the name of a man who might have been another Garibaldi, and had written a book which they ought to read; and Mr. Thornbury recollected that he had a pair of binoculars at anybody’s service. Miss Allan meanwhile murmured with the curious intimacy which a spinster often achieves with dogs, to the fox-terrier which Evelyn had at last induced to come over to them. Little particles of dust or blossom fell on the plates now and then when the branches sighed above. Rachel seemed to see and hear a little of everything, much as a river feels the twigs that fall into it and sees the sky above, but her eyes were too vague for Evelyn’s liking. She came across, and sat on the ground at Rachel’s feet.
“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 got 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 canals.
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 God, Helen, I’m not like you! I sometimes think you don’t think or feel or care to 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, 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 asserted 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 has been done to change its appearance from what it was to the eyes of the Elizabethan voyagers.