by Ann Bridge
“Oh Joe, not now! Please not now,” the girl almost moaned, putting up a protesting hand.
Mr. Hawtrey captured the hand. “Yes, now, sweetheart,” he said, gently but determinedly. “I love you, and I want to marry you. I won’t hurry you, but I’ve waited six months and not said a word, and now I’m asking you again. I know I’m not a brain, and all that,” said Joe simply, “but I’m sure I could make you happy, and I can never be happy myself unless I do! After all, we like the same things, don’t we?”
At that, to his great astonishment, the girl burst into tears. “Oh no, no!” she sobbed. “Oh no! Not that! No, no, no!” She seemed quite beside herself—her sobs were almost uncontrollable; her words made no sense at all. She’s utterly overdone, he thought—the heat and the excitement, and those beastly guns! Very gently, with a skill born of experience, Mr. Hawtrey contrived to slide an arm round Miss Harrison’s waist in such a way that, though they were in a stream of cars, it would not be unduly evident to outsiders. “There, now, sweet love—there,” he soothed her.
“No!” she cried, almost with violence and sitting bolt upright. “No, Joe, I tell you! I can’t marry you—and you’re not to say that! Do you understand?” She was quite hysterical. “You’re not to—I can’t—I can’t bear it!” she sobbed, sinking back again in a sort of collapse.
Joe was both hurt and distressed by this. But his concern for Amber outweighed all other feelings. “All right, dearest—I won’t, I promise. Just sit quiet and don’t talk—there’s a darling.” Still sobbing, she lay with closed eyes, while with his free hand he stroked hers, gently, as it lay in her lap. Poor darling, poor love, he thought, watching her white face, as her sobs came more slowly—all his personal hurt and disappointment melted away, but a new pain forced its way into his mind. This was love! She wanted someone she couldn’t get. Was it Rupert, with that new girl of his, damn him? They had seemed very thick, he and Amber, about Christmas time, but lately it seemed to have worn off a bit. Or was it someone else? Looking round among her friends, only one other person presented himself as in the least probable—Nugent! Oh, perhaps! Girls did do that—fell for married men. And Nugent was much more attractive than he probably realised, with his curt masterful speech, his intelligence, and the way he understood people. And she was always there. Perhaps it was Nugent. Anyhow, he thought bitterly, it wasn’t him, Joe! That was all sure, and he had best make up his mind to it. No good going on trying while she was as much in love as this. Stubbornly he took his pill, sitting there in the car, his eye-glass stuck firmly in his eye, his white top-hat set at a jaunty angle, his arm round the person he loved, who loved somebody else.
Chapter Twenty-seven
MR. RUPERT BENENDEN’S engagement to Miss Daphne Boggit was announced a week after the races. The intervening days saw a new war-lord established in Peking. It seemed to happen very simply, really. The guns boomed away outside the city for a couple of days, some of Wang’s commercial aeroplanes flew over the town and dropped a bomb or two, the city gates were shut. Then, one evening, as Nugent and Joanna drove out to dine in the Tartar City they found Morrison Street full of groups of soldiers, each group, as a rule, running behind a donkey hung round like a Christmas tree with rifles, clothes, tin basins and bags of meal, which dropped off it at intervals—the Marshal’s troops, it proved, retiring. And next day, going out to ride at the Temple of Heaven, they met, overshadowed biblically by a high-hanging cloud of dust, Wang’s troops marching in, singing Moody and Sankey hymns as they went. And that was all. There was no proper siege, no actual bombardment, and nothing much in the way of a battle; there seemed no particular military reason why Li should have gone out, or Wang come in. Nugent, remembering Count Herman’s story, which Rupert had passed on to him, supposed that it had all been arranged in some sing-song house. Anyhow it made no difference, so far as he could see, to anybody but the shopkeepers, who found themselves obliged to accept a different paper currency from the newcomers, and landed with large stocks of the old one, which for the time being they could not easily dispose of. But even that would soon be adjusted by some indescribable Chinese method. One could not blame the European community, he thought, for being—as they were—far more interested in the engagement, and in the other important piece of diplomatic news, that Mr. George Hawtrey was to be transferred to Madrid, since to the inhabitants themselves the change-over was of so little moment.
Nugent’s first reaction to Rupert’s engagement was one of sheer dismay. The little he had seen of the girl he disliked; she was not in the least good enough; she would stifle the difficult best in Rupert, and bring out all his facile worst. It was a bad show. But his more immediate concern was Amber. She must hear the news in the easiest way for her. Rupert had come in person to tell him, and the moment he left the room, Nugent, changing his spectacles, rang up the Hei Lung Hu-t’ung. “Morning, Amber. What are you doing today?”
“Well, nothing, actually, till this afternoon—I said I’d go to Anna’s cocktail party then.”
“Would you like to cut that and come for a ride with me? I’ve found a place I want to show you.”
“Yes, I’d love to—but I’ve no ponies here, and we can’t get out, can we?”
“We don’t have to go ‘out,’ and you can ride the Mishu pony. Meet me outside the Hata-mên at five, will you?” And when she agreed—“Right. Well, I must work now,” he said. “By the way, there’s a piece of what I think bad news. Rupert is engaged to that girl—he’s just told me so. I don’t much like it”—and rang off.
That was all he could do. Ensure that she took the knock alone, not in a crowd, with a few quiet hours ahead of her; not to get over the worst of it—that, he knew, would be in the long weeks to come—but to recover from the actual shock, and to get her poor little face well set to meet the world. Nugent had never forgotten her dive into the carriage at Fenchurch Street, within a few minutes of his first setting eyes on her, of which he had divined the purpose. Poor little wretch! What a thing to meet twice over. Well, he would probably hear all about it this afternoon—indeed, he would see to it that he did; she couldn’t go bottling it all up. Sighing, in the dim light behind the lienzas in his green-washed room in the Chancery, Nugent changed his spectacles again and went back to his work.
When Nugent rang off, Amber hung up the receiver and went to her own courtyard, where she sat down on a step in the shadow of the loggia. In the patch of sunshine in the centre of the court two or three small blue dragon-flies, brilliant as jewels, poised and darted above the warm brown depths of the goldfish pool, or made flashing excursions towards the delicate carved stiffness of the two tree-paeonies by the doorway, whose great scentless flowers were each as perfect and solid as if made of ivory. There is all the difference in the world between listening to your heart within you crying that all is lost, and hearing the fact baldly stated in a reliable voice down the telephone. This was really the end; now there was no longer any room for secret unbidden gleams of hope. Without knowing that she watched them, her eyes followed the dragon-flies, rested on the flowers, during the hot hours of that morning—it was only years afterwards that she realised why she disliked the sight of blue dragon-flies, or why even a picture of tree-paeonies filled her with a vague discomfort. In those hours, she asked herself again and again those questions which at the races she had not dared to face. Why had he changed? Was it her fault this time too? Where had she gone wrong? She remembered with something like agony those occasions when she had gone to train her ponies instead of walking or skating with Rupert. At the time it had seemed right and even inevitable to do that—had it really been a grave mistake? But if he loved her he must have understood why she did it—and she had been so certain that he loved her. Had she been wrong ever to be certain? Oh, but that she could not do!—when she tried to examine the grounds for her certainty, to recall those moments on the Wall, such an extremity of misery overcame her that the sensation was almost one of physical torment. She couldn’t, she would
n’t remember that—not now—that must remain inviolable, untouched! She moved, in her pain—got up, went into her room, drank water. It was no better in there; she felt cold; she went out again with a hat, and sat in the sun. It occurred to her, in the shock of this second defeat, that perhaps she was really the sort of person whom nobody could go on loving—no real person, like Rupert or Arthur; only very, very simple people like Joe. Then why had he taken so much interest in her at first, been so persistent about seeing her? She thought of their walk at the Temple of Heaven last year, and suddenly she remembered the resolution she had begun to break that day, to watch her step, to keep clear of young men. She had been right, right, right! She would have avoided this misery if she had stuck to that. But then she remembered, too, that she had really definitely decided to break it because of what Nugent said. Nugent must be right—he was always right; he could be trusted utterly. Thinking of Nugent, for the first time she wept, her head sunk on her knees as she sat beside the goldfish pool. In all her misery and mortification, she clung desperately to the thought of Nugent; and how he had said that this was the right way to live.
The south-eastern quarter of the Chinese city in Peking is a place little visited by Europeans. There is nothing particular to take them there, and the dust of the rutted road which leads out to the inconspicuous gateway of the Chiang-Ts’o-mên is seldom stirred by the wheels of foreign cars or the feet of foreigners’ horses. To the Chiang-Ts’o-mên, however, Nugent took Amber that afternoon, riding across the open fields and through the woods of small trees, where the few houses are clustered together like country villages and the city is completely lost sight of, till with a shock one comes on the Wall again, reflected in the reed-fringed waters of the swampy mere that lies near the gate. They turned there, and rode back by another route which brought them to the foot of a small pagoda, standing isolated among the fields. It was very ruinous. Its little stone frills were crumbling and broken—weeds had taken root in the neglected stonework and hung wreathing down in places over the creamy walls, adding to its derelict look. But it had nevertheless a curious desolate grace. They dismounted, and gave their horses to a couple of peasants who had left the hoeing of their crops, as usual, to come and feast their eyes on wai-kuo-jen. Nugent led her over to a bit of broken stonework, the footing of some ruined wall, and they sat down on it. In front of them lay a little group of graves, the rough earthen mounds still decorated with willow-wands and sticks frilled with paper, stuck in the top; about and between them, more peasants were hoeing the rows of winter wheat.
“How much more gemütlich that is than our way, isn’t it?” said Nugent. “Instead of the dead all huddled together in a damp solitary churchyard, where people only go once a week, if that, to lie out in the sunshine in their own fields, with their families working round them, day in and day out.”
“Yes, much,” said Amber. Then, feeling her answer rather inadequate: “What are the willow-wands for?” she roused herself to ask.
“They put them there at Ch’ing Ming,” said Nugent. “Stefany was telling me about it. Ch’ing Ming is the Spring Festival; a sort of Easter, May Day and Arbour Day combined, when they go out to visit the dead, and give them food and money and so on for the next year in the other life. The willow is the symbol of immortality, because it is the first living thing to bud afresh in spring.”
Amber said nothing. You couldn’t say “How interesting!” to Nugent, and her mind felt quite empty, squeezed dry by the pressure of one continuous train of thought.
“Amber, how much has this about Rupert hit you?” Nugent asked her then.
She turned away her head—he saw her hands moving in her lap. “It’s rather—beaten me up,” she said, in a stifled voice. “Why? Could you see?” she said, in tones cold with desperation, after a moment.
“I shouldn’t have, but for what you told me at T’ang-shan, and for knowing Rupert so well.”
“Oh, does he go in for this sort of thing?” she asked, with icy bitterness.
Nugent put his hand on her arm. “Amber, my very dear child, not that way,” he said. He had never, he realised, heard her say a bitter thing before, and it moved him more than anything else could have done. “Won’t you tell me about it, quite quietly? It’s him I’m sorry for, and so must you be.”
“I can’t understand it,” the girl burst out. “If I could understand it I shouldn’t mind so much. You see, I thought it was all right—I felt so safe. I didn’t worry when I couldn’t see him and go for the walks he wanted. I had to train the ponies; but when people love one another they understand about things like that.”
“What made you think he loved you?” Nugent asked.
“I suppose it was my mistake,” said Amber, wretchedly.
“Well, tell me.” Gradually he drew it out of her—the story of Lydia, the talk on the Wall, and how the world had turned then to music; her engrossment in the ponies afterwards, the breeze over her question about Count Herman. As she spoke her manner became quieter—once she cried a little; it was clear that to get it all out afforded her some relief. Presently she said a thing which struck him. “I believe I shouldn’t have made whatever mistake I did make if I could have known him better—but he’s afraid of being known.” He realised at once that this was true; it was one key to Rupert’s character. But to the question which he knew was tormenting her, what her mistake was, he could give no answer.
“You may find that out sometime,” he said, “but it’s not really important, because it may not have been anything in you at all, but something in Rupert. And you may have been perfectly right in believing that he did love you. One can’t always know these things. What is important is that you shouldn’t be either embittered or intimidated by all this. Do you remember something of Rupert’s that I quoted to you on the boat?”
“The traveller?”
“Yes. There are bags of gold to bear home even from these sort of journeys.”
She stared at it. Were there really? even from these deserts of pain?
“There are,” he said, answering her unspoken question. “So don’t regret, and don’t forget. By the way, when were you thinking of going home? Would it be a good plan, do you think?”
Amber had thought of it. Her year was more than up, and now that Joe was going back, there was not much point in keeping on the stable, she said. Nugent pointed out that Mrs. Hugo was going home in just under a month, so that she could count on an escort. They agreed that it would be as well to take this chance. There was a pause, and then Amber said, quietly and thoughtfully—
“I came out here to get away from Arthur, and now I’m going home to get away from Rupert; but how am I to get away from the thing in me which makes these mistakes? How am I ever to know if it’s real or not, when everything turns luminous and sings?”
“That’s in you—so it’s always real, to that extent,” he told her. “But it isn’t the important thing. It doesn’t matter.”
“Doesn’t matter?” She stared at him.
“No—it’s heavenly, but it’s quite irrelevant to loving anyone, really and truly. It isn’t the thing that lasts. It may be the prelude to what lasts, but it’s quite independent of it.” He pointed to the blue figures of the peasants among the graves in front of them. “There are four hundred millions of those people, and they have the most perfect family life in the world. But it isn’t based on music—nearly always their marriages are arranged for them. It’s based solidly on loyal love and affection growing up through the years, as all good marriages must be, ultimately, however they begin.” He paused. “I often think,” he went on, “that we sacrifice a lot of time and a lot of happiness in Europe to the theory of romantic love.”
Amber sat looking in front of her.
“And yet you told me to accept experience,” she said at length.
“Yes, certainly—since that is how we all live. You can’t, being a twentieth-century Englishwoman, get your mother to arrange a marriage for you with a suitable man you
’ve never seen—and you couldn’t settle down in it if you did. But you will be twice the wife to somebody because of Arthur and Rupert.”
“Why?”
“Because you’ll be twice the person. At present, like everyone else, you want the world to be made luminous and sing—in fact, you want it more than most of us. And I can tell you that it’s not important, till my tongue falls out, but you won’t believe me. The only way to learn that particular truth is by having that experience and losing it—as you have been doing. That in the end will give you freedom.”
“Freedom from what?” she asked.
“Yourself—and our Western tyranny of romantic love. Incidentally you learn a lot about loving each time, too;
but the main thing——” he paused, looking ahead of him.
“What is the main thing?” she asked, as he did not go on. In spite of his brusque words his face had a curious visionary look, very unlike a Counsellor’s, as he stared at the sunlit Chinese graves.
“Look at those willow-wands,” he said. “How like the Chinese and their sweet, unfathomable good sense! The commonest of all the trees, the simplest of all natural facts—it buds the first in spring! That is their symbol of immortality.” He took off his hat, and sighed—the hair above his ears was greyer than fifteen months ago, when she saw the lilac-blossom stuck in it, the day after they reached Peking. “One can die, and yet be immortal, here and now,” he said. “That is the main thing, Amber.”
She did not know why the tears stood in her eyes then. Something about him moved her extraordinarily; she was reminded somehow of that evening when she saw him standing by Dickie’s garden, during the child’s illness. The unconscious undertone of resistance to what he had been saying gave way—something melted, broke, flowed in her; her resentment, her despair, her mortification yielded to some gentler, truer impulse.
