Singing Waters

by Ann Bridge

  “You could not get a comparable volume of business without it,” he concluded.

  “Yes, that is true. But for whose benefit is the business?—the manufacturers’, or those who are cajoled or frightened into buying the goods?”

  “Well, I would answer that the business gives employment, and having the extra goods at least does people no harm.” He looked worried again. “You sound to me like a reactionary, and yet I would hesitate to think you that,” said Warren, who by now greatly liked Larsen.

  “Perhaps I am reactionary,” the Swede said. “But I would like to make my position clear. There are forms of advertisement that are quite reasonable—it is fair to let people who live far from cities know what is available. When I was a boy, I stayed often with an English aunt of mine, and she used to buy her wool from a shop in Wales—I even remember the name,” he said, smiling—“Price Jones. They sent out a small printed list of garments, of qualities of wool, and of prices—and she wrote and bought from them. This is reasonable. But in that catalogue were no pictures of glamorous ladies in woollen combinations, and no suggestion that one would die of pneumonia if one did not wear wool.”

  Miss Anne, who was knitting, smiled approvingly.

  “Old-fashioned, I am,” Larsen pursued, “for I am still concerned with such matters as religion and spiritual values. What I find most injurious to mankind in modern advertising is the constant appeal to material standards and values, the elevating of material things into an end in themselves, a virtue. Religion teaches us to sit lightly to this world and to material possessions, and to turn our hearts and minds to what is fair, lovely, and of good report. But St. Paul did not mean lipsticks, or nail-varnish or brassieres! I would paraphrase what Lord Shaftesbury said about child labour in factories: if business expansion has to depend on the suggestion—the most skilful and unremitting mass suggestion ever devised, at vast expense—that material things are immensely desirable, and seeks to focus the whole attention of a nation on material things, day in and day out, then let business expansion perish! It is not worth having at the cost of a nation’s soul.”

  Warren, more troubled than ever, sat silent; Miss Anne nodded approval, while her needles clicked and flashed.

  “This is not only in America,” Larsen went on. “The tendency is everywhere—but in America it is most, and in America most vaunted, advertising. The modern means of vast production and the desire for great sales have set the whole world this problem; but it must be solved somehow, or the soul of mankind will perish. I say to you, as I said in the train to Mrs. Thurston—‘Where a man’s treasure is, there will his heart be also.’ I asked her, and I ask you—where is America’s treasure?”

  Unexpectedly, Warren laughed.

  “Gloire is what every woman reader of magazines in the States would like to be,” he said; “she’s just the type they aim at.”

  “It’s not a high type,” said Miss Anne, knitting furiously.

  “But internally, is not Mrs. Thurston most unhappy?” Larsen asked. “This was my impression.”

  “I think you were right,” Warren said slowly.

  “Of course he was right,” said Miss Anne. “Idle, selfish people are always unhappy.”

  “But what do the advertisements in the American magazines suggest for the interior life?” Larsen asked.

  “Nothing. And Gloire is the ultimate product of that view of life.” He turned round to the Swede. “Tell me why you sent her here.”

  “I spoke at random,” Larsen said. “Hungary, Poland, Albania—any one of these would have served to show her what I wished her to see. But it really did not occur to me that she would come.”

  “What did you wish her to see?”

  “The foundations on which European civilisation is built—life lived in relation to the soil, with tradition and religion as ever-present, operative conditions. To see, to know, is better than to read or to be told. I thought this might help to clear her mind.”

  “Well, she’s having a fine spell of seeing, getting stuck up there with the Lek-Gionajs,” Warren observed, chuckling. “I’ve been wondering a lot how she’s getting along. Poor Gloire, her mind could do with some clearing.”

  “You have known her long? You know how she came to be as she is? I wondered at her misery, her boredom, her despair,” the Swede said.

  “I’ve known her from a child,” Warren answered. “But—don’t you exaggerate? Boredom, yes; but misery, despair?”

  “I think I do not exaggerate,” Larsen said simply.

  Miss Anne spoke.

  “Gloire was always spoilt, Mr. Larsen. Her mother, who was an excessively foolish woman, with more money than is good for anyone, and no background, spoilt her to death. Spoilt people are always miserable, and if you are miserable long enough, I fancy you end in despair.” Her needles flashed. “Gloire never had any discipline. No one ever said ‘You must’ to her, and she never learned to say ‘I ought’ to herself.”

  Larsen fixed his pale gaze on the Bostonian spinster. She was likely to prove more fruitful than his host, he thought.

  “The husband?” he asked.

  To discuss a family friend with a stranger was contrary to all Miss Anne’s habits and principles; but she had taken greatly to Larsen, and was impressed with the degree to which he had taken Gloire’s measure, and with the quality of his interest in her.

  “A very fine man,” she pronounced. “The best type of Englishman. Gloire had the quite undeserved good fortune to marry him—but then everyone is at the mercy of her type of looks! I fancy he might have made something of her, all the same. His death was a tragedy, in every way.”

  “She loved him—yes?” Larsen asked.

  “She did,” Miss Anne pronounced, with immense finality.

  Warren fairly gaped. Anne speaking with such certainty about Gloire’s love life was a portent in itself—but that she should do so to a man she had never met before that evening was incredible.

  “And I do believe she tried,” Miss Anne pursued. “Lady Mary—his mother—hated the marriage, pretty naturally, but of course she behaved perfectly. The British are much more tolerant of out-breeding than we are in New England; their men go their own way, and their society is strong enough to impose its own traditions on the wives they bring home. If Captain Thurston had lived, he would have made something of Gloire.”

  “Maybe Albania will do the trick,” Warren said. “That’s what you hoped, anyway,” he said to Larsen.

  “It is what I suggested,” the Swede amended.

  The Langdons were having a dinner-party later in the week, and next morning, on Miss Anne’s suggestion, Warren rang up the Continental and invited Larsen.

  “I am so sorry—no. I shall not be here,” the careful accents came down the telephone.

  “Isn’t that too bad. You’re leaving so soon? We had hoped to see a lot more of you.”

  “When I come back, I hope. I am only going up to Torosh.”

  “To see how much Gloire’s seen?” Warren asked, grinning down the telephone.

  “Yes—a little. And to see Lek-Gionaj. And my old friend, Miss Glanfield. There will be much to see,” Larsen replied, unperturbed. “And it is too long since I walked through Albania in spring.”

  Later—“No, he can’t come,” Warren reported to his sister. “He’s going up to Torosh to see the girls!” He was greatly amused.

  “Which, I wonder?” said Miss Anne.

  Chapter Fourteen

  Larsen enjoyed walking through Albania in the spring again. He travelled light, with an interpreter and a couple of ponies; he whistled as he climbed up onto the Malsi ridge, where the silvery verbascums which Miss Glanfield had picked in bud stood now as tall yellow candelabra; he sang as he ran, loose-legged, down through the woods to the Malsi spring, where he too drank; he lay there and smoked for a long while, listening to the nightingales, and then went on and camped at Shpali.

  Larsen was perfectly clear as to which of the two women he was going
to see—Mrs. Thurston. But he was extremely pleased to be about to meet Susan Glanfield again. He knew quite well that to meet someone after twenty years may easily prove a disconcerting experience, but he allowed for this, and did not worry about it. She might be grey; she might be stout; he did not expect her to be as she had been. She had been a delightful person, and he was confident that he would find her essentially delightful still. There had never been any hint of love between them; their talk had been all of books and poetry and mountains—and sociology, after the fashion of their day. Larsen never even asked himself, as he lay in his sleeping-bag that night under the great ash-trees at Shpali, whether he had been at all in love with her—he was so sure that he had not. But how enormously he had liked her. She had climbed beautifully, with strength and speed and great spirit; she had been charming to look at; poetry had breathed from her, apart from her pretty verses; she had been ardent and intelligent. And she had remained in his mind all these years, a triumphant figure of youth and romance, with a virginal quality that held some antique spell. Vera incessu patuit dea—he remembered how often the words had sprung into his mind as he watched her, tall and slender, walking into a hotel dining-room in the Alps, fresh from achieving some tremendous expedition. But there had never been any emotional nexus, and he looked forward with the old cool pleasure to their meeting. Time has little power over the qualities for which he remembered her, and he was not afraid.

  But Mrs. Thurston—her he had come to see. He had taken these days off, deliberately, to come and find out what she was making of Albania, and what Albania was making of her—that very agreeable clever American was quite right. Larsen had been greatly disturbed by Mrs. Thurston, and greatly touched that she had taken his casual advice. His thoughts turned to her, as he lay staring up at the ash boughs with the stars burning through them, their tracery as vivid and metallic a green in the light of his fire as it had been when Gloire gazed up at them three weeks earlier. Surely this place must help her! He thought of what Mr. Langdon and his sister—a fine old character, that!—had said of her: spoilt, futile. But the sister had thrown a little fresh light on what the husband had been, and might have meant, to her. He was glad she was with Miss Glanfield—just the right person to help her, he thought.

  He made a leisurely start next morning, taking a dip first in the cold singing hurrying river; strode, sweating, up the steep path out of the main valley, and drank and rested, as Gloire had done, by the spring at the top. He paused, over the crest above Torosh, to look down on the great church, and up the wide trough of the valley, filled and glittering with light—it was June now, and the heat was great. Larsen expanded his lungs, taking in the fine dry mountain air. Ah, it was very good to be here again. Seeing a group of women pass, in their gay and yet formal dress, he smiled to himself—what on earth would Mrs. Thurston be wearing up here? Those ridiculous shoes and gossamer stockings, or beach trousers, or what?

  He was soon to see. As he swung down past the church and took the small hot path beyond it into the ravine, he overtook two more Albanian women; he barely glanced at them and was striding on across the bridge, when to his astonishment he heard his name called—“Mr. Larsen!” He turned, and saw Gloire Thurston.

  Larsen stood transfixed. What Mrs. Thurston was this?—in tunic and trousers and velvet jacket, her eyebrows growing, her face tanned? The black silk shawl bound over her head gave her curious square countenance a most extraordinary charm. She was quite lovely! He stood speechless, as she advanced upon him.

  “Mr. Larsen! Well of all things! What on earth are you doing here?”

  “I came to see you,” Nils said, startled into the most unguarded truthfulness.

  “Well, I hope you like what you see.” She was gay; she was animated. “Look—this is Lisa—Miss Lek-Gionaj.” She spoke a few words in halting Albanian to the beautiful girl with her, mentioning his name; Lisa smiled shyly. Standing together by the parapet of the bridge, the pair of them, they made a group like an antique painting, youth and health glowing through the formality of their ample clothes; and again Gloire’s radiance, as much as her beauty, struck him with astonished pleasure. “And guess who’s here,” she went on. “You’ll never guess, so I’ll tell you—Susan Glanfield!”

  “I know—they told me in Tirana,” Nils said tactlessly.

  “Oh, what a shame! Who told you? Who did you see?”

  “Mr. Langdon—and his sister. At first I thought it was you who was hurt.”

  “How are they?” Gloire asked, almost eagerly.

  “They are well. They are so very nice,” Nils said. “But”— again he eyed her—“how come you dressed like this?”

  “Oh, I tore my slacks going after flowers for Susan, and I had to wear something, so Mme. Lek-Gionaj fitted me out. And I rather fancied it, so I’ve stuck to it,” Gloire replied airily. “How do you like it?”

  “It is beautiful. I never thought to see you look so,” he said earnestly.

  “Quite the Albanian maiden, I am now,” Gloire chattered on as they breasted a steep slope through a wood of small pines—and now he noticed that she was wearing goat-skin sandals. How splendidly she walked, he thought—unconsciously she had quickened her pace to match his, and Lisa was falling behind. He had not been wrong about her walking when he first followed her down the corridor of the Orient Express.

  “Where have you been?” he asked.

  “Oh, down to the valley to borrow a finer shuttle for the loom—old Maria wants to start a piece of extra fine silk, and one of the married daughters down at Mastrokol has one. But Lisa walks frightfully slowly—just like a Swiss guide.”

  “Mountaineers always do,” Larsen said. He was feeling extraordinarily pleased—there was an enchantment about this happy gay sunburnt Gloire, and the evidently intimate terms on which she was with Lisa and the family concerns delighted him. As they approached the house she and Lisa both went across to a group of juniper-bushes, white with linen spread out to dry; they felt the pieces knowingly; Gloire gathered up a bundle, and tucking it under her arm, rejoined him.

  “I don’t know where Lek-Gionaj and Madame are just now, but you’d better come right up and see Susan. Lisa will tell them you’re here. We’ve pretty well mopped up the guest-room, I’m afraid, as a hospital—but they will fix you up somehow.”

  “I have a sleeping-bag—I need not be fixed,” Larsen said.

  Out of the heat, Larsen walked into the high-lit coolness of that upper room, and saw at first only a litter of feminine belongings, and a small white canopy, like a meat-safe, on a red mattress. Gloire ran across to it.

  “Here, take that thing off!” she exclaimed, laughing—“I’ve brought you an old friend!” She whisked away the meat-safe and Larsen confronted Miss Glanfield.

  For a moment both stared in silence. Miss Glanfield, the more surprised of the two, being a woman was the more self-possessed, and spoke first.

  “Nils! How extraordinary! But how very nice to see you again.

  He walked slowly towards her, studying the square pale face, the very blue eyes, the soft loose hair—above all the expression. Her hair—not grey yet; a sort of silvery lacquer on the chestnut he knew, in front. With his incurable simplicity, he spoke his first thought. “But you are beautiful, still.”

  To Gloire’s amused delight, Miss Glanfield actually blushed. It had never occurred to her that Susan Glanfield was beautiful—looking with Larsen’s eyes she saw that she might be accounted so, with the fine modelling, not yet marred by wrinkles, of her face, the clear skin, the gay sweet look.

  “Nonsense!” Miss Glanfield said, without losing her self-possession, in spite of the blush. “You usen’t to pay compliments! But what on earth are you doing up here?”

  “I came to see how Mrs. Thurston likes Albania—and in Tirana I heard that you are here, so I had a double reason for coming,” he said, sitting down on one of the upright chairs by the bed. His eyes were on her all the time. “How long is it since we climbed together?”<
br />
  “Twenty years,” said Miss Glanfield, with her usual total absence of coyness. “It was in Wales—do you remember? We made a new climb in Clogwyn-y-person.”

  “So we did! And were benighted trying to get down the zig-zags from Snowdon. It was very black, and snowed. You were clever, and found the snow-steps with a match! And then they sent a search-party after us, and you were very cross!”

  “Of course I was cross! It was such nonsense—we were only an hour or two late for dinner,” said Miss Glanfield, with a sort of youthful naturalness that made Larsen laugh—it brought back that very dark walk down, and the girl who was so undaunted even by the prospect of a night out on Snowdon in winter. Gloire watched and listened, amused and interested, while they recalled episodes in their climbing past, which seemed to have been varied and extensive: they had climbed in the Graians, they had climbed and danced at Zermatt, they had met in huts above Chamonix and Courmayeur and Grindelwald; there had been episodes with guides, there had been excitements and dangers. They talked as if twenty months stood between them and those days, not twenty long years. Gloire marvelled and envied; it was extraordinary to see two particularly mature persons so engrossed in their common past—and how full that past had been of joy and adventure, and the peculiar intimacy which shared experiences confers. It must have meant a lot to both of them, she thought, for it to be so clear after such a lapse of time. Larsen, whom she had only known as rather judgematical, severe, was laughing now over those old adventures with a boyish eagerness and abandonment.

  “Do you remember,” he exclaimed, “that poem you wrote after we walked down the Val d’Anniviers, and slept at Sierre? The day we got so wet, and your skirt was left at the Trift Hut, because we had hoped to traverse the Gabelhorn back to Zermatt, and the porter took you for a young man?” He began to recite it:

  “Oh, do you remember

  Walking down to Sierre

  The puddles on the winding road

  The coolness in the air?