by Ann Bridge
Poppy is much better, but not the old self yet. I believe it’s nothing but fuss about Mums that’s keeping him back. We got letters here, but no word of her, of course. People can’t die now without getting into the papers, as I keep on telling him – but I do think it rather odd of her not to realise that he would fuss. They are so funny, those two. He does nothing but trample rather elegantly on Mums when she’s there, but when he mislays her completely for a few weeks he nearly dies of worry – and she’s utterly taken in by the trampling, and I don’t think realises in the least that she matters more to him than twenty Roses. Mums isn’t at all good at realising things – she’s really so madly humble, although she does try to stand on her rights at intervals.
It was perhaps partly this mad humility which made Lady Kilmichael show Nicholas her letter to his mother before she sealed it up. ‘Yes – I think that’ll do very well,’ he said, handing it back to her. ‘It won’t fuss her – you make it clear it’s all over now. But why do you write like that?’
‘Like what?’
‘As though you’d had nothing to do with it. You might be just a person staying in the village, from that letter; instead of having slaved night and day for me, and ruined your hands!’
‘I don’t think your Mother would be particularly interested in my hands!’ said Grace cheerfully, licking the flap of the envelope.
‘I shall tell her what a saint you’ve been, all the same,’ he said.
‘All right – it will come better from you.’ She gave a little laugh. ‘I wish Linnet could hear you!’
‘Doesn’t Linnet see that you’re rather an angel?’ he asked, with a sort of simple curiosity.
‘No, of course not. Nobody does but you, you silly child! Now take this Benger.’
He took it, but after a moment or two of imbibing he removed his lips from the cup, to grin at her with almost his old impudence.
‘I bet you the Professor does!’ he said.
TWENTY
Lady Kilmichael’s own views on her humility did not quite square with Linnet’s. During the last days at the villa, before they returned to the Imperial, she was comfortably aware of a sort of fatherly approval in Dr Halther’s attitude to her; and she was struck by the fact that this approval, and still more Nicholas’s idealising attitude, made her feel much more humble than she had ever felt at home. There, with Walter and Linnet constantly criticising her, she was always on the defensive, justifying herself to herself, seeking excuses, thinking how much she did for them, and how little she was in fault; whereas here, where Nicholas (in the intervals between being distinctly cross and offhand) made it clear that he thought her far more clever and good than she in fact knew herself to be, she was becoming much more honest and clear-sighted about her own faults and weaknesses. Now she was willing and even eager to recognise them. It was very odd! And thus introduced to the uses of appreciation, Lady Kilmichael, in her painstaking fashion, thought it all out. Obviously this linked on to what the Professor had said about amour propre; now that her amour propre was not wounded, she was all right. But that would not do; one couldn’t depend on that sort of nourishment. One must learn what one was like, and then be what one ought, independently of the opinion of other people, whether good or ill. Then one would be free. And thinking this, in little sentences which she said over to herself – it was her way of trying to get things clear – suddenly she laughed. How amused Walter would be at her making this discovery for herself, at her age! Because after all this was a thing that, in other words, one was taught in the schoolroom. Only words, unluckily, taught one so little; it was only when the things happened to oneself, and when the words got into your heart, that they came to have any meaning, and really did you any good. Truth, she thought, all the truths that anyone could need to lead an admirable, a nearly perfect life, lay spread out all round one all the time – but one had got to annex them, as it were, conquer them by force and make them one’s own, before one could use them.
She was sitting up on the little hill with the battered chapel on its summit, one hot afternoon, when this particular idea crystallised in her mind – it was perhaps the sunny fields spread out on all sides below her which prompted the form of her reflections about truth. For the last day or two Nicholas had been able to come down and spend some hours in the garden in a deckchair, and she rather gladly left him to Dr Halther’s company, and took herself off to walk or sketch. She had been surprised how soon he began to look normal again; his face filled out as if by magic as soon as he stopped being sick – this, Dr Roget had explained, was due to the normal supply of fluid being restored to the body. But she found that his return of strength did not keep pace by any means with the improvement in his appearance – it came back very slowly. Naturally, Roget told her; such a bout knocked a person out pretty thoroughly, and he would need care about food and fatigue for some time to come. But he could well be left now, and she was glad sometimes to be alone. She had taken her sketchbook today, but she was not sketching; she just sat quietly in the shade of the cypresses on the dry pale turf, idly noticing through her thoughts all sorts of little things – the smooth nut-like silvery knobs, almost as bright as silver foil, on the trunks of the larger cypresses; a great vetch with flowers of mixed maroon and lemon-yellow, up and down whose stalks ants were running, for some purpose which she could not guess; the extreme delicacy and grace of a slender blue veronica, with pointed heads of bloom over two inches long – it had a sort of lovely poise, erect, but slightly drooping at the tips; like a firm character which can yet show a gracious flexibility, she thought. The air was full of the faint resinous fragrance of the cypresses, brought out by the sun, and the whirring of the grasshoppers – that scent and that sound, restful and sleepy, seemed so much a part of the air that the fancy came to her that she breathed them in with it. That was the sort of idea for which Dr Halther would remonstrate with her, smiling and shaking his great head – there was no ‘clear thought’ there! And thinking of him, she remembered their first conversation that other afternoon, up on the chapel steps, only a few yards above where she now sat, when he had so scourged her folly in not foreseeing that Nicholas would fall in love with her. It seemed a long time ago, though really it was not yet a fortnight.
She sighed a little. The illness had caused a lull, a sort of truce to this problem, but as soon as he got well it would have to be faced again. In a way it was beginning again even now. Nicholas might idealise her, but he took it out of her too! As he got better he was increasingly short with her, increasingly restive under her care – and the better he got, the worse this would become. She guessed dimly at the cause, some revolt in him against his own feelings – she could even sympathise with it. She had already less actual nursing to do, and as soon as she got him back to the Imperial, and he was properly on his feet again, she would leave him. She could, she felt, really go home very soon now; she was almost equal to that, and she ought to go.
Lady Kilmichael and Nicholas went back to the Imperial at Ragusa a couple of days later. Grace was startled, when it came to the point, at the liveliness of the regret which she felt at leaving the villa. On the last morning she went down early to fetch something which Nicholas had left under the ilex – she stood there for a moment, looking round her almost with surprise. Dew lay grey on the lawn, and clung mistily to the flowers; the spray fell into the pool with a clear gentle noise. All this – the fountain, the ilex with its marble seat, the buckthorns and the roses were now familiar to her with an intense and individual familiarity. They were really the same this morning as on the day, three weeks ago, when she first glanced in through the villa gate on her way down from painting the irises, and thought that the garden was planned with great taste – but for her they were different. Places and objects which have as it were escorted us through certain experiences take on this individual quality – they become the companions who share our memories. Grace felt this then. She would miss that garden – some part of her would always belong there, mo
re than anywhere else in the world. She would miss the Professor too, she thought, as she went back to the house. His wisdom, his clarity of thought, his strength and kindness had not only instructed her, they had in some way supported her too; leaving him, she felt rather small and chilled. She would try to put his precepts into practice, go forward; soon she would be going home, to test her new knowledge among the old surroundings; but a child going to school, she thought, though full to the brim of good advice and good resolutions, must feel much as she felt now.
Roberto drove them in the car. He had taken Grace in once in the morning, with an advance load of luggage, canvases and painting equipment, and she had done some preliminary unpacking in their rooms at the Imperial so that Nicholas should be able to rest undisturbed when he arrived, after the exertion of the drive. She came back to lunch, and immediately afterwards they set out. Dr Halther, in his yellow suit, came with them to the gate. ‘Viel Glück with the painting,’ he said to Nicholas. ‘Perhaps one day my friend Mr Humphries of Vienna shall be famous!’
‘Goodbye,’ said Grace, holding out her hand. ‘You have been so good to us.’
He bowed over her hand and kissed it. ‘Auf Wiedersehen, meine Gnädigste,’ he said. Emerging into the lane outside the villa they found quite a small crowd clustered round the car, waiting to see them off – both the Orlandos, the niece (who would certainly be late for afternoon school), the innkeeper, Grace’s little porter, Teta, nodding her white head, Maria, and the bus driver. There were handshakings, cries, farewells; then the car moved slowly out onto the fondamento, and gathered speed along it.
‘How sweet of them!’ said Grace, sitting back after a last wave from the window.
‘Mmm,’ grunted Nicholas. ‘Well, that’s that.’ As the car turned into the main road she leant out to take a last look at the river, the square bulk of the Restauracija Tete Mare, the whole clean serene prettiness of Komolac, spread out in the afternoon sunshine. She remembered with what pleasure she had seen it on that first afternoon, and with what a sense of satisfaction she had gone there next day, to escape from Nicholas. She had thought she was doing that for his sake; but had some part of her, wiser than the rest, unconsciously prompted that move as an escape from her own feelings, while yet she was unaware of them? She could not tell. Anyhow it hadn’t been any good, she thought, leaning back in the car; that effort at freedom had come to what Teddy would call a sticky end. She had only been free for three days, after that she had been more involved with Nicholas than ever – and now here she was, committed to looking after him for at least another week, bless him; and entangled in her own emotions into the bargain. Rather helplessly, she wondered what the outcome would be. It could have no outcome, really; it would just have to come to an end. And till it came to an end, the only thing was to keep kindness in it. What was he thinking about, staring so fixedly ahead of him? Did he know what she was thinking? He so often did know. And just then Nicholas spoke.
‘That’s where you sang ‘Morgen,’ coming down the river,’ he said, pointing to the green stream below them. ‘I remember that ruined house on the bank; we were passing it as you began.’
‘Oh, were we?’ said Lady Kilmichael.
The change to Ragusa did Nicholas good. After a few days he was able to begin painting again, a little in the morning and a little in the afternoon. He got two pictures going for the two different lights – one of San Salvatore before lunch, and in the afternoons one of the view down across the deserted Piazza delle Erbe. Grace finished her picture of the Stradone – really it meant practically beginning it all over again, for the quality of the light had altered in the last three weeks; the noonday shadows were shorter, the sunlight hotter and more intense. Then she began one of the Franciscan cloister, at which she worked in the mornings; and in the afternoons she was doing a funny little vista down a small dark street and across the corner of a shadowed square, a vista closed by the façade of the Duomo, brilliantly lit up by the western sun. It was only a hundred yards or so from where Nicholas sat in the Piazza, and she had chosen it partly so that without apparently watching over him she could hunt him away when the shadows got too chilly.
She was sitting there one afternoon, working away, and thinking that she could safely go on for another half-hour at least, when to her surprise as she glanced down towards the Duomo she saw Nicholas go up the steps and into the church. How odd of him! She supposed that he must be going to have a look at the Memling, as she had often urged him to do.
But the sight of him made her put her brush down and begin to think about him again. Since they got back to Ragusa he had been very much withdrawn into himself; the old easy confidence between them was impaired – she felt that she never knew what his mind was up to, now. She guessed that their silence on the subject which must be as much in his thoughts as in hers might be oppressive to him, but so far she could not bring herself to do anything to break it. Halther had said emphatically that she ought to give him a chance to speak – ‘some expression such feelings must have, gnädige Frau.’ But the more she thought about it, the more some instinct told her that it would in the long run be easier for both of them if nothing was said. Of course such feelings craved expression – but not only by talking, as a rule! And if once he started to speak of it, she would find it hard, in the face of his sincerity, not to show an equal truth about herself – and that could not help. Married, and twice his age, what could come of it? That was always the point to which she came back. It had never occurred to Lady Kilmichael to take any but the practical view of love. Love ought to lead to marriage – if it didn’t do that, it could only lead to disaster or waste. And no exhortations could change her view.
Her thoughts went round it again and again. She felt sure that in this Walter would agree with the Professor; she could hear him saying airily – ‘Lord, yes, let the boy go to it and kiss you as much as he likes. Do him all the good in the world.’ Walter would think her hesitations foolish, prudish and cowardly. Perhaps they were. If she could be sure that free expression would be the best thing for Nicholas, of course she would want him to have it. But her instinct reiterated that between him and her such a thing would be – ‘inappropriate’ was the modest word her mind found for it. There was a real thing which she and Nicholas had got, improbable though it might seem – a very genuine and happy affection, trust and pleasure in each other. That was all right – that could be glad and permanent. But Lady Kilmichael felt that this other element was somehow fortuitous, an intrusion, with no possible solution or permanence in it; and that to acknowledge it and give it free expression might imperil the rather delicate and valuable thing which they had got.
Presently she saw Nicholas come out of the Duomo again. He stood on the steps for a moment or two, before he walked slowly down them and disappeared in the direction of the Piazza delle Erbe. Seen at that distance, his solitary and unconscious figure had a curious significance, like that of a person in a film; Grace had a swift impression, as he paused on the great steps, of someone who was lost, adrift – who really did not know which way to turn. The tears sprang to her eyes at the sight – little phrases came crowding to her lips. ‘Darling child! Dear love! If only I knew, too! But I don’t, any more than you.’ Then she scolded herself for silliness, wiped her eyes, re-did her face, and bundled her things together – it was getting chilly, and he had been at work quite long enough; they would go and have coffee down at the restaurant opposite San Biagio, in the Piazza.
Nicholas seemed quite ready to knock off when she rejoined him, and they put their canvases and easels into a barber’s shop at the corner of the square, as usual. One of the nice things about Ragusa, as Nicholas always said, was the unquestioning readiness of the inhabitants to assist in any enterprise save their own legitimate ones; anybody would knock off whatever he was doing to show the way, give unasked advice about a picture, find a place to bestow it, or produce rags or a stool. Signor Lassi, the photographer, had abandoned his shop to two very immature as
sistants for a whole hour one morning in order to escort Lady Kilmichael in person to find the little carved fragment set above a door in a wall which is all that is left of the Church of Holy Stephen, the earliest building remaining in the city today.
They had their coffee, and then Nicholas suggested a walk. ‘Yes, I’d love to – only not too far – I don’t feel very active,’ said Grace.
‘Are you tired?’
‘A tiny bit – I’d like to stretch my legs, but not to go miles,’ replied Grace, who wasn’t tired in the least, but thought that Nicholas ought not to walk too much. They strolled out through the passage under the belfry tower and skirted the harbour, past the great arched recesses in the walls into which ships were formerly drawn – these are now for the most part walled up, but small doors here and there led into cavernous depths, gloomy and smelling faintly nautical, in which small odd trades were carried on – a tinsmith, a repairer of wine barrels, a sail-maker all functioned there. They lingered a little by the harbour – some wine boats from the islands were drawn up by the quay, and Nicholas commented on their quite extraordinary resemblance to Roman galleys. Then they went up to the Porta Ploce and the coast road, and followed it round below the Monte Sergio – when they were nearly back at the Borgo the sight of one of the many flights of steps leading down from the steep hillside prompted a suggestion from Nicholas that they should go up and see the sunset over the town.
They climbed up, flight after flight, sometimes between walls overhung with palms and roses, sometimes looking down into gardens where houses, washed pink or yellow or pale green, stood luscious as blocks of ice cream among the spears of agaves and the green spiny oddity of cactuses. At last they reached a height where the city lay spread out below them; along the walls the mediaeval strangeness of tower and bastion was defined by transparent blue shadows, blue as the sea beyond; within them the city roofs, blurred with the smoke of evening cooking, glowed like a misty opal. Up here they were still in sunshine, and it was warm – they sat down on a seat, and began talking idly, amusing themselves by trying to pick out various buildings from the huddle of roofs crammed within the walls; they argued about them and laughed, more at ease than they had been for some time.