by Bridge, Ann;
There are those who think Brahms’s ‘Nachtwandler’ the greatest song in the world. Laura Leroy knew it well, and Vinstead heard her give a little sigh of contentment as she leaned back to listen. Judith sang it in German, and the strange words, so closely matched by the haunting subtlety of the intervals, poured out into the night, carrying to at least two of the listeners an intensity of meaning they had never borne before. Yes, Laura thought, as she listened to the opening lines, that was the very picture of the simple, the unawakened, wrapped, as little Annette was wrapped, in a sort of enchantment, a wistful dream. She half turned to Vinstead, and he nodded at her in the gloom. He knew what was in her mind. ‘There you are!’ he murmured in her ear at the close of the second verse. ‘What did I tell you this morning?’
Vibrant on the lower notes of the register, Judith’s voice took the altered melody of the third verse, with its shivering hint of menace; it rose magnificently into the glorious intoxication of the fourth line, and poised on the sharp note of warning in the fifth, sinking away into the pitying cadences of the last.
In the moment of silence before the applause broke out Vinstead leant over to Laura.
‘What an amazing piece of writing that is,’ he murmured. ‘You can hear him walking the tightrope on the first line of that last verse, can’t you? – keeping level on those two notes.’
There was a general appeal for an encore. ‘But can’t we have it in English?’ said Miss Hande. ‘It’s such a glorious thing, but I can’t quite follow the German.’
‘Yes, do sing it in English, Miss Judith,’ urged Nina. ‘I’m dying to know what it’s all about. You can tell it’s something fearfully dramatic.’
‘Can you, Judith?’ Laura asked, as the girl hesitated. ‘Is there a decent translation?’
‘Yes, moderate, I think,’ said Judith.
‘Go ahead then,’ she was urged. A snort of disapproval from Derek, who disliked translations, passed unnoticed. Effortless and clear, the lovely melody flowed out again from the shadows under the leaning pine, carrying this time words accessible to all.
Rouse him not, whose simple spirit
Walks in slumber, dream-enchanted,
Let his heart the night inherit
In its peace, desire-haunted.
Menaced now by storm and danger
On he moves, serene, unshaken –
Come you not, a careless stranger
Him with reckless words to waken.
Deep in sleep’s enchantment sunken
Passing now o’er depths unsounded,
With the full moon’s glory drunken –
With the full moon’s glory drunken –
Leave, oh leave his peace unwounded,
Oh leave his peace unwounded.
There it was, set forth for all to see, the problem of the somnambulist in life, the sleeper whose only safety is in his sleep – whose sudden awakening will plunge him into those perils over which, wrapt in his dream, he does indeed pass serenely. The music was as usual summing up the immediate and personal into the timeless and universal, carrying its truth with final certainty into the very heart. Laura as she listened would have given worlds to be sitting beside Nina, to watch her face and to whisper in her ear, ‘Now do you see?’
But Nina was at the other side of the group. Vinstead, close beside her, did see, she knew, and she turned towards him. But Vinstead was sitting in a curious abstraction, with a remote look, almost of pain, on his face. Ah, music has a way of getting back at us, of searching out the secret places of the heart – it is no good going to music for distraction. The Professor had then a swift vision of the sleepwalker who lies hidden in all men’s hearts, below the rationality of consciousness and intellect; the dreamer who stirs sometimes and walks abroad, intoxicated with golden visions, over the giddiest abysses; the sleeper whom we dare not waken.
He jerked his shoulders impatiently. This was worse than ever! And turning to Mrs Leroy with his most Cambridge voice, at the close, he asked if she knew whose the translation was. ‘It’s extraordinarily good.’
Everyone wanted to know this. ‘What beautiful words!’ Miss Hande ejaculated; and Touchy leant across to Laura with, ‘Yes, by Jove! And absolutely right for the music. Whose is it?’
Mrs Leroy did not know, and Judith was applied to. She hesitated a good deal, and when pressed, ‘Lilah made it for me,’ she said at last, reluctantly – it was evident that she had promised not to mention the fact.
But Lilah accepted the congratulations which poured in on her with calm gratification. ‘I’m glad you like it!’ she said to Touchy.
‘It’s an absolute gem!’ Touchy declared roundly.
But Mrs Leroy went off to bed an hour later more astonished than ever at her eldest niece. To be calmly wise was one thing, but to write a song like that was quite another. Lilah! Well, well!
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
THE T’AN CHÜEH SSU party set off next morning at 8.30 a.m. in considerable spirits. Miss Hande during breakfast had been positively chatty, so exhilarated was she by the prospect of adding yet another famous temple to her collection; even Lilah showed a frame of mind a degree removed from resignation, and when mildly rallied by Touchy on her unusual energy in going somewhere that she needn’t, hazarded the opinion that she ‘had an idea it might be going to be rather fun’. The nature of the fun she kept to herself – only her eyes slid slowly round, first to the Professor’s face and then to Laura’s. Derek had thrown off his dejection of the night before, apparently, and was trying to get Miss Hande to listen to his account of the private lives of bonzes. General Nevile was supervising the feet of the party. As a soldier of experience, he attached importance to suitable footgear. The Professor’s feet were adorned with stout brogues, heavily nailed, which called forth his condemnation.
‘Haven’t you got any tennis shoes?’ he asked, fixing a gloomy eyeglass on these objects. ‘You’ll be sorry you ever saw those things before the day is out.’
‘What’s wrong with them?’ asked Vinstead in surprise. His shoes were walking shoes, and he was going to walk – in mountains, moreover.
‘Those nails will slip on these cobbled paths at every step,’ said the General. ‘And that leather will make your feet sweat till you can’t stand. You want shoes like Mrs Leroy’s here, or Fitzmaurice’s.’
Vinstead glanced at Laura’s feet. She was wearing shorts and knee stockings; her white canvas shoes had thick string soles, such as the Chinese wear. Derek and Judith had the same, and even Lilah wore tennis shoes. But the Professor had no tennis shoes. Touchy offered a pair which were, however, too small for him, and in the condemned brogues he finally set off, feeling slightly foolish. But how the devil was one to know, he reflected gloomily, as he walked up the cobbled path above the temple, his hobnails screaming on the stones, what to do or expect in this damned country? He realised by now that his suit was too thick for comfort on such an expedition; that a collar was a mistake, and braces intolerable. His topi was all right, only it was so difficult to keep it on – it slithered about on his head, and he envied Derek his double-felt. He had not slept well either. While he was broad awake he could force his thoughts to remain rational, but so soon as he slipped off into the borderlands of sleep, they behaved intolerably, crowding images of Laura Leroy before him in the most impracticable fantasies. And when he jerked himself awake, and opened his eyes, there was the peach blossom above his head, between him and the stars, to remind him of her grave face as she stood in the turret with the flowering spray in her hands, on the first evening. In the warm stillness of the moonlit night he had lain and cursed the fruit blossom, the temple, the picnic, the whole enraging business. The middle-aged do not welcome emotion, bathe in it, swim gloriously on the strong tide as youth does; they jib, wrestle, struggle in an agony of self-preservation. Late love is apt to be not a joyous irradiation, a heavenly suffusion of the whole of life – but a slow painful consuming of habit, reason and will in deep-smouldering combustion. Among th
e self-contained, anyhow, this is so – self-respect, even, resists with all its might. Professor Vinstead was extremely self-contained, and he was in the first throes of this resistance. At such moments a man wants all his armour, even that of a normal appearance. This had been denied to the Professor, and scorning himself for minding such things, he yet did mind – minded his condemned shoes, his collar which would presently wilt, his topi which kept canting tipsily sideways, his indecently tidy suit. He surveyed the latter with an expression of sour grieving which was not lost on Lilah. From her ass she called to him, ‘What’s wrong with your suit?’
Vinstead started guiltily, and looked at her. What an odd observant creature she was! But somehow the sleepy mockery in her face was not irritating.
‘It’s too hot and too tidy,’ he said truthfully.
‘Take off your coat then, and hang it on my saddle.’
Vinstead did so, remarking, ‘Even that won’t keep my collar alive.’
‘Take that off too – horrible tight thing! You can wear this.’ She produced from a pocket a soft gaudy silk ’kerchief. Vinstead looked at it doubtfully, but finally removed his collar, and knotted the thing round his neck. It was certainly more comfortable. And when Laura, happening to look back, called out, ‘Oh, how sensible you look!’ his comfort was increased.
There are two ways of reaching T’an Chüeh Ssu from the direction of Peking – up from Men-t’ou-kou, the coal-mining village near the railway, down in the valley of the Hun-ho, or by a hill track from Chieh T’ai Ssu, which dips up and down along the ridges, and finally joins the valley track at a sort of stony col on the lip of the cup in which T’an Chüeh Ssu lies. There is a third road to it, little used by foreigners as a rule, coming over the hills behind from the direction of the Ch’ing Shui Tien, or Clear Water Peak, the lovely Chinese name for the shapely summit which Europeans, seeing it from the city wall, call Mount Conolly – a sort of back entrance leading down through groves of oaks and thujas to the great courts.
In its way the Temple of the Oak Pool is almost more impressive than Chieh T’ai Ssu. It lacks its wonderful terrace, wide view, and steep-pitched situation on the hillside, but it is on an even vaster scale, and it has running water. The great walled enclosure fills the bottom of the hollow in which it lies, and straggles gently up the northern slopes of it; there are spread the mighty courts, acres and acres of flagged pavement, surrounded by the gay colours of painted eaves and scarlet pillars; freshened by the runnels of bright water which flow in open stone conduits through every courtyard, great or small; chattering beside the flagstones in the shadowed passages between buildings, racing down inclined shoots past flights of marble steps, or lingering with lazy tinklings and soft murmurs in pools below the grottoes, where goldfish swim mysteriously. The whole temple is full of the light gentle voice of water; the formality of stone and shrine and symbol is made gay with its shining freedom, brought in, like the blossoming tree, to worship within the holy places. The Chinese do deeply love and honour the things of nature – air, water, flowers and trees; more deeply than almost any other people; not with a vague poetic yearning, as northern races do, but with a practical recognition, a visible universal allegiance. These things are, as it were, part of the Established Church, not lovely pagans or shy dissenters. At the great entrance gate of T’an Chüeh Ssu are several large inscriptions in painted characters. ‘Purple Hills and Red Springs’, says one; ‘Fragrant Groves and Clean Earth’, another. To such things is the pilgrim invited, as well as to shrines and ceremonies. And within, in the largest court of all, stands a gingko tree of unknown age and immense size, tall as the tallest English elm and of a mighty circumference, which a few casual centuries back was canonised as a saint, and also elevated to the peerage with a title corresponding to that of marquess. At the foot of its great silvery-yellowish trunk stands a little altar where the pious may burn joss sticks in its honour; close by a carved tablet bears its patent of nobility. No one knows exactly how old it is, but like its parent temple it has outlived many dynasties. The written records of T’an Chüeh Ssu are said to go back to the year 400 AD, and an old country proverb declares, ‘First there was T’an Chüeh, and after there was Yu Chou.’ Yu Chou is an old name for Peking; a name so ancient that it had already fallen into disuse in the days of Kublai Khan.
After nearly three hours’ going the party found themselves looking down on T’an Chüeh Ssu from the col where their track joined the shorter way up from Ment’ou-kou, and they paused for a breather, perching on the hot slabby rocks, whence the lizards scooted swiftly away into the still-withered yellow bents and scrubby herbs. A hot walk they had had, up hill and down, along the narrow stony or cobbled tracks, and the temple, lying below them in its cup in the hills, embowered in thujas, looked marvellously cool and inviting. They had passed more than one group of soldiers on their way – obvious T’ao-pings, without armlets and without officers; and now as they rested on the col yet another company appeared, straggling up a small bypath. They seemed in poor case; their uniforms were soiled and worn, their slippers in some cases dropping to bits, and their faces wore a look of sullen weariness as they stared with sulky curiosity at the group of foreigners; but they were all fully armed, each man with a rifle and a bandolier of cartridges, and many with revolvers as well.
‘I say, Laura, there are a hell of a lot of them about,’ said Derek, half aside. ‘I wonder what the devil they’re all up to.’
‘Goodness knows!’ said Mrs Leroy indifferently. ‘Peking may have fallen by this time for aught we know, and Li legged it off somewhere. We shouldn’t have heard anything out here, and it’s two days since we left.’
‘They do look a ruffianly lot, I must say,’ said Derek, fixing his eyeglass on the soldiers with much distaste. More and more of the grey-clad figures were coming up and crowding round the party on the col, filling the air with the fumes of garlic; he was aware of the vague mental discomfort which is generally induced by the presence of numbers of armed men of another race. ‘Don’t you think we might move on?’ he said.
They moved on, then, down the broad paved road into the hollow, the group of soldiers staring curiously after them as they went. At the entrance to the monastery they were met by Niu; he had preceded them with the asses and food, and now led them to the pavilion where he was preparing lunch. They followed him across court after court, where the shadows of curved roofs fell short and black on the hot dazzling pavement; past high carved fronts of shrines, loggiaed with scarlet pillars; feeling a cold chill as they passed into the shadow of a building and trod damp stone, feeling a rush of heat as they emerged again into the glare of sunshine, till at last they reached their quarters for the day.
Right up in the north-east corner of the enclosure, jammed in under the monastery wall, lies a little oblong courtyard, reached only by a narrow entryway, with a small two-roomed pavilion at the back. Just within the entryway stands a curious erection, one of the small architectural fantasies in which the Chinese so much delight – a little cupola supported on slender pillars, shading a tiny island of stone pavement, on all sides of which water flows in open channels. Here a table was spread invitingly for lunch; Niu informed Laura that the rice would be opened at one o’clock. Miss Hande and Judith exclaimed with delight at such a luncheon place, and while the two men paused at the table for drinks after their hot walk, the ladies went on into the pavilion to wash and titivate before exploring the temple till lunchtime.
One of the lesser complications of visiting a Chinese temple is the question of sanitary arrangements. Few Europeans will willingly pay a second visit to a Chinese lavatory, the open pit between paving stones, with two bricks for the feet to stand upon and generally without a door of any sort, where the effluvium from the accumulations below has been known to produce a fainting fit. In private temples, and in the better-arranged apartments of the big ones, a series of cabinets-de-toilette gets over the difficulty. But in such places as the corner pavilion of T’an Chüeh Ssu it b
ecomes necessary to explore. Accordingly they explored. The two ends and the back of the courtyard were enclosed by the outer wall of the monastery itself, which was here a sort of rampart against the actual slope of the hill, from which the courtyard had been scooped out – a wall of large uneven bricks or stones with a slight batter which took it barely off the vertical, and overgrown with moss. It was possible, they found, to squeeze round one end of the pavilion into the long narrow chasm behind, between it and the wall. This particular exploration produced some notable results later in the day, and is therefore recorded.
Vinstead was astonished, later, to remember the peaceable casual way in which they strolled about the temple after that. They went and admired the giant gingko tree and his smaller wife, in the greatest court of all; Miss Hande was intrigued by their curious fern-like foliage, and deeply interested to learn that the gingko is really a tree of the Coal Epoch, geologically, and no longer found wild anywhere in the world.
‘How like the Chinese, isn’t it?’ said Derek, ‘to preserve a tree from the Coal Age in their temples till now. Just the sort of thing they would do.’