Whether too slight or too vague the ties that bind people casually
meeting in a hotel at midnight, they possess one advantage at least
over the bonds which unite the elderly, who have lived together once
and so must live for ever. Slight they may be, but vivid and genuine,
merely because the power to break them is within the grasp of each, and
there is no reason for continuance except a true desire that continue
they shall. When two people have been married for years they seem to
become unconscious of each other’s bodily presence so that they move as
if alone, speak aloud things which they do not expect to be answered,
and in general seem to experience all the comfort of solitude without
its loneliness. The joint lives of Ridley and Helen had arrived at this
stage of community, and it was often necessary for one or the other to
recall with an effort whether a thing had been said or only thought,
shared or dreamt in private. At four o’clock in the afternoon two or
three days later Mrs. Ambrose was standing brushing her hair, while her
husband was in the dressing-room which opened out of her room, and
occasionally, through the cascade of water—he was washing his face—she
caught exclamations, “So it goes on year after year; I wish, I wish, I
wish I could make an end of it,” to which she paid no attention.
“It’s white? Or only brown?” Thus she herself murmured, examining a
hair which gleamed suspiciously among the brown. She pulled it out and
laid it on the dressing-table. She was criticising her own appearance,
or rather approving of it, standing a little way back from the glass
and looking at her own face with superb pride and melancholy, when her
husband appeared in the doorway in his shirt sleeves, his face half
obscured by a towel.
“You often tell me I don’t notice things,” he remarked.
“Tell me if this is a white hair, then?” she replied. She laid the hair
on his hand.
“There’s not a white hair on your head,” he exclaimed.
“Ah, Ridley, I begin to doubt,” she sighed; and bowed her head under
his eyes so that he might judge, but the inspection produced only a
kiss where the line of parting ran, and husband and wife then proceeded
to move about the room, casually murmuring.
“What was that you were saying?” Helen remarked, after an interval of
conversation which no third person could have understood.
“Rachel—you ought to keep an eye upon Rachel,” he observed
significantly, and Helen, though she went on brushing her hair, looked
at him. His observations were apt to be true.
“Young gentlemen don’t interest themselves in young women’s education
without a motive,” he remarked.
“Oh, Hirst,” said Helen.
“Hirst and Hewet, they’re all the same to me—all covered with spots,”
he replied. “He advises her to read Gibbon. Did you know that?”
Helen did not know that, but she would not allow herself inferior to
her husband in powers of observation. She merely said:
“Nothing would surprise me. Even that dreadful flying man we met at the
dance—even Mr. Dalloway—even—”
“I advise you to be circumspect,” said Ridley. “There’s Willoughby,
remember—Willoughby”; he pointed at a letter.
Helen looked with a sigh at an envelope which lay upon her
dressing-table. Yes, there lay Willoughby, curt, inexpressive,
perpetually jocular, robbing a whole continent of mystery, enquiring
after his daughter’s manners and morals—hoping she wasn’t a bore, and
bidding them pack her off to him on board the very next ship if she
were—and then grateful and affectionate with suppressed emotion, and
then half a page about his own triumphs over wretched little natives
who went on strike and refused to load his ships, until he roared
English oaths at them, “popping my head out of the window just as I
was, in my shirt sleeves. The beggars had the sense to scatter.”
“If Theresa married Willoughby,” she remarked, turning the page with a
hairpin, “one doesn’t see what’s to prevent Rachel—”
But Ridley was now off on grievances of his own connected with the
washing of his shirts, which somehow led to the frequent visits of
Hughling Elliot, who was a bore, a pedant, a dry stick of a man, and
yet Ridley couldn’t simply point at the door and tell him to go. The
truth of it was, they saw too many people. And so on and so on, more
conjugal talk pattering softly and unintelligibly, until they were both
ready to go down to tea.
The first thing that caught Helen’s eye as she came downstairs was a
carriage at the door, filled with skirts and feathers nodding on the
tops of hats. She had only time to gain the drawing-room before two
names were oddly mispronounced by the Spanish maid, and Mrs. Thornbury
came in slightly in advance of Mrs. Wilfrid Flushing.
“Mrs. Wilfrid Flushing,” said Mrs. Thornbury, with a wave of her hand.
“A friend of our common friend Mrs. Raymond Parry.”
Mrs. Flushing shook hands energetically. She was a woman of forty
perhaps, very well set up and erect, splendidly robust, though not as
tall as the upright carriage of her body made her appear.
She looked Helen straight in the face and said, “You have a charmin’
house.”
She had a strongly marked face, her eyes looked straight at you, and
though naturally she was imperious in her manner she was nervous at the
same time. Mrs. Thornbury acted as interpreter, making things smooth
all round by a series of charming commonplace remarks.
“I’ve taken it upon myself, Mr. Ambrose,” she said, “to promise that
you will be so kind as to give Mrs. Flushing the benefit of your
experience. I’m sure no one here knows the country as well as you do.
No one takes such wonderful long walks. No one, I’m sure, has your
encyclopaedic knowledge upon every subject. Mr. Wilfrid Flushing is a
collector. He has discovered really beautiful things already. I had no
notion that the peasants were so artistic—though of course in the
past—”
“Not old things—new things,” interrupted Mrs. Flushing curtly. “That
is, if he takes my advice.”
The Ambroses had not lived for many years in London without knowing
something of a good many people, by name at least, and Helen remembered
hearing of the Flushings. Mr. Flushing was a man who kept an old
furniture shop; he had always said he would not marry because most
women have red cheeks, and would not take a house because most houses
have narrow staircases, and would not eat meat because most animals
bleed when they are killed; and then he had married an eccentric
aristocratic lady, who certainly was not pale, who looked as if she ate
meat, who had forced him to do all the things he most disliked—and this
then was the lady. Helen looked at her with interest. They had moved
out into the garden, where the tea was laid under a tree, and Mrs.
Flushing was helping herself to cherry jam. She had a peculiar jerking
movement of the body when she spoke, which caused the canary-coloured
plume on her hat to jerk too. Her small but finely-cut and vigorous
features, together with the deep red of lips and cheeks, pointed to
many generations of well-trained and well-nourished ancestors behind
her.
“Nothin’ that’s more than twenty years old interests me,” she
continued. “Mouldy old pictures, dirty old books, they stick ’em in
museums when they’re only fit for burnin’.”
“I quite agree,” Helen laughed. “But my husband spends his life in
digging up manuscripts which nobody wants.” She was amused by Ridley’s
expression of startled disapproval.
“There’s a clever man in London called John who paints ever so much
better than the old masters,” Mrs. Flushing continued. “His pictures
excite me—nothin’ that’s old excites me.”
“But even his pictures will become old,” Mrs. Thornbury intervened.
“Then I’ll have ’em burnt, or I’ll put it in my will,” said Mrs.
Flushing.
“And Mrs. Flushing lived in one of the most beautiful old houses in
England—Chillingley,” Mrs. Thornbury explained to the rest of them.
“If I’d my way I’d burn that to-morrow,” Mrs. Flushing laughed. She had
a laugh like the cry of a jay, at once startling and joyless.
“What does any sane person want with those great big houses?” she
demanded. “If you go downstairs after dark you’re covered with black
beetles, and the electric lights always goin’ out. What would you do if
spiders came out of the tap when you turned on the hot water?” she
demanded, fixing her eye on Helen.
Mrs. Ambrose shrugged her shoulders with a smile.
“This is what I like,” said Mrs. Flushing. She jerked her head at the
Villa. “A little house in a garden. I had one once in Ireland. One
could lie in bed in the mornin’ and pick roses outside the window with
one’s toes.”
“And the gardeners, weren’t they surprised?” Mrs. Thornbury enquired.
“There were no gardeners,” Mrs. Flushing chuckled. “Nobody but me and
an old woman without any teeth. You know the poor in Ireland lose their
teeth after they’re twenty. But you wouldn’t expect a politician to
understand that—Arthur Balfour wouldn’t understand that.”
Ridley sighed that he never expected any one to understand anything,
least of all politicians.
“However,” he concluded, “there’s one advantage I find in extreme old
age—nothing matters a hang except one’s food and one’s digestion. All I
ask is to be left alone to moulder away in solitude. It’s obvious that
the world’s going as fast as it can to—the Nethermost Pit, and all I
can do is to sit still and consume as much of my own smoke as
possible.” He groaned, and with a melancholy glance laid the jam on his
bread, for he felt the atmosphere of this abrupt lady distinctly
unsympathetic.
“I always contradict my husband when he says that,” said Mrs. Thornbury
sweetly. “You men! Where would you be if it weren’t for the women!”
“Read the _Symposium_,” said Ridley grimly.
“_Symposium_?” cried Mrs. Flushing. “That’s Latin or Greek? Tell me, is
there a good translation?”
“No,” said Ridley. “You will have to learn Greek.”
Mrs. Flushing cried, “Ah, ah, ah! I’d rather break stones in the road.
I always envy the men who break stones and sit on those nice little
heaps all day wearin’ spectacles. I’d infinitely rather break stones
than clean out poultry runs, or feed the cows, or—”
Here Rachel came up from the lower garden with a book in her hand.
“What’s that book?” said Ridley, when she had shaken hands.
“It’s Gibbon,” said Rachel as she sat down.
“_The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire_?” said Mrs. Thornbury. “A
very wonderful book, I know. My dear father was always quoting it at
us, with the result that we resolved never to read a line.”
“Gibbon the historian?” enquired Mrs. Flushing. “I connect him with
some of the happiest hours of my life. We used to lie in bed and read
Gibbon—about the massacres of the Christians, I remember—when we were
supposed to be asleep. It’s no joke, I can tell you, readin’ a great
big book, in double columns, by a night-light, and the light that comes
through a chink in the door. Then there were the moths—tiger moths,
yellow moths, and horrid cockchafers. Louisa, my sister, would have the
window open. I wanted it shut. We fought every night of our lives over
that window. Have you ever seen a moth dyin’ in a night-light?” she
enquired.
Again there was an interruption. Hewet and Hirst appeared at the
drawing-room window and came up to the tea-table.
Rachel’s heart beat hard. She was conscious of an extraordinary
intensity in everything, as though their presence stripped some cover
off the surface of things; but the greetings were remarkably
commonplace.
“Excuse me,” said Hirst, rising from his chair directly he had sat
down. He went into the drawing-room, and returned with a cushion which
he placed carefully upon his seat.
“Rheumatism,” he remarked, as he sat down for the second time.
“The result of the dance?” Helen enquired.
“Whenever I get at all run down I tend to be rheumatic,” Hirst stated.
He bent his wrist back sharply. “I hear little pieces of chalk grinding
together!”
Rachel looked at him. She was amused, and yet she was respectful; if
such a thing could be, the upper part of her face seemed to laugh, and
the lower part to check its laughter.
Hewet picked up the book that lay on the ground.
“You like this?” he asked in an undertone.
“No, I don’t like it,” she replied. She had indeed been trying all the
afternoon to read it, and for some reason the glory which she had
perceived at first had faded, and, read as she would, she could not
grasp the meaning with her mind.
“It goes round, round, round, like a roll of oil-cloth,” she hazarded.
Evidently she meant Hewet alone to hear her words, but Hirst demanded,
“What d’you mean?”
She was instantly ashamed of her figure of speech, for she could not
explain it in words of sober criticism.
“Surely it’s the most perfect style, so far as style goes, that’s ever
been invented,” he continued. “Every sentence is practically perfect,
and the wit—”
“Ugly in body, repulsive in mind,” she thought, instead of thinking
about Gibbon’s style. “Yes, but strong, searching, unyielding in mind.”
She looked at his big head, a disproportionate part of which was
occupied by the forehead, and at the direct, severe eyes.
“I give you up in despair,” he said. He meant it lightly, but she took
it seriously, and believed that her value as a human being was lessened
because she did not happen to admire the style of Gibbon. The others
were talking now in a group about the native villages which Mrs.
Flushing ought to visit.
“I despair too,” she said impetuously. “How are you going to judge
people merely by their minds?”
“You agree with my spinster Aunt, I expect,” said St. John in his
jaunty manner, which was always irritating because it made the person
he talked to appear unduly clumsy and in earnest. “‘Be good, sweet
maid’—I thought Mr. Kingsley and my Aunt were now obsolete.”
“One can be very nice without having read a book,” she asserted. Very
silly and simple her words sounded, and laid her open to derision.
“Did I ever deny it?” Hirst enquired, raising his eyebrows.
Most unexpectedly Mrs. Thornbury here intervened, either because it was
her mission to keep things smooth or because she had long wished to
speak to Mr. Hirst, feeling as she did that young men were her sons.
“I have lived all my life with people like your Aunt, Mr. Hirst,” she
said, leaning forward in her chair. Her brown squirrel-like eyes became
even brighter than usual. “They have never heard of Gibbon. They only
care for their pheasants and their peasants. They are great big men who
look so fine on horseback, as people must have done, I think, in the
days of the great wars. Say what you like against them—they are animal,
they are unintellectual; they don’t read themselves, and they don’t
want others to read, but they are some of the finest and the kindest
human beings on the face of the earth! You would be surprised at some
of the stories I could tell. You have never guessed, perhaps, at all
the romances that go on in the heart of the country. There are the
people, I feel, among whom Shakespeare will be born if he is ever born
again. In those old houses, up among the Downs—”
“My Aunt,” Hirst interrupted, “spends her life in East Lambeth among
the degraded poor. I only quoted my Aunt because she is inclined to
persecute people she calls ‘intellectual,’ which is what I suspect Miss
Vinrace of doing. It’s all the fashion now. If you’re clever it’s
always taken for granted that you’re completely without sympathy,
understanding, affection—all the things that really matter. Oh, you
Christians! You’re the most conceited, patronising, hypocritical set of
old humbugs in the kingdom! Of course,” he continued, “I’m the first to
allow your country gentlemen great merits. For one thing, they’re
probably quite frank about their passions, which we are not. My father,
who is a clergyman in Norfolk, says that there is hardly a squire in
the country who does not—”
“But about Gibbon?” Hewet interrupted. The look of nervous tension
which had come over every face was relaxed by the interruption.
“You find him monotonous, I suppose. But you know—” He opened the book,
and began searching for passages to read aloud, and in a little time he
found a good one which he considered suitable. But there was nothing in
the world that bored Ridley more than being read aloud to, and he was
besides scrupulously fastidious as to the dress and behaviour of
ladies. In the space of fifteen minutes he had decided against Mrs.
Flushing on the ground that her orange plume did not suit her
complexion, that she spoke too loud, that she crossed her legs, and
finally, when he saw her accept a cigarette that Hewet offered her, he
jumped up, exclaiming something about “bar parlours,” and left them.
Mrs. Flushing was evidently relieved by his departure. She puffed her
cigarette, stuck her legs out, and examined Helen closely as to the
character and reputation of their common friend Mrs. Raymond Parry. By
a series of little strategems she drove her to define Mrs. Parry as
somewhat elderly, by no means beautiful, very much made up—an insolent
old harridan, in short, whose parties were amusing because one met odd
people; but Helen herself always pitied poor Mr. Parry, who was
understood to be shut up downstairs with cases full of gems, while his
wife enjoyed herself in the drawing-room. “Not that I believe what
people say against her—although she hints, of course—” Upon which Mrs.
Flushing cried out with delight:
“She’s my first cousin! Go on—go on!”
When Mrs. Flushing rose to go she was obviously delighted with her new
acquaintances. She made three or four different plans for meeting or
going on an expedition, or showing Helen the things they had bought, on
her way to the carriage. She included them all in a vague but
magnificent invitation.
As Helen returned to the garden again, Ridley’s words of warning came
into her head, and she hesitated a moment and looked at Rachel sitting
between Hirst and Hewet. But she could draw no conclusions, for Hewet
was still reading Gibbon aloud, and Rachel, for all the expression she
had, might have been a shell, and his words water rubbing against her
ears, as water rubs a shell on the edge of a rock.
Hewet’s voice was very pleasant. When he reached the end of the period
Hewet stopped, and no one volunteered any criticism.
“I do adore the aristocracy!” Hirst exclaimed after a moment’s pause.
“They’re so amazingly unscrupulous. None of us would dare to behave as
that woman behaves.”
“What I like about them,” said Helen as she sat down, “is that they’re
so well put together. Naked, Mrs. Flushing would be superb. Dressed as
she dresses, it’s absurd, of course.”
“Yes,” said Hirst. A shade of depression crossed his face. “I’ve never
weighed more than ten stone in my life,” he said, “which is ridiculous,
considering my height, and I’ve actually gone down in weight since we
came here. I daresay that accounts for the rheumatism.” Again he jerked
his wrist back sharply, so that Helen might hear the grinding of the
chalk stones. She could not help smiling.
“It’s no laughing matter for me, I assure you,” he protested. “My
mother’s a chronic invalid, and I’m always expecting to be told that
I’ve got heart disease myself. Rheumatism always goes to the heart in
the end.”
“For goodness’ sake, Hirst,” Hewet protested; “one might think you were
an old cripple of eighty. If it comes to that, I had an aunt who died
of cancer myself, but I put a bold face on it—” He rose and began
tilting his chair backwards and forwards on its hind legs. “Is any one
here inclined for a walk?” he said. “There’s a magnificent walk, up
behind the house. You come out on to a cliff and look right down into
the sea. The rocks are all red; you can see them through the water. The
other day I saw a sight that fairly took my breath away—about twenty
jelly-fish, semi-transparent, pink, with long streamers, floating on
the top of the waves.”
“Sure they weren’t mermaids?” said Hirst. “It’s much too hot to climb
uphill.” He looked at Helen, who showed no signs of moving.
“Yes, it’s too hot,” Helen decided.
There was a short silence.
“I’d like to come,” said Rachel.
“But she might have said that anyhow,” Helen thought to herself as
Hewet and Rachel went away together, and Helen was left alone with St.
John, to St. John’s obvious satisfaction.
He may have been satisfied, but his usual difficulty in deciding that
one subject was more deserving of notice than another prevented him
from speaking for some time. He sat staring intently at the head of a
dead match, while Helen considered—so it seemed from the expression of
her eyes—something not closely connected with the present moment.
At last St. John exclaimed, “Damn! Damn everything! Damn everybody!” he
added. “At Cambridge there are people to talk to.”
“At Cambridge there are people to talk to,” Helen echoed him,
rhythmically and absent-mindedly. Then she woke up. “By the way, have
you settled what you’re going to do—is it to be Cambridge or the Bar?”
He pursed his lips, but made no immediate answer, for Helen was still
slightly inattentive. She had been thinking about Rachel and which of
the two young men she was likely to fall in love with, and now sitting
opposite to Hirst she thought, “He’s ugly. It’s a pity they’re so
ugly.”
She did not include Hewet in this criticism; she was thinking of the
clever, honest, interesting young men she knew, of whom Hirst was a
good example, and wondering whether it was necessary that thought and
scholarship should thus maltreat their bodies, and should thus elevate
their minds to a very high tower from which the human race appeared to
them like rats and mice squirming on the flat.
“And the future?” she reflected, vaguely envisaging a race of men
becoming more and more like Hirst, and a race of women becoming more
and more like Rachel. “Oh no,” she concluded, glancing at him, “one
wouldn’t marry you. Well, then, the future of the race is in the hands
of Susan and Arthur; no—that’s dreadful. Of farm labourers; no—not of
the English at all, but of Russians and Chinese.” This train of thought
did not satisfy her, and was interrupted by St. John, who began again:
“I wish you knew Bennett. He’s the greatest man in the world.”
“Bennett?” she enquired. Becoming more at ease, St. John dropped the
concentrated abruptness of his manner, and explained that Bennett was a
man who lived in an old windmill six miles out of Cambridge. He lived
the perfect life, according to St. John, very lonely, very simple,
caring only for the truth of things, always ready to talk, and
extraordinarily modest, though his mind was of the greatest.
“Don’t you think,” said St. John, when he had done describing him,
“that kind of thing makes this kind of thing rather flimsy? Did you
notice at tea how poor old Hewet had to change the conversation? How
they were all ready to pounce upon me because they thought I was going
to say something improper? It wasn’t anything, really. If Bennett had
been there he’d have said exactly what he meant to say, or he’d have
got up and gone. But there’s something rather bad for the character in
that—I mean if one hasn’t got Bennett’s character. It’s inclined to
make one bitter. Should you say that I was bitter?”
Helen did not answer, and he continued:
“Of course I am, disgustingly bitter, and it’s a beastly thing to be.
But the worst of me is that I’m so envious. I envy every one. I can’t
endure people who do things better than I do—perfectly absurd things
too—waiters balancing piles of plates—even Arthur, because Susan’s in
love with him. I want people to like me, and they don’t. It’s partly my
appearance, I expect,” he continued, “though it’s an absolute lie to
say I’ve Jewish blood in me—as a matter of fact we’ve been in Norfolk,
Hirst of Hirstbourne Hall, for three centuries at least. It must be
awfully soothing to be like you—every one liking one at once.”
“I assure you they don’t,” Helen laughed.
“They do,” said Hirst with conviction. “In the first place, you’re the
most beautiful woman I’ve ever seen; in the second, you have an
exceptionally nice nature.”
If Hirst had looked at her instead of looking intently at his teacup he
would have seen Helen blush, partly with pleasure, partly with an
impulse of affection towards the young man who had seemed, and would
seem again, so ugly and so limited. She pitied him, for she suspected
that he suffered, and she was interested in him, for many of the things
he said seemed to her true; she admired the morality of youth, and yet
she felt imprisoned. As if her instinct were to escape to something
brightly coloured and impersonal, which she could hold in her hands,
she went into the house and returned with her embroidery. But he was
not interested in her embroidery; he did not even look at it.
“About Miss Vinrace,” he began,—“oh, look here, do let’s be St. John
and Helen, and Rachel and Terence—what’s she like? Does she reason,
does she feel, or is she merely a kind of footstool?”
“Oh no,” said Helen, with great decision. From her observations at tea
she was inclined to doubt whether Hirst was the person to educate
Rachel. She had gradually come to be interested in her niece, and fond
of her; she disliked some things about her very much, she was amused by
others; but she felt her, on the whole, a live if unformed human being,
experimental, and not always fortunate in her experiments, but with
powers of some kind, and a capacity for feeling. Somewhere in the
depths of her, too, she was bound to Rachel by the indestructible if
inexplicable ties of sex. “She seems vague, but she’s a will of her
own,” she said, as if in the interval she had run through her
qualities.
The embroidery, which was a matter for thought, the design being
difficult and the colours wanting consideration, brought lapses into
the dialogue when she seemed to be engrossed in her skeins of silk, or,
with head a little drawn back and eyes narrowed, considered the effect
of the whole. Thus she merely said, “Um-m-m” to St. John’s next remark,
“I shall ask her to go for a walk with me.”
Perhaps he resented this division of attention. He sat silent watching
Helen closely.
“You’re absolutely happy,” he proclaimed at last.
“Yes?” Helen enquired, sticking in her needle.
“Marriage, I suppose,” said St. John.
“Yes,” said Helen, gently drawing her needle out.
“Children?” St. John enquired.
“Yes,” said Helen, sticking her needle in again. “I don’t know why I’m
happy,” she suddenly laughed, looking him full in the face. There was a
considerable pause.
“There’s an abyss between us,” said St. John. His voice sounded as if
it issued from the depths of a cavern in the rocks. “You’re infinitely
simpler than I am. Women always are, of course. That’s the difficulty.
One never knows how a woman gets there. Supposing all the time you’re
thinking, ‘Oh, what a morbid young man!’”
Helen sat and looked at him with her needle in her hand. From her
position she saw his head in front of the dark pyramid of a
magnolia-tree. With one foot raised on the rung of a chair, and her
elbow out in the attitude for sewing, her own figure possessed the
sublimity of a woman’s of the early world, spinning the thread of
fate—the sublimity possessed by many women of the present day who fall
into the attitude required by scrubbing or sewing. St. John looked at
her.
“I suppose you’ve never paid any a compliment in the course of your
life,” he said irrelevantly.
“I spoil Ridley rather,” Helen considered.
“I’m going to ask you point blank—do you like me?”
After a certain pause, she replied, “Yes, certainly.”
“Thank God!” he exclaimed. “That’s one mercy. You see,” he continued
with emotion, “I’d rather you liked me than any one I’ve ever met.”
“What about the five philosophers?” said Helen, with a laugh, stitching
firmly and swiftly at her canvas. “I wish you’d describe them.”
Hirst had no particular wish to describe them, but when he began to
consider them he found himself soothed and strengthened. Far away on
the other side of the world as they were, in smoky rooms, and grey
medieval courts, they appeared remarkable figures, free-spoken men with
whom one could be at ease; incomparably more subtle in emotion than the
people here. They gave him, certainly, what no woman could give him,
not Helen even. Warming at the thought of them, he went on to lay his
case before Mrs. Ambrose. Should he stay on at Cambridge or should he
go to the Bar? One day he thought one thing, another day another. Helen
listened attentively. At last, without any preface, she pronounced her
decision.
“Leave Cambridge and go to the Bar,” she said. He pressed her for her
reasons.
“I think you’d enjoy London more,” she said. It did not seem a very
subtle reason, but she appeared to think it sufficient. She looked at
him against the background of flowering magnolia. There was something
curious in the sight. Perhaps it was that the heavy wax-like flowers
were so smooth and inarticulate, and his face—he had thrown his hat
away, his hair was rumpled, he held his eye-glasses in his hand, so
that a red mark appeared on either side of his nose—was so worried and
garrulous. It was a beautiful bush, spreading very widely, and all the
time she had sat there talking she had been noticing the patches of
shade and the shape of the leaves, and the way the great white flowers
sat in the midst of the green. She had noticed it half-consciously,
nevertheless the pattern had become part of their talk. She laid down
her sewing, and began to walk up and down the garden, and Hirst rose
too and paced by her side. He was rather disturbed, uncomfortable, and
full of thought. Neither of them spoke.
The sun was beginning to go down, and a change had come over the
mountains, as if they were robbed of their earthly substance, and
composed merely of intense blue mist. Long thin clouds of flamingo red,
with edges like the edges of curled ostrich feathers, lay up and down
the sky at different altitudes. The roofs of the town seemed to have
sunk lower than usual; the cypresses appeared very black between the
roofs, and the roofs themselves were brown and white. As usual in the
evening, single cries and single bells became audible rising from
beneath.
St. John stopped suddenly.
“Well, you must take the responsibility,” he said. “I’ve made up my
mind; I shall go to the Bar.”
His words were very serious, almost emotional; they recalled Helen
after a second’s hesitation.
“I’m sure you’re right,” she said warmly, and shook the hand he held
out. “You’ll be a great man, I’m certain.”
Then, as if to make him look at the scene, she swept her hand round the
immense circumference of the view. From the sea, over the roofs of the
town, across the crests of the mountains, over the river and the plain,
and again across the crests of the mountains it swept until it reached
the villa, the garden, the magnolia-tree, and the figures of Hirst and
herself standing together, when it dropped to her side.