Chapter XVII
It was now the height of the season, and every ship that came fromEngland left a few people on the shores of Santa Marina who drove up tothe hotel. The fact that the Ambroses had a house where one could escapemomentarily from the slightly inhuman atmosphere of an hotel was asource of genuine pleasure not only to Hirst and Hewet, but to theElliots, the Thornburys, the Flushings, Miss Allan, Evelyn M., togetherwith other people whose identity was so little developed that theAmbroses did not discover that they possessed names. By degrees therewas established a kind of correspondence between the two houses, the bigand the small, so that at most hours of the day one house could guesswhat was going on in the other, and the words "the villa" and "thehotel" called up the idea of two separate systems of life. Acquaintancesshowed signs of developing into friends, for that one tie to Mrs.Parry's drawing-room had inevitably split into many other ties attachedto different parts of England, and sometimes these alliances seemedcynically fragile, and sometimes painfully acute, lacking as they didthe supporting background of organised English life. One night when themoon was round between the trees, Evelyn M. told Helen the story ofher life, and claimed her everlasting friendship; or 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 tomeet 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 togetherso slight a friendship.
Hewet, indeed, might have found excellent material at this time upat 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 becomevery silent. Having detected, as she thought, a secret, and judging thatRachel meant to keep it from her, Mrs. Ambrose respected it carefully,but from that cause, though unintentionally, a curious atmosphere ofreserve grew up between them. Instead of sharing their views upon allsubjects, and plunging after an idea wherever it might lead, they spokechiefly in comment upon the people they saw, and the secret betweenthem made itself felt in what they said even of Thornburys and Elliots.Always calm and unemotional in her judgments, Mrs. Ambrose wasnow inclined to be definitely pessimistic. She was not severe uponindividuals so much as incredulous of the kindness of destiny, fate,what happens in the long run, and apt to insist that this was generallyadverse to people in proportion as they deserved well. Even this theoryshe was ready to discard in favour of one which made chaos triumphant,things happening for no reason at all, and every one groping about inillusion and ignorance. With a certain pleasure she developed theseviews to her niece, taking a letter from home as her test: which gavegood news, but might just as well have given bad. How did she know thatat this very moment both her children were not lying dead, crushed bymotor omnibuses? "It's happening to somebody: why shouldn't it happento me?" she would argue, her face taking on the stoical expression ofanticipated sorrow. However sincere these views may have been, they wereundoubtedly called forth by the irrational state of her niece's mind.It was so fluctuating, and went so quickly from joy to despair, that itseemed necessary to confront it with some stable opinion which naturallybecame dark as well as stable. Perhaps Mrs. Ambrose had some idea thatin leading the talk into these quarters she might discover what was inRachel's mind, but it was difficult to judge, for sometimes she wouldagree with the gloomiest thing that was said, at other times she refusedto listen, and rammed Helen's theories down her throat with laughter,chatter, ridicule of the wildest, and fierce bursts of anger even atwhat 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 whyan hour later, perhaps, life was something so wonderful and vividthat the eyes of Rachel beholding it were positively exhilarating to aspectator. True to her creed, she did not attempt to interfere, althoughthere were enough of those weak moments of depression to make itperfectly easy for a less scrupulous person to press through and knowall, and perhaps Rachel was sorry that she did not choose. All thesemoods ran themselves into one general effect, which Helen compared tothe sliding of a river, quick, quicker, quicker still, as it races to awaterfall. Her instinct was to cry out Stop! but even had there beenany use in crying Stop! she would have refrained, thinking it best thatthings should take their way, the water racing because the earth wasshaped to make it race.
It seemed that Rachel herself had no suspicion that she was watched, orthat 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 thecondition of the racing water to which Helen compared it. She wantedto see Terence; she was perpetually wishing to see him when he was notthere; it was an agony to miss seeing him; agonies were strewn all abouther day on account of him, but she never asked herself what this forcedriving through her life arose from. She thought of no result any morethan a tree perpetually pressed downwards by the wind considers theresult of being pressed downwards by the wind.
During the two or three weeks which had passed since their walk, half adozen notes from him had accumulated in her drawer. She would readthem, and spend the whole morning in a daze of happiness; the sunny landoutside the window being no less capable of analysing its own colourand heat than she was of analysing hers. In these moods she found itimpossible to read or play the piano, even to move being beyond herinclination. The time passed without her noticing it. When it was darkshe was drawn to the window by the lights of the hotel. A light thatwent in and out was the light in Terence's window: there he sat, readingperhaps, or now he was walking up and down pulling out one book afteranother; and now he was seated in his chair again, and she tried toimagine what he was thinking about. The steady lights marked the roomswhere Terence sat with people moving round him. Every one who stayed inthe hotel had a peculiar romance and interest about them. They were notordinary people. She would attribute wisdom to Mrs. Elliot, beauty toSusan Warrington, a splendid vitality to Evelyn M., because Terencespoke to them. As unreflecting and pervasive were the moods ofdepression. Her mind was as the landscape outside when dark beneathclouds and straitly lashed by wind and hail. Again she would sit passivein her chair exposed to pain, and Helen's fantastical or gloomy wordswere like so many darts goading her to cry out against the hardness oflife. Best of all were the moods when for no reason again this stress offeeling slackened, and life went on as usual, only with a joy and colourin its events that was unknown before; they had a significance like thatwhich she had seen in the tree: the nights were black bars separatingher from the days; she would have liked to run all the days into onelong continuity of sensation. Although these moods were directly orindirectly caused by the presence of Terence or the thought of him, shenever said to herself that she was in love with him, or considered whatwas to happen if she continued to feel such things, so that Helen'simage of the river sliding on to the waterfall had a great likeness tothe facts, and the alarm which Helen sometimes felt was justified.
In her curious condition of unanalysed sensations she was incapable ofmaking a plan which should have any effect upon her state of mind. Sheabandoned herself to the mercy of accidents, missing Terence one day,meeting him the next, receiving his letters always with a start ofsurprise. Any woman experienced in the progress of courtship would havecome by certain opinions from all this which would have given her atleast 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 booksshe read, from _Wuthering_ _Heights_ to _Man_ _and_ _Superman_, and theplays of Ibsen, suggested from their analysis of love that what theirheroines felt was what she was feeling now. It seemed to her that hersensations had no name.
She met Terence frequently. When they did not meet, he was apt to send anote with a book or about a book, for he had not been able after all toneglect that approach to int
imacy. But sometimes he did not come or didnot write for several days at a time. Again when they met their meetingmight be one of inspiriting joy or of harassing despair. Over all theirpartings 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 completelyignorant of his. At first he moved as a god; as she came to know himbetter he was still the centre of light, but combined with this beautya wonderful power of making her daring and confident of herself. Shewas conscious of emotions and powers which she had never suspected inherself, and of a depth in the world hitherto unknown. When she thoughtof their relationship she saw rather than reasoned, representing herview of what Terence felt by a picture of him drawn across the room tostand by her side. This passage across the room amounted to a physicalsensation, 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 daysaccumulated their small events which shaped the year. Superficially,three odes of Pindar were mended, Helen covered about five inches of herembroidery, and St. John completed the first two acts of a play. He andRachel being now very good friends, he read them aloud to her, and shewas so genuinely impressed by the skill of his rhythms and the varietyof 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 literaturerather than for law. It was a time of profound thought and suddenrevelations for more than one couple, and several single people.
A Sunday came, which no one in the villa with the exception of Racheland the Spanish maid proposed to recognise. Rachel still went to church,because she had never, according to Helen, taken the trouble to thinkabout it. Since they had celebrated the service at the hotel she wentthere expecting to get some pleasure from her passage across the gardenand through the hall of the hotel, although it was very doubtful whethershe would see Terence, or at any rate have the chance of speaking tohim.
As the greater number of visitors at the hotel were English, there wasalmost as much difference between Sunday and Wednesday as there is inEngland, and Sunday appeared here as there, the mute black ghost orpenitent spirit of the busy weekday. The English could not pale thesunshine, but they could in some miraculous way slow down the hours,dull the incidents, lengthen the meals, and make even the servants andpage-boys wear a look of boredom and propriety. The best clothes whichevery one put on helped the general effect; it seemed that no lady couldsit down without bending a clean starched petticoat, and no gentlemancould breathe without a sudden crackle from a stiff shirt-front. As thehands of the clock neared eleven, on this particular Sunday, variouspeople tended to draw together in the hall, clasping little red-leavedbooks in their hands. The clock marked a few minutes to the hour whena stout black figure passed through the hall with a preoccupiedexpression, as though he would rather not recognise salutations,although aware of them, and disappeared down the corridor which led fromit.
"Mr. Bax," Mrs. Thornbury whispered.
The little group of people then began to move off in the same directionas the stout black figure. Looked at in an odd way by people who madeno effort to join them, they moved with one exception slowly andconsciously towards the stairs. Mrs. Flushing was the exception. Shecame running downstairs, strode across the hall, joined the processionmuch out of breath, demanding of Mrs. Thornbury in an agitated whisper,"Where, where?"
"We are all going," said Mrs. Thornbury gently, and soon they weredescending 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 ofno black volume, but of one thin book bound in light-blue cloth, whichSt. John carried under his arm.
The chapel was the old chapel of the monks. It was a profound cool placewhere they had said Mass for hundreds of years, and done penance inthe cold moonlight, and worshipped old brown pictures and carved saintswhich stood with upraised hands of blessing in the hollows in the walls.The transition from Catholic to Protestant worship had been bridged by atime of disuse, when there were no services, and the place was used forstoring jars of oil, liqueur, and deck-chairs; the hotel flourishing,some religious body had taken the place in hand, and it was now fittedout 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 issuingfrom a harmonium, where Miss Willett, concealed from view by a baizecurtain, struck emphatic chords with uncertain fingers. The sound spreadthrough the chapel as the rings of water spread from a fallen stone. Thetwenty or twenty-five people who composed the congregation first bowedtheir 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 usualbows and smiles were dispensed with, but they recognised each other.The Lord's Prayer was read over them. As the childlike battle of voicesrose, the congregation, many of whom had only met on the staircase, feltthemselves pathetically united and well-disposed towards each other.As if the prayer were a torch applied to fuel, a smoke seemed to riseautomatically and fill the place with the ghosts of innumerable serviceson innumerable Sunday mornings at home. Susan Warrington in particularwas conscious of the sweetest sense of sisterhood, as she covered herface with her hands and saw slips of bent backs through the chinksbetween her fingers. Her emotions rose calmly and evenly, approving ofherself 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 thepage and read a psalm. Though he read it with no change of voice themood was broken.
"Be merciful unto me, O God," he read, "for man goeth about to devourme: he is daily fighting and troubling me. . . . They daily mistake mywords: all that they imagine is to do me evil. They hold all togetherand keep themselves close. . . . Break their teeth, O God, in theirmouths; smite the jaw-bones of the lions, O Lord: let them fall awaylike water that runneth apace; and when they shoot their arrows let thembe rooted out."
Nothing in Susan's experience at all corresponded with this, and as shehad no love of language she had long ceased to attend to such remarks,although she followed them with the same kind of mechanical respect withwhich she heard many of Lear's speeches read aloud. Her mind was stillserene and really occupied with praise of her own nature and praise ofGod, 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 theothers, the men in particular, felt the inconvenience of the suddenintrusion of this old savage. They looked more secular and critical asthen listened to the ravings of the old black man with a cloth round hisloins cursing with vehement gesture by a camp-fire in the desert. Afterthat there was a general sound of pages being turned as if they were inclass, and then they read a little bit of the Old Testament about makinga well, very much as school boys translate an easy passage from the_Anabasis_ when they have shut up their French grammar. Then theyreturned to the New Testament and the sad and beautiful figureof Christ. While Christ spoke they made another effort to fit hisinterpretation of life upon the lives they lived, but as they were allvery different, some practical, some ambitious, some stupid, some wildand experimental, some in love, and others long past any feeling excepta feeling of comfort, they did very different things with the words ofChrist.
From their faces it seemed that for the most part they made no effortat all, and, recumbent as it were, accepted the ideas the words gaveas representing goodness, in the same way, no doubt, as one of thoseindustrious needlewomen had accepted the bright ugly pattern on her matas beauty.
Whatever the reason might be, for the first time in her life, insteadof slipping at once into some curious pleasant cloud of emotion, toofamiliar to be considered, Rachel listened critically to
what was beingsaid. By the time they had swung in an irregular way from prayer topsalm, from psalm to history, from history to poetry, and Mr. Bax wasgiving out his text, she was in a state of acute discomfort. Such wasthe discomfort she felt when forced to sit through an unsatisfactorypiece of music badly played. Tantalised, enraged by the clumsyinsensitiveness of the conductor, who put the stress on the wrongplaces, and annoyed by the vast flock of the audience tamely praisingand acquiescing without knowing or caring, so she was not tantalized andenraged, only here, with eyes half-shut and lips pursed together, theatmosphere of forced solemnity increased her anger. All round her werepeople pretending to feel what they did not feel, while somewhere aboveher floated the idea which they could none of them grasp, which theypretended 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 blunderingeffort and misunderstanding were perpetually going on, great buildings,filled with innumerable men and women, not seeing clearly, whofinally gave up the effort to see, and relapsed tamely into praise andacquiescence, half-shutting their eyes and pursing up their lips. Thethought had the same sort of physical discomfort as is caused by a filmof mist always coming between the eyes and the printed page. She did herbest to brush away the film and to conceive something to be worshippedas the service went on, but failed, always misled by the voice of Mr.Bax saying things which misrepresented the idea, and by the patter ofbaaing inexpressive human voices falling round her like damp leaves. Theeffort was tiring and dispiriting. She ceased to listen, and fixed hereyes on the face of a woman near her, a hospital nurse, whose expressionof devout attention seemed to prove that she was at any rate receivingsatisfaction. But looking at her carefully she came to the conclusionthat the hospital nurse was only slavishly acquiescent, and that thelook of satisfaction was produced by no splendid conception of Godwithin her. How indeed, could she conceive anything far outside her ownexperience, a woman with a commonplace face like hers, a little roundred face, upon which trivial duties and trivial spites had drawn lines,whose weak blue eyes saw without intensity or individuality, whosefeatures were blurred, insensitive, and callous? She was adoringsomething shallow and smug, clinging to it, so the obstinate mouthwitnessed, with the assiduity of a limpet; nothing would tear her fromher demure belief in her own virtue and the virtues of her religion. Shewas a limpet, with the sensitive side of her stuck to a rock, for everdead to the rush of fresh and beautiful things past her. The faceof this single worshipper became printed on Rachel's mind with animpression of keen horror, and she had it suddenly revealed to her whatHelen meant and St. John meant when they proclaimed their hatred ofChristianity. With the violence that now marked her feelings, sherejected all that she had implicitly believed.
Meanwhile Mr. Bax was half-way through the second lesson. She looked athim. 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 nomeans clever, but she was not in the mood to give any one credit forsuch qualities, and examined him as though he were an epitome of all thevices of his service.
Right at the back of the chapel Mrs. Flushing, Hirst, and Hewet sat ina row in a very different frame of mind. Hewet was staring at the roofwith his legs stuck out in front of him, for as he had never tried tomake the service fit any feeling or idea of his, he was able to enjoythe beauty of the language without hindrance. His mind was occupiedfirst with accidental things, such as the women's hair in front ofhim, the light on the faces, then with the words which seemed to himmagnificent, and then more vaguely with the characters of the otherworshippers. But when he suddenly perceived Rachel, all these thoughtswere 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 chantingsound which paused, and then renewed itself, a little higher or a littlelower. He stared alternately at Rachel and at the ceiling, but hisexpression was now produced not by what he saw but by something in hismind. He was almost as painfully disturbed by his thoughts as she was byhers.
Early in the service Mrs. Flushing had discovered that she had taken upa 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 thethin pale-blue volume. Unable to understand, she peered closer, uponwhich Hirst politely laid the book before her, pointing to the firstline 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 everbeen written."
Mrs. Flushing could not resist such an opportunity. She gulped down theOde to Aphrodite during the Litany, keeping herself with difficulty fromasking when Sappho lived, and what else she wrote worth reading, andcontriving to come in punctually at the end with "the forgiveness ofsins, the Resurrection of the body, and the life everlastin'. Amen."
Meanwhile Hirst took out an envelope and began scribbling on the back ofit. When Mr. Bax mounted the pulpit he shut up Sappho with his envelopebetween the pages, settled his spectacles, and fixed his gaze intentlyupon the clergyman. Standing in the pulpit he looked very large and fat;the light coming through the greenish unstained window-glass made hisface appear smooth and white like a very large egg.
He looked round at all the faces looking mildly up at him, althoughsome of them were the faces of men and women old enough to be hisgrandparents, and gave out his text with weighty significance. Theargument 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 generalinterest in the weekly newspapers. It rambled with a kind of amiableverbosity from one heading to another, suggesting that all human beingsare very much the same under their skins, illustrating this by theresemblance of the games which little Spanish boys play to the gameslittle boys in London streets play, observing that very small things doinfluence people, particularly natives; in fact, a very dear friend ofMr. Bax's had told him that the success of our rule in India, that vastcountry, largely depended upon the strict code of politeness which theEnglish adopted towards the natives, which led to the remark that smallthings were not necessarily small, and that somehow to the virtue ofsympathy, which was a virtue never more needed than to-day, when welived in a time of experiment and upheaval--witness the aeroplane andwireless telegraph, and there were other problems which hardly presentedthemselves to our fathers, but which no man who called himself a mancould leave unsettled. Here Mr. Bax became more definitely clerical, ifit were possible, he seemed to speak with a certain innocent craftiness,as he pointed out that all this laid a special duty upon earnestChristians. What men were inclined to say now was, "Oh, thatfellow--he's a parson." What we want them to say is, "He's a goodfellow"--in other words, "He is my brother." He exhorted them to keepin touch with men of the modern type; they must sympathise with theirmultifarious interests in order to keep before their eyes that whateverdiscoveries were made there was one discovery which could not besuperseded, which was indeed as much of a necessity to the mostsuccessful and most brilliant of them all as it had been to theirfathers. The humblest could help; the least important things had aninfluence (here his manner became definitely priestly and his remarksseemed to be directed to women, for indeed Mr. Bax's congregations weremainly composed of women, and he was used to assigning them their dutiesin his innocent clerical campaigns). Leaving more definite instruction,he passed on, and his theme broadened into a peroration for whichhe drew a long breath and stood very upright,--"As a drop of water,detached, alone, separate from others, falling from the cloud andentering the great ocean, alters, so scientists tell us, not only theimmediate spot in the ocean where it falls, but all the myriad dropswhich together compose the great universe of waters, and by this meansalters the configuration of the globe and the lives of millions of seacreatures, and finally the lives of the men and women who seek t
heirliving upon the shores--as all this is within the compass of a singledrop of water, such as any rain shower sends in millions to losethemselves in the earth, to lose themselves we say, but we know verywell that the fruits of the earth could not flourish without them--sois a marvel comparable to this within the reach of each one of us, whodropping a little word or a little deed into the great universe altersit; yea, it is a solemn thought, _alters_ it, for good or for evil, notfor one instant, or in one vicinity, but throughout the entire race,and for all eternity." Whipping round as though to avoid applause, hecontinued with the same breath, but in a different tone of voice,--"Andnow to God the Father . . ."
He gave his blessing, and then, while the solemn chords again issuedfrom the harmonium behind the curtain, the different people beganscraping and fumbling and moving very awkwardly and consciously towardsthe door. Half-way upstairs, at a point where the light and sounds ofthe upper world conflicted with the dimness and the dying hymn-tune ofthe 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 wasgreeted with curious respectful glances by the people who had not goneto church, although their clothing made it clear that they approved ofSunday to the very verge of going to church. Rachel felt unable to standany more of this particular atmosphere, and was about to say she mustgo back, when Terence passed them, drawn along in talk with Evelyn M.Rachel thereupon contented herself with saying that the people lookedvery respectable, which negative remark Mrs. Flushing interpreted tomean 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 atRachel'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, andbegan to pound energetically up the staircase, as though the middleclasses of England were in pursuit. She did not stop until she hadslammed 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 burstforth beyond her control.
"I thought it the most loathsome exhibition I'd ever seen!" she brokeout. "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 wastoo indignant to stop to analyse her feelings. Mrs. Flushing watched herwith keen gusto as she stood ejaculating with emphatic movements of herhead and hands in the middle of the room.
"Go on, go on, do go on," she laughed, clapping her hands. "It'sdelightful 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 thathad put her into such a passion the sight of Terence in the hall hadconfused her thoughts, leaving her merely indignant. She looked straightat their own villa, half-way up the side of the mountain. The mostfamiliar view seen framed through glass has a certain unfamiliardistinction, and she grew calm as she gazed. Then she remembered thatshe was in the presence of some one she did not know well, and sheturned and looked at Mrs. Flushing. Mrs. Flushing was still sittingon the edge of the bed, looking up, with her lips parted, so that herstrong 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 proceededto describe them both, and to say that both frightened her, but onefrightened 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. Therewere a great many arm-chairs and settees covered in brown holland, buteach of these was occupied by a large square piece of yellow cardboard,and all the pieces of cardboard were dotted or lined with spots ordashes of bright oil paint.
"But you're not to look at those," said Mrs. Flushing as she sawRachel's eye wander. She jumped up, and turned as many as she could,face downwards, upon the floor. Rachel, however, managed to possessherself of one of them, and, with the vanity of an artist, Mrs. Flushingdemanded 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 upinto the air; you could almost see the clods flying as it whirled.
Rachel passed from one to another. They were all marked by something ofthe jerk and decision of their maker; they were all perfectly untrainedonslaughts of the brush upon some half-realised idea suggested by hillor tree; and they were all in some way characteristic of Mrs. Flushing.
"I see things movin'," Mrs. Flushing explained. "So"--she swept her handthrough a yard of the air. She then took up one of the cardboards whichRachel had laid aside, seated herself on a stool, and began to flourisha stump of charcoal. While she occupied herself in strokes which seemedto serve her as speech serves others, Rachel, who was very restless,looked about her.
"Open the wardrobe," said Mrs. Flushing after a pause, speakingindistinctly because of a paint-brush in her mouth, "and look at thethings."
As Rachel hesitated, Mrs. Flushing came forward, still with apaint-brush in her mouth, flung open the wings of her wardrobe, andtossed a quantity of shawls, stuffs, cloaks, embroideries, on to thebed. Rachel began to finger them. Mrs. Flushing came up once more, anddropped a quantity of beads, brooches, earrings, bracelets, tassels, andcombs among the draperies. Then she went back to her stool and began topaint in silence. The stuffs were coloured and dark and pale; they madea curious swarm of lines and colours upon the counterpane, withthe reddish lumps of stone and peacocks' feathers and clear paletortoise-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'tknow what they're worth, so we get 'em cheap. And we shall sell 'em tosmart women in London," she chuckled, as though the thought of theseladies and their absurd appearance amused her. After painting forsome minutes, she suddenly laid down her brush and fixed her eyes uponRachel.
"I tell you what I want to do," she said. "I want to go up there and seethings for myself. It's silly stayin' here with a pack of old maids asthough we were at the seaside in England. I want to go up the river andsee the natives in their camps. It's only a matter of ten days undercanvas. My husband's done it. One would lie out under the trees at nightand be towed down the river by day, and if we saw anythin' nice we'dshout out and tell 'em to stop." She rose and began piercing the bedagain and again with a long golden pin, as she watched to see whateffect 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 andt'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, whichshe invariably spelt wrong. Rachel was enthusiastic, for indeed the ideawas immeasurably delightful to her. She had always had a great desire tosee 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 tohelp Mrs. Flushing by suggesting names, helping her to spell them, andcounting up the days of the week upon her fingers. As Mrs. Flushingwanted to know all she could tell her about the birth and pursuits ofevery person she suggested, and threw in wild stories of her own
as tothe temperaments and habits of artists, and people of the same name whoused to come to Chillingley in the old days, but were doubtless not thesame, though they too were very clever men interested in Egyptology, thebusiness took some time.
At last Mrs. Flushing sought her diary for help, the method of reckoningdates on the fingers proving unsatisfactory. She opened and shut everydrawer in her writing-table, and then cried furiously, "Yarmouth!Yarmouth! Drat the woman! She's always out of the way when she'swanted!"
At this moment the luncheon gong began to work itself into its middayfrenzy. Mrs. Flushing rang her bell violently. The door was opened by ahandsome maid who was almost as upright as her mistress.
"Oh, Yarmouth," said Mrs. Flushing, "just find my diary and see whereten days from now would bring us to, and ask the hall porter how manymen 'ud be wanted to row eight people up the river for a week, andwhat it 'ud cost, and put it on a slip of paper and leave it on mydressing-table. Now--" she pointed at the door with a superb forefingerso that Rachel had to lead the way.
"Oh, and Yarmouth," Mrs. Flushing called back over her shoulder. "Putthose things away and hang 'em in their right places, there's a goodgirl, 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 wasstill Sunday, although the mood was slightly abating. The Flushings'table was set by the side in the window, so that Mrs. Flushing couldscrutinise each figure as it entered, and her curiosity seemed to beintense.
"Old Mrs. Paley," she whispered as the wheeled chair slowly made its waythrough the door, Arthur pushing behind. "Thornburys" came next. "Thatnice 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 witha prepared smile as though she came out upon a stage, might wellhave quailed before Mrs. Flushing's stare, which expressed her steelyhostility to the whole tribe of painted ladies. Next came the two youngmen whom Mrs. Flushing called collectively the Hirsts. They sat downopposite, across the gangway.
Mr. Flushing treated his wife with a mixture of admiration andindulgence, making up by the suavity and fluency of his speech for theabruptness of hers. While she darted and ejaculated he gave Rachel asketch of the history of South American art. He would deal with oneof his wife's exclamations, and then return as smoothly as ever to histheme. He knew very well how to make a luncheon pass agreeably, withoutbeing dull or intimate. He had formed the opinion, so he told Rachel,that wonderful treasures lay hid in the depths of the land; the thingsRachel had seen were merely trifles picked up in the course of one shortjourney. He thought there might be giant gods hewn out of stone in themountain-side; and colossal figures standing by themselves in the middleof vast green pasture lands, where none but natives had ever trod.Before the dawn of European art he believed that the primitive huntsmenand priests had built temples of massive stone slabs, had formed out ofthe dark rocks and the great cedar trees majestic figures of gods andof beasts, and symbols of the great forces, water, air, and forest amongwhich they lived. There might be prehistoric towns, like those in Greeceand Asia, standing in open places among the trees, filled with the worksof 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 wasinattentive, and Hirst was finding him also very cross and disagreeable.They had touched upon all the usual topics--upon politics andliterature, gossip and Christianity. They had quarrelled over theservice, which was every bit as fine as Sappho, according to Hewet;so that Hirst's paganism was mere ostentation. Why go to church, hedemanded, merely in order to read Sappho? Hirst observed that he hadlistened to every word of the sermon, as he could prove if Hewet wouldlike a repetition of it; and he went to church in order to realise thenature of his Creator, which he had done very vividly that morning,thanks to Mr. Bax, who had inspired him to write three of the mostsuperb lines in English literature, an invocation to the Deity.
"I wrote 'em on the back of the envelope of my aunt's last letter," hesaid, and pulled it from between the pages of Sappho.
"Well, let's hear them," said Hewet, slightly mollified by the prospectof a literary discussion.
"My dear Hewet, do you wish us both to be flung out of the hotel byan enraged mob of Thornburys and Elliots?" Hirst enquired. "The merestwhisper would be sufficient to incriminate me for ever. God!" he brokeout, "what's the use of attempting to write when the world's peopled bysuch 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 collectionof Europeans were now engaged in eating, in some cases in gnawing, thestringy foreign fowls. Hewet looked, and grew more out of temper thanever. 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 eyesreturned to his plate. "That's the worst of friendships with youngwomen--they tend to fall in love with one."
To that Hewet made no answer whatever, and sat singularly still. Hirstdid not seem to mind getting no answer, for he returned to Mr. Baxagain, quoting the peroration about the drop of water; and when Hewetscarcely replied to these remarks either, he merely pursed his lips,chose a fig, and relapsed quite contentedly into his own thoughts, ofwhich he always had a very large supply. When luncheon was over theyseparated, taking their cups of coffee to different parts of the hall.
From his chair beneath the palm-tree Hewet saw Rachel come out of thedining-room with the Flushings; he saw them look round for chairs, andchoose 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 sheetof paper upon which he made drawings as he went on with his talk. He sawRachel lean over and look, pointing to this and that with her finger.Hewet unkindly compared Mr. Flushing, who was extremely well dressed fora hot climate, and rather elaborate in his manner, to a very persuasiveshop-keeper. Meanwhile, as he sat looking at them, he was entangled inthe Thornburys and Miss Allan, who, after hovering about for a minuteor 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 alwaysthinking 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 wasnot the son of Mr. William Bax. There was a pause. Then Mrs. Thornburyremarked that she was still in the habit of saying Queen instead ofKing in the National Anthem. There was another pause. Then Miss Allanobserved reflectively that going to church abroad always made her feelas 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 bluecolour, appeared on the section of the terrace that could be seen fromwhere they sat. Mrs. Thornbury was led to enquire whether we shouldlike it if all our rooks were blue--"What do _you_ think, William?" sheasked, 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 inWiltshire," he concluded; he dropped his glasses to his side again. Thethree elderly people now gazed meditatively at the bird, which was soobliging as to stay in the middle of the view for a considerable spaceof time, thus making it unnecessary for them to speak again. Hewet beganto wonder whether he might not cross over to the Flushings' corner, whenHirst appeared from the background, slipped into a chair by Rachel'sside, 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 ofdoors.
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