When considered in detail by Mr. Flushing and Mrs. Ambrose the
expedition proved neither dangerous nor difficult. They found also that
it was not even unusual. Every year at this season English people made
parties which steamed a short way up the river, landed, and looked at
the native village, bought a certain number of things from the natives,
and returned again without damage done to mind or body. When it was
discovered that six people really wished the same thing the
arrangements were soon carried out.
Since the time of Elizabeth very few people had seen the river, and
nothing has been done to change its appearance from what it was to the
eyes of the Elizabethan voyagers. The time of Elizabeth was only
distant from the present time by a moment of space compared with the
ages which had passed since the water had run between those banks, and
the green thickets swarmed there, and the small trees had grown to huge
wrinkled trees in solitude. Changing only with the change of the sun
and the clouds, the waving green mass had stood there for century after
century, and the water had run between its banks ceaselessly, sometimes
washing away earth and sometimes the branches of trees, while in other
parts of the world one town had risen upon the ruins of another town,
and the men in the towns had become more and more articulate and unlike
each other. A few miles of this river were visible from the top of the
mountain where some weeks before the party from the hotel had
picnicked. Susan and Arthur had seen it as they kissed each other, and
Terence and Rachel as they sat talking about Richmond, and Evelyn and
Perrott as they strolled about, imagining that they were great captains
sent to colonise the world. They had seen the broad blue mark across
the sand where it flowed into the sea, and the green cloud of trees
mass themselves about it farther up, and finally hide its waters
altogether from sight. At intervals for the first twenty miles or so
houses were scattered on the bank; by degrees the houses became huts,
and, later still, there was neither hut nor house, but trees and grass,
which were seen only by hunters, explorers, or merchants, marching or
sailing, but making no settlement.
By leaving Santa Marina early in the morning, driving twenty miles and
riding eight, the party, which was composed finally of six English
people, reached the river-side as the night fell. They came cantering
through the trees—Mr. and Mrs. Flushing, Helen Ambrose, Rachel,
Terence, and St. John. The tired little horses then stopped
automatically, and the English dismounted. Mrs. Flushing strode to the
river-bank in high spirits. The day had been long and hot, but she had
enjoyed the speed and the open air; she had left the hotel which she
hated, and she found the company to her liking. The river was swirling
past in the darkness; they could just distinguish the smooth moving
surface of the water, and the air was full of the sound of it. They
stood in an empty space in the midst of great tree-trunks, and out
there a little green light moving slightly up and down showed them
where the steamer lay in which they were to embark.
When they all stood upon its deck they found that it was a very small
boat which throbbed gently beneath them for a few minutes, and then
shoved smoothly through the water. They seemed to be driving into the
heart of the night, for the trees closed in front of them, and they
could hear all round them the rustling of leaves. The great darkness
had the usual effect of taking away all desire for communication by
making their words sound thin and small; and, after walking round the
deck three or four times, they clustered together, yawning deeply, and
looking at the same spot of deep gloom on the banks. Murmuring very low
in the rhythmical tone of one oppressed by the air, Mrs. Flushing began
to wonder where they were to sleep, for they could not sleep
downstairs, they could not sleep in a doghole smelling of oil, they
could not sleep on deck, they could not sleep—She yawned profoundly. It
was as Helen had foreseen; the question of nakedness had risen already,
although they were half asleep, and almost invisible to each other.
With St. John’s help she stretched an awning, and persuaded Mrs.
Flushing that she could take off her clothes behind this, and that no
one would notice if by chance some part of her which had been concealed
for forty-five years was laid bare to the human eye. Mattresses were
thrown down, rugs provided, and the three women lay near each other in
the soft open air.
The gentlemen, having smoked a certain number of cigarettes, dropped
the glowing ends into the river, and looked for a time at the ripples
wrinkling the black water beneath them, undressed too, and lay down at
the other end of the boat. They were very tired, and curtained from
each other by the darkness. The light from one lantern fell upon a few
ropes, a few planks of the deck, and the rail of the boat, but beyond
that there was unbroken darkness, no light reached their faces, or the
trees which were massed on the sides of the river.
Soon Wilfrid Flushing slept, and Hirst slept. Hewet alone lay awake
looking straight up into the sky. The gentle motion and the black
shapes that were drawn ceaselessly across his eyes had the effect of
making it impossible for him to think. Rachel’s presence so near him
lulled thought asleep. Being so near him, only a few paces off at the
other end of the boat, she made it as impossible for him to think about
her as it would have been impossible to see her if she had stood quite
close to him, her forehead against his forehead. In some strange way
the boat became identified with himself, and just as it would have been
useless for him to get up and steer the boat, so was it useless for him
to struggle any longer with the irresistible force of his own feelings.
He was drawn on and on away from all he knew, slipping over barriers
and past landmarks into unknown waters as the boat glided over the
smooth surface of the river. In profound peace, enveloped in deeper
unconsciousness than had been his for many nights, he lay on deck
watching the tree-tops change their position slightly against the sky,
and arch themselves, and sink and tower huge, until he passed from
seeing them into dreams where he lay beneath the shadow of the vast
trees, looking up into the sky.
When they woke next morning they had gone a considerable way up the
river; on the right was a high yellow bank of sand tufted with trees,
on the left a swamp quivering with long reeds and tall bamboos on the
top of which, swaying slightly, perched vivid green and yellow birds.
The morning was hot and still. After breakfast they drew chairs
together and sat in an irregular semicircle in the bow. An awning above
their heads protected them from the heat of the sun, and the breeze
which the boat made aired them softly. Mrs. Flushing was already
dotting and striping her canvas, her head jerking this way and that
with the action of a bird nervously picking up grain; the others had
books or pieces of paper or embroidery on their knees, at which they
looked fitfully and again looked at the river ahead. At one point Hewet
read part of a poem aloud, but the number of moving things entirely
vanquished his words. He ceased to read, and no one spoke. They moved
on under the shelter of the trees. There was now a covey of red birds
feeding on one of the little islets to the left, or again a blue-green
parrot flew shrieking from tree to tree. As they moved on the country
grew wilder and wilder. The trees and the undergrowth seemed to be
strangling each other near the ground in a multitudinous wrestle; while
here and there a splendid tree towered high above the swarm, shaking
its thin green umbrellas lightly in the upper air. Hewet looked at his
books again. The morning was peaceful as the night had been, only it
was very strange because he could see it was light, and he could see
Rachel and hear her voice and be near to her. He felt as if he were
waiting, as if somehow he were stationary among things that passed over
him and around him, voices, people’s bodies, birds, only Rachel too was
waiting with him. He looked at her sometimes as if she must know that
they were waiting together, and being drawn on together, without being
able to offer any resistance. Again he read from his book:
Whoever you are holding me now in your hand,
Without one thing all will be useless.
A bird gave a wild laugh, a monkey chuckled a malicious question, and,
as fire fades in the hot sunshine, his words flickered and went out.
By degrees as the river narrowed, and the high sandbanks fell to level
ground thickly grown with trees, the sounds of the forest could be
heard. It echoed like a hall. There were sudden cries; and then long
spaces of silence, such as there are in a cathedral when a boy’s voice
has ceased and the echo of it still seems to haunt about the remote
places of the roof. Once Mr. Flushing rose and spoke to a sailor, and
even announced that some time after luncheon the steamer would stop,
and they could walk a little way through the forest.
“There are tracks all through the trees there,” he explained. “We’re no
distance from civilisation yet.”
He scrutinised his wife’s painting. Too polite to praise it openly, he
contented himself with cutting off one half of the picture with one
hand, and giving a flourish in the air with the other.
“God!” Hirst exclaimed, staring straight ahead. “Don’t you think it’s
amazingly beautiful?”
“Beautiful?” Helen enquired. It seemed a strange little word, and Hirst
and herself both so small that she forgot to answer him.
Hewet felt that he must speak.
“That’s where the Elizabethans got their style,” he mused, staring into
the profusion of leaves and blossoms and prodigious fruits.
“Shakespeare? I hate Shakespeare!” Mrs. Flushing exclaimed; and Wilfrid
returned admiringly, “I believe you’re the only person who dares to say
that, Alice.” But Mrs. Flushing went on painting. She did not appear to
attach much value to her husband’s compliment, and painted steadily,
sometimes muttering a half-audible word or groan.
The morning was now very hot.
“Look at Hirst!” Mr. Flushing whispered. His sheet of paper had slipped
on to the deck, his head lay back, and he drew a long snoring breath.
Terence picked up the sheet of paper and spread it out before Rachel.
It was a continuation of the poem on God which he had begun in the
chapel, and it was so indecent that Rachel did not understand half of
it although she saw that it was indecent. Hewet began to fill in words
where Hirst had left spaces, but he soon ceased; his pencil rolled on
deck. Gradually they approached nearer and nearer to the bank on the
right-hand side, so that the light which covered them became definitely
green, falling through a shade of green leaves, and Mrs. Flushing set
aside her sketch and stared ahead of her in silence. Hirst woke up;
they were then called to luncheon, and while they ate it, the steamer
came to a standstill a little way out from the bank. The boat which was
towed behind them was brought to the side, and the ladies were helped
into it.
For protection against boredom, Helen put a book of memoirs beneath her
arm, and Mrs. Flushing her paint-box, and, thus equipped, they allowed
themselves to be set on shore on the verge of the forest.
They had not strolled more than a few hundred yards along the track
which ran parallel with the river before Helen professed to find it was
unbearably hot. The river breeze had ceased, and a hot steamy
atmosphere, thick with scents, came from the forest.
“I shall sit down here,” she announced, pointing to the trunk of a tree
which had fallen long ago and was now laced across and across by
creepers and thong-like brambles. She seated herself, opened her
parasol, and looked at the river which was barred by the stems of
trees. She turned her back to the trees which disappeared in black
shadow behind her.
“I quite agree,” said Mrs. Flushing, and proceeded to undo her
paint-box. Her husband strolled about to select an interesting point of
view for her. Hirst cleared a space on the ground by Helen’s side, and
seated himself with great deliberation, as if he did not mean to move
until he had talked to her for a long time. Terence and Rachel were
left standing by themselves without occupation. Terence saw that the
time had come as it was fated to come, but although he realised this he
was completely calm and master of himself. He chose to stand for a few
moments talking to Helen, and persuading her to leave her seat. Rachel
joined him too in advising her to come with them.
“Of all the people I’ve ever met,” he said, “you’re the least
adventurous. You might be sitting on green chairs in Hyde Park. Are you
going to sit there the whole afternoon? Aren’t you going to walk?”
“Oh, no,” said Helen, “one’s only got to use one’s eye. There’s
everything here—everything,” she repeated in a drowsy tone of voice.
“What will you gain by walking?”
“You’ll be hot and disagreeable by tea-time, we shall be cool and
sweet,” put in Hirst. Into his eyes as he looked up at them had come
yellow and green reflections from the sky and the branches, robbing
them of their intentness, and he seemed to think what he did not say.
It was thus taken for granted by them both that Terence and Rachel
proposed to walk into the woods together; with one look at each other
they turned away.
“Good-bye!” cried Rachel.
“Good-by. Beware of snakes,” Hirst replied. He settled himself still
more comfortably under the shade of the fallen tree and Helen’s figure.
As they went, Mr. Flushing called after them, “We must start in an
hour. Hewet, please remember that. An hour.”
Whether made by man, or for some reason preserved by nature, there was
a wide pathway striking through the forest at right angles to the
river. It resembled a drive in an English forest, save that tropical
bushes with their sword-like leaves grew at the side, and the ground
was covered with an unmarked springy moss instead of grass, starred
with little yellow flowers. As they passed into the depths of the
forest the light grew dimmer, and the noises of the ordinary world were
replaced by those creaking and sighing sounds which suggest to the
traveller in a forest that he is walking at the bottom of the sea. The
path narrowed and turned; it was hedged in by dense creepers which
knotted tree to tree, and burst here and there into star-shaped crimson
blossoms. The sighing and creaking up above were broken every now and
then by the jarring cry of some startled animal. The atmosphere was
close and the air came at them in languid puffs of scent. The vast
green light was broken here and there by a round of pure yellow
sunlight which fell through some gap in the immense umbrella of green
above, and in these yellow spaces crimson and black butterflies were
circling and settling. Terence and Rachel hardly spoke.
Not only did the silence weigh upon them, but they were both unable to
frame any thoughts. There was something between them which had to be
spoken of. One of them had to begin, but which of them was it to be?
Then Hewet picked up a red fruit and threw it as high as he could. When
it dropped, he would speak. They heard the flapping of great wings;
they heard the fruit go pattering through the leaves and eventually
fall with a thud. The silence was again profound.
“Does this frighten you?” Terence asked when the sound of the fruit
falling had completely died away.
“No,” she answered. “I like it.”
She repeated “I like it.” She was walking fast, and holding herself
more erect than usual. There was another pause.
“You like being with me?” Terence asked.
“Yes, with you,” she replied.
He was silent for a moment. Silence seemed to have fallen upon the
world.
“That is what I have felt ever since I knew you,” he replied. “We are
happy together.” He did not seem to be speaking, or she to be hearing.
“Very happy,” she answered.
They continued to walk for some time in silence. Their steps
unconsciously quickened.
“We love each other,” Terence said.
“We love each other,” she repeated.
The silence was then broken by their voices which joined in tones of
strange unfamiliar sound which formed no words. Faster and faster they
walked; simultaneously they stopped, clasped each other in their arms,
then releasing themselves, dropped to the earth. They sat side by side.
Sounds stood out from the background making a bridge across their
silence; they heard the swish of the trees and some beast croaking in a
remote world.
“We love each other,” Terence repeated, searching into her face. Their
faces were both very pale and quiet, and they said nothing. He was
afraid to kiss her again. By degrees she drew close to him, and rested
against him. In this position they sat for some time. She said
“Terence” once; he answered “Rachel.”
“Terrible—terrible,” she murmured after another pause, but in saying
this she was thinking as much of the persistent churning of the water
as of her own feeling. On and on it went in the distance, the senseless
and cruel churning of the water. She observed that the tears were
running down Terence’s cheeks.
The next movement was on his part. A very long time seemed to have
passed. He took out his watch.
“Flushing said an hour. We’ve been gone more than half an hour.”
“And it takes that to get back,” said Rachel. She raised herself very
slowly. When she was standing up she stretched her arms and drew a deep
breath, half a sigh, half a yawn. She appeared to be very tired. Her
cheeks were white. “Which way?” she asked.
“There,” said Terence.
They began to walk back down the mossy path again. The sighing and
creaking continued far overhead, and the jarring cries of animals. The
butterflies were circling still in the patches of yellow sunlight. At
first Terence was certain of his way, but as they walked he became
doubtful. They had to stop to consider, and then to return and start
once more, for although he was certain of the direction of the river he
was not certain of striking the point where they had left the others.
Rachel followed him, stopping where he stopped, turning where he
turned, ignorant of the way, ignorant why he stopped or why he turned.
“I don’t want to be late,” he said, “because—” He put a flower into her
hand and her fingers closed upon it quietly. “We’re so late—so late—so
horribly late,” he repeated as if he were talking in his sleep.
“Ah—this is right. We turn here.”
They found themselves again in the broad path, like the drive in the
English forest, where they had started when they left the others. They
walked on in silence as people walking in their sleep, and were oddly
conscious now and again of the mass of their bodies. Then Rachel
exclaimed suddenly, “Helen!”
In the sunny space at the edge of the forest they saw Helen still
sitting on the tree-trunk, her dress showing very white in the sun,
with Hirst still propped on his elbow by her side. They stopped
instinctively. At the sight of other people they could not go on. They
stood hand in hand for a minute or two in silence. They could not bear
to face other people.
“But we must go on,” Rachel insisted at last, in the curious dull tone
of voice in which they had both been speaking, and with a great effort
they forced themselves to cover the short distance which lay between
them and the pair sitting on the tree-trunk.
As they approached, Helen turned round and looked at them. She looked
at them for some time without speaking, and when they were close to her
she said quietly:
“Did you meet Mr. Flushing? He has gone to find you. He thought you
must be lost, though I told him you weren’t lost.”
Hirst half turned round and threw his head back so that he looked at
the branches crossing themselves in the air above him.
“Well, was it worth the effort?” he enquired dreamily.
Hewet sat down on the grass by his side and began to fan himself.
Rachel had balanced herself near Helen on the end of the tree trunk.
“Very hot,” she said.
“You look exhausted anyhow,” said Hirst.
“It’s fearfully close in those trees,” Helen remarked, picking up her
book and shaking it free from the dried blades of grass which had
fallen between the leaves. Then they were all silent, looking at the
river swirling past in front of them between the trunks of the trees
until Mr. Flushing interrupted them. He broke out of the trees a
hundred yards to the left, exclaiming sharply:
“Ah, so you found the way after all. But it’s late—much later than we
arranged, Hewet.”
He was slightly annoyed, and in his capacity as leader of the
expedition, inclined to be dictatorial. He spoke quickly, using
curiously sharp, meaningless words.
“Being late wouldn’t matter normally, of course,” he said, “but when
it’s a question of keeping the men up to time—”
He gathered them together and made them come down to the river-bank,
where the boat was waiting to row them out to the steamer.
The heat of the day was going down, and over their cups of tea the
Flushings tended to become communicative. It seemed to Terence as he
listened to them talking, that existence now went on in two different
layers. Here were the Flushings talking, talking somewhere high up in
the air above him, and he and Rachel had dropped to the bottom of the
world together. But with something of a child’s directness, Mrs.
Flushing had also the instinct which leads a child to suspect what its
elders wish to keep hidden. She fixed Terence with her vivid blue eyes
and addressed herself to him in particular. What would he do, she
wanted to know, if the boat ran upon a rock and sank.
“Would you care for anythin’ but savin’ yourself? Should I? No, no,”
she laughed, “not one scrap—don’t tell me. There’s only two creatures
the ordinary woman cares about,” she continued, “her child and her dog;
and I don’t believe it’s even two with men. One reads a lot about
love—that’s why poetry’s so dull. But what happens in real life, eh? It
ain’t love!” she cried.
Terence murmured something unintelligible. Mr. Flushing, however, had
recovered his urbanity. He was smoking a cigarette, and he now answered
his wife.
“You must always remember, Alice,” he said, “that your upbringing was
very unnatural—unusual, I should say. They had no mother,” he
explained, dropping something of the formality of his tone; “and a
father—he was a very delightful man, I’ve no doubt, but he cared only
for racehorses and Greek statues. Tell them about the bath, Alice.”
“In the stable-yard,” said Mrs. Flushing. “Covered with ice in winter.
We had to get in; if we didn’t, we were whipped. The strong ones
lived—the others died. What you call survival of the fittest—a most
excellent plan, I daresay, if you’ve thirteen children!”
“And all this going on in the heart of England, in the nineteenth
century!” Mr. Flushing exclaimed, turning to Helen.
“I’d treat my children just the same if I had any,” said Mrs. Flushing.
Every word sounded quite distinctly in Terence’s ears; but what were
they saying, and who were they talking to, and who were they, these
fantastic people, detached somewhere high up in the air? Now that they
had drunk their tea, they rose and leant over the bow of the boat. The
sun was going down, and the water was dark and crimson. The river had
widened again, and they were passing a little island set like a dark
wedge in the middle of the stream. Two great white birds with red
lights on them stood there on stilt-like legs, and the beach of the
island was unmarked, save by the skeleton print of birds’ feet. The
branches of the trees on the bank looked more twisted and angular than
ever, and the green of the leaves was lurid and splashed with gold.
Then Hirst began to talk, leaning over the bow.
“It makes one awfully queer, don’t you find?” he complained. “These
trees get on one’s nerves—it’s all so crazy. God’s undoubtedly mad.
What sane person could have conceived a wilderness like this, and
peopled it with apes and alligators? I should go mad if I lived
here—raving mad.”
Terence attempted to answer him, but Mrs. Ambrose replied instead. She
bade him look at the way things massed themselves—look at the amazing
colours, look at the shapes of the trees. She seemed to be protecting
Terence from the approach of the others.
“Yes,” said Mr. Flushing. “And in my opinion,” he continued, “the
absence of population to which Hirst objects is precisely the
significant touch. You must admit, Hirst, that a little Italian town
even would vulgarise the whole scene, would detract from the
vastness—the sense of elemental grandeur.” He swept his hands towards
the forest, and paused for a moment, looking at the great green mass,
which was now falling silent. “I own it makes us seem pretty small—us,
not them.” He nodded his head at a sailor who leant over the side
spitting into the river. “And that, I think, is what my wife feels, the
essential superiority of the peasant—” Under cover of Mr. Flushing’s
words, which continued now gently reasoning with St. John and
persuading him, Terence drew Rachel to the side, pointing ostensibly to
a great gnarled tree-trunk which had fallen and lay half in the water.
He wished, at any rate, to be near her, but he found that he could say
nothing. They could hear Mr. Flushing flowing on, now about his wife,
now about art, now about the future of the country, little meaningless
words floating high in air. As it was becoming cold he began to pace
the deck with Hirst. Fragments of their talk came out distinctly as
they passed—art, emotion, truth, reality.
“Is it true, or is it a dream?” Rachel murmured, when they had passed.
“It’s true, it’s true,” he replied.
But the breeze freshened, and there was a general desire for movement.
When the party rearranged themselves under cover of rugs and cloaks,
Terence and Rachel were at opposite ends of the circle, and could not
speak to each other. But as the dark descended, the words of the others
seemed to curl up and vanish as the ashes of burnt paper, and left them
sitting perfectly silent at the bottom of the world. Occasional starts
of exquisite joy ran through them, and then they were peaceful again.