Singing Waters Page 20

  “Oh God!” said Gloire.

  At this point, simultaneously, Lek-Gionaj rose and waved his guests towards the table, and Rudolf Valentino flung open the door and ushered in a stream of servants with dishes. The guests stepped forward and were about to sit down, when the door opened again, and in walked a little old lady, white-haired, rather bent, in a grey cashmere dress with pince-nez on a black cord, and a firm neatness of expression and hair-do that could hardly have emanated from anywhere but New England.

  The Robinsons advanced upon her with delight.

  “Dr. Crowninshield! How splendid! But what on earth are you doing here? We thought you were in Mati.”

  “Pieter’s wife is pretty sick,” said the little old lady, in accents which warmed Gloire’s heart. “She has puerperal fever and breast ulcers, poor child. They sent for me, so I came along. I shall be here quite a time, I imagine. But how very agreeable to meet you.”

  There were introductions, of which the Robinsons took charge, to Gloire and Miss Glanfield, and then at last they sat down. Dr. Crowninshield was evidently on the happiest of terms with her hosts, and talked to them in Albanian with perfect ease and naturalness—the uncouth syllables pouring from that closely-formed New England mouth, under the pale New England eyes, the tight hair, and the pince-nez, were a phenomenon so startling that Gloire could not take her eyes off it.

  The long-awaited meal was very good when it came. There was soup—a kind of Scotch broth, but much more strongly seasoned with herbs than is usual in Scotland, and with a sort of noodles in it instead of barley. Next came boiled lamb, swimming in broth; this was followed by roast lamb, a whole innocent on a vast platter. There were no vegetables; the meal was rather on the muttony side, as Miss Glanfield observed in an undertone to Gloire. However they enjoyed it; but after the fourth course they were more than satisfied—sleepiness began to gain on them, and it was with something like dismay that Gloire saw Valentino bringing in yet another dish.

  “Not more!” she murmured to Mrs. Robinson.

  “This is dessert,” said Dr. Crowninshield, who had overheard. “It’s very good, too. Is it getting you down? We eat rather largely in Albania.”

  “It’s all lovely,” said Gloire hastily—“only we seem to have eaten mountains, already.”

  Dr. Crowninshield laughed.

  “You have to learn to take a very small portion of everything,” she said. “But the dessert will be the last.

  It was. It was a sort of sweet pancake, very thick, and quite as good as Dr. Crowninshield had foretold. And after it had been consumed, and been followed by more coffee, and more raki, Colonel Robinson, poked up by his wife and Miss Glanfield, indicated to their host that they had in fact made a very early start and would be glad to rest. At once, Lek-Gionaj said, and gave an order to Valentino.

  Gloire and Miss Glanfield had innocently supposed that they would now be led off to bedrooms. But not at all. In Albania, in the mountains at any rate, though the duty of hospitality is interpreted with princely liberality in the matter of food and drink, accommodation is on simpler lines. Even in great houses, there is usually one guest-room—and this was it. Valentino, aided by his assistants, proceeded to bring into the room four very large fat mattresses, stuffed with wool and upholstered in Turkey-red cotton, which he laid in the three vacant corners of the room and under one of the windows; at the head of each he placed a large red pillow, and over all he laid a Turkey-red quilt, with a clean sheet of crimson twill tacked to its under side and coming down over the top; he folded these back at one corner with the expertise and precision of a well-trained housemaid, and then stood and bowed invitingly towards his handiwork. The guests, led by the well-trained Robinsons, rose and left the table, the last of the plates and glasses were whisked away, Lek-Gionaj wished them a pleasant rest, and bowed himself out—and the four travellers and Dr. Crowninshield (who seemed to be beata possidens of the brass bedstead) were left to themselves. It was 4.30. Each chose a mattress, and lay down. The mattresses were heaven, deep and soft; so were the down pillows; but so were not the flies.

  “My God!” Gloire exclaimed after a few uneasy moments—“What on earth does one do about these flies? They’re sitting all over me.”

  “Put a handkerchief over your face,” advised Dr. Crowninshield, who had already done so.

  “But that will be so stuffy.”

  “You’ll get accustomed to it.”

  Gloire did as she was told; Miss Glanfield silently followed her example. In a few minutes, flies or no flies, they were all five fast asleep.

  Chapter Eleven

  Dr. Emmeline Crowninshield, in her brief appearance at lunch, had inspired Miss Glanfield with the liveliest curiosity. This was not unreasonable. A little white-haired old lady in long skirts, wearing the very aspect of a lifelong inhabitant of some small New England township, who proves to be a qualified physician and surgeon, would be something of a portent, met anywhere—but to find such a one wandering about High Albania, talking the language with mastery and on terms of intimacy and affection with the local inhabitants, was really startling. She fell asleep wondering what had brought the old lady to Albania, and above all what had prompted her to stay there to exercise her skill—and waking after about an hour and a half of rather stuffy dozing, she instantly began to ponder all this again. Her curiosity moved her to pull the handkerchief off her face, turn over on her red mattress, and gaze at the small figure on the brass bedstead, quietly reposing under a red quilt like her own.

  The penetrating effect of the human stare apparently operates even through a handkerchief, for after a few moments there was a stir under the opposite quilt and the bandanna was twitched off, revealing the neatly-arranged white hair under the hair-net, and the stone-pale, tight-lipped, lined old face, pince-nez and all. For a long moment the two women looked at one another in silence across the bare stretch of floor, a prolonged and somehow communicative gaze. Then they both smiled, still in silence. Miss Glanfield had a strong feeling, at that moment, that she and this small improbable stranger had somehow achieved, mysteriously, an effective contact in that silent interchange. Normally she was wont to be sceptical about such direct apprehensions, and to discount them at the time; but on this occasion she acted on her impression. Feeling under her red pillow for her cigarette-case she slid out from under the quilt and in her socks tiptoed across the floor to the old woman’s bed. Dr. Crowninshield put out a neat little claw and patted it, and Miss Glanfield obeyed the gesture and sat down.

  “I’m sure you’re wondering what I’m doing here,” said the American at once, in a whisper.

  “I am,” Miss Glanfield whispered back, lighting a cigarette. “Passionately,” she added, half-smiling.

  “Well, I daresay I’ll tell you sometime. But just now you tell me something, while we’re quiet. What’s been amiss with that attractive child, and why is she here?”

  Miss Glanfield was instantly struck by the implications of one small word in that final sentence, packed as it was with implications—the word “been”. Involuntarily she glanced across to the mattress in the opposite corner, where a long low outline and another handkerchief represented all that could, for the moment, be seen of Gloire. Been? Was she cured already, in the little old woman’s opinion? or was it just American phrasing.

  “I don’t know—what’s been wrong with her, I mean. She lost her husband some years ago. She’s here because she wanted to come, and I brought her,” whispered Miss Glanfield, blowing smoke at the clouds of flies.

  “Unh-huh,” was Dr. Crowninshield’s non-committal response.

  “Why do you say ‘been wrong with her’?” the writer pursued—broadly speaking no conversation, however bizarre, could be too bizarre for her, or find her unprepared to respond. In fact she was delighted with the strange swiftness of the old woman’s insight. She was undoubtedly a witch! “Do you think she’s over it, whatever it was?”

  “I think she’s dans la bonne voie.”

&n
bsp; “You wouldn’t have said that a week ago, if you’d seen her then,” said Miss Glanfield rapidly.

  “Maybe not. I do say it now. Maybe you’ve done her good. I surmise you could do her a lot of good, if you do little enough about it,” said the American surprisingly.

  “I’ve not done much so far but get her here.”

  “Well, she’ll want more of you than that. But not as much as you might very conceivably give her.”

  “Oh, how on earth?” Miss Glanfield, still unperturbed, was delighted by the significant and unexpected quality of Dr. Crowninshield’s utterances. This was Delphi in person.

  “You might overwhelm her with your ideas—make her accept something that was ultimately bad for her, because it came from you, and she likes you; try to make her live on your level, which isn’t her level. I guess you often do that to folks. I read you, you know,” said Dr. Crowninshield, smiling, with a very keen fine glance.

  “Oh, but do go on!”

  “You’re pretty nice!” said the old lady—“I guess you don’t mind my criticisms a bit!”

  “It’s fascinating! But I shall try to remember. What else?”

  “I fancy that’s about all. I’m sorry for her. If nothing comes between you, you may help her a whole lot, if you aren’t too energetic with her.”

  “What could come between us? I’m just trying to think.”

  “I don’t know. But remember that in any conflict, you’d break her and her little arts like a butterfly on a wheel.”

  This final pronouncement from Delphi did upset Miss Glanfield.

  “Oh really, Dr. Crowninshield, I don’t think I should! I’m sorry for her too. After all, I arranged for her to come on this trip.”

  “My dear, you just wouldn’t know you were doing a thing! But she’d get broken, just the same.”

  “That’s horrible,” said Miss Glanfield thoughtfully. “Am I horrible?” she asked, looking very directly at the old woman.

  “No. You’re a fine person. But you’re big, and potent—you’re like a turbine in a drawing-room, among her sort of folks. And if you touch a turbine in the wrong place, you get frizzled.”

  “Oh dear!” said Miss Glanfield, frowning with thought, her indeterminate eyebrows drawn down level above those very blue eyes. “This is frightful. My husband always says things like that, but I don’t pay very much attention to him—one doesn’t, you know. And I have a clever, excessively lethargic friend who always tells me my energy is so tiring. But I always tell her how fearfully enervating her laziness is, to people like me! Surely the lazy ones aren’t the only people to get consideration?”

  Dr. Crowninshield, at this, laughed aloud, a little dry crackling New England laugh. They had both raised their whispers practically to the normal tone of speech by this time, so absorbed were they in their most peculiar interchange; but Dr. Crowninshield’s laughter brought it to an abrupt end. Three recumbent figures stirred under three red quilts, three handkerchiefs were pulled off three faces—the others had woken up.

  “What’s the time?” Colonel Robinson asked.

  “Six,” said Miss Glanfield, looking at her watch.

  Gloire sat up and stretched her arms in a lovely lazy graceful gesture, and patted her mouth to cover a tiny yawn.

  “What time do the flies go to bed?” she enquired, flicking her bandanna at them as the skilful crack a whip.

  “After dark,” said Mrs. Robinson, also sitting up, and beginning to comb out her hair. Gloire did this too—but whereas the Colonel’s wife would have reminded the cultured onlooker forcibly of the more dismal type of Ricketts woman at her toilet, Mrs. Thurston looked like something off a Grecian urn. The Colonel threw aside his quilt, stuck his feet over the edge of the mattress, and began to put on his shoes. Miss Glanfield from her coign of vantage on Dr. Crowninshield’s brass bed surveyed them with delight—it was such an unwonted scene of mixed domesticity. So this was Albanian country-house life! Charming.

  Rudolf Valentino now entered, bearing a tray with tiny cups of Turkish coffee, which he handed round to each bed. When he gave Dr. Crowninshield her cup he said something to her in Albanian.

  “What happens now?” Gloire asked, lighting a cigarette and setting to work on her face with a piece of cotton-wool and some fluid out of a small bottle.

  “You go and see the animals,” said Dr. Crowninshield. “The Lek-Gionajs will be ready when you are, he says.”

  “I’ve seen the animals at least eight times,” said the Colonel, putting his now shod feet back on the mattress, and starting on his coffee.

  The animals proved to be so spectacular as to be worth seeing nine times, Miss Glanfield thought. When they went downstairs, parting from Dr. Crowninshield, who returned to her patient, they were led out to a bare open space in a hollow below the house, occupied by a large enclosure of wooden uprights, rather like the split-chestnut fencing seen in the southern counties in England, but stouter, and over six feet high. About it at a distance of some forty yards stood a ring of tall stout poles, and on the slopes above, overlooking the hollow, were several open-fronted wooden shelters with heaps of blankets. Mme. Lek-Gionaj, translated by Mrs. Robinson, explained the uses of all these things to her newest visitors. To the poles round the central fold the dogs were tied at night, so that when the wolves came prowling down the shepherds could safely shoot at the marauders without fear of injuring the dogs; the shepherds slept in the open-fronted shelters, so that they could fire at the wolves as they lay, when the barking of the dogs aroused them.

  “But do wolves really come here?” Gloire asked incredulously.

  “Oh yes—constantly.”

  Folds and shelters were alike empty, and Gloire asked where the animals were? For answer, Mrs. Robinson pointed up the mountainside. Above the dark pine woods, the pinnacles of Mali Shënjt were glowing golden in the last sunshine, though where they stood was already in shadow; the head of the valley and the upper slopes were bathed in a flood of rich light. And down from these sun-bathed upper slopes into the blue lake of shadow below two rivers were pouring, a white river and a brown river, gathering small tributaries as they flowed from branching gullies and isolated clearings—a brown river of goats, a white river of sheep. Shouts and the barking of dogs accompanied their flow, and were borne to the onlookers on the still mountain air.

  “Heavens! What masses! Are they all coming here?”

  Yes, they were—and presently first the white and then the brown torrent debouched into the hollow, and like a river expanding into a lake, spread all over it. Miss Glanfield now saw what she had not noticed at first, that a division ran across the main fold, dividing it in two—the entrance was just by the division, and a man standing in it, with a stick and incredible skill, divided the sheep from the goats, as the surging flood bore down upon him, turning them into their several quarters. Baa-ing, bleating, they rushed at him, the sheep jumping, the goats galloping flat—but he made no mistakes; the sheep and lambs poured into one fold, the goats into the other. The kids to Miss Glanfield’s surprise were excluded, and remained bleating desolately outside. As usual she asked the reason for this.

  “They’ll milk the goats in the morning, so the kids have to be kept apart from their mothers during the night,” Mrs. Robinson told her.

  “But where will they go?”

  “You’ll see—in the little fold.”

  She did see, presently. When the flowing river slackened and all the sheep and goats were disposed in the folds, two solid floors of brown and white, shoving and pushing noisily round the water-troughs and food-racks, the shepherd who had so skilfully organised their disposition went and opened a gate into the smaller fold at one side, and the dogs, barking, hustled the kids into it. Along with them went three old rams, with curling horns and fleeces that swept the ground.

  “What in the world are the old tups doing in there, Robina?” Miss Glanfield asked.

  “Oh, they act as sort of nurses to the kids—show them how to eat and drink,
and make them feel at home,” Mrs. Robinson replied. And indeed, the elderly rams proceeded quietly to the smaller drinking and food-troughs provided for the kids, who presently stopped bleating so piercingly after their mothers, and followed this sensible example.

  “How very amusing!” said Miss Glanfield. “But why rams?”

  Mrs. Robinson applied to Mme. Lek-Gionaj.

  “She says billies aren’t reliable; they might knock the kids about,” she said—“and of course if it was sheep or nannies there would be a riot. But rams make splendid foster-mothers.”

  For some reason this use of the rams particularly charmed Miss Glanfield—but indeed the whole scene charmed her. She glanced round the darkling hollow—at the troop of shepherds with their wild faces and bizarre dress, at the horde of sheep-dogs, almost as savage as the wolves at whom, apparently, they were wont to bark, at the enormous wealth of animals now safely folded against Nature’s still potent enemies. Mrs. Robinson, to whom she mentioned the riches such flocks must represent in a pastoral community, in return quoted the Albanian proverb—“God grant me not crops in my fields if I do not have my cup of milk.”

  Finally, she looked at the Lek-Gionajs themselves, standing among their flocks and herds and servants as Abraham and Sarah might have stood of old on the plains of Palestine. Lek-Gionaj was a short man, thick-set; it was hard to see much of Abraham in the semi-European dress which he affected—an old-fashioned Norfolk suit with pleated back and patch pockets, knee-stockings, and stout black laced shoes, most oddly combined with a collarless shirt, gauged to the neck, and an immensely broad cummerbund of striped black and silver silk which, embracing the bottom of his neat waistcoat, fastened in front with a huge silver buckle set with turquoises, at least eight inches across. Yet there was something patriarchal about him; the quiet, substantial satisfaction with which he stood, feet apart, surveying his fleecy, vocal, visible wealth—a satisfaction which the sight of packets of gilt-edged securities in a safe can never quite afford—and the tone of friendly interest and calm unquestioned authority with which he spoke to his men.