"Well?" she asked suddenly. "What are you thinking about?"
"Miss Warrington," Rachel replied rashly, because she had to say something. She did indeed see Susan murmuring to Mrs. Elliot, while Arthur stared at her with complete confidence in his own love. Both Rachel and Evelyn then began to listen to what Susan was saying.
"There"s the ordering and the dogs and the garden, and the children coming to be taught," her voice proceeded rhythmically as if checking the list, "and my tennis, and the village, and letters to write for father, and a thousand little things that don"t sound much; but I never have a moment to myself, and when I go to bed, I"m so sleepy I"m off before my head touches the pillow. Besides I like to be a great deal with my Aunts - I"m a great bore, aren"t I, Aunt Emma?" (she smiled at old Mrs. Paley, who with head slightly drooped was regarding the cake with speculative affection), "and father has to be very careful about chills in winter which means a great deal of running about, because he won"t look after himself, any more than you will, Arthur! So it all mounts up!"
Her voice mounted too, in a mild ecstasy of satisfaction with her life and her own nature. Rachel suddenly took a violent dislike to Susan, ignoring all that was kindly, modest, and even pathetic about her. She appeared insincere and cruel; she saw her grown stout and prolific, the kind blue eyes now shallow and watery, the bloom of the cheeks congealed to a network of dry red ca.n.a.ls.
Helen turned to her. "Did you go to church?" she asked. She had won her sixpence and seemed making ready to go.
"Yes," said Rachel. "For the last time," she added.
In preparing to put on her gloves, Helen dropped one.
"You"re not going?" Evelyn asked, taking hold of one glove as if to keep them.
"It"s high time we went," said Helen. "Don"t you see how silent every one"s getting - ?"
A silence had fallen upon them all, caused partly by one of the accidents of talk, and partly because they saw some one approaching. Helen could not see who it was, but keeping her eyes fixed upon Rachel observed something which made her say to herself, "So it"s Hewet." She drew on her gloves with a curious sense of the significance of the moment. Then she rose, for Mrs. Flushing had seen Hewet too, and was demanding information about rivers and boats which showed that the whole conversation would now come over again.
Rachel followed her, and they walked in silence down the avenue. In spite of what Helen had seen and understood, the feeling that was uppermost in her mind was now curiously perverse; if she went on this expedition, she would not be able to have a bath, the effort appeared to her to be great and disagreeable.
"It"s so unpleasant, being cooped up with people one hardly knows," she remarked. "People who mind being seen naked."
"You don"t mean to go?" Rachel asked.
The intensity with which this was spoken irritated Mrs. Ambrose.
"I don"t mean to go, and I don"t mean not to go," she replied. She became more and more casual and indifferent.
After all, I daresay we"ve seen all there is to be seen; and there"s the bother of getting there, and whatever they may say it"s bound to be vilely uncomfortable."
For some time Rachel made no reply; but every sentence Helen spoke increased her bitterness. At last she broke out - "Thank G.o.d, Helen, I"m not like you! I sometimes think you don"t think or feel or care or do anything but exist! You"re like Mr. Hirst. You see that things are bad, and you pride yourself on saying so. It"s what you call being honest; as a matter of fact it"s being lazy, being dull, being nothing. You don"t help; you put an end to things."
Helen smiled as if she rather enjoyed the attack.
"Well?" she enquired.
"It seems to me bad - that"s all," Rachel replied.
"Quite likely," said Helen.
At any other time Rachel would probably have been silenced by her Aunt"s candour; but this afternoon she was not in the mood to be silenced by any one. A quarrel would be welcome.
"You"re only half alive," she continued.
"Is that because I didn"t accept Mr. Flushing"s invitation?" Helen asked, "or do you always think that?"
At the moment it appeared to Rachel that she had always seen the same faults in Helen, from the very first night on board the Euphrosyne, Euphrosyne, in spite of her beauty, in spite of her magnanimity and their love. in spite of her beauty, in spite of her magnanimity and their love.
"Oh, it"s only what"s the matter with every one!" she exclaimed. "No one feels - no one does anything but hurt. I tell you, Helen, the world"s bad. It"s an agony, living, wanting - "
Here she tore a handful of leaves from a bush and crushed them to control herself.
"The lives of these people," she tried to explain, "the aimlessness, the way they live. One goes from one to another, and it"s all the same. One never gets what one wants out of any of them."
Her emotional state and her confusion would have made her an easy prey if Helen had wished to argue or had wished to draw confidences. But instead of talking she fell into a profound silence as they walked on. Aimless, trivial, meaningless, oh no - what she had seen at tea made it impossible for her to believe that. The little jokes, the chatter, the inanities of the afternoon had shrivelled up before her eyes. Underneath the likings and spites, the comings together and partings, great things were happening - terrible things, because they were so great. Her sense of safety was shaken, as if beneath twigs and dead leaves she had seen the movement of a snake. It seemed to her that a moment"s respite was allowed, a moment"s make-believe, and then again the profound and reasonless law a.s.serted itself, moulding them all to its liking, making and destroying.
She looked at Rachel walking beside her, still crushing the leaves in her fingers and absorbed in her own thoughts. She was in love, and she pitied her profoundly. But she roused herself from these thoughts and apologised. "I"m very sorry," she said, "but if I"m dull, it"s my nature, and it can"t be helped."If it was a natural defect, however, she found an easy remedy, for she went on to say that she thought Mr. Flushing"s scheme a very good one, only needing a little consideration, which it appeared she had given it by the time they reached home. By that time they had settled that if anything more was said, they would accept the invitation.
CHAPTER XX.
WHEN CONSIDERED IN DETAIL by Mr. Flushing and Mrs. Ambrose the expedition proved neither dangerous nor difficult. They found also that it was not even unusual. Every year at this season English people made parties which steamed a short way up the river, landed, and looked at the native village, bought a certain number of things from the natives, and returned again without damage done to mind or body. When it was discovered that six people really wished the same thing the arrangements were soon carried out.
Since the time of Elizabeth very few people had seen the river, and nothing had been done to change its appearance from what it was to the eyes of the Elizabethan voyagers. The time of Elizabeth was only distant from the present time by a moment of s.p.a.ce compared with the ages which had pa.s.sed since the water had run between those banks, and the green thickets swarmed there, and the small trees had grown to huge wrinkled trees in solitude. Changing only with the change of the sun and clouds, the waving green ma.s.s had stood there for century after century, and the water had run between its banks ceaselessly, sometimes washing away earth and sometimes the branches of trees, while in other parts of the world one town had risen upon the ruins of another town, and the men in the towns had become more and more articulate and unlike each other. A few miles of this river were visible from the top of the mountain where some weeks before the party from the hotel had picnicked. Susan and Arthur had seen it as they kissed each other, and Terence and Rachel as they sat talking about Richmond, and Evelyn and Perrott as they strolled about, imagining that they were great captains sent to colonise the world. They had seen the broad blue mark across the sand where it flowed into the sea, and the green cloud of trees ma.s.s themselves about it farther up, and finally hide its waters altogether from sight. At intervals for the first twenty miles or so houses were scattered on the bank; by degrees the houses became huts, and, later still, there was neither hut nor house, but trees and gra.s.s, which were seen only by hunters, explorers, or merchants, marching or sailing, but making no settlement.
By leaving Santa Marina early in the morning, driving twenty miles and riding eight, the party, which was composed finally of six English people, reached the river-side as the night fell. They came cantering through the trees - Mr. and Mrs. Flushing, Helen Ambrose, Rachel, Terence, and St. John. The tired little horses then stopped automatically, and the English dismounted. Mrs. Flushing strode to the river-bank in high spirits. The day had been long and hot, but she had enjoyed the speed and the open air; she had left the hotel which she hated, and she found the company to her liking. The river was swirling past in the darkness; they could just distinguish the smooth moving surface of the water, and the air was full of the sound of it. They stood in an empty s.p.a.ce in the midst of great tree-trunks, and out there a little green light moving slightly up and down showed them where the steamer lay in which they were to embark.
When they all stood upon its deck they found that it was a very small boat which throbbed gently beneath them for a few minutes, and then shoved smoothly through the water. They seemed to be driving into the heart of the night, for the trees closed in front of them, and they could hear all round them the rustling of leaves. The great darkness had the usual effect of taking away all desire for communication by making their words sound thin and small; and, after walking round the deck three or four times, they cl.u.s.tered together, yawning deeply, and looking at the same spot of deep gloom on the banks. Murmuring very low in the rhythmical tone of one oppressed by the air, Mrs. Flushing began to wonder where they were to sleep, for they could not sleep downstairs, they could not sleep in a dog-hole smelling of oil, they could not sleep on deck, they could not sleep - She yawned profoundly. It was as Helen had foreseen; the question of nakedness had risen already, although they were half asleep, and almost invisible to each other. With St. John"s help she stretched an awning, and persuaded Mrs. Flushing that she could take off her clothes behind this, and that no one would notice if by chance some part of her which had been concealed for forty-five years was laid bare to the human eye. Mattresses were thrown down, rugs provided, and the three women lay near each other in the soft open air.
The gentlemen, having smoked a certain number of cigarettes, dropped the glowing ends into the river, and looked for a time at the ripples wrinkling the black water beneath them, undressed too, and lay down at the other end of the boat. They were very tired, and curtained from each other by the darkness. The light from one lantern fell upon a few ropes, a few planks of the deck, and the rail of the boat, but beyond that there was unbroken darkness, no light reached their faces, or the trees which were ma.s.sed on the sides of the river.
Soon Wilfred Flushing slept, and Hirst slept. Hewet alone lay awake looking straight up into the sky. The gentle motion and the black shapes that were drawn ceaselessly across his eyes had the effect of making it impossible for him to think. Rachel"s presence so near him lulled thought asleep. Being so near him, only a few paces off at the other end of the boat, she made it as impossible for him to think about her as it would have been impossible to see her if she had stood quite close to him, her forehead against his forehead. In some strange way the boat became identified with himself, and just as it would have been useless for him to get up and steer the boat, so was it useless for him to struggle any longer with the irresistible force of his own feelings. He was drawn on and on away from all he knew, slipping over barriers and past landmarks into unknown waters as the boat glided over the smooth surface of the river. In profound peace, enveloped in deeper unconsciousness than had been his for many nights, he lay on deck watching the tree-tops change their position slightly against the sky, and arch themselves, and sink and tower huge, until he pa.s.sed from seeing them into dreams where he lay beneath the shadow of vast trees, looking up into the sky.
When they woke next morning they had gone a considerable way up the river; on the right was a high yellow bank of sand tufted with trees, on the left a swamp quivering with long reeds and tall bamboos on the top of which, swaying slightly, perched vivid green and yellow birds. The morning was hot and still. After breakfast they drew chairs together and sat in an irregular semicircle in the bow.
An awning above their heads protected them from the heat of the sun, and the breeze which the boat made aired them softly. Mrs. Flushing was already dotting and striping her canvas, her head jerking this way and that with the action of a bird nervously picking up grain; the others had books or pieces of paper or embroidery on their knees, at which they looked fitfully and again looked at the river ahead. At one point, Hewet read part of a poem aloud, but the number of moving things entirely vanquished his words. He ceased to read, and no one spoke. They moved on under the shelter of the trees. There was now a covey of red birds feeding on one of the little islets to the left, or again a blue-green parrot flew shrieking from tree to tree. As they moved on the country grew wilder and wilder. The trees and the undergrowth seemed to be strangling each other near the ground in a mult.i.tudinous wrestle; while here and there a splendid tree towered high above the swarm, shaking its thin green umbrellas lightly in the upper air. Hewet looked at his book again. The morning was peaceful as the night had been, only it was very strange because it was light, and he could see Rachel and hear her voice and be near to her. He felt as if he were waiting, as if somehow he were stationary among things that pa.s.sed over him and around him, voices, people"s bodies, birds, only Rachel too was waiting with him. He looked at her sometimes as if she must know that they were waiting together, and being drawn on together, without being able to offer any resistance. Again he read from his book: Whoever you are holding me now in your hand, Without one thing all will be useless.21 A bird gave a wild laugh, a monkey chuckled a malicious question, and, as fire fades in the hot sunshine, his words flickered and went out.
By degrees as the river narrowed, and the high sandbanks fell to level ground thickly grown with trees, the sounds of the forest could be heard. It echoed like a hall. There were sudden cries; and then long s.p.a.ces of silence, such as there are in a cathedral when a boy"s voice has ceased and the echo of it still seems to haunt about the remote places of the roof Once Mr. Flushing rose and spoke to a sailor, and even announced that some time after luncheon the steamer would stop, and they could walk a little way through the forest.
"There are tracks all through the trees there," he explained. "We"re no distance from civilisation yet."
He scrutinised his wife"s painting. Too polite to praise it openly, he contented himself with cutting off one half of the picture with one hand, and giving a flourish in the air with the other.
"G.o.d!" Hirst exclaimed, staring straight ahead. "Don"t you think it"s amazingly beautiful?"
"Beautiful?" Helen enquired. It seemed a strange little word, and Hirst and herself both so small that she forgot to answer him.
Hewet felt that he must speak.
"That"s where the Elizabethans got their style," he mused, staring into the profusion of leaves and blossoms and prodigious fruits.
"Shakespeare? I hate Shakespeare!" Mrs. Flushing exclaimed; and Wilfred returned admiringly, "I believe you"re the only person who dares to say that, Alice." But Mrs. Flushing went on painting. She did not appear to attach much value to her husband"s compliment, and painted steadily, sometimes muttering a half-audible word or groan.
The morning was now very hot.
"Look at Hirst!" Mr. Flushing whispered. His sheet of paper had slipped on to the deck, his head lay back, and he drew a long snoring breath.
Terence picked up the sheet of paper and spread it out before Rachel. It was a continuation of the poem on G.o.d which he had begun in the chapel, and it was so indecent that Rachel did not understand half of it although she saw that it was indecent. Hewet began to fill in words where Hirst had left s.p.a.ces, but he soon ceased; his pencil rolled on deck. Gradually they approached nearer and nearer to the bank on the right-hand side, so that the light which covered them became definitely green, falling through a shade of green leaves, and Mrs. Flushing set aside her sketch and stared ahead of her in silence. Hirst woke up; they were then called to luncheon, and while they ate it, the steamer came to a standstill a little way out from the bank. The boat which was towed behind them was brought to the side, and the ladies were helped into it.
For protection against boredom, Helen put a book of memoirs beneath her arm, and Mrs. Flushing her paint-box, and, thus equipped, they allowed themselves to be set on sh.o.r.e on the verge of the forest.
They had not strolled more than a few hundred yards along the track which ran parallel with the river before Helen professed to find it was unbearably hot. The river breeze had ceased, and a hot steamy atmosphere, thick with scents, came from the forest.
"I shall sit down here," she announced, pointing to the trunk of a tree which had fallen long ago and was now laced across and across by creepers and thong-like brambles. She seated herself, opened her parasol, and looked at the river which was barred by the stems of trees. She turned her back to the trees which disappeared in black shadow behind her.
"I quite agree," said Mrs. Flushing, and proceeded to undo her paint-box. Her husband strolled about to select an interesting point of view for her. Hirst cleared a s.p.a.ce on the ground by Helen"s side, and seated himself with great deliberation, as if he did not mean to move until he had talked to her for a long time. Terence and Rachel were left standing by themselves without occupation. Terence saw that the time had come as it was fated to come, but although he realised this he was completely calm and master of himself He chose to stand for a few moments talking to Helen, and persuading her to leave her seat. Rachel joined him too in advising her to come with them.
"Of all the people I"ve ever met," he said, "you"re the least adventurous. You might be sitting on green chairs in Hyde Park. Are you going to sit there the whole afternoon? Aren"t you going to walk?"
"Oh, no," said Helen, "one"s only got to use one"s eye. There"s everything here - everything," she repeated in a drowsy tone of voice. "What will you gain by walking?"
"You"ll be hot and disagreeable by tea-time, we shall be cool and sweet," put in Hirst. Into his eyes as he looked up at them had come yellow and green reflections from the sky and the branches, robbing them of their intentness, and he seemed to think what he did not say. It was thus taken for granted by them both that Terence and Rachel proposed to walk into the woods together; with one look at each other they turned away.
"Good-bye!" cried Rachel.
"Good-bye. Beware of snakes," Hirst replied. He settled himself still more comfortably under the shade of the fallen tree and Helen"s figure. As they went, Mr. Flushing called after them,"We must start in an hour. Hewet, please remember that. An hour."
Whether made by man, or for some reason preserved by nature, there was a wide pathway striking through the forest at right angles to the river. It resembled a drive in an English forest, save that tropical bushes with their sword-like leaves grew at the side, and the ground was covered with an unmarked springy moss instead of gra.s.s, starred with little yellow flowers. As they pa.s.sed into the depths of the forest the light grew dimmer, and the noises of the ordinary world were replaced by those creaking and sighing sounds which suggest to the traveller in a forest that he is walking at the bottom of the sea. The path narrowed and turned; it was hedged in by dense creepers which knotted tree to tree, and burst here and there into star-shaped crimson blossoms. The sighing and creaking up above were broken every now and then by the jarring cry of some startled animal. The atmosphere was close and the air came at them in languid puffs of scent. The vast green light was broken here and there by a round of pure yellow sunlight which fell through some gap in the immense umbrella of green above, and in these yellow s.p.a.ces crimson and black b.u.t.terflies were circling and settling. Terence and Rachel hardly spoke.
Not only did the silence weigh upon them, but they were both unable to frame any thoughts. There was something between them which had to be spoken of. One of them had to begin, but which of them was it to be? Then Hewet picked up a red fruit and threw it as high as he could. When it dropped, he would speak. They heard the flapping of great wings; they heard the fruit go pattering through the leaves and eventually fall with a thud. The silence was again profound.
"Does this frighten you?" Terence asked when the sound of the fruit falling had completely died away.
"No," she answered. "I like it."
She repeated "I like it." She was walking fast, and holding herself more erect than usual. There was another pause.
"You like being with me?" Terence asked.
"Yes, with you," she replied.
He was silent for a moment. Silence seemed to have fallen upon the world.
"That is what I have felt ever since I knew you," he replied. "We are happy together." He did not seem to be speaking, or she to be hearing.
"Very happy," she answered.
They continued to walk for some time in silence. Their steps unconsciously quickened.
"We love each other," Terence said.
"We love each other," she repeated.
The silence was then broken by their voices which joined in tones of strange unfamiliar sound which formed no words. Faster and faster they walked; simultaneously they stopped, clasped each other in their arms, then, releasing themselves, dropped to the earth. They sat side by side. Sounds stood out from the background making a bridge across their silence; they heard the swish of the trees and some beast croaking in a remote world.
"We love each other," Terence repeated, searching into her face. Their faces were both very pale and quiet, and they said nothing. He was afraid to kiss her again. By degrees she drew close to him, and rested against him. In this position they sat for some time. She said "Terence" once; he answered "Rachel."
"Terrible - terrible," she murmured after another pause, but in saying this she was thinking as much of the persistent churning of the water as of her own feeling. On and on it went in the distance, the senseless and cruel churning of the water. She observed that the tears were running down Terence"s cheeks.
The next movement was on his part. A very long time seemed to have pa.s.sed. He took out his watch.
"Flushing said an hour. We"ve been gone more than half an hour."
And it takes that to get back," said Rachel. She raised herself very slowly. When she was standing up she stretched her arms and drew a deep breath, half a sigh, half a yawn. She appeared to be very tired. Her cheeks were white. "Which way?" she asked.
"There," said Terence.
They began to walk back down the mossy path again. The sighing and creaking continued far overhead, and the jarring cries of animals. The b.u.t.terflies were circling still in the patches of yellow sunlight. At first Terence was certain of his way, but as they walked he became doubtful. They had to stop to consider, and then to return and start once more, for although he was certain of the direction of the river he was not certain of striking the point where they had left the others. Rachel followed him, stopping where he stopped, turning where he turned, ignorant of the way, ignorant why he stopped or why he turned.
"I don"t want to be late," he said, "because - " He put a flower into her hand and her fingers closed upon it quietly. "We"re so late - so late - so horribly late," he repeated as if he were talking in his sleep. "Ah - this is right. We turn here."
They found themselves again in the broad path, like the drive in an English forest, where they had started when they left the others. They walked on in silence as people walking in their sleep, and were oddly conscious now and again of the ma.s.s of their bodies. Then Rachel exclaimed suddenly, "Helen!"
In the sunny s.p.a.ce at the edge of the forest they saw Helen still sitting on the tree-trunk, her dress showing very white in the sun, with Hirst still propped on his elbow by her side. They stopped instinctively. At the sight of other people they could not go on. They stood hand in hand for a minute or two in silence. They could not bear to face other people.
"But we must go on," Rachel insisted at last, in the curious dull tone of voice in which they had both been speaking, and with a great effort they forced themselves to cover the short distance which lay between them and the pair sitting on the tree-trunk.
As they approached, Helen turned round and looked at them. She looked at them for some time without speaking, and when they were close to her she said quietly: "Did you meet Mr. Flushing? He has gone to find you. He thought you must be lost, though I told him you weren"t lost."
Hirst half turned round and threw his head back so that he looked at the branches crossing themselves in the air above him.
"Well, was it worth the effort?" he enquired dreamily.
Hewet sat down on the gra.s.s by his side and began to fan himself.
"Hot," he said.
Rachel had balanced herself near Helen on the end of the tree-trunk.
"Very hot," she said.
"You look exhausted anyhow," said Hirst.
"It"s fearfully close in those trees," Helen remarked, picking up her book and shaking it free from the dried blades of gra.s.s which had fallen between the leaves. Then they were all silent, looking at the river swirling past in front of them between the trunks of the trees until Mr. Flushing interrupted them. He broke out of the trees a hundred yards to the left, exclaiming sharply: "Ah, so you found the way after all. But it"s late - much later than we arranged, Hewet."
He was slightly annoyed, and in his capacity as leader of the expedition, inclined to be dictatorial. He spoke quickly, using curiously sharp, meaningless words.
"Being late wouldn"t matter normally, of course," he said, "but when it"s a question of keeping the men up to time - "
He gathered them together and made them come down to the river-bank, where the boat was waiting to row them out to the steamer.
The heat of the day was going down, and over their cups of tea the Flushings tended to become communicative. It seemed to Terence as he listened to them talking, that existence now went on in two different layers. Here were the Flushings talking, talking somewhere high up in the air above him, and he and Rachel had dropped to the bottom of the world together. But with something of a child"s directness, Mrs. Flushing had also the instinct which leads a child to suspect what its elders wish to keep hidden. She fixed Terence with her vivid blue eyes and addressed herself to him in particular. What would he do, she wanted to know, if the boat ran upon a rock and sank.