“Not long ago,” said Hilda, “I had a chat with him. We sat on the grass
in the middle of the Maidan, and there was nothing to interfere with my
impressions.”
“What were your impressions? No!” Alicia cried. “No! Don't tell me. It
is all so peaceful now, and simple, and straightforward. You think such
extraordinary things. He comes here quite often, to talk about her. He
is coming this afternoon. So I have impressions too--and they are just
as good.”
“All right.” Hilda crossed her knees more comfortably. “WHAT did you say
the Surgeon-Major paid for those Teheran tiles?”
“Something absurd--I've forgotten. He writes to her regularly, diary
letters, by every mail.”
“Do you tell him what to put into them?”
“Hilda, sometimes--you're positively gross.”
“I daresay, my dear. You didn't come out of a cab, and you never are. I
like being gross, I feel nearer to nature then, but I don't say that
as an excuse. I like the smell of warm kitchens and the talk
of bus-drivers, and bread and herrings for my tea--all the low
satisfactions appeal to me. Beer, too, and hand-organs.”
“I don't know when to believe you. He talks about her quite freely,
and--and so do I. She is really interesting in her way.”
“And in perspective.”
“Why should you be odiously smart. He and Stephen”--her glance was
tentative--“have made it up.”
“Oh?”
“He admits now that Stephen was justified, from his point of view. But
of course that is easy enough when you have come off best.”
“Of course.”
“Hilda, what do you THINK?”
“Oh, I think it's deplorable--you have always known what I think. Have
you seen him lately--I mean your cousin?”
“He lunched with us yesterday. He was more enthusiastic than ever about
you.”
“I wish you could tell me that he hadn't mentioned my name. I don't want
his enthusiasm. The pit gives one that.”
“Hilda, tell me; what is your idea of--of what it ought to be? What is
the principal part of it? Not enthusiasm--adoration?”
“Goodness, no! Something quite different and quite simple--too simple to
explain. Besides, it is a thing that requires the completest ignorance
to discuss comfortably. Do you want me to vivisect my soul? You
yourself, can you talk about what most possesses you?”
“Oh,” protested Alicia, “I wasn't thinking about myself,” and at the
same moment the door opened and Hilda said, “Ah! Mr. Lindsay.”
There was a hint of the unexpected in Duff's response to Miss Howe's
greeting, and a suggestion in the way he sat down that this made a
difference, and that he must find other things to say. He found them
with facility, while Hilda decided that she would finish her tea before
she went. Alicia, busy with the urn, seemed satisfied to abandon them to
each other, to take a decorative place in the conversation, interrupting
it with brief inquiries about cream and sugar. Alicia waited, it was her
way; she sank almost palpably into the tapestries until some reviving
circumstance should bring her out again, a process which was quite
compatible with her little laughs and comments. She waited, offering
repose, and unconscious even of that. You know Hilda Howe as a creature
of bold reflections. Looking at Alicia Livingstone behind the teapot,
the conviction visited her that a sex three-quarters of this fibre
explained the monastic clergy.
“It is reported that you have performed the wonderful, the impossible,”
Lindsay said; “that Llewellyn Stanhope goes home solvent.”
“I don't know how he can help it now. But I have to be very firm. He's
on his knees to me to do Ibsen. I tell him I will if he'll combine with
Jimmy Finnigan and bring the Surprise Party on between the acts. The
only way it would go, in this capital.”
“Oh, do produce Ibsen,” Alicia exclaimed; “I've never seen one of his
plays--doesn't it sound terrible!”
“If people will elect to live upon a coral strand--oh, I should like to,
for you and Duff here, but Ibsen is the very last man to deliver to a
scratch company. He must have equal merit, or there's no meaning.
You see he makes none of the vulgar appeals. It would be a tame
travesty--nobody could redeem it alone. You must keep to the old
situations, the reliable old dodges, when you play in any part of Asia.”
“I never shall cease to regret that I didn't see you in The Offence of
Galilee?” Duff said. “Everyone who knows the least bit about it said you
were marvellous in that.”
“Marvellous,” said Alicia
Hilda gazed straight before her for an instant without speaking. The
others looked at her absent eyes. “A bazar trick or two helped me,”
she said, and glanced with vivacity at any other subject that might be
hanging on the wall, or visible out of the window.
“And are you really invincible about not putting it on again in
Calcutta?” Duff asked.
“Not in Calcutta, or anywhere. The rest hate it--nobody has a chance but
me,” Hilda said, and got up.
“Oh, I don't know,” Alicia began, but Miss Howe was already half-way
out of the discussion, in the direction of the door. There was often a
brusqueness in her comings and goings, but she usually left a flavour of
herself behind. One turned with facility to talk about her, this being
the easiest way of applying the stimulus that came of talking to her.
It was more conspicuous than either of these two realised that they
accepted her retreat without a word, that there was even between them a
consciousness of satisfaction that she had gone.
“This morning's mail,” said Alicia, smiling brightly at Lindsay,
“brought you a letter, I know.” It was extraordinary how detached she
could be from her vital personal concern in him. It seemed relegated
to some background of her nature while she occupied herself with the
immediate play of circumstance or was lost in her observation of him.
“How kind of you to think of it,” Lindsay said. “This was the first by
which I could possibly hear from England.”
“Ah, well, now you will have no more anxiety. Letters from on board ship
are always difficult to write and unsatisfactory,” Alicia said. Miss
Filbert's had been postcards, with a wide unoccupied margin at the
bottom.
“The Sutlej seems to have arrived on the third; that's a day later,
isn't it, than we made out she would be?”
Alicia consulted her memory, and found she couldn't be sure. Lindsay was
vexed by a similar uncertainty, but they agreed that the date was early
in the month.
“Did they get comfortably through the Canal? I remember being tied up
there for forty-eight hours once.”
“I don't think she says, so I fancy it must have been all right.
The voyage is bound to do her good. I've asked the Simpsons to watch
particularly for any sign of malaria later, though. One can't possibly
know what she may have imported from that slum in Bentinck Street.”
“And what was it like after Gibraltar?” Alicia asked, with a barely
perceptible glance at the envelope edges showing over his breast-pocket.
“I'll look,” and he sorted one out. It was pink and glossy, with a
diagonal water-stripe. Lindsay drew out the single sheet it contained,
and she could see that every line was ruled and faintly pencilled. “Let
me see,” said he. “To begin at the beginning. 'We arrived home on the
third,'--you see it was the third,--'making very slow progress the
last day on account of a fog in the Channel'--ah, a fog in the
Channel!--'which was a great disappointment to some on board who were
impatient to meet their loved ones. One lady had not seen her family of
five for seven years. She said she would like to get out and swim, and
you could not wonder. She was my s--stable companion.”
“Quaint!” said Alicia.
“She has picked up the expression on board. 'So--so she told me this.'
Oh yes. 'Now that it is all over I have written the voyage down among
my mercies in spite of three days' sickness, when you could keep nothing
on--' What are those two words, Miss Livingstone? I can't quite make
them out.”
“'Your'--cambric?--stom--'stomach'--'your stomach.'”
“Oh, quite so. Thanks!--'in the Bay of Biscay.' You see it WAS rough
after Gib. 'Everybody was'--yes. 'The captain read Church of England
prayers on Sunday mornings, in which I had no objection to join, and we
had mangoes every day for a week after leaving Ceylon.'”
“Miss Filbert was so fond of mangoes,” Alicia said.
“Was she? 'The passengers got up two dances, and quite a number of
gentlemen invited me, but I declined with thanks, though I would not say
it is wrong in itself.'” Lindsay seemed to waver; her glance went
near enough to him to show her that his face had a red tinge of
embarrassment. He looked at the letter uncertainly, on the point of
folding it up.
“You see she hasn't danced for so long,” Alicia put in quickly; “she
would naturally hesitate about beginning again with anybody but you. I
shouldn't wonder,” she added gently, “if she never does, with anybody
else.”
“I know it's an idea some women have,” he replied. “I think it's
rather--nice.”
“And her impressions of the Simpsons--and Plymouth?”
“She goes on to that.” He reconsulted the letter. “'Mr. and Mrs. Simpson
met me as expected and welcomed me very affably.' She has got hold of
a wrong impression there, I fancy; the Simpsons couldn't be 'affable.'
'They seem very kind and pleasant for such stylish people, and their
house is lovely, with electric light in the parlour and hot and cold
water throughout. They seem very earnest people and have family prayers
regularly, but I have not yet been asked to lead. Four servants come in
to prayers. Mr. and Mrs. Simpson are deeply interested in the work of
the Army, though I think Plymouth as a whole is more taken up with the
C.M.S.; but we cannot have all things.' Dear me, yes! I remember those
evangelical teas and the disappointment that I could not speak more
definitely about the work among the Sontalis.”
“Fancy her having caught the spirit of the place already!” exclaimed
Alicia. “He went on: 'Mr. and Mrs. Simpson have a beautiful garden and
grow most of their own vegetables. We sit in it a great deal and I think
of all that has passed. I hope ever that it has been for the best and
pray for you always. Oh that your feet may be set in the right path and
that we may walk hand in hand upon the way to Zion!'” Lindsay lowered
his voice and read the last sentences rapidly, as if the propulsion
of the first part of the letter sent him through them. Then he stopped
abruptly, and Alicia looked up.
“That's all, only,” he added, with an awkward smile, “the usual
formula.”
“'God bless you'?” she asked, and he nodded.
“It has a more genuine ring than most formulas,” she observed.
“Yes, hasn't it? May I have another cup?” He restored the pink sheet to
its pink envelope, and both to his breast-pocket, while she poured out
the other cup, but Miss Filbert was still present with them. They went
on talking about her, and entirely in the tone of congratulation--the
suitability of the Simpsons, the suitability of Plymouth, the
probability that she would entirely recover, in its balmy atmosphere,
her divine singing voice. Plymouth certainly was in no sense a tonic,
but Miss Filbert didn't need a tonic; she was too much inclined to
be strung up as it was. What she wanted was the soothing, quieting
influence of just Plymouth's meetings and just Plymouth's teas. The
charms that so sweetly and definitely characterised her would expand
there; it was a delightful flowery environment for them, and she
couldn't fail to improve in health. Devonshire's visitors got
tremendously well fed, with fish items of especial excellence.