advantage of Hewet’s company to cut his toe-nails.
“Describe them,” said Hewet.
“You know I can’t describe things!” said Hirst. “They were much like other women, I should think. They always are.”
“No; that’s where we differ,” said Hewet. “I say everything’s different. No two people are in the least the same. Take you and me now.”
“So I used to think once,” said Hirst. “But now they’re all types. Don’t take us,—take this hotel. You could draw circles round the whole lot of them, and they’d never stray outside.”
(”You can kill a hen by doing that”), Hewet murmured.
“Mr. Hughling Elliot, Mrs. Hughling Elliot, Miss Allan, Mr. and Mrs. Thornbury—one circle,” Hirst continued. “Miss Warrington, Mr. Arthur Venning, Mr. Perrott, Evelyn M. another circle; then there are a whole lot of natives; finally ourselves.”
“Are we all alone in our circle?” asked Hewet.
“Quite alone,” said Hirst. “You try to get out, but you can’t. You only make a mess of things by trying.”
“I’m not a hen in a circle,” said Hewet. “I’m a dove on a tree-top.”
“I wonder if this is what they call an ingrowing toe-nail?” said Hirst, examining the big toe on his left foot.
“I flit from branch to branch,” continued Hewet. “The world is profoundly pleasant.” He lay back on the bed, upon his arms.
“I wonder if it’s really nice to be as vague as you are?” asked Hirst, looking at him. “It’s the lack of continuity—that’s what’s so odd bout you,” he went on. “At the age of twenty-seven, which is nearly thirty, you seem to have drawn no conclusions. A party of old women excites you still as though you were three.”
Hewet contemplated the angular young man who was neatly brushing the rims of his toe-nails into the fire-place in silence for a moment.
“I respect you, Hirst,” he remarked.
“I envy you—some things,” said Hirst. “One: your capacity for not thinking; two: people like you better than they like me. Women like you, I suppose.”
“I wonder whether that isn’t really what matters most?” said Hewet. Lying now flat on the bed he waved his hand in vague circles above him.
“Of course it is,” said Hirst. “But that’s not the difficulty. The difficulty is, isn’t it, to find an appropriate object?”
“There are no female hens in your circle?” asked Hewet.
“Not the ghost of one,” said Hirst.
Although they had known each other for three years Hirst had never yet heard the true story of Hewet’s loves. In general conversation it was taken for granted that they were many, but in private the subject was allowed to lapse. The fact that he had money enough to do no work, and that he had left Cambridge after two terms owing to a difference with the authorities, and had then travelled and drifted, made his life strange at many points where his friends’ lives were much of a piece.
“I don’t see your circles—I don’t see them,” Hewet continued. “I see a thing like a teetotum spinning in and out—knocking into things—dashing from side to side—collecting numbers—more and more and more, till the whole place is thick with them. Round and round they go—out there, over the rim—out of sight.”
His fingers showed that the waltzing teetotums had spun over the edge of the counterpane and fallen off the bed into infinity.
“Could you contemplate three weeks alone in this hotel?” asked Hirst, after a moment’s pause.
Hewet proceeded to think.
“The truth of it is that one never is alone, and one never is in company,” he concluded.
“Meaning?” said Hirst.
“Meaning? Oh, something about bubbles—auras—what d’you call ’em? You can’t see my bubble; I can’t see yours; all we see of each other is a speck, like the wick in the middle of that flame. The flame goes about with us everywhere; it’s not ourselves exactly, but what we feel; the world is short, or people mainly; all kinds of people.”
“A nice streaky bubble yours must be!” said Hirst.
“And supposing my bubble could run into some one else’s bubble—”
“And they both burst?” put in Hirst.
“Then—then—then—” pondered Hewet, as if to himself, “it would be an e-nor-mous world,” he said, stretching his arms to their full width, as though even so they could hardly clasp the billowy universe, for when he was with Hirst he always felt unusually sanguine and vague.
“I don’t think you altogether as foolish as I used to, Hewet,” said Hirst. “You don’t know what you mean but you try to say it.”
“But aren’t you enjoying yourself here?” asked Hewet.
“On the whole—yes,” said Hirst. “I like observing people. I like looking at things. This country is amazingly beautiful. Did you notice how the top of the mountain turned yellow to-night? Really we must take our lunch and spend the day out. You’re getting disgustingly fat.” He pointed at the calf of Hewet’s bare leg.
“We’ll get up an expedition,” said Hewet energetically. “We’ll ask the entire hotel. We’ll hire donkeys and—”
“Oh, Lord!” said Hirst, “do shut it! I can see Miss Warrington and Miss Allan and Mrs. Elliot and the rest squatting on the stones and quacking, ‘How jolly!’”
“We’ll ask Venning and Perrott and Miss Murgatroyd—every one we can lay hands on,” went on Hewet. “What’s the name of the little old grasshopper with the eyeglasses? Pepper?—Pepper shall lead us.”
“Thank God, you’ll never get the donkeys,” said Hirst.
“I must make a note of that,” said Hewet, slowly dropping his feet to the floor. “Hirst escorts Miss Warrington; Pepper advances alone on a white ass; provisions equally distributed—or shall we hire a mule? The matrons—there’s Mrs. Paley, by Jove!—share a carriage.”
“That’s where you’ll go wrong,” said Hirst. “Putting virgins among matrons.”
“How long should you think that an expedition like that would take, Hirst?” asked Hewet.
“From twelve to sixteen hours I would say,” said Hirst. “The time usually occupied by a first confinement.”
“It will need considerable organisation,” said Hewet. He was now padding softly round the room, and stopped to stir the books on the table. They lay heaped one upon another.
“We shall want some poets too,” he remarked. “Not Gibbon; no; d’you happen to have Modern Love or John Donne? You see, I contemplate pauses when people get tired of looking at the view, and then it would be nice to read something rather difficult aloud.”
“Mrs. Paley will enjoy herself,” said Hirst.
“Mrs. Paley will enjoy it certainly,” said Hewet. “It’s one of the saddest things I know—the way elderly ladies cease to read poetry. And yet how appropriate this is:
I speak as one who plumbs
Life’s dim profound,
One who at length can sound
Clear views and certain.
But—after love what comes?
A scene that lours,
A few sad vacant hours,
And then, the Curtain.
I