1
It had evidently been a great festival. One of the events of Mr.
Hancock's summer; designed by him for the happiness and enjoyment of his
friends and enjoyed by him in labouring to those ends. It was
_beautiful_ to look back upon; in every part; the easy journey, the
approach to the cottage along the mile of green-feathered river, the
well-ordered feast in the large clean cottage; the well-thought out
comfort of the cottage bedrooms, the sight of the orchard lit by Chinese
lanterns, the lantern-lit boats, the drifting down the river in the soft
moonlit air; the candle lit supper table, morning through the cottage
windows, upstairs and down, far away from the world, people meeting at
breakfast like travellers in a far-off country, pleased to see well
known faces ... the morning on the green river ... the gentleness and
kindliness and quiet dignity of everybody, the kindly difficult gently
jesting discussion of small personal incidents; the gentle amiable
strains; the mild restrained self-effacing watchfulness of the women;
the uncompeting mutual admiration of the men; the general gratitude of
the group when one or other of the men filled up a space of time with a
piece of modestly narrated personal reminiscence....
2
Never, never could she belong to that world. It was a perfect little
world; enclosed; something one would need to be born and trained into;
the experience of it as an outsider was pure pain and misery;
admiration, irritation and resentment running abreast in a fever.
Welcome and kindliness could do nothing; one's own straining towards it,
nothing; a night of sleepless battering at its closed doors, nothing.
There was a secret in it, in spite of its simple seeming exterior; an
undesired secret. Something to which one could not give oneself up. Its
terms were terms on which one could not live. That girl could live on
them, in spite of her strenuous different life in the east-end
settlement ... in spite of her plain dull dress and red hands. She knew
the code; her cheap straw hat waved graciously, her hair ruffled about
her head in soft clouds. Why had he never spoken of her uncle's cottage
so near his own? She must be always there. When she appeared in the
surgery she seemed to come straight out of the east-end ... his respect
for workers amongst the poor ... his general mild revulsion from
philanthropists; but down here she was not a philanthropist ...
outwardly a girl with blowy hair and a wavy hat, smiling in boats,
understanding botany and fishing ... inwardly a designing female, her
mind lit by her cold intellectual "ethical"--hooooo--the very _sound_ of
the word--"ethical Pantheism"; cool and secret and hateful. "Rather a
nice little thing"; "pretty green dress"; _nice_!