was now too startled by this fresh instance of his noticing exactly the things she noticed to pay attention at once to what he was saying.
He looked at her with amusement. ‘Mrs Leroy, this is getting serious! I am sure you did notice.’
‘Yes, I did, and I agree,’ said Laura laughing.
‘I am not at all sure that the same applies to the little American girl, though,’ he continued. ‘I very much doubt whether she has the capacity for living any but the most instinctive sort of life.’
‘Oh, do you really think so? You don’t think perhaps circumstances might wake her up?’
‘I am not sure that it would be good for her even if they did,’ he said thoughtfully. ‘There are people, you know, who can live quite satisfactorily on what is practically the instinctive plane, but if they are roused to that fuller consciousness of which we were speaking yesterday, they may be almost maimed in the process, and go halt ever afterwards. In such cases to attempt to “wake them up”, as you call it, is cruel as well as useless.’
‘But would it be wrong to try to wake up the half-and-halfs, like Mr Fitzmaurice?’ Laura asked, thinking of her talk with Judith overnight.
‘Interfering with other people’s characters or souls is always a very dubious business, I think,’ he answered, ‘except of course by interested parties like wives and husbands, who can’t help doing it to some extent. But if anyone is a suitable subject for it I should say that young man is! And I should say he was likely to get it, from what I have seen of
your niece!’ he added, with the quick grin which Laura had liked from the outset. ‘But I am not so happy about Miss Ingersoll. I should be afraid of her getting more rousing than is good for her from the Frenchman.’
They had reached the terrace now, and saw the party, including Henri and Miss Ingersoll, gathering round the tables under the leaning pine at the further end.
‘Poor Annette!’ said Laura, as they approached, and the girl, radiant in her summer frock, waved to them. ‘I wonder what the way out for her will be.’
‘There always is a way out, though not always an agreeable one,’ said the Professor.
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
THE FIRST BREAKFAST of any party in any Chinese temple is always spent in comparing notes of the night. The party at Chieh T’ai Ssu was no exception. While they ate their grapefruit, the General inquired politely of Miss Hande whether she had slept well.
‘Why, I have slept more profoundly in my time,’ replied that lady, ‘but I didn’t feel any way disagreeably. I would say there isn’t a great deal of ventilation in those pavilions.’
‘No, it was horribly stuffy,’ said Mrs Nevile. ‘It was really a mercy you three went to the other pavilion,’ nodding at Laura and the two Milnes.
‘Air at night is quite unnecessary,’ said the General firmly. ‘The Chinese are perfectly right about that.’
‘Did you ’ave any rats in your room?’ Henri asked Laura.
‘I slept out there,’ she said, pointing to the inner terrace door behind the tables.
‘Ow, you were outside too! Well, I ’ave not slept well outside. I do not think it is the air,’ to General Nevile, ‘I think it is the camp bed.’
Sleeping in a camp bed was a trick, Touchy declared – he for his part slept better in one than in anything else.
Vinstead turned to Lilah, who as usual was eating in complete silence, and asked her how she had passed the night.
‘Oh, all right,’ she answered. ‘There were a few rats, but I don’t mind them.’
‘Comment? You ’ave ’ad rats in your room?’ exclaimed Henri. ‘Nina! Laura! – listen! She ’as ’ad rats – your boy is quite right.’
‘Oh no, Miss Milne, surely not!’ said Nina. ‘What makes you think there were rats?’
‘Because I heard a scrabbling on the matting, and switched on my torch, and there were five of them sitting eating biscuits on the k’ang by me,’ said Lilah tranquilly.
‘Heavens! What did you do?’ asked Derek.
‘Threw a slipper at them and went to sleep again,’ said Lilah, and returned unconcernedly to her kidney omelette.
After breakfast Laura and Nina and Miss Hande strolled along the inner terrace and sat in the little turret at the end. It was already warm, and the sun brought out the aromatic resinous smell of the white pine, and the faint nutty scent of the fruit blossom below the terrace wall. They chatted idly, with that pleasant sense of independence which older women have when they draw together from the younger elements of a mixed party.
‘Well, Anna, are our two couples providing you with plenty of material for your next book?’ asked Mrs Nevile presently, with her engaging wide smile.
‘Why no, I wouldn’t say they are,’ replied Miss Hande. ‘I find young people’s love affairs a most difficult subject for treatment.’
‘Are older people’s easier?’ Laura asked.
‘Oh, surely – incomparably so.’
‘But why, Anna?’ Nina inquired.
‘I can hardly tell you,’ replied Miss Hande honestly. ‘But I would say it’s because young people’s love is too simplified to be interesting, perhaps.’
‘What do you mean?’ asked Laura, interested.
‘Why, when young things are in love, they’re just plain crazy about one another, and that’s all there is to it, as a rule,’ said the novelist, fixing her lorgnette on Mrs Leroy. ‘It’s all new to them, and it fills the world, but to outsiders they’re just as alike as birds in spring. But when older people fall in love there are all sorts of cahmplicated forces and elements in the situation, and it makes a much richer material.’
‘Go on, Anna; this is rather thrilling,’ said Mrs Nevile. ‘What sort of forces?’
‘Why, it’s like this,’ said Miss Hande, turning her lorgnette now on Nina. ‘Take our two couples here. They’re just being drawn together by some instinct, and there’s nothing to hinder it. But if you, or Mrs Leroy here, were to fall in love, you’d be pulled two ways, or three, by extraneous considerations, and so there would be some drama to the situation.’
‘Indeed there would!’ said Nina gaily. Laura said nothing.
‘Even when older men and women who aren’t married fall in love,’ pursued Miss Hande, ‘they have much richer natures and a wider experience than the young folk have, and so you get emotional reactions of intrinsic value.’
‘I wonder how often older people do fall in love,’ said Laura thoughtfully.
‘Freely, I should say,’ said Miss Hande.
‘They say round about forty is the dangerous age,’ laughed Nina. ‘You’re nearly there, my dear’ – she nodded at Laura – ‘you must look out!’
‘I don’t believe that is universal by any means,’ said Laura. ‘I think women round about forty tend to go in for one of two things, lovers or detachment – but quite as often detachment as the other. What do you think?’ she asked Miss Hande.
‘Well, that’s an entirely new viewpoint,’ said the novelist. ‘You may be right. And what would you say determines the direction of their interest?’
‘Oh, how they have spent their thirties!’ said Mrs Leroy, with a little wintry smile of irony. She got up. ‘I am interested in detachment,’ she added.
Nina pealed with laughter, like a run of little bells. Miss Hande hadn’t quite got there, and before she did Mrs Leroy had wandered away towards the outer terrace.
‘Why has she gone off?’ Miss Hande asked, looking after her tall figure rather regretfully.
‘Oh, Laura’s always slipping through one’s fingers like that,’ said Nina airily.
‘Has she had many lovers?’ the novelist inquired, her lorgnette still fixed on Laura’s retreating figure.
‘None that one ever heard of,’ said Mrs Nevile. ‘Lots of people have been devoted to her – she has that sweet lovely way with her, and she’s a marvellous friend – but she has always seemed too fastidious for anything of the sort. I can always imagine her, when anyone makes her a declaration, telling them it’s so nice of them to mention it, but she happens to have an engagement!’ The silvery peal of laughter came again. ‘And of course she’s terribly absorbed in her children.’
‘How old is she, actually?’
‘Thirty-seven.’
‘You surprise me! I wouldn’t have thought her much more than thirty. Of course her mind is very mature, but the mind is immortal, I guess,’ said Miss Hande blandly. ‘I would like to know her history,’ was her final comment.
Meanwhile Laura had been annexed by Touchy for a stroll. Touchy had so far seen very little of her on the picnic, and was inclined to feel slightly defrauded. He was not therefore overpleased when Professor Vinstead after a short time joined them, and asked whether, if they were looking at the temple, he might be shown it too? The three of them wandered about, visiting various shrines where the images of Buddha sat solemnly in front of formal flat curtains of yellow brocade. Priests in grey thrust little aromatic sticks of incense into their hands, which they obediently stood in the powdery sweet-smelling ashes of the incense burners and lit with a taper. These burners, mostly shallow bowls on three feet, stood on long narrow tables before the images, between superb vases and ornaments; here and there little offerings of painted cakes, which looked like marzipan, were piled among them. These caught the Professor’s eye, and he asked if they were edible.
‘Oh yes,’ Laura told him.
‘Who does in point of fact eat them, Laura – do you know?’ Touchy asked. ‘One often sees other food offered too –
what becomes of it all?’
‘The priests eat it,’ Laura answered. ‘The Abbot at T’ien T’ai Shan told me all about it once. He said that Buddha took the spiritual essence of the food, and then the priests ate the material remainder. And he said that one must never give such offerings to children, because to nourish them properly they need the spiritual essence of the food as well as the other. Isn’t that rather nice?’
‘Yes, it’s what Miss Hande would call a “beautiful idea”,’ said Touchy, as he felt in his pockets for a small coin to give to the attendant priest. Laura was a little chilled, and on leaving the shrine they walked for a time in silence. At the Professor’s suggestion they went up one of the broad flights of steps towards the upper levels of the monastery, treading interminable shallow marble stairs splashed with shade. They found themselves presently on another terrace, flanked by an imposing shrine with a richly-carved latticed front. Henri and Little Annette were sitting on the steps of this shrine, deeply engaged in conversation – the girl, Laura thought, looked a little puzzled and strained, as if disturbed by something. Laura and her two companions leant on the balustrade, and looked down at the scene below – the roofs, peeps of the great terrace between the trees, and their own courtyard spread out like a plan beneath them. The balustrade was warm to the touch – it was getting hot, and they were glad to rest after the ascent; they were silent, slightly embarrassed at having unwittingly intruded on the seated pair, but unable to leave forthwith, slightly ill-assorted as a trio.
A voice from behind disturbed them – Judith’s clear voice. ‘We must find someone! Oh, there’s Laura! Splendid! She’ll be able to talk to him.’
They turned round. From the opened doors of the shrine they saw Judith and Derek emerging, followed by a priest, who pursued them with earnest gestures of explanation.