The Voyage Out
confused her thoughts, leaving her merely indignant. She looked
straight at their own villa, half-way up the side of the mountain. The
most familiar view seen framed through glass has a certain unfamiliar
distinction, and she grew calm as she gazed. Then she remembered that
she was in the presence of some one she did not know well, and she
turned and looked at Mrs. Flushing. Mrs. Flushing was still sitting on
the edge of the bed, looking up, with her lips parted, so that her
strong white teeth showed in two rows.
“Tell me,” she said, “which d’you like best, Mr. Hewet or Mr. Hirst?”
“Mr. Hewet,” Rachel replied, but her voice did not sound natural.
“Which is the one who reads Greek in church?” Mrs. Flushing demanded.
It might have been either of them and while Mrs. Flushing proceeded to
describe them both, and to say that both frightened her, but one
frightened her more than the other, Rachel looked for a chair. The
room, of course, was one of the largest and most luxurious in the
hotel. There were a great many arm-chairs and settees covered in brown
holland, but each of these was occupied by a large square piece of
yellow cardboard, and all the pieces of cardboard were dotted or lined
with spots or dashes of bright oil paint.
“But you’re not to look at those,” said Mrs. Flushing as she saw
Rachel’s eye wander. She jumped up, and turned as many as she could,
face downwards, upon the floor. Rachel, however, managed to possess
herself of one of them, and, with the vanity of an artist, Mrs.
Flushing demanded anxiously, “Well, well?”
“It’s a hill,” Rachel replied. There could be no doubt that Mrs.
Flushing had represented the vigorous and abrupt fling of the earth up
into the air; you could almost see the clods flying as it whirled.
Rachel passed from one to another. They were all marked by something of
the jerk and decision of their maker; they were all perfectly untrained
onslaughts of the brush upon some half-realised idea suggested by hill
or tree; and they were all in some way characteristic of Mrs. Flushing.
“I see things movin’,” Mrs. Flushing explained. “So”—she swept her hand
through a yard of the air. She then took 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
stringy foreign fowls. Hewet looked, and grew more out of temper than
ever. Hirst looked too. His eyes fell upon Rachel, and he bowed to her.
“I rather think Rachel’s in love with me,” he remarked, as his eyes
returned to his plate. “That’s the worst of friendships with young
women—they tend to fall in love with one.”
To that Hewet made no answer whatever, and sat singularly still. Hirst
did not seem to mind getting no answer, for he returned to Mr. Bax
again, quoting the peroration about the drop of water; and when Hewet
scarcely replied to these remarks either, he merely pursed his lips,
chose a fig, and relapsed quite contentedly into his own thoughts, of
which he always had a very large supply. When luncheon was over they
separated, taking their cups of coffee to different parts of the hall.
From his chair beneath the palm-tree Hewet saw Rachel come out of the
dining-room with the Flushings; he saw them look round for chairs, and
choose three in a corner where they could go on talking in private. Mr.
Flushing was now in the full tide of his discourse. He produced a sheet
of paper upon which he made drawings as he went on with his talk. He
saw Rachel lean over and look, pointing to this and that with her
finger. Hewet unkindly compared Mr. Flushing, who was extremely well