It was now the height of the season, and every ship that came from
England left a few people on the shores of Santa Marina who drove up to
the hotel. The fact that the Ambroses had a house where one could
escape momentarily from the slightly inhuman atmosphere of an hotel was
a source of genuine pleasure not only to Hirst and Hewet, but to the
Elliots, the Thornburys, the Flushings, Miss Allan, Evelyn M., together
with other people whose identity was so little developed that the
Ambroses did not discover that they possessed names. By degrees there
was established a kind of correspondence between the two houses, the
big and the small, so that at most hours of the day one house could
guess what was going on in the other, and the words “the villa” and
“the hotel” called up the idea of two separate systems of life.
Acquaintances showed signs of developing into friends, for that one tie
to Mrs. Parry’s drawing-room had inevitably split into many other ties
attached to different parts of England, and sometimes these alliances
seemed cynically fragile, and sometimes painfully acute, lacking as
they did the supporting background of organised English life. One night
when the moon was round between the trees, Evelyn M. told Helen the
story of her life, and claimed her everlasting friendship; on another
occasion, merely because of a sigh, or a pause, or a word thoughtlessly
dropped, poor Mrs. Elliot left the villa half in tears, vowing never
again to meet the cold and scornful woman who had insulted her, and in
truth, meet again they never did. It did not seem worth while to piece
together so slight a friendship.
Hewet, indeed, might have found excellent material at this time up at
the villa for some chapters in the novel which was to be called
“Silence, or the Things People don’t say.” Helen and Rachel had become
very silent. Having detected, as she thought, a secret, and judging
that Rachel meant to keep it from her, Mrs. Ambrose respected it
carefully, but from that cause, though unintentionally, a curious
atmosphere of reserve grew up between them. Instead of sharing their
views upon all subjects, and plunging after an idea wherever it might
lead, they spoke chiefly in comment upon the people they saw, and the
secret between them made itself felt in what they said even of
Thornburys and Elliots. Always calm and unemotional in her judgments,
Mrs. Ambrose was now inclined to be definitely pessimistic. She was not
severe upon individuals so much as incredulous of the kindness of
destiny, fate, what happens in the long run, and apt to insist that
this was generally adverse to people in proportion as they deserved
well. Even this theory she was ready to discard in favour of one which
made chaos triumphant, things happening for no reason at all, and every
one groping about in illusion and ignorance. With a certain pleasure
she developed these views to her niece, taking a letter from home as
her test: which gave good news, but might just as well have given bad.
How did she know that at this very moment both her children were not
lying dead, crushed by motor omnibuses? “It’s happening to somebody:
why shouldn’t it happen to me?” she would argue, her face taking on the
stoical expression of anticipated sorrow. However sincere these views
may have been, they were undoubtedly called forth by the irrational
state of her niece’s mind. It was so fluctuating, and went so quickly
from joy to despair, that it seemed necessary to confront it with some
stable opinion which naturally became dark as well as stable. Perhaps
Mrs. Ambrose had some idea that in leading the talk into these quarters
she might discover what was in Rachel’s mind, but it was difficult to
judge, for sometimes she would agree with the gloomiest thing that was
said, at other times she refused to listen, and rammed Helen’s theories
down her throat with laughter, chatter, ridicule of the wildest, and
fierce bursts of anger even at what she called the “croaking of a raven
in the mud.”
“It’s hard enough without that,” she asserted.
“What’s hard?” Helen demanded.
“Life,” she replied, and then they both became silent.
Helen might draw her own conclusions as to why life was hard, as to why
an hour later, perhaps, life was something so wonderful and vivid that
the eyes of Rachel beholding it were positively exhilarating to a
spectator. True to her creed, she did not attempt to interfere,
although there were enough of those weak moments of depression to make
it perfectly easy for a less scrupulous person to press through and
know all, and perhaps Rachel was sorry that she did not choose. All
these moods ran themselves into one general effect, which Helen
compared to the sliding of a river, quick, quicker, quicker still, as
it races to a waterfall. Her instinct was to cry out Stop! but even had
there been any use in crying Stop! she would have refrained, thinking
it best that things should take their way, the water racing because the
earth was shaped to make it race.
It seemed that Rachel herself had no suspicion that she was watched, or
that there was anything in her manner likely to draw attention to her.
What had happened to her she did not know. Her mind was very much in
the condition of the racing water to which Helen compared it. She
wanted to see Terence; she was perpetually wishing to see him when he
was not there; it was an agony to miss seeing him; agonies were strewn
all about her day on account of him, but she never asked herself what
this force driving through her life arose from. She thought of no
result any more than a tree perpetually pressed downwards by the wind
considers the result of being pressed downwards by the wind.
During the two or three weeks which had passed since their walk, half a
dozen notes from him had accumulated in her drawer. She would read
them, and spend the whole morning in a daze of happiness; the sunny
land outside the window being no less capable of analysing its own
colour and heat than she was of analysing hers. In these moods she
found it impossible to read or play the piano, even to move being
beyond her inclination. The time passed without her noticing it. When
it was dark she was drawn to the window by the lights of the hotel. A
light that went in and out was the light in Terence’s window: there he
sat, reading perhaps, or now he was walking up and down pulling out one
book after another; and now he was seated in his chair again, and she
tried to imagine what he was thinking about. The steady lights marked
the rooms where Terence sat with people moving round him. Every one who
stayed in the hotel had a peculiar romance and interest about them.
They were not ordinary people. She would attribute wisdom to Mrs.
Elliot, beauty to Susan Warrington, a splendid vitality to Evelyn M.,
because Terence spoke to them. As unreflecting and pervasive were the
moods of depression. Her mind was as the landscape outside when dark
beneath clouds and straitly lashed by wind and hail. Again she would
sit passive in her chair exposed to pain, and Helen’s fantastical or
gloomy words were like so many darts goading her to cry out against the
hardness of life. Best of all were the moods when for no reason again
this stress of feeling slackened, and life went on as usual, only with
a joy and colour in its events that was unknown before; they had a
significance like that which she had seen in the tree: the nights were
black bars separating her from the days; she would have liked to run
all the days into one long continuity of sensation. Although these
moods were directly or indirectly caused by the presence of Terence or
the thought of him, she never said to herself that she was in love with
him, or considered what was to happen if she continued to feel such
things, so that Helen’s image of the river sliding on to the waterfall
had a great likeness to the facts, and the alarm which Helen sometimes
felt was justified.
In her curious condition of unanalysed sensations she was incapable of
making a plan which should have any effect upon her state of mind. She
abandoned herself to the mercy of accidents, missing Terence one day,
meeting him the next, receiving his letters always with a start of
surprise. Any woman experienced in the progress of courtship would have
come by certain opinions from all this which would have given her at
least a theory to go upon; but no one had ever been in love with
Rachel, and she had never been in love with any one. Moreover, none of
the books she read, from _Wuthering Heights_ to _Man and Superman_, and
the plays of Ibsen, suggested from their analysis of love that what
their heroines felt was what she was feeling now. It seemed to her that
her sensations had no name.
She met Terence frequently. When they did not meet, he was apt to send
a note with a book or about a book, for he had not been able after all
to neglect that approach to intimacy. But sometimes he did not come or
did not write for several days at a time. Again when they met their
meeting might be one of inspiriting joy or of harassing despair. Over
all their partings hung the sense of interruption, leaving them both
unsatisfied, though ignorant that the other shared the feeling.
If Rachel was ignorant of her own feelings, she was even more
completely ignorant of his. At first he moved as a god; as she came to
know him better he was still the centre of light, but combined with
this beauty a wonderful power of making her daring and confident of
herself. She was conscious of emotions and powers which she had never
suspected in herself, and of a depth in the world hitherto unknown.
When she thought of their relationship she saw rather than reasoned,
representing her view of what Terence felt by a picture of him drawn
across the room to stand by her side. This passage across the room
amounted to a physical sensation, but what it meant she did not know.
Thus the time went on, wearing a calm, bright look upon its surface.
Letters came from England, letters came from Willoughby, and the days
accumulated their small events which shaped the year. Superficially,
three odes of Pindar were mended, Helen covered about five inches of
her embroidery, and St. John completed the first two acts of a play. He
and Rachel being now very good friends, he read them aloud to her, and
she was so genuinely impressed by the skill of his rhythms and the
variety of his adjectives, as well as by the fact that he was Terence’s
friend, that he began to wonder whether he was not intended for
literature rather than for law. It was a time of profound thought and
sudden revelations for more than one couple, and several single people.
A Sunday came, which no one in the villa with the exception of Rachel
and the Spanish maid proposed to recognise. Rachel still went to
church, because she had never, according to Helen, taken the trouble to
think about it. Since they had celebrated the service at the hotel she
went there expecting to get some pleasure from her passage across the
garden and through the hall of the hotel, although it was very doubtful
whether she would see Terence, or at any rate have the chance of
speaking to him.
As the greater number of visitors at the hotel were English, there was
almost as much difference between Sunday and Wednesday as there is in
England, and Sunday appeared here as there, the mute black ghost or
penitent spirit of the busy weekday. The English could not pale the
sunshine, but they could in some miraculous way slow down the hours,
dull the incidents, lengthen the meals, and make even the servants and
page-boys wear a look of boredom and propriety. The best clothes which
every one put on helped the general effect; it seemed that no lady
could sit down without bending a clean starched petticoat, and no
gentleman could breathe without a sudden crackle from a stiff
shirt-front. As the hands of the clock neared eleven, on this
particular Sunday, various people tended to draw together in the hall,
clasping little red-leaved books in their hands. The clock marked a few
minutes to the hour when a stout black figure passed through the hall
with a preoccupied expression, as though he would rather not recognise
salutations, although aware of them, and disappeared down the corridor
which led from it.
“Mr. Bax,” Mrs. Thornbury whispered.
The little group of people then began to move off in the same direction
as the stout black figure. Looked at in an odd way by people who made
no effort to join them, they moved with one exception slowly and
consciously towards the stairs. Mrs. Flushing was the exception. She
came running downstairs, strode across the hall, joined the procession
much out of breath, demanding of Mrs. Thornbury in an agitated whisper,
“Where, where?”
“We are all going,” said Mrs. Thornbury gently, and soon they were
descending the stairs two by two. Rachel was among the first to
descend. She did not see that Terence and Hirst came in at the rear
possessed of no black volume, but of one thin book bound in light-blue
cloth, which St. John carried under his arm.
The chapel was the old chapel of the monks. It was a profound cool
place where they had said Mass for hundreds of years, and done penance
in the cold moonlight, and worshipped old brown pictures and carved
saints which stood with upraised hands of blessing in the hollows in
the walls. The transition from Catholic to Protestant worship had been
bridged by a time of disuse, when there were no services, and the place
was used for storing jars of oil, liqueur, and deck-chairs; the hotel
flourishing, some religious body had taken the place in hand, and it
was now fitted out with a number of glazed yellow benches,
claret-coloured footstools; it had a small pulpit, and a brass eagle
carrying the Bible on its back, while the piety of different women had
supplied ugly squares of carpet, and long strips of embroidery heavily
wrought with monograms in gold.
As the congregation entered they were met by mild sweet chords issuing
from a harmonium, where Miss Willett, concealed from view by a baize
curtain, struck emphatic chords with uncertain fingers. The sound
spread through the chapel as the rings of water spread from a fallen
stone. The twenty or twenty-five people who composed the congregation
first bowed their heads and then sat up and looked about them. It was
very quiet, and the light down here seemed paler than the light above.
The usual bows and smiles were dispensed with, but they recognised each
other. The Lord’s Prayer was read over them. As the childlike battle of
voices rose, the congregation, many of whom had only met on the
staircase, felt themselves pathetically united and well-disposed
towards each other. As if the prayer were a torch applied to fuel, a
smoke seemed to rise automatically and fill the place with the ghosts
of innumerable services on innumerable Sunday mornings at home. Susan
Warrington in particular was conscious of the sweetest sense of
sisterhood, as she covered her face with her hands and saw slips of
bent backs through the chinks between her fingers. Her emotions rose
calmly and evenly, approving of herself and of life at the same time.
It was all so quiet and so good. But having created this peaceful
atmosphere Mr. Bax suddenly turned the page and read a psalm. Though he
read it with no change of voice the mood was broken.
“Be merciful unto me, O God,” he read, “for man goeth about to devour
me: he is daily fighting and troubling me. . . . They daily mistake my
words: all that they imagine is to do me evil. They hold all together
and keep themselves close. . . . Break their teeth, O God, in their
mouths; smite the jaw-bones of the lions, O Lord: let them fall away
like water that runneth apace; and when they shoot their arrows let
them be rooted out.”
Nothing in Susan’s experience at all corresponded with this, and as she
had no love of language she had long ceased to attend to such remarks,
although she followed them with the same kind of mechanical respect
with which she heard many of Lear’s speeches read aloud. Her mind was
still serene and really occupied with praise of her own nature and
praise of God, that is of the solemn and satisfactory order of the
world.
But it could be seen from a glance at their faces that most of the
others, the men in particular, felt the inconvenience of the sudden
intrusion of this old savage. They looked more secular and critical as
they listened to the ravings of the old black man with a cloth round
his loins cursing with vehement gesture by a camp-fire in the desert.
After that there was a general sound of pages being turned as if they
were in class, and then they read a little bit of the Old Testament
about making a well, very much as school boys translate an easy passage
from the _Anabasis_ when they have shut up their French grammar. Then
they returned to the New Testament and the sad and beautiful figure of
Christ. While Christ spoke they made another effort to fit his
interpretation of life upon the lives they lived, but as they were all
very different, some practical, some ambitious, some stupid, some wild
and experimental, some in love, and others long past any feeling except
a feeling of comfort, they did very different things with the words of
Christ.
From their faces it seemed that for the most part they made no effort
at all, and, recumbent as it were, accepted the ideas the words gave as
representing goodness, in the same way, no doubt, as one of those
industrious needlewomen had accepted the bright ugly pattern on her mat
as beauty.
Whatever the reason might be, for the first time in her life, instead
of slipping at once into some curious pleasant cloud of emotion, too
familiar to be considered, Rachel listened critically to what was being
said. By the time they had swung in an irregular way from prayer to
psalm, from psalm to history, from history to poetry, and Mr. Bax was
giving out his text, she was in a state of acute discomfort. Such was
the discomfort she felt when forced to sit through an unsatisfactory
piece of music badly played. Tantalised, enraged by the clumsy
insensitiveness of the conductor, who put the stress on the wrong
places, and annoyed by the vast flock of the audience tamely praising
and acquiescing without knowing or caring, so she was now tantalised
and enraged, only here, with eyes half-shut and lips pursed together,
the atmosphere of forced solemnity increased her anger. All round her
were people pretending to feel what they did not feel, while somewhere
above her floated the idea which they could none of them grasp, which
they pretended to grasp, always escaping out of reach, a beautiful
idea, an idea like a butterfly. One after another, vast and hard and
cold, appeared to her the churches all over the world where this
blundering effort and misunderstanding were perpetually going on, great
buildings, filled with innumerable men and women, not seeing clearly,
who finally gave up the effort to see, and relapsed tamely into praise
and acquiescence, half-shutting their eyes and pursing up their lips.
The thought had the same sort of physical discomfort as is caused by a
film of mist always coming between the eyes and the printed page. She
did her best to brush away the film and to conceive something to be
worshipped as the service went on, but failed, always misled by the
voice of Mr. Bax saying things which misrepresented the idea, and by
the patter of baaing inexpressive human voices falling round her like
damp leaves. The effort was tiring and dispiriting. She ceased to
listen, and fixed her eyes on the face of a woman near her, a hospital
nurse, whose expression of devout attention seemed to prove that she
was at any rate receiving satisfaction. But looking at her carefully
she came to the conclusion that the hospital nurse was only slavishly
acquiescent, and that the look of satisfaction was produced by no
splendid conception of God within her. How, indeed, could she conceive
anything far outside her own experience, a woman with a commonplace
face like hers, a little round red face, upon which trivial duties and
trivial spites had drawn lines, whose weak blue eyes saw without
intensity or individuality, whose features were blurred, insensitive,
and callous? She was adoring something shallow and smug, clinging to
it, so the obstinate mouth witnessed, with the assiduity of a limpet;
nothing would tear her from her demure belief in her own virtue and the
virtues of her religion. She was a limpet, with the sensitive side of
her stuck to a rock, for ever dead to the rush of fresh and beautiful
things past her. The face of this single worshipper became printed on
Rachel’s mind with an impression of keen horror, and she had it
suddenly revealed to her what Helen meant and St. John meant when they
proclaimed their hatred of Christianity. With the violence that now
marked her feelings, she rejected all that she had implicitly believed.
Meanwhile Mr. Bax was half-way through the second lesson. She looked at
him. He was a man of the world with supple lips and an agreeable
manner, he was indeed a man of much kindliness and simplicity, though
by no means clever, but she was not in the mood to give any one credit
for such qualities, and examined him as though he were an epitome of
all the vices of his service.
Right at the back of the chapel Mrs. Flushing, Hirst, and Hewet sat in
a row in a very different frame of mind. Hewet was staring at the roof
with his legs stuck out in front of him, for as he had never tried to
make the service fit any feeling or idea of his, he was able to enjoy
the beauty of the language without hindrance. His mind was occupied
first with accidental things, such as the women’s hair in front of him,
the light on the faces, then with the words which seemed to him
magnificent, and then more vaguely with the characters of the other
worshippers. But when he suddenly perceived Rachel, all these thoughts
were driven out of his head, and he thought only of her. The psalms,
the prayers, the Litany, and the sermon were all reduced to one
chanting sound which paused, and then renewed itself, a little higher
or a little lower. He stared alternately at Rachel and at the ceiling,
but his expression was now produced not by what he saw but by something
in his mind. He was almost as painfully disturbed by his thoughts as
she was by hers.
Early in the service Mrs. Flushing had discovered that she had taken up
a Bible instead of a prayer-book, and, as she was sitting next to
Hirst, she stole a glance over his shoulder. He was reading steadily in
the thin pale-blue volume. Unable to understand, she peered closer,
upon which Hirst politely laid the book before her, pointing to the
first line of a Greek poem and then to the translation opposite.
“What’s that?” she whispered inquisitively.
“Sappho,” he replied. “The one Swinburne did—the best thing that’s ever
been written.”
Mrs. Flushing could not resist such an opportunity. She gulped down the
Ode to Aphrodite during the Litany, keeping herself with difficulty
from asking when Sappho lived, and what else she wrote worth reading,
and contriving to come in punctually at the end with “the forgiveness
of sins, the Resurrection of the body, and the life everlastin’. Amen.”
Meanwhile Hirst took out an envelope and began scribbling on the back
of it. When Mr. Bax mounted the pulpit he shut up Sappho with his
envelope between the pages, settled his spectacles, and fixed his gaze
intently upon the clergyman. Standing in the pulpit he looked very
large and fat; the light coming through the greenish unstained
window-glass made his face appear smooth and white like a very large
egg.
He looked round at all the faces looking mildly up at him, although
some of them were the faces of men and women old enough to be his
grandparents, and gave out his text with weighty significance. The
argument of the sermon was that visitors to this beautiful land,
although they were on a holiday, owed a duty to the natives. It did
not, in truth, differ very much from a leading article upon topics of
general interest in the weekly newspapers. It rambled with a kind of
amiable verbosity from one heading to another, suggesting that all
human beings are very much the same under their skins, illustrating
this by the resemblance of the games which little Spanish boys play to
the games little boys in London streets play, observing that very small
things do influence people, particularly natives; in fact, a very dear
friend of Mr. Bax’s had told him that the success of our rule in India,
that vast country, largely depended upon the strict code of politeness
which the English adopted towards the natives, which led to the remark
that small things were not necessarily small, and that somehow to the
virtue of sympathy, which was a virtue never more needed than to-day,
when we lived in a time of experiment and upheaval—witness the
aeroplane and wireless telegraph, and there were other problems which
hardly presented themselves to our fathers, but which no man who called
himself a man could leave unsettled. Here Mr. Bax became more
definitely clerical, if it were possible, he seemed to speak with a
certain innocent craftiness, as he pointed out that all this laid a
special duty upon earnest Christians. What men were inclined to say now
was, “Oh, that fellow—he’s a parson.” What we want them to say is,
“He’s a good fellow”—in other words, “He is my brother.” He exhorted
them to keep in touch with men of the modern type; they must sympathise
with their multifarious interests in order to keep before their eyes
that whatever discoveries were made there was one discovery which could
not be superseded, which was indeed as much of a necessity to the most
successful and most brilliant of them all as it had been to their
fathers. The humblest could help; the least important things had an
influence (here his manner became definitely priestly and his remarks
seemed to be directed to women, for indeed Mr. Bax’s congregations were
mainly composed of women, and he was used to assigning them their
duties in his innocent clerical campaigns). Leaving more definite
instruction, he passed on, and his theme broadened into a peroration
for which he drew a long breath and stood very upright,—“As a drop of
water, detached, alone, separate from others, falling from the cloud
and entering the great ocean, alters, so scientists tell us, not only
the immediate spot in the ocean where it falls, but all the myriad
drops which together compose the great universe of waters, and by this
means alters the configuration of the globe and the lives of millions
of sea creatures, and finally the lives of the men and women who seek
their living upon the shores—as all this is within the compass of a
single drop of water, such as any rain shower sends in millions to lose
themselves in the earth, to lose themselves we say, but we know very
well that the fruits of the earth could not flourish without them—so is
a marvel comparable to this within the reach of each one of us, who
dropping a little word or a little deed into the great universe alters
it; yea, it is a solemn thought, _alters_ it, for good or for evil, not
for one instant, or in one vicinity, but throughout the entire race,
and for all eternity.” Whipping round as though to avoid applause, he
continued with the same breath, but in a different tone of voice,—“And
now to God the Father . . .”
He gave his blessing, and then, while the solemn chords again issued
from the harmonium behind the curtain, the different people began
scraping and fumbling and moving very awkwardly and consciously towards
the door. Half-way upstairs, at a point where the light and sounds of
the upper world conflicted with the dimness and the dying hymn-tune of
the under, Rachel felt a hand drop upon her shoulder.
“Miss Vinrace,” Mrs. Flushing whispered peremptorily, “stay to
luncheon. It’s such a dismal day. They don’t even give one beef for
luncheon. Please stay.”
Here they came out into the hall, where once more the little band was
greeted with curious respectful glances by the people who had not gone
to church, although their clothing made it clear that they approved of
Sunday to the very verge of going to church. Rachel felt unable to
stand any more of this particular atmosphere, and was about to say she
must go back, when Terence passed them, drawn along in talk with Evelyn
M. Rachel thereupon contented herself with saying that the people
looked very respectable, which negative remark Mrs. Flushing
interpreted to mean that she would stay.
“English people abroad!” she returned with a vivid flash of malice.
“Ain’t they awful! But we won’t stay here,” she continued, plucking at
Rachel’s arm. “Come up to my room.”
She bore her past Hewet and Evelyn and the Thornburys and the Elliots.
Hewet stepped forward.
“Luncheon—” he began.
“Miss Vinrace has promised to lunch with me,” said Mrs. Flushing, and
began to pound energetically up the staircase, as though the middle
classes of England were in pursuit. She did not stop until she had
slammed her bedroom door behind them.
“Well, what did you think of it?” she demanded, panting slightly.
All the disgust and horror which Rachel had been accumulating burst
forth beyond her control.
“I thought it the most loathsome exhibition I’d ever seen!” she broke
out. “How can they—how dare they—what do you mean by it—Mr. Bax,
hospital nurses, old men, prostitutes, disgusting—”
She hit off the points she remembered as fast as she could, but she was
too indignant to stop to analyse her feelings. Mrs. Flushing watched
her with keen gusto as she stood ejaculating with emphatic movements of
her head and hands in the middle of the room.
“Go on, go on, do go on,” she laughed, clapping her hands. “It’s
delightful to hear you!”
“But why do you go?” Rachel demanded.
“I’ve been every Sunday of my life ever since I can remember,” Mrs.
Flushing chuckled, as though that were a reason by itself.
Rachel turned abruptly to the window. She did not know what it was that
had put her into such a passion; the sight of Terence in the hall had
confused her thoughts, leaving her merely indignant. She looked
straight at their own villa, half-way up the side of the mountain. The
most familiar view seen framed through glass has a certain unfamiliar
distinction, and she grew calm as she gazed. Then she remembered that
she was in the presence of some one she did not know well, and she
turned and looked at Mrs. Flushing. Mrs. Flushing was still sitting on
the edge of the bed, looking up, with her lips parted, so that her
strong white teeth showed in two rows.
“Tell me,” she said, “which d’you like best, Mr. Hewet or Mr. Hirst?”
“Mr. Hewet,” Rachel replied, but her voice did not sound natural.
“Which is the one who reads Greek in church?” Mrs. Flushing demanded.
It might have been either of them and while Mrs. Flushing proceeded to
describe them both, and to say that both frightened her, but one
frightened her more than the other, Rachel looked for a chair. The
room, of course, was one of the largest and most luxurious in the
hotel. There were a great many arm-chairs and settees covered in brown
holland, but each of these was occupied by a large square piece of
yellow cardboard, and all the pieces of cardboard were dotted or lined
with spots or dashes of bright oil paint.
“But you’re not to look at those,” said Mrs. Flushing as she saw
Rachel’s eye wander. She jumped up, and turned as many as she could,
face downwards, upon the floor. Rachel, however, managed to possess
herself of one of them, and, with the vanity of an artist, Mrs.
Flushing demanded anxiously, “Well, well?”
“It’s a hill,” Rachel replied. There could be no doubt that Mrs.
Flushing had represented the vigorous and abrupt fling of the earth up
into the air; you could almost see the clods flying as it whirled.
Rachel passed from one to another. They were all marked by something of
the jerk and decision of their maker; they were all perfectly untrained
onslaughts of the brush upon some half-realised idea suggested by hill
or tree; and they were all in some way characteristic of Mrs. Flushing.
“I see things movin’,” Mrs. Flushing explained. “So”—she swept her hand
through a yard of the air. She then took up one of the cardboards which
Rachel had laid aside, seated herself on a stool, and began to flourish
a stump of charcoal. While she occupied herself in strokes which seemed
to serve her as speech serves others, Rachel, who was very restless,
looked about her.
“Open the wardrobe,” said Mrs. Flushing after a pause, speaking
indistinctly because of a paint-brush in her mouth, “and look at the
things.”
As Rachel hesitated, Mrs. Flushing came forward, still with a
paint-brush in her mouth, flung open the wings of her wardrobe, and
tossed a quantity of shawls, stuffs, cloaks, embroideries, on to the
bed. Rachel began to finger them. Mrs. Flushing came up once more, and
dropped a quantity of beads, brooches, earrings, bracelets, tassels,
and combs among the draperies. Then she went back to her stool and
began to paint in silence. The stuffs were coloured and dark and pale;
they made a curious swarm of lines and colours upon the counterpane,
with the reddish lumps of stone and peacocks’ feathers and clear pale
tortoise-shell combs lying among them.
“The women wore them hundreds of years ago, they wear ’em still,” Mrs.
Flushing remarked. “My husband rides about and finds ’em; they don’t
know what they’re worth, so we get ’em cheap. And we shall sell ’em to
smart women in London,” she chuckled, as though the thought of these
ladies and their absurd appearance amused her. After painting for some
minutes, she suddenly laid down her brush and fixed her eyes upon
Rachel.
“I tell you what I want to do,” she said. “I want to go up there and
see things for myself. It’s silly stayin’ here with a pack of old maids
as though we were at the seaside in England. I want to go up the river
and see the natives in their camps. It’s only a matter of ten days
under canvas. My husband’s done it. One would lie out under the trees
at night and be towed down the river by day, and if we saw anythin’
nice we’d shout out and tell ’em to stop.” She rose and began piercing
the bed again and again with a long golden pin, as she watched to see
what effect her suggestion had upon Rachel.
“We must make up a party,” she went on. “Ten people could hire a
launch. Now you’ll come, and Mrs. Ambrose’ll come, and will Mr. Hirst
and t’other gentleman come? Where’s a pencil?”
She became more and more determined and excited as she evolved her
plan. She sat on the edge of the bed and wrote down a list of surnames,
which she invariably spelt wrong. Rachel was enthusiastic, for indeed
the idea was immeasurably delightful to her. She had always had a great
desire to see the river, and the name of Terence threw a lustre over
the prospect, which made it almost too good to come true. She did what
she could to help Mrs. Flushing by suggesting names, helping her to
spell them, and counting up the days of the week upon her fingers. As
Mrs. Flushing wanted to know all she could tell her about the birth and
pursuits of every person she suggested, and threw in wild stories of
her own as to the temperaments and habits of artists, and people of the
same name who used to come to Chillingley in the old days, but were
doubtless not the same, though they too were very clever men interested
in Egyptology, the business took some time.
At last Mrs. Flushing sought her diary for help, the method of
reckoning dates on the fingers proving unsatisfactory. She opened and
shut every drawer in her writing-table, and then cried furiously,
“Yarmouth! Yarmouth! Drat the woman! She’s always out of the way when
she’s wanted!”
At this moment the luncheon gong began to work itself into its midday
frenzy. Mrs. Flushing rang her bell violently. The door was opened by a
handsome maid who was almost as upright as her mistress.
“Oh, Yarmouth,” said Mrs. Flushing, “just find my diary and see where
ten days from now would bring us to, and ask the hall porter how many
men ’ud be wanted to row eight people up the river for a week, and what
it ’ud cost, and put it on a slip of paper and leave it on my
dressing-table. Now—” she pointed at the door with a superb forefinger
so that Rachel had to lead the way.
“Oh, and Yarmouth,” Mrs. Flushing called back over her shoulder. “Put
those things away and hang ’em in their right places, there’s a good
girl, or it fusses Mr. Flushin’.”
To all of which Yarmouth merely replied, “Yes, ma’am.”
As they entered the long dining-room it was obvious that the day was
still Sunday, although the mood was slightly abating. The Flushings’
table was set by the side in the window, so that Mrs. Flushing could
scrutinise each figure as it entered, and her curiosity seemed to be
intense.
“Old Mrs. Paley,” she whispered as the wheeled chair slowly made its
way through the door, Arthur pushing behind. “Thornburys” came next.
“That nice woman,” she nudged Rachel to look at Miss Allan. “What’s her
name?” The painted lady who always came in late, tripping into the room
with a prepared smile as though she came out upon a stage, might well
have quailed before Mrs. Flushing’s stare, which expressed her steely
hostility to the whole tribe of painted ladies. Next came the two young
men whom Mrs. Flushing called collectively the Hirsts. They sat down
opposite, across the gangway.
Mr. Flushing treated his wife with a mixture of admiration and
indulgence, making up by the suavity and fluency of his speech for the
abruptness of hers. While she darted and ejaculated he gave Rachel a
sketch of the history of South American art. He would deal with one of
his wife’s exclamations, and then return as smoothly as ever to his
theme. He knew very well how to make a luncheon pass agreeably, without
being dull or intimate. He had formed the opinion, so he told Rachel,
that wonderful treasures lay hid in the depths of the land; the things
Rachel had seen were merely trifles picked up in the course of one
short journey. He thought there might be giant gods hewn out of stone
in the mountain-side; and colossal figures standing by themselves in
the middle of vast green pasture lands, where none but natives had ever
trod. Before the dawn of European art he believed that the primitive
huntsmen and priests had built temples of massive stone slabs, had
formed out of the dark rocks and the great cedar trees majestic figures
of gods and of beasts, and symbols of the great forces, water, air, and
forest among which they lived. There might be prehistoric towns, like
those in Greece and Asia, standing in open places among the trees,
filled with the works of this early race. Nobody had been there;
scarcely anything was known. Thus talking and displaying the most
picturesque of his theories, Rachel’s attention was fixed upon him.
She did not see that Hewet kept looking at her across the gangway,
between the figures of waiters hurrying past with plates. He was
inattentive, and Hirst was finding him also very cross and
disagreeable. They had touched upon all the usual topics—upon politics
and literature, gossip and Christianity. They had quarrelled over the
service, which was every bit as fine as Sappho, according to Hewet; so
that Hirst’s paganism was mere ostentation. Why go to church, he
demanded, merely in order to read Sappho? Hirst observed that he had
listened to every word of the sermon, as he could prove if Hewet would
like a repetition of it; and he went to church in order to realise the
nature of his Creator, which he had done very vividly that morning,
thanks to Mr. Bax, who had inspired him to write three of the most
superb lines in English literature, an invocation to the Deity.
“I wrote ’em on the back of the envelope of my aunt’s last letter,” he
said, and pulled it from between the pages of Sappho.
“Well, let’s hear them,” said Hewet, slightly mollified by the prospect
of a literary discussion.
“My dear Hewet, do you wish us both to be flung out of the hotel by an
enraged mob of Thornburys and Elliots?” Hirst enquired. “The merest
whisper would be sufficient to incriminate me for ever. God!” he broke
out, “what’s the use of attempting to write when the world’s peopled by
such damned fools? Seriously, Hewet, I advise you to give up
literature. What’s the good of it? There’s your audience.”
He nodded his head at the tables where a very miscellaneous collection
of Europeans were now engaged in eating, in some cases in gnawing, the
stringy foreign fowls. Hewet looked, and grew more out of temper than
ever. Hirst looked too. His eyes fell upon Rachel, and he bowed to her.
“I rather think Rachel’s in love with me,” he remarked, as his eyes
returned to his plate. “That’s the worst of friendships with young
women—they tend to fall in love with one.”
To that Hewet made no answer whatever, and sat singularly still. Hirst
did not seem to mind getting no answer, for he returned to Mr. Bax
again, quoting the peroration about the drop of water; and when Hewet
scarcely replied to these remarks either, he merely pursed his lips,
chose a fig, and relapsed quite contentedly into his own thoughts, of
which he always had a very large supply. When luncheon was over they
separated, taking their cups of coffee to different parts of the hall.
From his chair beneath the palm-tree Hewet saw Rachel come out of the
dining-room with the Flushings; he saw them look round for chairs, and
choose three in a corner where they could go on talking in private. Mr.
Flushing was now in the full tide of his discourse. He produced a sheet
of paper upon which he made drawings as he went on with his talk. He
saw Rachel lean over and look, pointing to this and that with her
finger. Hewet unkindly compared Mr. Flushing, who was extremely well
dressed for a hot climate, and rather elaborate in his manner, to a
very persuasive shop-keeper. Meanwhile, as he sat looking at them, he
was entangled in the Thornburys and Miss Allan, who, after hovering
about for a minute or two, settled in chairs round him, holding their
cups in their hands. They wanted to know whether he could tell them
anything about Mr. Bax. Mr. Thornbury as usual sat saying nothing,
looking vaguely ahead of him, occasionally raising his eye-glasses, as
if to put them on, but always thinking better of it at the last moment,
and letting them fall again. After some discussion, the ladies put it
beyond a doubt that Mr. Bax was not the son of Mr. William Bax. There
was a pause. Then Mrs. Thornbury remarked that she was still in the
habit of saying Queen instead of King in the National Anthem. There was
another pause. Then Miss Allan observed reflectively that going to
church abroad always made her feel as if she had been to a sailor’s
funeral.
There was then a very long pause, which threatened to be final, when,
mercifully, a bird about the size of a magpie, but of a metallic blue
colour, appeared on the section of the terrace that could be seen from
where they sat. Mrs. Thornbury was led to enquire whether we should
like it if all our rooks were blue—“What do _you_ think, William?” she
asked, touching her husband on the knee.
“If all our rooks were blue,” he said,—he raised his glasses; he
actually placed them on his nose—“they would not live long in
Wiltshire,” he concluded; he dropped his glasses to his side again. The
three elderly people now gazed meditatively at the bird, which was so
obliging as to stay in the middle of the view for a considerable space
of time, thus making it unnecessary for them to speak again. Hewet
began to wonder whether he might not cross over to the Flushings’
corner, when Hirst appeared from the background, slipped into a chair
by Rachel’s side, and began to talk to her with every appearance of
familiarity. Hewet could stand it no longer. He rose, took his hat and
dashed out of doors.