Illyrian Spring

by Ann Bridge

  ‘Yes, let’s, Walter – I should like to,’ she answered. And a little breathless – for now it was upon her, the important thing – she set off beside her husband.

  TWENTY-THREE

  The immediate problem which occupied Grace Kilmichael was where to walk to. Ragusa is not a large place, nor is the choice of directions great. If they went up the road towards Gruz and out onto the open down-like slopes above the sea they would probably meet the General and Celia coming back from the Dance; if they walked down through the Borgo and along the coast road, they were liable to encounter Linnet returning from the ship; while the town itself was full of Nicholas and Breuil, walking about looking at the half-finished canvases, so casually scattered all over it. There really seemed nothing for it but to climb one of the flights of steps up to the Acquedotto promenade, and potter along that, above the town; the view was lovely, and presumably up there they would be safe from interruption. So turning to the right, to avoid the actual flight up which she and Nicholas had toiled the evening before, she said – ‘Do you mind a bit of a climb, Walter? There’s a level walk and a lovely view at the top’ – and led him up the first set of steps beyond the hotel.

  No one can talk much while they are walking upstairs, and long before they reached the Acquedotto promenade Grace began to regret her choice. This climb put off the beginning; and the longer they walked in silence, the harder it would be to begin. By the time they reached the promenade and turned along it towards Gruz she was completely out of breath, as much from nervousness as from all those steps. But it was not as difficult as she expected. As soon as they gained the level Walter paused, took out a cigarette, offered her one, lit both, and throwing away the match said very pleasantly – ‘You seem to have unearthed a genius. Where did you pick him up?’

  ‘At Torcello, actually. Only it was an accident my meeting him again.’ And she told him of their first and second encounters, and how Nicholas had turned out to be Lady Roseneath’s nephew. Walter laughed at the story of the stone she couldn’t draw, and she was encouraged by that to tell him also of Lady Roseneath’s two abortive confidences. ‘And what has he got, and lost?’ Walter asked, laughing again.

  ‘Do you know, I still don’t know,’ she said.

  ‘Haven’t you asked him? How unenterprising of you.’ But somehow Walter was being very nice about Nicholas; he was taking him absolutely for granted; his questions were only the sort of friendly interest one liked to have taken in one’s new friends – and her confidence returning, she found it easy to tell him what she had told Breuil, only in far more detail – her discovery of the boy’s passion for painting, his trouble with his Father, and her impulsive decision to let him show what he could do. ‘That was very subversive of you, wasn’t it?’ Walter asked, amused – ‘Yes, it was,’ she answered frankly. ‘But hasn’t it been worth it?’

  ‘Apparently it has – only it’s something quite new for you to start doing evil that good may come!’

  ‘Oh Walter, no, it wasn’t really evil’ – and she explained how she had made Nicholas write to his Mother (only the letter was never sent) before she would really undertake to coach him. But she explained undefensively; the old earlier habit, so long lost, of talking freely to Walter, without fear of reproof, was slipping back, somehow, in the most extraordinary way, and she found herself going on to tell him, quite simply and in fact rather enjoyably, the main story of the past few weeks – their sojourns at Spalato and Ragusa, her finding the Tete Mare at Komolac and going there, Nicholas’s escapade at the Professor’s villa, the advent of the Professor himself, and its happy ending; Nicholas’s illness, and their return to Ragusa. There were certain elisions; she said nothing about herself and Nicholas. But – how curious that was! – it was not in the least from fear of how Walter would take it, now, only out of a sort of loyalty to her dear, her darling child; she had a curious conviction, which grew while she talked, that this too was one of the things which Walter could be trusted to understand, and even perhaps to realise without being told. Because he never asked why, when she was so diligently teaching and helping him, she hadn’t somehow managed to take Nicholas with her to Komolac, and equally, he never queried the naturalness of Nicholas’s stratagems to install himself at the villa. He just laughed over them, loudly. Oh, how lovely was the strange ease of these preciously ready assumptions on Walter’s part, by contrast to the icy cross-examinations which had been her lot of late years! What had happened to him? The fact of his not asking made her really want to tell him – sometime she would, but somehow not now, not yet. Anyhow it didn’t matter. Then he began to ask, quite seriously, it seemed, about her painting, and how she had got on with that – and she confessed to having been rather idle, what with coaching Nicholas, and the contract.

  ‘I hadn’t heard about the contract,’ Walter said.

  ‘No – that was fixed up while you were in America,’ she replied, blushing a little. ‘But I’ve just sold Breuil two little pictures for thirty-five thousand francs, so I’m quite up on the trip.’

  Walter laughed. ‘I hope you told the General! Poor wretched man, what a mentality to carry round through life!’

  Then she enquired about Walter’s health, and now he told her in detail what Sir John had said; and with each question and reply the strange link which is wedlock established itself more and more between them. When they came in sight of Gruz and the harbour, with the black toad-like promontory of Lapad lying dark and wooded beyond – ‘Dubrovnik means “the woody”’ she told him inconsequently. They turned then, and walked back towards Ragusa – the walls, golden-white, stood out into the sea in their evening splendour, and she pointed out various landmarks – the Torre Menze, the Monte Sergio, the Monte Peline. ‘And Pelin is the Serbo-Croat word for salvia – they grow wild here everywhere. Isn’t it fun to think that once that slope of roofs was blue with salvias?’

  ‘You know a lot about it – how did you pick all this up?’

  ‘Oh, the Professor – Doctor Halther – you must meet him, Walter.’

  ‘I should like to.’

  But Walter had a question or two to ask after all. The first surprised her.

  ‘Why didn’t you let Nicholas know that you were really Grace Stanway?’

  She blushed again. ‘Oh, because I was afraid that if he knew that, he might think it worth mentioning to Lucia or to his Mother, and that – that it might get round to you or Gina, Walter, and you might try to make me come home. If you knew where I was, I mean. Mother had just sent me on your letter, to Venice, and that frightened me rather.’ She spoke hurriedly – here they were, now, at it! – but she spoke the truth.

  He listened, and walked beside her in silence. At last – ‘And when do you think of coming home?’ he asked. His tone was almost humble. Startled, she glanced at him – now he was being ironical, and after the confident ease of the last half-hour she felt slightly chilled. But – how very strange! – his face, his very splendid intellectual face, wore an expression both serious and sincere. He wasn’t being ironical. Grace was ready to faint with astonishment – Walter speaking humbly to her!

  ‘I am nearly ready to come,’ she said, not choosing her words at all.

  ‘What else do you want to do?’ he asked, still with that surprising seriousness – ‘Go to Greece?’

  That made her feel slightly hysterical. ‘No, Walter, not Greece! Anything but Greece!’

  ‘What’s wrong with Greece?’ he asked, surprised at her tone.

  ‘Oh nothing, really – only it’s become a sort of bogey, a mirage; Greece is like the end of the rainbow! I’ll tell you about that some other time. No, but Walter, I do want to come home – very soon.’

  ‘Well, what are you waiting for – besides Greece?’ he said, smiling now.

  ‘I think – just till I’m sure I’m quite free,’ she said, slowly.

  ‘Free?’

  ‘Yes. From myself and my amour propre. I don’t want to make a mess of it all a second time, you se
e. I’d rather like to tell you, Walter – I do see now what a mess I’ve made of everything – especially Linnet. But rather of you, too.’

  ‘How do you think you’ve made a mess of me and Linnet?’ he asked, very quietly.

  ‘By being afraid of you both,’ she answered promptly. ‘But that was because I wasn’t content with myself, and to be what I was – rather stupid, and all that. I wanted to be appreciated. When I wasn’t appreciated I was hurt – and then I was afraid of being hurt, and of the people who hurt me.’ She paused. ‘I seem to be getting rather tied up.’

  ‘No, I think I understand. Go on.’

  ‘You see I was always spreading out all the things I did for you and the children, like goods on a tray in a shop window – only you didn’t want any of them! Nobody would buy. That’s what was so silly, and must have been so maddening of me. Of course no one wants to pay with gratitude for those things – one must just give them, and leave it at that. They don’t entitle you to anything. But I couldn’t see that then.’ She drew a long breath. ‘Now I do. And of course as soon as one stops wanting gratitude and’ – she checked a moment – ‘affection – one is free. And then one is quite all right.’

  ‘How have you found all this out?’ Walter asked, when she stopped. He neither affirmed nor denied, but she had a sense, so long forgotten that it was almost new, of a current of sympathetic understanding in him.

  ‘Partly by being appreciated, funnily enough,’ she said, turning to him. ‘But not only that. I began to get onto it alone, and then Nicholas helped a lot. He talked to me about himself, and about Celia and her Mother, just as if I were a young person too; and so I began to see myself from Linnet’s end. It’s fearfully hard to do that just as a parent, because one’s own children never explain what it is that irritates them – they just are irritated, and leave it at that. But Nicholas did explain about his Mother, and that made me see – oh, no end of things where I’d gone wrong too.’

  ‘But Nicholas didn’t tell you about your amour propre, did he?’ Walter asked, in a curious tone.

  ‘Oh dear no! I don’t suppose he realises that a bit,’ she said candidly. ‘No – that was the Professor. Nicholas showed me the symptoms, as it were, and then the Professor diagnosed the disease.’

  ‘As amour propre?’

  ‘Yes – and more than that.’ She paused – this really was rather difficult. ‘He made me see,’ she said, getting the words out slowly, as if she were counting them one by one, ‘that it was because I wouldn’t accept inevitable things, like you and the children getting less fond of me, and needing me less, that I felt a failure and was hurt. And that if I could learn to accept that, I should be free. And then I should be able to carry on all right. And I think I have nearly learnt it. At least I see that I should be able to cope with Linnet much better if instead of giving way to her because – well really because I love her so, and want her so terribly to love me’ – her voice was a little unsteady – ‘I were to let that take care of itself, and just stick to what’s right.’

  ‘I see,’ said Walter gravely, and for some time he said nothing more. They walked in silence, now back above the town; now and then Grace glanced at her husband, and wondered what he was thinking. She had put it all so confusedly and badly; though even so, it was a relief to have got it out. But Walter Kilmichael was walking in silence because he was making some almost violent mental adjustments. Though his wife had not expressed herself well, her meaning was clear, and even clearer than her meaning were her fearlessness and sincerity, which took him completely by surprise. This was a new Grace! He had begun already to miss the old one, rather badly; the absence of her unassuming personality had affected his comfort in a way which he had not expected, altered the background of his life most disconcertingly. But life with this person now beside him might, he felt, be more than comfortable; it might even be rather delightful; given such a measure of honesty on her part, there were things they could share which they had never shared, after the delirious and almost unconscious fusion of the first months of marriage. He was startled and moved; and because he was moved, when he first began to speak it was rather formally and generally.

  ‘People are very slow to realise the truth about freedom,’ he said. ‘Of course it consists in the recognition of one’s limitations, primarily, and we are all reluctant to admit those, let alone to accept them. I am glad you have seen all this.’

  ‘Yes, Walter,’ said Grace meekly. But amusement began to stir in her, perhaps from the relief of having got her confession over. Walter was talking like a lecture on economics! He was so funny when he did that. And she knew him well enough to know why it was. Something stirred in her beside amusement – something warm and glad and curiously inspiriting.

  ‘But one has got to go on accepting them,’ he went on. ‘It’s a great thing to recognise the fact, but the job isn’t over and done once and for all, just by recognition. One must adapt and express that in terms of one’s circumstances.’

  Grace began to smile. ‘Yes, yes, Walter – how true!’ He turned and stared at her, incredulous. ‘Walter darling, I’m not the Central Hall, Westminster,’ she said, suddenly bursting into laughter – he looked so funny, with his solemn formality still like a garment on his face, and astonishment looking out of his eyes. She couldn’t help it. ‘Must you say it so preachily?’ she said, made incorrigibly gay by that warm inner happiness.

  Walter stood stock still, and stared at her for a moment. Then he too laughed. Suddenly he took her arm. ‘Amongst other things you’ve evidently acquired a superiority complex,’ he said, almost as gay as she. She stood so, facing him, smiling – one of those moments of reassurance which glow in the face like a pharos at sea. And then, slowly, her face changed. The light somehow went out of it.

  ‘What is it?’ Walter asked.

  ‘Rose! I’d forgotten all about her!’

  ‘What about Rose?’ he asked, in a tone of almost honest wonder.

  ‘That’s just it, Walter; what about Rose?’ Her eyes searched his face.

  Walter said, very stiffly – ‘I think you were always exceedingly foolish and unjust about poor Rose; you—’

  She interrupted, with a hand on his arm – ‘Walter, don’t please say that I worked myself up!’

  For the second time in two minutes he first stared, and then laughed. ‘Very well – you didn’t work yourself up! I didn’t know that was a phobia of yours, that phrase.’

  ‘Oh, such a phobia! You can’t think how I hate it. It always seemed the most unjust thing of all.’

  Something in the fall of her voice on those last words opened all sorts of doors and windows in Walter Kilmichael’s mind. Though he had missed his wife, more than he would admit even to himself, though he had wanted her back and worried over her disappearance, he had always thought her departure entirely without reason or justification, one of those mad emotional caprices of women which, to do her justice, had startled him in his Grace. But he was a person of sufficient sensibility to recognise freely that pain beyond a certain point is a reason, if not a justification, for almost anything. In this conversation which they had just had Grace had said nothing at all, save by implication, about the reasons for her leaving home – she had gone straight and fearlessly to a recognition of her own past faults and failures, and their causes; there had not been a single syllable either of complaint or justification. It was only now that those last words slipped out, on the heels of a bit of gay teasing, and the tone in which they were spoken suddenly revealed to him depths of pain and distress which explained almost anything. Unreasonable, mistaken this pain might have been, but of its reality he could not doubt – and it gave him a shock, the more so from the casual manner of the revelation. She had certainly not been working herself up this time! Seen in the light of that pain, her letter about Rose, which he had thought so uncalled-for and silly, looked quite different – and his own aloof and ignoring answer looked different too. He had thought that all artificial, a sham �
� ‘worked up’, in fact; and he hated shams. He saw now that it had at least been completely sincere. And having gone off goaded by that degree of pain, his heart commended her for having nevertheless seen what she had seen and got where she had got – and still more, in these moments of explanation, for her silence on the subject till now.

  But Englishmen whose hearts commend their wives are apt to give that commendation expression in rather singular ways. Walter’s way on this occasion was first to address to his wife a little sermon about Mrs Barum. His sense of dignity would not allow him initially either to admit an error of taste or judgement on his own part, or to suggest anything so crude as jealousy on hers. He just explained, in civilised and lucid phrases, how useful a person of Mrs Barum’s equipment could be and had been to him, especially in the preparation of his new book, which was appearing in a fortnight. He emphasised Rose’s generosity about giving her time and trouble, ‘without any sort of return,’ and her disinterested love of the work and the subject for its own sake. As he spoke Grace had a curious feeling that he was being a little bit more than fair to Rose, in the way one is overfair to people when one has an impulse to be slightly unfair or unkind to them. It was an oddly reassuring feeling. But now the book was done, Walter went on, and Rose and her Nathaniel were presently going off to South America for a year to study the effect of Latin racial psychology on the economic aspects of modern life; he was sure that they would make a remarkably fine thing of it. (Was it her fancy, or did his tone express something like relief – so that’s the end of that!) At last, speaking more stiffly than ever – ‘If I had in the least realised,’ Walter said, ‘that our really purely professional association might give rise to any talk or ideas which could cause you distress, I imagine I should have done something about it. But such a notion never occurred to me, till later.’