by Ann Bridge
‘Then I suppose he told you about Nicholas too?’ said Grace.
‘He tells me first of all, and with great triumph, that he has discovered the talent of the century,’ Halther said, with his peculiar combination of the benign and the sardonic in his expression, ‘and that he has made a contract with him. I ask him how the difficulties with the Herr Papa are overcome, and he says that he ignores this altogether – ‘Je paye, moi; pour le reste, Madame s’en charge!’ He reproduced M. Breuil’s accent of incisive indifference so exactly that Grace and Walter both laughed.
‘Poor Madame had rather a tough time with the General,’ said Walter, ‘but she brought it off.’
‘Madame can, I think, bring anything off if she applies herself to it,’ Halther replied. ‘But, gnädige Frau, how you have deceived me!’ he added, turning to her.
‘Deceived you? I?’
‘For over a fortnight I meet, for over a week I have under my roof one of the two modern artists whose work I most admire, but which, because of the cupidity of the old Breuil, I can never afford to buy!’ he said, shaking his forefinger at her accusingly.
‘I was incognito,’ said Grace gaily. ‘That isn’t deceit!’
‘You hide your pictures,’ he went on – ‘I do not see one stroke of your brush but the under-painting of a single toile, this day by the river. If I had seen a picture I should have known. Is not this deceit?’ he asked, turning to Sir Walter.
‘Odious deceit,’ agreed Walter. He was beginning to like the Professor, and it amused him to hear him ragging Grace.
‘That wasn’t deliberate,’ said Grace, also amused.
The Professor looked from her to Walter and back again, as if weighing something in his mind, before he spoke next.
‘And this lady who is not clever, whose lack of intelligence so troubles her, is famous throughout Europe and America! For all this lack of intelligence, she is an artist whose work only millionaires can afford!’
Walter glanced with raised eyebrows at the Professor at this speech, and then at Grace. She blushed a little, but answered readily enough.
‘I don’t think intelligence and painting have really much to do with one another,’ she said. ‘People can paint fearfully well and yet be very stupid about living; in fact I think the better they are at painting the stupider they are about all the rest. Look at Emanuel James! He’s quite good in any simple straightforward crisis, like people dying, or a motor smash, but he’s almost idiotic about daily life and human beings.’
Walter listened to this interchange with considerable curiosity. Grace and the Professor had evidently got onto what he called very rational terms; but that wasn’t a thing Grace usually did with anyone. And though she might have recognised that she was stupid, since when had she learned to talk about it in this easy way? For she went on, the next moment, since the Professor merely grinned at her – ‘That certainly wasn’t deceiving you – to tell you I wasn’t clever. You can ask my husband. He’ll bear me out.’ And she glanced, with a very serene little smile, at Walter.
‘My dear Grace!’ Walter protested. ‘Have I ever said you weren’t intelligent?’
‘Oh, Walter darling! Where do you expect to go?’ She turned to the Professor. ‘Doctor Halther, I promised that I would go and see the Signora – will you excuse me if I go now and then come back for tea? We want to stay for tea!’
‘That you must! Do this, gnädige Frau!’
‘And you can cross-examine him while I’m away!’ she said, nodding at her husband. ‘No, don’t get up! I’ll come back as quickly as I can.’ And she went off, leaving the two men under the ilex.
It is not easy to pay a surprise visit in Komolac. Lady Kilmichael found the whole establishment at the Tete Mare hoping expectantly for her appearance; the Signora in her best black sprigged dress, Teta setting out coffee cups in the garden. She answered the enquiries about Nicholas, described the sudden arrival of her husband and her daughter, and heard such local news as there was.
‘And now with your famiglia you return home, back to Inghilterra?’ the Signora asked at length.
Grace answered – ‘Si, domani, probabilmente’ before she thought what she was saying. She laughed then. The Signora smiled too – she thought the English lady was laughing with happiness at the idea of going home. And Grace was in fact happy as well as amused to find that her decision to go back with the others next day had taken itself so easily that she had never noticed it.
Before she left she asked the Signora to let her go up to her old room. She stood looking out through the window to the cypresses on the island, whose shadows were beginning to slant through air which looked almost as solid as clear gold, so thick all through it lay the afternoon sunshine. As she stood there, the flock of pigeons wheeled out over the river, circled round those grey-green spires, and returned; she watched them, remembering how in her first days at Komolac their flight had seemed to her an image of her own freedom. Now she was going back to her old life, to the prison-house, as she had thought it then, from which she had escaped; but she was going gladly and without dismay.
A sound roused her, shattering the afternoon stillness outside – the grinding rattle of the bus, setting off on its return journey to Gruz. She watched it, from the other window, pass in its cloud of white dust along the road. The last time she had heard the bus set off, in this room, was the morning of Nicholas’s illness, when she believed that he was on it – and she remembered how she had lain in bed, startled almost to indignation at the unexpected pain of parting from him. Well, she was going to part from him tomorrow – and no one was going to Greece this time! But somehow the pain was much less sharp. She would miss him; she would love him – not always, but probably for a long time, she thought, with her inveterate honesty and moderation – but there were all the other people she loved so much too, Linnet and the boys and Walter. Remembering the sharpness of that past pain, she had a sense of having emerged from a dream into waking reality, where familiar figures stood all about her, instead of just one face of dream-enchantment. Nicholas wasn’t a dream, of course, and she recognised honestly the depth of her feeling for him; but somehow that feeling was now manageable – she need not feel indignant at its tyranny. ‘Perhaps this is freedom, too,’ she thought, as she went downstairs.
Tea was already laid, out by the fountain, when she got back to the villa, and Walter and the Professor were discussing the relation of philosophy to the higher mathematics with every appearance of satisfaction. She poured out for them, without joining in the conversation – it gave her immense pleasure to watch them together, to note the interest in each face, the quick response of one mind to the other which their tones of voice, more than anything else, betrayed. But they reached a conclusion of some sort, presently, and when tea was over Walter did a thing for which her heart applauded him. While he was here, he said, he ought really to see the source of the Ombla; if Dr Halther would permit, he would go and look at it, and come back and pick up his wife. And he went off, leaving Grace and the Professor together.
When the gate in the hedge had given its familiar click behind Walter, Dr Halther looked across at Lady Kilmichael and said ‘Na?’
She smiled at him, but did not answer at once. She liked the comfortable intimacy of that little monosyllable of interrogation. It was nice to be back here again in the garden, talking to him by herself. How odd it was she thought, that she should want to talk to him by herself; that there should be things she could speak of to him that she did not speak of to Walter. It wasn’t exactly having secrets from Walter, it was just that these things belonged to a relationship which was independent of him, which was all her own. It struck her suddenly that this had never happened before; in all her married life, except with women, she had never had a relationship of her own like this. Walter talked to the men; she listened, or went away. Now there were two men, Nicholas and the Professor, with whom it was desirable that she should talk alone, because she had her own relationship with them. And
oddest of all was the fact that in spite of the novelty of this situation, Walter should instantly recognise it and sanction it, first with Nicholas, now with the Professor. That was very clever of Walter, and very nice.
‘Na?’ Dr Halther repeated, as she still did not speak.
‘I’m very happy,’ she said, smiling at him.
‘That is good,’ he said. ‘You have reason, I think. You are fortunate in your husband. I like him extremely. As an intellect I admired him always, but as a man he is also höchst sympathisch. I know you deserve your good fortune, but people do not always get what they deserve.’
‘No, I know. I’m glad you like him,’ she said simply.
They talked for some time then of the Humphries family, of Breuil and his plans for Nicholas, and of her return to England, a move which Dr Halther applauded. At length – ‘And the little Nicholas – what does he think of it all?’ he asked.
‘He’s really glad about his work, I think; he was a little bewildered at first.’
‘And what does he think about that which is not his work?’ he asked, with his remorseless glance.
She laughed. ‘I wasn’t hedging – I was coming to that! I think that is all right too. We had a talk – after the others had come.’
‘Well, and did he open his heart at last, der arme Junge?’
She looked ahead of her. ‘It was more his spirit,’ she said at last. ‘He did it – very beautifully, really,’ she said, turning to him.
‘That I believe. He has great quality. And now?’
She hesitated for a moment. ‘I think now’ she said, with a slight effort, ‘that probably he will very soon fall in love with somebody else, somebody of his own age, which is exactly what he ought to do!’
He gave her a long keen look from under his bushy brows. ‘Brava!’ he said at length, significantly.
She widened her eyes at him, at that – and then blushed. ‘You are quite right,’ she said, with a funny little smile – ‘you always know everything! When did you guess?’
‘With a person of your honesty and simplicity, this is not so difficult, to know things!’ he answered, rather more gravely than she expected. ‘When I guessed I am not sure – perhaps from the first. But not from any lack of discretion on your part. It is only that, as you know, I use for others these categories into which we do not care to put ourselves! – and when one sees a woman who is not happy with her family, who feels defeated and a failure, greatly loved and admired by someone else, one shall expect that her heart will make some response!’ He paused – his cheroot had gone out, and he threw it away. ‘But one thing I saw which I had not expected to see,’ he said.
‘What was that?’
‘Something outside all my categories, gnädige Frau – a self-restraint so perfect that it made tenderness unafraid. This cannot have been so easy.’
She blushed deeply at the unexpected praise. ‘Thank you,’ was all she said.
The latch of the gate clicked again. Dr Halther rose, came over to her, and kissed her hand. ‘Your husband also loves you very much!’ he said, as Walter came in at the gate.
TWENTY-SIX
Linnet and Nicholas had not returned when the others got back to the Imperial, and when they had bathed and changed, and came down for dinner, there was still no sign of them. ‘It’s no good waiting,’ said Walter, as the clock struck eight – ‘Linnet’s probably dragged him off to do something quite mad. Let’s begin.’ They went into the dining room, where the rather good small orchestra was playing at one end, and sat down. But before they were halfway through their soup the pair appeared, newly browned with the sun, sandy, dishevelled, and in tearing spirits. They had had the brilliant idea of chartering the vecchio piroscafo’s boat and sailing round the Lapad promontory to the bathing beach on the seaward side; and coming back, with the wind against them, they had had to row, and got late. ‘So sorry, Mums,’ said Linnet nicely, at the end of this recital.
‘Well, sit down now, and have some dinner – don’t bother to change,’ said her father.
‘No, I won’t change, but I must just tidy up,’ she said, rising from the chair into which she had dropped.
‘Why? You look perfectly nice as you are,’ said Nicholas. ‘You won’t better yourself!’
‘Oh, very well!’ she said, sketching the very slightest moue at the young man, as she reseated herself and began to look at the menu. Grace noticed that the girl’s lips were much less red than usual, and that there was nothing but a touch of powder on her face; she had evidently refrained from making up afresh after her bathe. She smiled to herself – Nicholas was making a beginning with his proposed reforms, it seemed. The pair of them had evidently got onto quite different terms in the course of the day – they were ‘Linnet’ and ‘Nicholas,’ they were teasing and at ease. And she remembered the idea she had had weeks before, of how well they would ‘do’ for one another. That gave her a small pang, now – and seeing them together, so gay and equal, she thought suddenly ‘He doesn’t need to forget her age!’ It was surprising how sharply that hurt. Talking, listening to their adventures, smiling and responding, she fought down this irrational pain. It wasn’t what she had gone for, his love and admiration; she hadn’t sought it for herself, she had tried honestly to put it aside, to ‘let him off his own feelings lightly.’ Then what could be better than that he should like Linnet? Why should she mind if it should be taken away, his immediate personal love of her? But though her mind and will obeyed her reason, the place inside still hurt, like the place whence a thorn has been withdrawn. Let it hurt, then, she told herself stoutly, as they passed out onto the terrace for coffee; and it continued to do so, obediently, when Nicholas, having given her her cup as she liked it, sat down on the further side of the little table to pursue some argument with Linnet. She talked quietly with Walter, but the effort was fantastically severe; it actually made her head ache. And then the orchestra began to play ‘Morgen’, with a clarinet solo.
Lady Kilmichael pushed her chair a little further back, into the shadow of a palm. She heard Nicholas interrupt Linnet with ‘Half-a-minute – do you mind? I want to listen to this.’ As the secretive melody was gradually unfolded and released, and the clarinet came in, carrying the part of the voice, she remembered the fortress of Clissa, standing up insubstantial as a shadow thrown on a wall against the paleness of Mount Mossor; remembered how darkly the river broadened to the sea as they came drifting round the bend of the Ombla, and she sang to please Nicholas; remembered that scrawled and panic-stricken postscript to his note of farewell. But these things, she thought, pulling her mind away from the intruding images, were not what the song meant – they were just its pilgrims, a train of rather pitiful disciples, attached to it only by her remembering heart. The music meant something different. And suddenly, as happens sometimes to thoroughly unmusical people who listen with the heart, at the bidding of the unfolded harmonies a picture sprang out in her mind, as clear and unexpected as that picture of the town which sprang out under the ship’s searchlights the night she and Nicholas came down the coast – a picture so lovely that she closed her eyes against quick tears. It was of Linnet and Nicholas, those two so terribly dear to her, coming up hand in hand from some shore, bounded by a wide-flung blue horizon, in their faces that grave look of absolute security and rapture which is the song’s meaning. How strange this was – though the real pair were sitting just opposite to her, only hidden by her lowered eyelids, this picture had far more intensity, as if seen under a brighter light, than their living faces only a few seconds before. And it was lovely, this vision, and peaceable – so lovely and so peaceable that it was taking all that desperate and humiliating pain away. She breathed deeply, testing herself for loss of pain, as one does when morphia begins to take effect. No – it was gone. The music was sealing up its secret again, at the close; but now she held the core of the secret within her. She opened her eyes, as it came to an end. Nicholas came over and took her cup. ‘More coffee, Lady K.?’ he asked
.
‘No, thank you, Nicholas.’
‘How awful the coffee was at Clissa,’ he said, sitting down beside her. ‘Do you remember?’
The words and tone were like a hand held out. (One must take a hand held out, but neither cling to it, nor press it.)
‘Yes – simply frightful. Nicholas, do show Linnet the sketch you did of the pink flowers at Clissa – she’d love to see it.’
‘Your sketches were better, and they give more of an idea of the whole place.’
‘Well, fetch mine down too, and show her the whole lot.’ And for the rest of the evening she watched the two heads, the yellow and the dark, bent together over the sketchbooks. She could do this now with a sort of satisfied calm. To her surprise she found herself once remembering the sickroom at Komolac, with the monkey tree outside the window, and Nicholas playing feebly with her unresisting hand. That was odd, because this was not really in the least the same; except – yes, that once more she had fought her way into freedom from the tyranny of her own feelings. And she smiled then, so that Walter asked what the joke was. ‘I was thinking of the way Teddy talks,’ was all she said. She had been thinking that Teddy’s way of expressing her thought just then would undoubtedly have been ‘Freedom is the ticket!’
At bedtime Linnet followed her Mother into her room and gave her that very unwonted thing, an uninvited kiss, as she said good night. Having said good night, however, she did not go to bed – she hung about, fiddling with her Mother’s toilet things and the new silver jewellery, and chattering. ‘Lapad was lovely, Mums,’ she observed presently; ‘this is a lovely place. I wish that old steamer wasn’t coming back tomorrow night – I should have liked to stay here another week. There’s such masses to see.’ Grace agreed. Linnet, still dangling the silver necklace, pouring it from one hand to the other, seemed unable to leave the room – presently she came over to her Mother, and draped the splendid ornament across her breast, from shoulder to shoulder, like an alderman’s chain. ‘You look like the Lord Mayor!’ she said, with a soft giggle, and went on, without any pause – ‘Mums, Nicholas is rather a pearl, you know.’