by Ann Bridge
“Mr. Grant-Howard, I will try!” she said impulsively. “You have been so good to me.”
“Give me a kiss,” he said gently, and kissed her. “You’re a brave child,” he said. “Be stout-hearted.”
Chapter Twenty-eight
THE train shrieked, puffed and lumbered its way out of the Ch’ien-mên station, with Mrs. Hugo’s, Miss Harrison’s and Mr. George Hawtrey’s heads projecting out of three windows, one behind the other. Nugent and Joanna stood on the platform, waving, with half Peking waving round them. Peking runs rather to farewells—there was a carriageful of bouquets for Amber and Mrs. Hugo, books and endless back-slappings for Joe. As the train disappeared a loud sobbing lamentation burst out—it was Mimi de Bulle, suddenly overcome by the loss of “Ce cher Joe!” “Il était tellement sympathique!” she wailed. Mrs. Leicester glanced round at her with a faint shrug of distaste—then continued to gaze after the train. Her lovely still face gave no clue to her thoughts—perhaps she was thinking of her words to Amber over a year ago, and wondering, since she left Peking engaged to no one, if she was leaving it with a broken heart. Or perhaps she knew. M. Rothstein turned away, cigar in mouth, genuine regret on his face—he liked that nice little girl. But he had got both her griffins, and one of them was going to be another Bengal. Uncle Bill and Aunt Bessie moved off together. “We shall miss her, Bill, shan’t we?” said Aunt Bessie.
“I wish she’d marry Joe!” said Uncle Bill.
Joanna and Nugent, walking behind them along the cinder-path with Sir James, overheard, and smiled the same smile at Old Bill.
“If she marries Hawtrey he’ll be an extremely lucky felloh,” the Minister observed in an undertone to Joanna. “She’s a delightful girl: healthy interests, you know—those ponies, and learning Chinese—and pretty manners. I like a girl like that.” Joanna had a moment’s wonder as to whether he liked his own niece so well. She soon learned. “I wish Daphne was more like her,” Sir James proceeded regretfully. “It’s all dancing, and those very odd modern books, with her—really deplorable, the books are, Mrs. Nugent.”
Joanna could well believe it. They parted from Sir James at the Water-gate, refusing a lift, and walked in the blazing sun down the Jade Canal Road and in at the “person-gape.” On the way—“I shouldn’t wonder if Joe does get her to marry him in the end,” Joanna said.
This utterance was rather unexpected to Nugent. Since that day when they discussed Miss Boggit on the way home from the paper-hunt Joanna had said very little about Amber—indeed she had almost seemed to sheer off the subject. And, with all Joe’s good qualities, he still didn’t quite see Amber marrying him—though anyone might do far worse. It would be much better, anyhow, than Rupert marrying Miss Boggit; that was simply a catastrophe. Already the mere fact of Rupert being engaged to someone he so much disapproved of had cut Nugent off from the old freedom and fearlessness of intercourse with him; they could not speak freely on the subject which was presumably nearest Rupert’s heart at the moment—at least he, Nugent, couldn’t. He felt himself a little chilly and bereft: Joe, comic and reliable, gone; Amber gone, with her confiding eagerness and the warmth of her affection; and left with him in this alien world, of all these friends, only Rupert, whom he had loved so well and so long, in whose companionship he took such delight, but now self-bound to a person who could only mar his best qualities and separate him from his more valuable friends. (Nugent naturally placed himself in this category.) Thinking all this, he said nothing; Joanna, however, proceeded with her train of thought undisturbed: “I’m sure he’d do her better than that idiotic Rupert, though she was so frightfully in love with him.”
“Why do you think that went wrong, really?” Nugent asked as they mounted the steps of the loggia—it was perfumed by the pots of stocks standing along its outer edge, and he sniffed the scent gratefully.
Joanna sat down in a long chair and took off her hat.
“One of the things that irritated him was that she would express things, I’m sure,” she said.
Nugent stared at her. “Why shouldn’t she express things?”
“She didn’t do it very well,” said Joanna—“a cleverer person would have kept her unfinished ideas to herself, at least with Rupert.”
“But he was tremendously interested in a lot of her ideas,” objected Nugent.
“I said her unfinished ones,” said Joanna evenly. “Rupert loves definiteness.” “Then of course he was maddened by all the business about horses,” she went on.
But a new idea had struck Nugent, and he let the horses slide. “Did that irritate you?” he asked suddenly.
“No,” said Joanna sincerely. “I liked her enormously, and her least baked ideas were worth much more than the slick little second-hand gobbets that that wretched Daphne hands out, as if they were so profound! But it was bad technique to unload them on to Rupert. Daphne has caught him by her absolute certainty about everything, I’m sure. Amber was always so uncertain. So long as anyone is certain, even about nothings, even if they’re wrong, it will do for him!” She spoke with a sort of exasperated contempt.
Nugent considered this. There was, as usual, a good deal in what she said. “You sound as though you really disliked Rupert,” he said at length.
“No,” said Joanna, “I don’t dislike him. His mind is perfectly charming—it’s like an incredibly ingenious machine for turning out amusing ideas. But I disapprove of him completely.”
“Why?”
“I hate his cold curiosity. He can’t let people alone—he’s as inquisitive as a Chinese, always poking and investigating and trying to make them function, to see how they work! And doing it without real affection. You never saw that, because you’re as blind as an owl about people you’re fond of, and besides, he doesn’t do it with you—he’s a little afraid of you. But that’s what he was doing to Amber—at first, anyhow.”
“Oh come, he wouldn’t do that—really, Joanna!” Nugent expostulated.
“Well, he mightn’t be absolutely deliberate about it, because he’s so careful not to know himself too well,” Joanna conceded. “But he does do it, and he did do it to her.”
But Nugent was reminded of Amber’s remark about Rupert—“he’s afraid of being known.” He repeated it now to his wife.
“Of course!—and the greatest protection against being known is to refuse to know yourself,” said Joanna. “That was very sharp of her. She was curiously intelligent sometimes. When did she tell you that—lately?”
“Yes—just after the engagement was announced. I took her a ride on purpose to give her a chance to talk about it if she wanted to—and she did.”
Joanna smiled. “What are you laughing at?” Nugent asked.
“I was only imagining you cross-examining her, because you thought she ought to talk about it,” said Joanna, looking very much amused. When Nugent changed his spectacles and looked Socratic, she knew that, as Joe would have said, she had got it in one. He did so now.
“I think it did her good to get it out,” he said very judgematically.
“Dearest, I’m sure it did—poor little mite!”
“You see, she had told me about her other young man in England, before,” said Nugent. “I didn’t tell you about that, because it was her poor wretched little secret; and I didn’t tell you about Rupert this time, because while she was still here, the fewer people who knew more than they could see, the better for her. Now it doesn’t matter. But her real trouble is that she feels she’s been a flop, twice—and that’s rather hard to get over.”
“Yes,” said Joanna thoughtfully. “She depends far too much on what other people think of her—she doesn’t go ahead on her own enough. And she’s madly generous-minded. That’s where she has it over all the Ruperts in the world! Lydia Leicester was perfectly right about her being made for pain with people, till she gets some security. That’s why I think Joe would make her such a good husband.”
“When did Lydia say that?”
“Oh, at Sir James
’s party for Li.” Something in the course of this conversation with her husband had drawn the small sting out of Mrs. Leicester’s other observations on the subject of Amber—Joanna could contemplate them serenely now. She smiled again, a very little, thinking that in her place Amber would certainly have poured out the whole story. Well, that might be generous, but it would be bad technique—some day, if she ever married, she would have to learn about the many silences which love and loyalty impose. Meanwhile, in this restored ease, Mrs. Grant-Howard turned back to the subject of Benenden. “Nugent,” she said, “you asked me what / thought about Rupert and Amber, but what do you think yourself?”
“About why it went wrong?”
“Yes, partly.”
“I simply don’t know. I think a lot of what you say about Rupert is probably true. But I don’t know how much he was ever in love with her. If I even knew that, I could have answered one of her worst questions.”
Joanna guessed what that question was. But she did not seek to verify her guess—Nugent ought to be allowed to respect the child’s confidences.
“Do you think I’m too hard on him?” she asked—“or do you agree that he’s too experimental?”
“I agree——” Nugent stopped, took off his spectacles and rubbed his eyes, a frequent gesture of his when his ideas were refractory. “I agree with you about his not being willing to know himself—what I’m less sure about is the reason. But I think I do know it, more or less.”
“Well?”
“Rupert’s a very conscious person, and he’s afraid of letting himself be much interested in moral questions—well, in the things of the spirit, if you like—for fear of where they might land him. But unconsciously, like everyone else, he is interested in them, so that in itself ties him up in a good many knots. And I believe he only lets his interest in those things express itself where other people are concerned—he puts them under a microscope to study spiritual values. That’s what makes him what you call so poking and inquisitive.”
“Um,” said Joanna. She balanced a comment, and then decided, in the interests of married life, which to her were paramount, that it would be better to bring it out. “That’s a little hard on the person who’s put under the microscope, isn’t it?”
“Yes, it may be,” said Nugent.
“Well, he won’t find exactly a plethora of the spiritual graces to study in Daphne B.!” said Joanna.
Nugent grinned—he enjoyed it when Joanna was spiteful. “No, he won’t,” he said. Then he sighed— “Poor old Rupert.”
Dickie came tearing down from the upper garden, his jaw working with some piece of news. “Amber’s left her hem behind!” he shouted, as soon as he got within earshot.
“What do you mean?” his mother asked, as he came up.
“Come and see! Come on, Babby!” Nugent rose and went with his son, in response to urgent tugs. Dickie led him to the septic tank, against which stood a wooden box. “Ip’s there still—she’s forgop ip,” he said, pointing to the roof. Mounting on the box, Nugent saw that the Bong indeed sat there, a malevolent ginger-coloured object among the green creepers. He had forgotten all about it. Now he eyed it thoughtfully, while Dickie told him the story of its return. Curious, the number of unpleasant things that had happened since Amber brought it out from the Temple of the Ancestors. It had done down the Soviets, it had pretty well done down Dickie—and since she brought it back again, Amber’s own happiness had been crashed.
“I think the Soviets can have it back, Dickie,” he said—“no, I’m sure Amber didn’t want it.” He picked up the thing gingerly, carried it along the path, and pitched it over the wall into the deserted garden of the Soviet Embassy. A tinkling crash announced its final demise. “Poor Amber!” Dickie muttered, still unconvinced. He could not imagine why his father rejoined “Poor Rupert!”
Chapter Twenty-nine
VERY occasionally there comes towards the end of January, even in London, one of those fine mild days, soft with an almost tremulous softness, when the air speaks of spring. Amber’s wedding-day was one of them. She sat, that morning, at the window of her room in Grosvenor House, looking out over the Park, where the mist seemed to hold the faint sunshine steady among the bare boughs of the plane-trees, and the delicate light made London’s buildings beautiful and dignified as those in one of Canaletto’s pictures. She was wishing that it wasn’t a London wedding; she would rather have been married at Riddingcote. But it had had to be hurried on when Joe’s appointment was suddenly changed from Madrid to Adis Ababa, because they must be married before he went; and what with the difficulty of getting a trousseau in a hurry from down in Gloucestershire, and the inconveniences of a winter wedding in the country, Lady Julia had decided firmly on London, taken a flat, and dragged Amber up to live, the girl felt, with dressmakers, for the next few weeks.
Sitting in the enforced idleness which custom decrees for brides on their wedding morning, Amber was also wishing that she had heard from Nugent. She had written to him as soon as she was engaged, two months ago, via Siberia, and if there had been no hold-ups, and he had replied by the same route she might have expected an answer by now. She wondered if her letter had made him understand why she was so sure it was all right, her marrying Joe. She was still sure—but somehow it was hard to be married without his approval; she had lived so much by Nugent and his precepts, all these last months. Well, never mind, she thought—she knew it was all right. Her mouth set in a firmer line than it had ever shown in Peking, as she sat there in the window.
It was all right for Joe too, really, she believed. She had told him the limitations he might expect of her love—“I’m not in love with you, Joe—do you understand?” She thought he did—Joe had been learning a lot of things even before they got engaged, as well as since. He had learned, for instance, that it cut no ice at all when he told her that he had no eyes for anyone else—she knew that only too well. God, he must have known some awful duds of women! It was some time before he could be persuaded that she really was not jealous of other women, or even of his Club! But since they were engaged she had found out that there were some things that Joe knew by himself. When, moved by conscientiousness, she enquired if he were sure he was really happy and satisfied, his answer was always the same. “Darling, I never think about those things. When I can look at you, I’m happy. And if I can do anything to amuse you and make you happy, of course I’m content. I love you. But I think you do too much, you know. Can’t you cut out——?” etc., etc. There was something extraordinarily lovable and restful about this simplicity—thinking of him now, she smiled. She would be very safe with Joe, and very happy. And even she, with all her lack of subtlety, could surely make Joe happy if, as she was doing and would do, she gave her whole mind to it. She thought of what Nugent had said about Chinese family life, and her mouth set again in lines at once firm and content. Nugent had been right—that terrible laying the world aside, the world made light and music, had given her a sort of freedom that she had never known before. This she was too wise to try to explain to Joe, but this too, like the Athenians, he ignorantly worshipped, saying—“I can’t describe it, but there’s a sort of otherworldly look about you now, that you hadn’t before.” She reminded him, she learned, of Watts’ Sir Galahad in Eton Chapel, which had caught his early aspirations and fixed them. Amber felt that Nugent would say that it was probably better to have seen these things in terms of Watts than not to have seen them at all. And then she would laugh, and thereafter scourge herself for an intellectual snob, setting up to be so much better than Joe, with all his loyal unselfish patience.
The opening door made her turn her head. Joe stood there. “Darling, what do you want?”
“To see you!” he said, shutting it cautiously and tiptoeing across the room. “Where’s Mamma?” he asked, kissing her.
“Somewhere about—she won’t approve of you coming here this morning.”
“I know—I put on sneakers on purpose.” He displayed a pair of crêpe-soled s
hoes complacently. “Leave her to me,” he said. Amber laughed—Joe handled Lady Julia as she had never dreamed that mortal could. “But look, sweetheart, I’ve got a good excuse. I just went round to the F.O. for my letters, and here’s one for you from jolly old Nugent, enclosed in one to me. So I brought it along. I thought you’d want it to be married on!”
“Angel!” said Amber, stretching out her hand for it.
“Ah! But what do I get for it?” said Joe, holding it out of her reach.
“Name your price!” said Amber. “The firm’s rich!”
He gave it into her hand, putting his other arm round her. “Lovely one! If you only knew how rich the firm is!” he whispered.
The door opened again, and there stood Lady Julia; her eyebrows would have quelled a whole brigade. “Morning, Mamma!” said Joe, springing up and giving her a hearty kiss. “I’m acting postman! No complaints, I hope? I found a letter for her at the Office, so I brought it round at once.”
“Oh, thank you, George. But she ought really to be left now,” said Lady Julia, “the dress-maker will be here very soon with her frock.”
“Right.—I’ll be off. Make her maid rouge her up a little, Mamma—she looks pale. Auf Wiedersehen, mein liebstes Herz.” He was off, Lady Julia following him out—“See him safely off the premises!” Amber grinned to herself. Then she turned to her letter.
It was a long one. From the first line Amber was reassured—Nugent understood. He was very glad indeed—“As for your Uncle Bill, you would have been touched at his pleasure; I met him the day they got your letter, and he made me drink a champagne cocktail on it!” Then, after good wishes, Nugent turned to another matter. “I think it may do you good to know the answers to two of the questions that worried you so much last spring. Rupert went and had dysentery the other day, rather badly—we shoved him into the German Hospital, and Hertz pulled him through, but we were all a good deal worried about him. Emetine and a diet of hsiao mi brought him low, and anyhow dysentery is a disease of the will, as I found out last summer—all inhibitions leave you for the time being—so one day he was moved to tell me the whole story from his point of view. I may tell you at once that you were not mistaken that time—he was in love with you; I think perhaps more than he himself realised then. But you know Rupert—do you remember how you told me once that he quarrelled with himself? And that he picked and chose and thought the worst of people? He wants everything at once, and everyone to be all of a piece—absurdly, at his age. And though he respected your mind and loved your generosity—he mentioned that—your inexperience fretted him. And there were the horses. He has always had a regular phobia of sporting people—did you know that his Father was an M.F.H.?—and he ran away with the idea that if a person cared about horses at all, they could care for nothing but horses. Of course you were very absorbed in your stable then—and that girl came along, and briganded him. (He didn’t tell me that, of course, but cela se voyait.) So that was that.”
