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_ 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; 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
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 redleaved 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 then
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 not tantalized 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. _
Read next: CHAPTER 18
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