up one of the cardboards which Rachel had laid aside, seated herself on a stool, and began to flourish a stump of charcoal. While she occupied herself in strokes which seemed to serve her as speech serves others, Rachel, who was very restless, looked about her.
“Open the wardrobe,” said Mrs. Flushing after a pause, speaking indistinctly because of a paint-brush in her mouth, “and look at the things.”
As Rachel hesitated, Mrs. Flushing came forward, still with a paint-brush in her mouth, flung open the wings of her wardrobe, and tossed a quantity of shawls, stuffs, cloaks, embroideries, on to the bed. Rachel began to finger them. Mrs. Flushing came up once more, and dropped a quantity of beads, brooches, earrings, bracelets, tassels, and combs among the draperies. Then she went back to her stool and began to paint in silence. The stuffs were coloured and dark and pale; they made a curious swarm of lines and colours upon the counterpane, with the reddish lumps of stone and peacocks’ feathers and clear pale tortoise-shell combs lying among them.
“The women wore them hundreds of years ago, they wear ’em still,” Mrs. Flushing remarked. “My husband rides about and finds ’em; they don’t know what they’re worth, so we get ’em cheap. And we shall sell ’em to smart women in London,” she chuckled, as though the thought of these ladies and their absurd appearance amused her. After painting for some minutes, she suddenly laid down her brush and fixed her eyes upon Rachel.
“I tell you what I want to do,” she said. “I want to go up there and see things for myself. It’s silly stayin’ here with a pack of old maids as though we were at the seaside in England. I want to go up the river and see the natives in their camps. It’s only a matter of ten days under canvas. My husband’s done it. One would lie out under the trees at night and be towed down the river by day, and if we saw anythin’ nice we’d shout out and tell ’em to stop.” She rose and began piercing the bed again and again with a long golden pin, as she watched to see what effect her suggestion had upon Rachel.
“We must make up a party,” she went on. “Ten people could hire a launch. Now you’ll come, and Mrs. Ambrose’ll come, and will Mr. Hirst and t’other gentleman come? Where’s a pencil?”
She became more and more determined and excited as she evolved her plan. She sat on the edge of the bed and wrote down a list of surnames, which she invariably spelt wrong. Rachel was enthusiastic, for indeed the idea was immeasurably delightful to her. She had always had a great desire to see the river, and the name of Terence threw a lustre over the prospect, which made it almost too good to come true. She did what she could to help Mrs. Flushing by suggesting names, helping her to spell them, and counting up the days of the week upon her fingers. As Mrs. Flushing wanted to know all she could tell her about the birth and pursuits of every person she suggested, and threw in wild stories of her own as to the temperaments and habits of artists, and people of the same name who used to come to Chillingley in the old days, but were doubtless not the same, though they too were very clever men interested in Egyptology, the business took some time.
At last Mrs. Flushing sought her diary for help, the method of reckoning dates on the fingers proving unsatisfactory. She opened and shut every drawer in her writing-table, and then cried furiously, “Yarmouth! Yarmouth! Drat the woman! She’s always out of the way when she’s wanted!”
At this moment the luncheon gong began to work itself into its midday frenzy. Mrs. Flushing rang her bell violently. The door was opened by a handsome maid who was almost as upright as her mistress.
“Oh, Yarmouth,” said Mrs. Flushing, “just find my diary and see where ten days from now would bring us to, and ask the hall porter how many men ’ud be wanted to row eight people up the river for a week, and what it ’ud cost, and put it on a slip of paper and leave it on my dressing-table. Now—” she pointed at the door with a superb forefinger so that Rachel had to lead the way.
“Oh, and Yarmouth,” Mrs. Flushing called back over her shoulder. “Put those things away and hang ’em in their right places, there’s a good girl, or it fusses Mr. Flushin’.”
To all of which Yarmouth merely replied, “Yes, ma’am.”
As they entered the long dining-room it was obvious that the day was still Sunday, although the mood was slightly abating. The Flushings’ table was set by the side in the window, so that Mrs. Flushing could scrutinise each figure as it entered, and her curiosity seemed to be intense.
“Old Mrs. Paley,” she whispered as the wheeled chair slowly made its way through the door, Arthur pushing behind. “Thornburys” came next. “That nice woman,” she nudged Rachel to look at Miss Allan. “What’s her name?” The painted lady who always came in late, tripping into the room with a prepared smile as though she came out upon a stage, might well have quailed before Mrs. Flushing’s stare, which expressed her steely hostility to the whole tribe of painted ladies. Next came the two young men whom Mrs. Flushing called collectively the Hirsts. They sat down opposite, across the gangway.
Mr. Flushing treated his wife with a mixture of admiration and indulgence, making up by the suavity and fluency of his speech for the abruptness of hers. While she darted and ejaculated he gave Rachel a sketch of the history of South American art. He would deal with one of his wife’s exclamations, and then return as smoothly as ever to his theme. He knew very well how to make a luncheon pass agreeably, without being dull or intimate. He had formed the opinion, so he told Rachel, that wonderful treasures lay hid in the depths of the land; the things Rachel had seen were merely trifles picked up in the course of one short journey. He thought there might be giant gods hewn out of stone in the mountain-side; and colossal figures standing by themselves in the middle of vast green pasture lands, where none but natives had ever trod. Before the dawn of European art he believed that the primitive huntsmen and priests had built temples of massive stone slabs, had formed out of the dark rocks and the great cedar trees majestic figures of gods and of beasts, and symbols of the great forces, water, air, and forest among which they lived. There might be prehistoric towns, like those in Greece and Asia, standing in open places among the trees, filled with the works of this early race. Nobody had been there; scarcely anything was known. Thus talking and displaying the most picturesque of his theories, Rachel’s attention was fixed upon him.
She did not see that Hewet kept looking at her across the gangway, between the figures of waiters hurrying past with plates. He was inattentive, and Hirst was finding him also very cross and disagreeable. They had touched upon all the usual topics—upon politics and literature, gossip and Christianity. They had quarrelled over the service, which was every bit as fine as Sappho, according to Hewet; so that Hirst’s paganism was mere ostentation. Why go to church, he demanded, merely in order to read Sappho? Hirst observed that he had listened to every word of the sermon, as he could prove if Hewet would like a repetition of it; and he went to church in order to realise the nature of his Creator, which he had done very vividly that morning, thanks to Mr. Bax, who had inspired him to write three of the most superb lines in English literature, an invocation to the Deity.
“I wrote ’em on the back of the envelope of my aunt’s last letter,” he said, and pulled it from between the pages of Sappho.
“Well, let’s hear them,” said Hewet, slightly mollified by the prospect of a literary discussion.
“My dear Hewet, do you wish us both to be flung out of the hotel by an enraged mob of Thornburys and Elliots?” Hirst enquired. “The merest whisper would be sufficient to incriminate me for ever. God!” he broke out, “what’s the use of attempting to write when the world’s peopled by such damned fools? Seriously, Hewet, I advise you to give up literature. What’s the good of it? There’s your audience.”
He nodded his head at the tables where a very miscellaneous collection of Europeans were now engaged in eating, in some cases in gnawing, the
