Four-Part Setting

by Ann Bridge

  “I will,” she said. But before she spoke again she freed her hand, and turned rather away from him.

  “There are things about him that I do love, rather,” she began. “He—well for one thing he has made me understand what loving with one’s body ought to be, the extraordinary way in which anything whatever is easy to say, after that—and the sort of warmness of interest in the other person. I certainly didn’t realise that anything like so much before. I do think people ought to be told how important physical love is,” she went on, speaking a little more easily, “just because of how it can add to the other side of love. But we aren’t told that, by the people who specialise in the other side of loving; and the people who specialise in the physical side don’t seem to know or care anything about the other. So the two things are sort of set apart in our minds, instead of being brought together.”

  “Bringing the two sides of love together isn’t a perfectly simple thing, actually,” he said.

  “I daresay not. But I do think that people ought to realise more than they do that that is the thing to work towards, the aim; instead of being led to suppose, either that the two sides of love are somehow opposed, or else that one is very much more important than the other, whichever school of thought you happen to belong to.”

  He nearly laughed, at that. She certainly had learnt something.

  “I agree with you,” he said. But there was something else he had to say.

  “Now that you have learnt about this, do you think that you can put it into practice with Henry?” he asked.

  “No—I’ve told you. That’s the damnable part of it. He’s so darling in lots of ways, but somehow he doesn’t go far enough.” She pushed her hair up off her face with both hands. “All the things—no, but most of them—that were capable of being perfect with Charles, if we could have got the rest right, couldn’t exist with him, because they don’t exist for him. You know that, Antony.”

  “Yes, I do know it,” he said. “But that is why I had to make sure that you see it yourself.”

  The sound of a small stone falling made them look round. The caravan had come up with them, unnoticed—it went winding down past them, the little grey heads of the donkeys, the parti-coloured loads, the occasional Union Jacks moving in and out between the glossy green bushes, overtopped by the blue tunics and shabby straw hats of the donkey-boys. Rose sighed.

  “Oh dear, what a mess it is!” she said.

  “Yes, it’s a mess,” Antony agreed.

  Her mind, stirred to unwonted clarity and activity, ran swiftly over her situation. Should she try again with Charles?—if he would? Should she, for very shame, stick to Henry, even to the point of marrying him? Shall I ask Antony that? she thought—and she said aloud—

  “I wonder what I had better do now?”

  “You’ll have to think that out for yourself,” he said. He rose as he spoke. “Come on—we must get along after them. Goodness knows what we shall find at Hong-An.”

  Rose stood up too.

  “I think you’ll probably have to help me,” she said, as she started to slither down through the bushes onto the path.

  A camping-trip in North China is a peculiarly poor place for introspection, or moral instruction, or anything of the sort. Something is always happening—things keep on happening in the most distracting way. It was only thanks to Rose’s fleetness of foot, as we have seen, that Lydiard had managed to fit in the conversation on which he was determined on the way down from Por Hua Shan; and barely three and a half hours later they ran into fresh local excitements. Hong-An was quiet enough, when they reached it—a modest village, where they lunched peacefully in the shade of a group of slender aspens beside a stream, watched by the usual crowd of old women, old men, and children; the able-bodied of both sexes, at mid-day, were at work in the fields. Of bandits there was no sign.

  They crossed the main Ch’ing-Shui (Clear Water) valley just below Hong-An, and took a track leading up towards a tributary valley coming in from the north-west. Down here the going was perfectly flat, the cultivation dense; there were rough stone walls on each side of the track, and at intervals of about 200 yards shallow depressions, some twenty feet long and roughly paved with stones, had been scooped out in it—wayside weeds had been cut down and thrown into these hollows. Rose, who had lingered behind the rest and was walking with the pack-train, soon learned what they were for. At each one, the men whistled suggestively and encouragingly to their animals, and one or another of the donkeys halted and voided excreta or urine; she noticed then that there was no trace of dung on the track between the hollows. The most frugal race in the world, and the best agriculturalists, the Chinese by this means take toll of the precious manure even of the passing beast—and the traveller, knowing the vital importance of what he does, willingly co-operates.

  About 3.30 they reached Tu Chia Chuang, the Village of the Tu Family, which lay just in the mouth of the tributary valley, and settled down in the village school for the night. The school, which lay on the outskirts of the village, possessed a charming walled courtyard of green turf shaded with willow-trees, where the tents were set up, and had a pretty t’ai at the further end commanding a view down the valley and across the maize-fields to the river. Sitting at tea on this t’ai, though they could see the view, the high walls of the courtyard completely shut out their immediate surroundings, and when loud sounds arose down by the door, the shuffling of feet, cries and scufflings, they could not see what was going on. “It sounds like what the insurance companies call ‘civil commotion’,” said Hillier; “I’ll go and look”—and he swung himself down off the t’ai, walked the length of the courtyard, and attempted to open the door. It would not move. The others saw him glance at the wall, find a couple of toe-holds, and pull himself up till his elbows rested on its green-tiled top. He craned over for a moment, then dropped down and came leisurely back to them.

  “What is it, Roy?” Antony asked.

  “Someone seems to be burying their dead at our gate,” Hillier replied, re-seating himself. “They’ve planted a brand new coffin plumb across the door, and they’re all standing round it, shouting.”

  “Lawks!” said Anastasia. “What can they be up to?”

  “T’ao-pings, my dear Asta—there are sure to be t’ao-pings in it somewhere,” Henry assured her.

  He was quite right. When they had finished tea, while Hargreaves and Hillier and the two women, seated on the top of the wall, watched the proceedings below, Lydiard made enquiries. The coffin was intended for the second of the Por Hua Shan hostages, who belonged to the Tu village and had, sure enough, been shot by his captors when some unusually spirited villagers went off in pursuit of them. His corpse was expected at any moment, and the entire population of the village gradually assembled to await it, grouped along the little dusty track and round the ark-like camphor-wood coffin which stood, propped on trestles, across the doorway. One and all kept up a dismal keening, crying out “Ai-yah! ai-yah!”, the traditional mourning cry for twenty centuries past. When the corpse itself arrived, wrapped in white cotton cloth, the scene was almost indescribable—the female relations, old and young, flung themselves on the ground, tearing at their clothes, screaming and moaning, and were dragged off by sympathisers; others sat in the dust of the roadway rocking to and fro, beating their breasts with their hands, grimacing horribly, and giving the same cry, which was echoed by the whole crowd and resounded up and down the valley, rising and falling in a curious dreary rhythm. It seemed astonishing that the human voice alone could produce such a volume of sound. When after about half-an-hour of it the Europeans, deafened and distressed, walked across the fields to the river, armed with towels and sponge-bags, to get a wash, they by no means escaped the noise of lamentation—desolate, monotonous and loud, it was still all round them, echoing from the hills, falling back, it seemed, from the very sky. Spaced out along the white stony margin of the stream, they washed in gloomy silence, without any of the usual cheerful disputes as to who sh
ould have the top beat, to avoid the soap-suds of the rest. Gloomily they returned, entering the school by a little doorway giving onto another courtyard, in which the school-house proper stood, and gloomily, presently, they had supper with the noise of wailing still in their ears.

  Indeed the whole business, as Lydiard unfolded it, chiefly for Hillier’s benefit, made them quite sick with pity, anger and disgust. Here were the wretched villagers, frugal, industrious, content, as helpless and as harmless as sheep, completely at the mercy of the bands of wandering soldiers, who were themselves none too well off: they had been abandoned by their officers, their headquarters had shifted God knew where across unmapped, roadless and largely waterless country, often of the wildest sort; they had almost certainly received no pay for months past, and were now trickling back to civilisation as best they could, with nothing but their rifles and the uniforms they stood up in. The real blame, as Antony pointed out, lay with the miserable Tuchuns (warlords), who made their futile and unceasing wars year after year, solely in their own interest, and with no coherent or patriotic purpose whatever.

  For hours the wailing went on—sometimes there were short intervals, but it was always resumed again. Even on the t’ai it was difficult to talk through the sound, and the effect was curiously distressing. Rose Pelham, after a time, felt that she could not bear it any longer—sitting there with nothing to do but listen, and Henry or Antony before her whenever she looked up. She slipped out through the other courtyard, and after wandering about between walls looming palely in the dusk she found herself on the track again, higher up the village. There was a log of wood under a wall, and she sat down on it. Opposite her was a field of maize—fire-flies, like living sparks, danced vertically among the shadowy stems, which moved in the night air with a curious sibilant whispering that penetrated even through the wailing down the road. Somewhere behind the wall a camel snarled and grunted. There was nobody about. She leaned her head back against the rough plaster—she felt tired. She wanted to collect her thoughts, to pull herself together, to decide on what line to take with Henry. But it was no good. Her thoughts moved as inconsequently as the fire-flies in front of her—it was as though the fire-flies were pulling her thoughts to and fro in their own mazy dance; and if she shut her eyes, she could not shut out that desolate crying and the memory of the screaming women in the road. She could think, she found, of nothing but that. Rose Pelham was seeing with her own eyes what the back-lash of civil war in China means, and the knowledge was almost intolerable.

  Both Henry and Lydiard had seen her go out. On a camping trip one does not ask persons who leave the party suddenly where they are going—one assumes that they are taking what Hargreaves invariably referred to as “a walk in the kaoliang”. But when ten minutes, then twenty minutes passed, and Rose did not return, Antony began to fidget. After half-an-hour he was definitely worried. Prolonged walks alone at night were definitely against the rules, especially for the women, and Rose knew it. He too got up, saying nothing, and slipped out. Outside in the lane, he called “Rose!” low and cautiously—there was no answer. With the keening, he realised, she wouldn’t hear. He must just look for her, that was all, and he set off through the maze of little alleys and lanes.

  A moment later Hargreaves also got up and went out, on the same errand and moved by the same anxiety. Outside he called to Antony; he wanted to enrol him in the search, but his voice, too, was drowned in the loud wailing, and in the dark they missed one another. So each went off alone.

  It was Lydiard who found Rose. With her eyes shut and the lament filling her ears, perhaps really half asleep, she never heard his step when at last he came on her. By that time he was in such a state of anxiety that her relaxed attitude on the log, in the semi-darkness, filled him with terror. He touched her shoulder, and she started up with a little scream—“Oh! Who is that?”

  “Dearest, it’s only me—Antony.” He held her arm, breathing fast in his relief.

  “Oh. You did frighten me,” she said.

  “You frightened me,” he returned, letting go of her arm, as he recovered himself. “What did you go off for? You know you oughtn’t to do that.”

  “I was so miserable,” she said simply—“and I wanted to think. I am sorry, Antony.” Again she spoke with that gentle docility which he always found so moving, her face before him soft and pale in the starlight. He stood looking at her for a long moment, and then turned abruptly away.

  “Come on back,” he said over his shoulder, in a brusque tone. “It’s time we all turned in.”

  Without answering, she followed him up the shadowy track. Half-way back a large figure loomed up in front of them, and Hargreaves’ voice called—“Antony? Rose?” on a sharp note.

  “It’s all right—she’s here,” Lydiard answered.

  “Thank goodness!” But Captain Hargreaves, after that one exclamation, was too experienced to give himself away any further. He began his usual cajoling banter. “She’s a naughty one, isn’t she, Ant? Going off mooning among the bandits and darkness! Do you know you’ve been out an hour? What on earth were you up to?”

  “I wanted to stroll—I forgot,” said Rose. She did not say she was sorry, to Henry.

  “And so old Ant had to bring home the lost sheep!” Hargreaves went on, cheerfully.

  “Oh Henry, do shut up!” Rose snapped, at that. Lydiard never said a word. He was remembering, as he was to remember for a long time, what, in that moment of panic, he had called Rose Pelham.

  Chapter Thirteen

  “How glad we seem to be to leave these various villages, so often,” Hillier remarked to Anastasia, as they walked out of Tu Chia Chuang the following morning.

  “Are we?” Anastasia replied vaguely—she was thinking of something else.

  Hillier looked at her with amusement. Four days ago her obvious absence of mind would have irritated him, or made him suspicious and self-conscious; but the way in which she had tackled him so remorselessly while she mended his shoe had made him, oddly enough, feel quite secure and at home with her.

  “Surely, yes,” he now said. “We were glad to leave Ch’ang T’sao because it was full of corpses, and that mad woman who mewed; we were glad to leave that place, whatever it was called, where you savaged me, because it was so dirty and dead; and now we are glad to leave the Tu home town because we’ve been keened at all night. Or aren’t you glad to leave it?”

  Anastasia laughed.

  “Yes, I am—thankful! Poor creatures—I suppose it’s cowardly to mind having one’s nose rubbed in their misery, but I do. This country,” she waved her hand at the head of the Ch’ing Shui Valley, bright in the morning sun, “is such heaven by itself.” She had noticed, and was rather pleased by his open reference to that awkward conversation of theirs, but didn’t take it up.

  Hillier however noticed the omission, and dealt with it.

  “I’m feeling rather strong, this morning,” he pronounced. “I think I am not to be put off. I made a notable statement, and you have ignored it. Please don’t.”

  Anastasia was more pleased than ever. This was progress. She laughed again—there was something pleasantly absurd about Hillier’s deliberately pompous tone.

  “‘You ’eard’ is what you ought to say,” she said. “But what do you want me to do? Say I didn’t ‘savage’ you? I shan’t do that, because I think I did, though as usual I consider the expression exaggerated.”

  “And impenitent!” said Hillier.

  “If the end has justified the means?” she said, turning and smiling at him fully. Her smile, with that powerful mouth, was enormously engaging; the more so for being rather rare—and it now fetched Hillier considerably.

  “Do you think that?” he said—and for the first time since he came to China she heard him speak with perfect simplicity—a simplicity as complete as Rose’s.

  “Beginning to—yes,” she said. “Oh, look. What is that mauve thing?” she broke off. And for some time the flora of North China held the field.
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  They had left Tu Chia Chuang about 7.30, but already before they left the coffin had been removed from the school doorway, and when they filed out into the clear early sunshine all that was left to recall the tragedy of the previous night were the two trestles, abandoned under the wall, and some bits of rag blowing about in the trampled dust. They were heading for the Hsiao Lung Mên, or Small Dragon Gate, the pass through the old inner Great Wall of China, close to the watershed between the Ch’ing Shui Valley and the further valley to the north of it, in which lies a Trappist monastery. The pass, according to Lydiard’s map, was 4500 feet; the hills on the ridge rise another 500 feet or so—they however were not on the map at all, which ended abruptly at the Hsiao Lung Mên. But Wu and one of the donkey-boys professed to know the track leading over and down to La Trappe. The water-shed lies at the northern edge of the range, so that crossing from south to north, as Lydiard’s party was doing, there is a very long gradual ascent to it. They soon left the open valley and entered an extremely narrow winding gorge, overhung by steep rocks and cliffs; here there was no walking up the bed of the river on comfortable white stones—the Ta Lu was the worst they had so far encountered, a mere thread scrambling its way over slabs and round boulders, so narrow and rough that often the donkey-boys, wishing to tug their animals along, had to hop over the tops of rocks three feet above their charges. The walls of the ravine were thickly set with all sorts of rich shrubs: myrtles, azaleas, a big-leaved dwarf oak, hornbeams, wild apricots, a dwarf birch and five or six sorts of honeysuckle.

  At a sharp bend in the gorge, where it had broadened out a little, they came without warning on a big square stone tower, set on a low spur in such a position as to command the valley absolutely—the watch tower of the Small Dragon Gate itself. But where was the Great Wall? This was what everyone wanted to see, Hillier in particular—and they spread out, like hounds at fault, to look for it. They soon came on it, to the south of the tower—what was left of it, that is to say. Smothered in broom and myrtle, this legendary rampart was now a crumbling ruin—by grubbing about, under Hillier’s directions, they cleared the foundations sufficiently to establish the fact that it had been about ten feet broad, faced with dressed stone and with a rubble core. At this point the old Great Wall of China is certainly less impressive than the Roman Wall at, say, Sewing Shields.