Chapter V

It was all over now, and her first sensation was intense relief. She wasn’t glad to get rid of Nina, but she was thankful beyond expression that she had not failed her first. There had been moments when she had nearly failed her—dreadful, jangled moments, when the mere tones of Nina’s voice, the turn of her head, the perpetual small restlessness and quick movements of her body, contrived to exasperate Anne to the verge of desperation. She had longed to say, “For Heaven’s sake, keep still,” or “Don’t talk like that—your voice is as sharp as a knife,” or “Don’t you see how conspicuous you are making yourself!” But she had never said any of these things. She had never taken Nina up sharply or snubbed her brusque little social sallies. There hadn’t been an ardour of Nina’s which she had thrown cold water on, or an effort that she had nipped in the bud; and yet she hadn’t left the girl alone in her mistakes.

Anne couldn’t make her behave properly because the essence of propriety is self-consciousness, and Nina had no self-consciousness; but she had taught her to clean her nails, to fasten her clothes, and not to behave in public as if life was a race for the last seat in a ’bus. Nina was not naturally rude, but from a very early age she had had to fend for herself. Her manners were frankly predatory. She had extravagant good nature for the real needs of her fellows and an economy of grace when it came to the smaller services of life. She didn’t see why she should wait for older women to go first through doors. Anne’s way of bringing these matters home to her was a slight elaboration of her own manners. It was only when Nina directly questioned her that Anne gave her, straight from the shoulder, and with an impersonal emphasis, her standard of behaviour. Nina thought it was a funny standard, but as her pride was never put on its defensive, she had learned from it readily, even when she didn’t see that it had any sense. The great thing for Nina was that Anne was perfect, so that even when what she did seemed to her silly, it was probably all right. It had been a great help to Anne that Nina believed in her perfection. She felt herself as hollow as an empty shell and as wicked as one of the Borgias, but she was glad that she gave the appearance of solidity and moral worth.

Nina never dreamed that there were moments, as they stood together by the dingy yellow Tiber and Anne explained to her so beautifully about St. Angelo and the escapes of Popes, when her companion would have liked to push her under the heavy muddy coils of the river and hold her there till she drowned. But these were not Anne’s worst temptations. She knew that these were only the last flickers of a dying barbarism in her heart—she wouldn’t ever touch a hair of the girl’s head with violence. It was less easy to deal with the spirit of condemnation in which there was more vitality and for which there was more excuse.

When Nina sat at Anne’s feet on the roof of their little hotel watching the sunset catch the Pincian Hill—and all the umbrella pines pass into it like spirits into flame—while she told Anne the crude sordid little stories of her working life—it was much harder for Anne to hide her sick distaste. She didn’t want to hear about the trivial girls Nina alternately went with and quarrelled with, or the doubtful young men, some of whose attentions weren’t doubtful at all, who made up the “adventures” of Nina’s daily life. If they had been told poignantly by some great artist, with the refinement of selection, they might have interested Anne, but Nina wasn’t a great artist, and she was only telling Anne because she wanted her to know all about her life. But if Nina was no companion for Anne, Anne was apparently exactly the companion for Nina.

“Don’t bother about me,” Anne often said to her. “Find anyone you like to go about with. I’m perfectly happy poking about among my old ruins alone.”

But Nina never found anyone she liked to go about with more than Anne, and she did not realise how much this put an end to Anne’s “poking.”

They took days together on the Campagna, lonely, lovely days, by the old aqueducts and under the shade of solitary towers. The air blew over them, fresh and clean, the mountains in the distance were made of light and azure, at their feet were quantities of small sweet flowers, and in the evenings Anne sometimes took Nina to a Roman cinema, which she liked even more.

But now that it was all over what pleased Anne most to think about was how she had loved Nina, in spite of the clashes, the astonishments, the blank momentary repulsions; and that inevitable, irritable comparison which never wholly ceased. She had admired the girl’s ready pluck—her way of taking difficulties as a spirited horse starts towards its fences. She had been touched by her unvarying honesty which accepted so simply her disabilities without any attempt to hide them, and above all Anne had surrendered eagerly to Nina’s vitality. If Nina’s critical faculties were raw, they were at any rate alive. She saw everything with an intensity which left Anne panting in the rear. She took Italy in her stride, but she really took it; for all her ignorances, she would go away with more of it in her consciousness than Anne could assimilate in a lifetime; and that was the way Nina took Norman. Anne had to prepare her for her marriage, so that she learned, without any trace of concealment, exactly what the girl felt. Nina, for all her crude experiences, her open, hand-to-hand scuffles with reality, knew very little about life. Half her knowledge was bravado and the other half founded on comic papers. She had read, but her mind had only formulated like a parrot, it had never pierced into the signification of what she read. Anne had once been as innocent as the girl before her, but never as ignorant, and she never would be so knowing. After this deepening of their intimacy they spent most of their hours together talking about Norman. St. Peter’s, where they had spent a long wet morning, walking to and fro in its clear unchangeable climate, was full of a prolonged discussion. They began on him as they stood by the Pietà, that small statue of the Madonna, soft as milk, holding her great dead Christ in her weak arms. Nina said, “That’s like you, Anne—the Madonna, I mean. I don’t want to be awful, but I’m not like that—I wouldn’t go on holding anyone I loved who was as heavy as that—I’m sure you’ve been too good to Norman, Anne—” That gave Anne her chance. She told Nina how sensitive Norman was, and how delicate—how much his work exhausted him, and how he ought always to be spared. By the time they had reached the small stubborn bronze of St. Peter with his time-worn toe, she thought she had convinced Nina how necessary it was to be careful with Norman; but Nina was all the time seeing another Norman—young, striving, ardent, who didn’t need to be spared anything. Nina was kind about Anne’s Norman, but he wasn’t her own, and she hadn’t the least intention of ever letting him become so. Even St. Peter’s wasn’t large enough for them to get to the bottom of their subject, but perhaps it was better for them to stop half way.

They were to be married at the Consulate and go straight to Venice. Anne was simply to dress Nina and not to go with them to the ceremony. She would have gone as well, if it had seemed wisest, but she was afraid people would find out afterwards and laugh at Norman if she went, so she had decided to let them go alone.

It was October and their wedding day was dear and sweet, like the heart of a ripe apple. Nina came to Anne early in the morning, and sat on her bed while they had breakfast. Then Anne dressed her. She had chosen a pale grey dress for the girl with a soft grey hat and veil, and when she had finished dressing her, she was astonished at her beauty and a little proud of it.

Nina felt nervous because she hadn’t seen Norman for four months, and she thought perhaps everything might be different. But Anne said, “When he comes nothing will be different.”

When it was nearly time for Norman to come, Anne asked, “Have you any money, darling?” and Nina flushed and confessed that she had only a shilling which she hadn’t had changed at Cook’s. Anne gave her ten pounds, five of it in Lire, and a five pound note, to wear round her neck. “You must take this, dear child,” she said, “because it’s always so nice to have something of one’s own. You’ll find no one in the world as generous as Norman, but it’s only right you should have something to be generous with as well!”

“If I had everything in the world I couldn’t be as generous as you!” said Nina suddenly, “Oh, Anne!” She clung to Anne speechlessly, and Anne held her long and close. Nina had been able to say afterwards, “Anne, will he be as good to me as you have been? Can any man?”

“Oh, my dear—you’ll know—you’ll know soon!” Anne whispered. “There isn’t anything he won’t do for you—only perhaps—let him—that’s what he’ll like best!”

Then Norman had come. Anne heard him first, she stood alone in the little salon, and when she heard his step she put her hand on the table so that she could steady herself if she felt it was necessary. Before Norman came in, the door behind her opened and shut; she knew without turning round that the girl was there. Then Anne said, “Come in,” quite clearly, and moved aside so that Norman’s eyes might fall on the girl. It hadn’t been necessary to steady herself. As he came in the girl hesitated for an instant and then flew into his arms. Anne turned her eyes away, but she had seen Norman’s face first, helpless with tenderness. Norman had not loved Anne in just this way, because he had not been old enough when they met; he was giving to Nina all the best love of his heart, including his frustrated fatherhood. They were only a few shaken moments together before Anne managed to get them safely and comfortably off. They left her with their happiness intact, there was no bruise of anger on it, or shadow of her pain. They were understood and blessed and loved. That was what she had meant to accomplish, and the relief was in knowing that it was accomplished.

After they had gone Anne put on her things and went out. She thought that she would like to go up the Aventine Hill. The roads are grass grown and very quiet on the Aventine, and there is a cool old church called St. Sabina, where St. Dominic once blessed an orange tree. The orange tree is still there in the cloisters, and Anne knew the monks would leave her alone and not even try to tell her about the miracle again, if she told them she wanted to be quiet. The sun was hot overhead, but the air had a light tonic feeling as if it came from the sea. The tall black cypresses in the Aventine gardens were full of little birds singing broken songs. Rain had fallen in the night and the Palatine Hill dipping down low towards the Arch of Constantine was covered by thick purple shadows. St. Sabina was cool and full of light. There was nobody in the silent sunny building.

Anne was not a religious person. She had been brought up in the Church of England which she had never cared for very much, and Norman had frankly hated it, so that after her marriage she gave up going to church. She said her prayers vaguely, half from habit and half because she believed that perhaps if you prayed regularly for people you loved, the desire to help them might effect something. She was not good because she thought she ought to be good, but because on the whole she liked goodness; she might have been said to have believed in goodness. She sat quite still between the long coloured Hymettian columns, with her eyes shut, expecting nothing, thinking of nothing. She felt like someone who has had a very painful operation and is for the first time definitely out of pain; the great thing was to keep quite still so that it shouldn’t begin again.

Suddenly, from somewhere deep within her being, a feeling of love, of triumph, of intense joy welled up with such force that it seemed as if her heart would break. It was unlike anything she had ever known. Her identity vanished like a cloud before it. She knew nothing but the inrush of joy. Wave after wave of it flooded through her, as if a door had opened and let in the infinite sea. She was utterly drowned in this undreamed-of splendour; her ordinary, intricate, outside life was gone. Nothing was left but love, to which she had sacrificed all she had; and which had accepted her sacrifice. It might have been an hour, it might have been three or four, when Anne realised the silent sunny space around her again, and knew that the door was once more shut. The shadows began to creep across the light, and the Brother in charge of the church was standing beside her, looking at her anxiously.

“Va bene,” he said as she met his eyes, “the Signora has had her quiet time. I do not wish to hurry her, but the church closes—the Signora perhaps would wish to see in the cloisters St. Dominic’s miraculous orange tree?”

Anne shook her head smiling (when she stood up she found that her knees trembled under her) and she asked that she might be allowed to see the orange tree another day. She had to walk to the foot of the Aventine before she found a little carriage. Her head ached stubbornly as if it would never stop.

Norman and Nina must be in Venice by now, but though she dragged her mind to think of them, it did not want to think of them any more. Everything in the streets looked strange to her as if it had grown smaller and duller, and as if she had no particular part in it. When she reached the hotel she was still more shaken by her own insignificance. She didn’t want to bother the waiter to bring her tea, or the lift boy to take her up to her room in the lift. She felt like a shadow without a claim upon anyone on earth, and then somebody said, “Hullo, Anne!” and took hold of her, as if she wasn’t a shadow, and she knew it was Toby, though her headache was so bad by this time she could hardly see. A great many things happened quickly after that; the lift boy sprang to the lift with a surprising velocity, and Anne found herself lying down on the sofa in the little salon with the blinds down and Toby giving her tea and aspirin, and putting cool bandages on her head. She managed to explain to him that she was so sorry he was just too late for the wedding, and he said he hadn’t come for the wedding; but he didn’t say why he had come, and Anne was too tired to ask him. She was too tired even to care whether he was there or not.