Among the promises which Mrs. Ambrose had made her niece should she
stay was a room cut off from the rest of the house, large, private—a
room in which she could play, read, think, defy the world, a fortress
as well as a sanctuary. Rooms, she knew, became more like worlds than
rooms at the age of twenty-four. Her judgment was correct, and when she
shut the door Rachel entered an enchanted place, where the poets sang
and things fell into their right proportions. Some days after the
vision of the hotel by night she was sitting alone, sunk in an
arm-chair, reading a brightly-covered red volume lettered on the back
_Works of Henrik Ibsen_. Music was open on the piano, and books of
music rose in two jagged pillars on the floor; but for the moment music
was deserted.
Far from looking bored or absent-minded, her eyes were concentrated
almost sternly upon the page, and from her breathing, which was slow
but repressed, it could be seen that her whole body was constrained by
the working of her mind. At last she shut the book sharply, lay back,
and drew a deep breath, expressive of the wonder which always marks the
transition from the imaginary world to the real world.
“What I want to know,” she said aloud, “is this: What is the truth?
What’s the truth of it all?” She was speaking partly as herself, and
partly as the heroine of the play she had just read. The landscape
outside, because she had seen nothing but print for the space of two
hours, now appeared amazingly solid and clear, but although there were
men on the hill washing the trunks of olive trees with a white liquid,
for the moment she herself was the most vivid thing in it—an heroic
statue in the middle of the foreground, dominating the view. Ibsen’s
plays always left her in that condition. She acted them for days at a
time, greatly to Helen’s amusement; and then it would be Meredith’s
turn and she became Diana of the Crossways. But Helen was aware that it
was not all acting, and that some sort of change was taking place in
the human being. When Rachel became tired of the rigidity of her pose
on the back of the chair, she turned round, slid comfortably down into
it, and gazed out over the furniture through the window opposite which
opened on the garden. (Her mind wandered away from Nora, but she went
on thinking of things that the book suggested to her, of women and
life.)
During the three months she had been here she had made up considerably,
as Helen meant she should, for time spent in interminable walks round
sheltered gardens, and the household gossip of her aunts. But Mrs.
Ambrose would have been the first to disclaim any influence, or indeed
any belief that to influence was within her power. She saw her less
shy, and less serious, which was all to the good, and the violent leaps
and the interminable mazes which had led to that result were usually
not even guessed at by her. Talk was the medicine she trusted to, talk
about everything, talk that was free, unguarded, and as candid as a
habit of talking with men made natural in her own case. Nor did she
encourage those habits of unselfishness and amiability founded upon
insincerity which are put at so high a value in mixed households of men
and women. She desired that Rachel should think, and for this reason
offered books and discouraged too entire a dependence upon Bach and
Beethoven and Wagner. But when Mrs. Ambrose would have suggested Defoe,
Maupassant, or some spacious chronicle of family life, Rachel chose
modern books, books in shiny yellow covers, books with a great deal of
gilding on the back, which were tokens in her aunt’s eyes of harsh
wrangling and disputes about facts which had no such importance as the
moderns claimed for them. But she did not interfere. Rachel read what
she chose, reading with the curious literalness of one to whom written
sentences are unfamiliar, and handling words as though they were made
of wood, separately of great importance, and possessed of shapes like
tables or chairs. In this way she came to conclusions, which had to be
remodelled according to the adventures of the day, and were indeed
recast as liberally as any one could desire, leaving always a small
grain of belief behind them.
Ibsen was succeeded by a novel such as Mrs. Ambrose detested, whose
purpose was to distribute the guilt of a woman’s downfall upon the
right shoulders; a purpose which was achieved, if the reader’s
discomfort were any proof of it. She threw the book down, looked out of
the window, turned away from the window, and relapsed into an
arm-chair.
The morning was hot, and the exercise of reading left her mind
contracting and expanding like the main-spring of a clock, and the
small noises of midday, which one can ascribe to no definite cause, in
a regular rhythm. It was all very real, very big, very impersonal, and
after a moment or two she began to raise her first finger and to let it
fall on the arm of her chair so as to bring back to herself some
consciousness of her own existence. She was next overcome by the
unspeakable queerness of the fact that she should be sitting in an
arm-chair, in the morning, in the middle of the world. Who were the
people moving in the house—moving things from one place to another? And
life, what was that? It was only a light passing over the surface and
vanishing, as in time she would vanish, though the furniture in the
room would remain. Her dissolution became so complete that she could
not raise her finger any more, and sat perfectly still, listening and
looking always at the same spot. It became stranger and stranger. She
was overcome with awe that things should exist at all. . . . She forgot
that she had any fingers to raise. . . . The things that existed were
so immense and so desolate. . . . She continued to be conscious of
these vast masses of substance for a long stretch of time, the clock
still ticking in the midst of the universal silence.
“Come in,” she said mechanically, for a string in her brain seemed to
be pulled by a persistent knocking at the door. With great slowness the
door opened and a tall human being came towards her, holding out her
arm and saying:
“What am I to say to this?”
The utter absurdity of a woman coming into a room with a piece of paper
in her hand amazed Rachel.
“I don’t know what to answer, or who Terence Hewet is,” Helen
continued, in the toneless voice of a ghost. She put a paper before
Rachel on which were written the incredible words:
DEAR MRS. AMBROSE—I am getting up a picnic for next Friday, when we
propose to start at eleven-thirty if the weather is fine, and to make
the ascent of Monte Rosa. It will take some time, but the view should
be magnificent. It would give me great pleasure if you and Miss Vinrace
would consent to be of the party.—Yours sincerely,
TERENCE HEWET
Rachel read the words aloud to make herself believe in them. For the
same reason she put her hand on Helen’s shoulder.
“Books—books—books,” said Helen, in her absent-minded way. “More new
books—I wonder what you find in them. . . .”
For the second time Rachel read the letter, but to herself. This time,
instead of seeming vague as ghosts, each word was astonishingly
prominent; they came out as the tops of mountains come through a mist.
_Friday_—_eleven-thirty_—_Miss Vinrace_. The blood began to run in her
veins; she felt her eyes brighten.
“We must go,” she said, rather surprising Helen by her decision. “We
must certainly go”—such was the relief of finding that things still
happened, and indeed they appeared the brighter for the mist
surrounding them.
“Monte Rosa—that’s the mountain over there, isn’t it?” said Helen; “but
Hewet—who’s he? One of the young men Ridley met, I suppose. Shall I say
yes, then? It may be dreadfully dull.”
She took the letter back and went, for the messenger was waiting for
her answer.
The party which had been suggested a few nights ago in Mr. Hirst’s
bedroom had taken shape and was the source of great satisfaction to Mr.
Hewet, who had seldom used his practical abilities, and was pleased to
find them equal to the strain. His invitations had been universally
accepted, which was the more encouraging as they had been issued
against Hirst’s advice to people who were very dull, not at all suited
to each other, and sure not to come.
“Undoubtedly,” he said, as he twirled and untwirled a note signed Helen
Ambrose, “the gifts needed to make a great commander have been absurdly
overrated. About half the intellectual effort which is needed to review
a book of modern poetry has enabled me to get together seven or eight
people, of opposite sexes, at the same spot at the same hour on the
same day. What else is generalship, Hirst? What more did Wellington do
on the field of Waterloo? It’s like counting the number of pebbles of a
path, tedious but not difficult.”
He was sitting in his bedroom, one leg over the arm of the chair, and
Hirst was writing a letter opposite. Hirst was quick to point out that
all the difficulties remained.
“For instance, here are two women you’ve never seen. Suppose one of
them suffers from mountain-sickness, as my sister does, and the other—”
“Oh, the women are for you,” Hewet interrupted. “I asked them solely
for your benefit. What you want, Hirst, you know, is the society of
young women of your own age. You don’t know how to get on with women,
which is a great defect, considering that half the world consists of
women.”
Hirst groaned that he was quite aware of that.
But Hewet’s complacency was a little chilled as he walked with Hirst to
the place where a general meeting had been appointed. He wondered why
on earth he had asked these people, and what one really expected to get
from bunching human beings up together.
“Cows,” he reflected, “draw together in a field; ships in a calm; and
we’re just the same when we’ve nothing else to do. But why do we do
it?—is it to prevent ourselves from seeing to the bottom of things” (he
stopped by a stream and began stirring it with his walking-stick and
clouding the water with mud), “making cities and mountains and whole
universes out of nothing, or do we really love each other, or do we, on
the other hand, live in a state of perpetual uncertainty, knowing
nothing, leaping from moment to moment as from world to world?—which
is, on the whole, the view _I_ incline to.”
He jumped over the stream; Hirst went round and joined him, remarking
that he had long ceased to look for the reason of any human action.
Half a mile further, they came to a group of plane trees and the
salmon-pink farmhouse standing by the stream which had been chosen as
meeting-place. It was a shady spot, lying conveniently just where the
hill sprung out from the flat. Between the thin stems of the plane
trees the young men could see little knots of donkeys pasturing, and a
tall woman rubbing the nose of one of them, while another woman was
kneeling by the stream lapping water out of her palms.
As they entered the shady place, Helen looked up and then held out her
hand.
“I must introduce myself,” she said. “I am Mrs. Ambrose.”
Having shaken hands, she said, “That’s my niece.”
Rachel approached awkwardly. She held out her hand, but withdrew it.
“It’s all wet,” she said.
Scarcely had they spoken, when the first carriage drew up.
The donkeys were quickly jerked into attention, and the second carriage
arrived. By degrees the grove filled with people—the Elliots, the
Thornburys, Mr. Venning and Susan, Miss Allan, Evelyn Murgatroyd, and
Mr. Perrott. Mr. Hirst acted the part of hoarse energetic sheep-dog. By
means of a few words of caustic Latin he had the animals marshalled,
and by inclining a sharp shoulder he lifted the ladies. “What Hewet
fails to understand,” he remarked, “is that we must break the back of
the ascent before midday.” He was assisting a young lady, by name
Evelyn Murgatroyd, as he spoke. She rose light as a bubble to her seat.
With a feather drooping from a broad-brimmed hat, in white from top to
toe, she looked like a gallant lady of the time of Charles the First
leading royalist troops into action.
“Ride with me,” she commanded; and, as soon as Hirst had swung himself
across a mule, the two started, leading the cavalcade.
“You’re not to call me Miss Murgatroyd. I hate it,” she said. “My
name’s Evelyn. What’s yours?”
“St. John,” he said.
“I like that,” said Evelyn. “And what’s your friend’s name?”
“His initials being R. S. T., we call him Monk,” said Hirst.
“Oh, you’re all too clever,” she said. “Which way? Pick me a branch.
Let’s canter.”
She gave her donkey a sharp cut with a switch and started forward. The
full and romantic career of Evelyn Murgatroyd is best hit off by her
own words, “Call me Evelyn and I’ll call you St. John.” She said that
on very slight provocation—her surname was enough—but although a great
many young men had answered her already with considerable spirit she
went on saying it and making choice of none. But her donkey stumbled to
a jog-trot, and she had to ride in advance alone, for the path when it
began to ascend one of the spines of the hill became narrow and
scattered with stones. The cavalcade wound on like a jointed
caterpillar, tufted with the white parasols of the ladies, and the
panama hats of the gentlemen. At one point where the ground rose
sharply, Evelyn M. jumped off, threw her reins to the native boy, and
adjured St. John Hirst to dismount too. Their example was followed by
those who felt the need of stretching.
“I don’t see any need to get off,” said Miss Allan to Mrs. Elliot just
behind her, “considering the difficulty I had getting on.”
“These little donkeys stand anything, _n’est-ce pas_?” Mrs. Elliot
addressed the guide, who obligingly bowed his head.
“Flowers,” said Helen, stooping to pick the lovely little bright
flowers which grew separately here and there. “You pinch their leaves
and then they smell,” she said, laying one on Miss Allan’s knee.
“Haven’t we met before?” asked Miss Allan, looking at her.
“I was taking it for granted,” Helen laughed, for in the confusion of
meeting they had not been introduced.
“How sensible!” chirped Mrs. Elliot. “That’s just what one would always
like—only unfortunately it’s not possible.”
“Not possible?” said Helen. “Everything’s possible. Who knows what
mayn’t happen before night-fall?” she continued, mocking the poor
lady’s timidity, who depended so implicitly upon one thing following
another that the mere glimpse of a world where dinner could be
disregarded, or the table moved one inch from its accustomed place,
filled her with fears for her own stability.
Higher and higher they went, becoming separated from the world. The
world, when they turned to look back, flattened itself out, and was
marked with squares of thin green and grey.
“Towns are very small,” Rachel remarked, obscuring the whole of Santa
Marina and its suburbs with one hand. The sea filled in all the angles
of the coast smoothly, breaking in a white frill, and here and there
ships were set firmly in the blue. The sea was stained with purple and
green blots, and there was a glittering line upon the rim where it met
the sky. The air was very clear and silent save for the sharp noise of
grasshoppers and the hum of bees, which sounded loud in the ear as they
shot past and vanished. The party halted and sat for a time in a quarry
on the hillside.
“Amazingly clear,” exclaimed St. John, identifying one cleft in the
land after another.
Evelyn M. sat beside him, propping her chin on her hand. She surveyed
the view with a certain look of triumph.
“D’you think Garibaldi was ever up here?” she asked Mr. Hirst. Oh, if
she had been his bride! If, instead of a picnic party, this was a party
of patriots, and she, red-shirted like the rest, had lain among grim
men, flat on the turf, aiming her gun at the white turrets beneath
them, screening her eyes to pierce through the smoke! So thinking, her
foot stirred restlessly, and she exclaimed:
“I don’t call this _life_, do you?”
“What do you call life?” said St. John.
“Fighting—revolution,” she said, still gazing at the doomed city. “You
only care for books, I know.”
“You’re quite wrong,” said St. John.
“Explain,” she urged, for there were no guns to be aimed at bodies, and
she turned to another kind of warfare.
“What do I care for? People,” he said.
“Well, I _am_ surprised!” she exclaimed. “You look so awfully serious.
Do let’s be friends and tell each other what we’re like. I hate being
cautious, don’t you?”
But St. John was decidedly cautious, as she could see by the sudden
constriction of his lips, and had no intention of revealing his soul to
a young lady. “The ass is eating my hat,” he remarked, and stretched
out for it instead of answering her. Evelyn blushed very slightly and
then turned with some impetuosity upon Mr. Perrott, and when they
mounted again it was Mr. Perrott who lifted her to her seat.
“When one has laid the eggs one eats the omelette,” said Hughling
Elliot, exquisitely in French, a hint to the rest of them that it was
time to ride on again.
The midday sun which Hirst had foretold was beginning to beat down
hotly. The higher they got the more of the sky appeared, until the
mountain was only a small tent of earth against an enormous blue
background. The English fell silent; the natives who walked beside the
donkeys broke into queer wavering songs and tossed jokes from one to
the other. The way grew very steep, and each rider kept his eyes fixed
on the hobbling curved form of the rider and donkey directly in front
of him. Rather more strain was being put upon their bodies than is
quite legitimate in a party of pleasure, and Hewet overheard one or two
slightly grumbling remarks.
“Expeditions in such heat are perhaps a little unwise,” Mrs. Elliot
murmured to Miss Allan.
But Miss Allan returned, “I always like to get to the top”; and it was
true, although she was a big woman, stiff in the joints, and unused to
donkey-riding, but as her holidays were few she made the most of them.
The vivacious white figure rode well in front; she had somehow
possessed herself of a leafy branch and wore it round her hat like a
garland. They went on for a few minutes in silence.
“The view will be wonderful,” Hewet assured them, turning round in his
saddle and smiling encouragement. Rachel caught his eye and smiled too.
They struggled on for some time longer, nothing being heard but the
clatter of hooves striving on the loose stones. Then they saw that
Evelyn was off her ass, and that Mr. Perrott was standing in the
attitude of a statesman in Parliament Square, stretching an arm of
stone towards the view. A little to the left of them was a low ruined
wall, the stump of an Elizabethan watch-tower.
“I couldn’t have stood it much longer,” Mrs. Elliot confided to Mrs.
Thornbury, but the excitement of being at the top in another moment and
seeing the view prevented any one from answering her. One after another
they came out on the flat space at the top and stood overcome with
wonder. Before them they beheld an immense space—grey sands running
into forest, and forest merging in mountains, and mountains washed by
air, the infinite distances of South America. A river ran across the
plain, as flat as the land, and appearing quite as stationary. The
effect of so much space was at first rather chilling. They felt
themselves very small, and for some time no one said anything. Then
Evelyn exclaimed, “Splendid!” She took hold of the hand that was next
her; it chanced to be Miss Allan’s hand.
“North—South—East—West,” said Miss Allan, jerking her head slightly
towards the points of the compass.
Hewet, who had gone a little in front, looked up at his guests as if to
justify himself for having brought them. He observed how strangely the
people standing in a row with their figures bent slightly forward and
their clothes plastered by the wind to the shape of their bodies
resembled naked statues. On their pedestal of earth they looked
unfamiliar and noble, but in another moment they had broken their rank,
and he had to see to the laying out of food. Hirst came to his help,
and they handed packets of chicken and bread from one to another.
As St. John gave Helen her packet she looked him full in the face and
said:
“Do you remember—two women?”
He looked at her sharply.
“I do,” he answered.
“So you’re the two women!” Hewet exclaimed, looking from Helen to
Rachel.
“Your lights tempted us,” said Helen. “We watched you playing cards,
but we never knew that we were being watched.”
“It was like a thing in a play,” Rachel added.
“And Hirst couldn’t describe you,” said Hewet.
It was certainly odd to have seen Helen and to find nothing to say
about her.
Hughling Elliot put up his eyeglass and grasped the situation.
“I don’t know of anything more dreadful,” he said, pulling at the joint
of a chicken’s leg, “than being seen when one isn’t conscious of it.
One feels sure one has been caught doing something ridiculous—looking
at one’s tongue in a hansom, for instance.”
Now the others ceased to look at the view, and drawing together sat
down in a circle round the baskets.
“And yet those little looking-glasses in hansoms have a fascination of
their own,” said Mrs. Thornbury. “One’s features look so different when
one can only see a bit of them.”
“There will soon be very few hansom cabs left,” said Mrs. Elliot. “And
four-wheeled cabs—I assure you even at Oxford it’s almost impossible to
get a four-wheeled cab.”
“I wonder what happens to the horses,” said Susan.
“Veal pie,” said Arthur.
“It’s high time that horses should become extinct anyhow,” said Hirst.
“They’re distressingly ugly, besides being vicious.”
But Susan, who had been brought up to understand that the horse is the
noblest of God’s creatures, could not agree, and Venning thought Hirst
an unspeakable ass, but was too polite not to continue the
conversation.
“When they see us falling out of aeroplanes they get some of their own
back, I expect,” he remarked.
“You fly?” said old Mr. Thornbury, putting on his spectacles to look at
him.
“I hope to, some day,” said Arthur.
Here flying was discussed at length, and Mrs. Thornbury delivered an
opinion which was almost a speech to the effect that it would be quite
necessary in time of war, and in England we were terribly behind-hand.
“If I were a young fellow,” she concluded, “I should certainly
qualify.” It was odd to look at the little elderly lady, in her grey
coat and skirt, with a sandwich in her hand, her eyes lighting up with
zeal as she imagined herself a young man in an aeroplane. For some
reason, however, the talk did not run easily after this, and all they
said was about drink and salt and the view. Suddenly Miss Allan, who
was seated with her back to the ruined wall, put down her sandwich,
picked something off her neck, and remarked, “I’m covered with little
creatures.” It was true, and the discovery was very welcome. The ants
were pouring down a glacier of loose earth heaped between the stones of
the ruin—large brown ants with polished bodies. She held out one on the
back of her hand for Helen to look at.
“Suppose they sting?” said Helen.
“They will not sting, but they may infest the victuals,” said Miss
Allan, and measures were taken at once to divert the ants from their
course. At Hewet’s suggestion it was decided to adopt the methods of
modern warfare against an invading army. The table-cloth represented
the invaded country, and round it they built barricades of baskets, set
up the wine bottles in a rampart, made fortifications of bread and dug
fosses of salt. When an ant got through it was exposed to a fire of
bread-crumbs, until Susan pronounced that that was cruel, and rewarded
those brave spirits with spoil in the shape of tongue. Playing this
game they lost their stiffness, and even became unusually daring, for
Mr. Perrott, who was very shy, said, “Permit me,” and removed an ant
from Evelyn’s neck.
“It would be no laughing matter really,” said Mrs. Elliot
confidentially to Mrs. Thornbury, “if an ant did get between the vest
and the skin.”
The noise grew suddenly more clamorous, for it was discovered that a
long line of ants had found their way on to the table-cloth by a back
entrance, and if success could be gauged by noise, Hewet had every
reason to think his party a success. Nevertheless he became, for no
reason at all, profoundly depressed.
“They are not satisfactory; they are ignoble,” he thought, surveying
his guests from a little distance, where he was gathering together the
plates. He glanced at them all, stooping and swaying and gesticulating
round the table-cloth. Amiable and modest, respectable in many ways,
lovable even in their contentment and desire to be kind, how mediocre
they all were, and capable of what insipid cruelty to one another!
There was Mrs. Thornbury, sweet but trivial in her maternal egoism;
Mrs. Elliot, perpetually complaining of her lot; her husband a mere pea
in a pod; and Susan—she had no self, and counted neither one way nor
the other; Venning was as honest and as brutal as a schoolboy; poor old
Thornbury merely trod his round like a horse in a mill; and the less
one examined into Evelyn’s character the better, he suspected. Yet
these were the people with money, and to them rather than to others was
given the management of the world. Put among them some one more vital,
who cared for life or for beauty, and what an agony, what a waste would
they inflict on him if he tried to share with them and not to scourge!
“There’s Hirst,” he concluded, coming to the figure of his friend; with
his usual little frown of concentration upon his forehead he was
peeling the skin off a banana. “And he’s as ugly as sin.” For the
ugliness of St. John Hirst, and the limitations that went with it, he
made the rest in some way responsible. It was their fault that he had
to live alone. Then he came to Helen, attracted to her by the sound of
her laugh. She was laughing at Miss Allan. “You wear combinations in
this heat?” she said in a voice which was meant to be private. He liked
the look of her immensely, not so much her beauty, but her largeness
and simplicity, which made her stand out from the rest like a great
stone woman, and he passed on in a gentler mood. His eye fell upon
Rachel. She was lying back rather behind the others resting on one
elbow; she might have been thinking precisely the same thoughts as
Hewet himself. Her eyes were fixed rather sadly but not intently upon
the row of people opposite her. Hewet crawled up to her on his knees,
with a piece of bread in his hand.
“What are you looking at?” he asked.
She was a little startled, but answered directly, “Human beings.”