modern poetry has enabled me to get together seven or eight people, of opposite sexes, at the same spot at the same hour on the same day. What else is generalship, Hirst? What more did Wellington do on the field of Waterloo? It’s like counting the number of pebbles of a path, tedious but not difficult.”
He was sitting in his bedroom, one leg over the arm of the chair, and Hirst was writing a letter opposite. Hirst was quick to point out that all the difficulties remained.
“For instance, here are two women you’ve never seen. Suppose one of them suffers from mountain-sickness, as my sister does, and the other—”
“Oh, the women are for you,” Hewet interrupted. “I asked them solely for your benefit. What you want, Hirst, you know, is the society of young women of your own age. You don’t know how to get on with women, which is a great defect, considering that half the world consists of women.”
Hirst groaned that he was quite aware of that.
But Hewet’s complacency was a little chilled as he walked with Hirst to the place where a general meeting had been appointed. He wondered why on earth he had asked these people, and what one really expected to get from bunching human beings up together.
“Cows,” he reflected, “draw together in a field; ships in a calm; and we’re just the same when we’ve nothing else to do. But why do we do it?—is it to prevent ourselves from seeing to the bottom of things” (he stopped by a stream and began stirring it with his walking-stick and clouding the water with mud), “making cities and mountains and whole universes out of nothing, or do we really love each other, or do we, on the other hand, live in a state of perpetual uncertainty, knowing nothing, leaping from moment to moment as from world to world?—which is, on the whole, the view I incline to.”
He jumped over the stream; Hirst went round and joined him, remarking that he had long ceased to look for the reason of any human action.
Half a mile further, they came to a group of plane trees and the salmon-pink farmhouse standing by the stream which had been chosen as meeting-place. It was a shady spot, lying conveniently just where the hill sprung out from the flat. Between the thin stems of the plane trees the young men could see little knots of donkeys pasturing, and a tall woman rubbing the nose of one of them, while another woman was kneeling by the stream lapping water out of her palms.
As they entered the shady place, Helen looked up and then held out her hand.
“I must introduce myself,” she said. “I am Mrs. Ambrose.”
Having shaken hands, she said, “That’s my niece.”
Rachel approached awkwardly. She held out her hand, but withdrew it. “It’s all wet,” she said.
Scarcely had they spoken, when the first carriage drew up.
The donkeys were quickly jerked into attention, and the second carriage arrived. By degrees the grove filled with people—the Elliots, the Thornburys, Mr. Venning and Susan, Miss Allan, Evelyn Murgatroyd, and Mr. Perrott. Mr. Hirst acted the part of hoarse energetic sheep-dog. By means of a few words of caustic Latin he had the animals marshalled, and by inclining a sharp shoulder he lifted the ladies. “What Hewet fails to understand,” he remarked, “is that we must break the back of the ascent before midday.” He was assisting a young lady, by name Evelyn Murgatroyd, as he spoke. She rose light as a bubble to her seat. With a feather drooping from a broad-brimmed hat, in white from top to toe, she looked like a gallant lady of the time of Charles the First leading royalist troops into action.
“Ride with me,” she commanded; and, as soon as Hirst had swung himself across a mule, the two started, leading the cavalcade.
“You’re not to call me Miss Murgatroyd. I hate it,” she said. “My name’s Evelyn. What’s yours?”
“St. John,” he said.
“I like that,” said Evelyn. “And what’s your friend’s name?”
“His initials being R.S.T., we call him Monk,” said Hirst.
“Oh, you’re all too clever,” she said. “Which way?” Pick me a branch. Let’s canter.”
She gave her donkey a sharp cut with a switch and started forward. The full and romantic career of Evelyn Murgatroyd is best hit off by her own words, “Call me Evelyn and I’ll call you St. John.” She said that on very slight provocation—her surname was enough—but although a great many young men had answered her already with considerable spirit she went on saying it and making choice of none. But her donkey stumbled to a jog-trot, and she had to ride in advance alone, for the path when it began to ascend one of the spines of the hill became narrow and scattered with stones. The cavalcade wound on like a jointed caterpillar, tufted with the white parasols of the ladies, and the panama hats of the gentlemen. At one point where the ground rose sharply, Evelyn M. jumped off, threw her reins to the native boy, and adjured St. John Hirst to dismount too. Their example was followed by those who felt the need of stretching.
“I don’t see any need to get off,” said Miss Allan to Mrs. Elliot just behind her, “considering the difficulty I had getting on.”
“These little donkeys stand anything, n’est-ce pas?” Mrs. Elliot addressed the guide, who obligingly bowed his head.
“Flowers,” said Helen, stooping to pick the lovely little bright flowers which grew separately here and there. “You pinch their leaves and then they smell,” she said, laying one on Miss Allan’s knee.
“Haven’t we met before?” asked Miss Allan, looking at her.
“I was taking it for granted,” Helen laughed, for in the confusion of meeting they had not been introduced.
“How sensible!” chirped Mrs. Elliot. “That’s just what one would always like—only unfortunately it’s not possible.” “Not possible?” said Helen. “Everything’s possible. Who knows what mayn’t happen before night-fall?” she continued, mocking the poor lady’s timidity, who depended implicitly upon one thing following another that the mere glimpse of a world where dinner could be disregarded, or the table moved one inch from its accustomed place, filled her with fears for her own stability.
Higher and higher they went, becoming separated from the world. The world, when they turned to look back, flattened itself out, and was marked with squares of thin green and grey.
“Towns are very small,” Rachel remarked, obscuring the whole of Santa Marina and its suburbs with one hand. The sea filled in all the angles of the coast smoothly, breaking in a white frill, and here and there ships were set firmly in the blue. The sea was stained with purple and green blots, and there was a glittering line upon the rim where it met the sky. The air was very clear and silent save for the sharp noise of grasshoppers and the hum of bees, which sounded loud in the ear as they shot past and vanished. The party halted and sat for a time in a quarry on the hillside.
“Amazingly clear,” exclaimed St. John, identifying one cleft in the land after another.
Evelyn M. sat beside him, propping her chin on her hand. She surveyed the view with a certain look of triumph.
“D’you think Garibaldi was ever up here?” she asked Mr. Hirst. Oh, if she had been his bride! If, instead of a picnic party, this was a party of patriots, and she, red-shirted like the rest, had lain among grim men, flat on the turf, aiming her gun at the white turrets beneath them, screening her eyes to pierce through the smoke! So thinking, her foot stirred restlessly, and she exclaimed:
“I don’t call this life, do you?”
“What do you call life?” said St. John.
“Fighting—revolution,” she said, still gazing at the doomed city. “You only care for books, I know.”
“You’re quite wrong,” said St. John.
“Explain,” she urged, for there were no guns to be aimed at bodies, and she turned to another kind of warfare.
“What