and question him as if he were a baby, an old, tired, querulous baby. She did not tell him about Miss Vinrace’s death, for that would only disturb him, and he was put out already. She tried to discover why he was uneasy. Politics again? What were those horrid people doing? She spent the whole morning in discussing politics with her husband, and by degrees she became deeply interested in what they were saying. But every now and then what she was saying seemed to her oddly empty of meaning.
At luncheon it was remarked by several people that the visitors at the hotel were beginning to leave; there were fewer every day. There were only forty people at luncheon, instead of the sixty that there had been. So old Mrs. Paley computed, gazing about her with her faded eyes, as she took her seat at her own table in the window. Her party generally consisted of Mr. Perrott as well as Arthur and Susan, and today Evelyn was lunching with them also.
She was unusually subdued. Having noticed that her eyes were red, and guessing the reason, the others took pains to keep up an elaborate conversation between themselves. She suffered it to go on for a few minutes, leaning both elbows on the table, and leaving her soup untouched, when she exclaimed suddenly, “I don’t know how you feel, but I can simply think of nothing else!”
The gentlemen murmured sympathetically, and looked grave.
Susan replied, “Yes—isn’t it perfectly awful? When you think what a nice girl she was—only just engaged, and this need never have happened—it seems too tragic.” She looked at Arthur as though he might be able to help her with something more suitable.
“Hard lines,” said Arthur briefly. “But it was a foolish thing to do—to go up that river.” He shook his head. “They should have known better. You can’t expect Englishwomen to stand roughing it as the natives do who’ve been acclimatised. I’d half a mind to warn them at tea that day when it was being discussed. But it’s no good saying these sort of things—it only puts people’s backs up—it never makes any difference.”
Old Mrs. Paley, hitherto contented with her soup, here intimated, by raising one hand to her ear, that she wished to know what was being said.
“You heard, Aunt Emma, that poor Miss Vinrace has died of the fever,” Susan informed her gently. She could not speak of death loudly or even in her usual voice, so that Mrs. Paley did not catch a word. Arthur came to the rescue.
“Miss Vinrace is dead,” he said very distinctly.
Mrs. Paley merely bent a little towards him and asked, “Eh?”
“Miss Vinrace is dead,” he repeated. It was only by stiffening all the muscles round his mouth that he could prevent himself from bursting into laughter, and forced himself to repeat for the third time, “Miss Vinrace.… She’s dead.”
Let alone the difficulty of hearing the exact words, facts that were outside her daily experience took some time to reach Mrs. Paley’s consciousness. A weight seemed to rest upon her brain, impeding, though not damaging its action. She sat vague-eyed for at least a minute before she realised what Arthur meant.
“Dead?” she said vaguely. “Miss Vinrace dead? Dear me…that’s very sad. But I don’t at the moment remember which she was. We seem to have made so many new acquaintances here.” She looked at Susan for help. “A tall dark girl, who just missed being handsome, with a high colour?”
“No,” Susan interposed. “She was—” then she gave it up in despair. There was no use in explaining that Mrs. Paley was thinking of the wrong person.
“She ought not to have died,” Mrs. Paley continued. “She looked so strong. But people will drink the water. I can never make out why. It seems such a simple thing to tell them to put a bottle of Seltzer water in your bedroom. That’s all the precaution I’ve ever taken, and I’ve been in every part of the world, I may say—Italy a dozen times over.… But young people always think they know better, and then they pay the penalty. Poor thing—I am very sorry for her.” But the difficulty of peering into a dish of potatoes and helping herself engrossed her attention.
Arthur and Susan both secretly hoped that the subject was now disposed of, for there seemed to them something unpleasant in this discussion. But Evelyn was not ready to let it drop. Why would people never talk about the things that mattered?
“I don’t believe you care a bit!” she said, turning savagely upon Mr. Perrott, who had sat all this time in silence.
“I? Oh, yes, I do,” he answered awkwardly, but with obvious sincerity. Evelyn’s questions made him too feel uncomfortable.
“It seems so inexplicable,” Evelyn continued. “Death, I mean. Why should she be dead, and not you or I? It was only a fortnight ago that she was here with the rest of us. What d’you believe?” she demanded of mr. Perrott. “D’you believe that things go on, that she’s still somewhere—or d’you think it’s simply a game—we crumble up to nothing when we die? I’m positive Rachel’s not dead.”
Mr. Perrott would have said almost anything that Evelyn wanted him to say, but to assert that he believed in the immortality of the soul was not in his power. He sat silent, more deeply wrinkled than usual, crumbling his bread.
Lest Evelyn should next ask him what he believed, Arthur, after making a pause equivalent to a full stop, started a completely different topic.
“Supposing,” he said, “a man were to write and tell you that he wanted five pounds because he had known your grandfather, what would you do? It was this way. My grandfather—”
“Invented a stove,” said Evelyn. “I know all about that. We had one in the conservatory to keep the plants warm.”
“Didn’t know I was so famous,” said Arthur. “Well,” he continued, determined at all costs to spin his story out at length, “the old chap, being about the second best inventor of his day, and a capable lawyer too, died, as they always do, without making a will. Now Fielding, his clerk, with how much justice I don’t know, always claimed that he meant to do something for him. The poor old boy’s come down in the world through trying inventions on his own account, lives in Penge over a tobacconist’s shop. I’ve been to see him there. The question is—must I stump up or not? What does the abstract spirit of justice require, Perrott? Remember, I didn’t benefit under my grandfather’s will, and I’ve no way of testing the truth of the story.”
“I don’t know much about the abstract spirit of justice,” said Susan, smiling complacently at the others, “but I’m certain of one thing—he’ll get his five pounds!”
As Mr. Perrott proceeded to deliver an opinion, and Evelyn insisted that he was much too stingy, like all lawyers, thinking of the letter and not of the spirit, while Mrs. Paley required to be kept informed between the courses as to what they were all saying, the luncheon passed with no interval of silence, and Arthur congratulated himself upon the tact with which the discussion had been smoothed over.
As they left the room it happened that Mrs. Paley’s wheeled chair ran into the Elliots, who were coming through the door, as she was going out. Brought thus to a standstill for a moment, Arthur and Susan congratulated Hughling Elliot upon his convalescence,—he was down, cadaverous enough, for the first time,—and Mr. Perrott took occasion to say a few words in private to Evelyn.
“Would there be any chance of seeing you this afternoon, about three-thirty say? I shall be in the garden, by the fountain.”
The block dissolved before Evelyn answered. But as she left them in the hall, she looked at him brightly and said, “Half-past three, did you say? That’ll suit me.”
She ran upstairs with the feeling of spiritual exaltation and quickened life which the prospect of an emotional scene always aroused in her. That Mr. Perrott was again about to propose to her, she had no doubt, and she was aware that on this occasion she ought to be prepared with a definite answer, for she was going away in three days’ time. But she could not bring her mind to bear upon the question. To come to a decision was very difficult to her, because she had a natural dislike of anything final and done with; she liked to go on and on—always on and on.