________________________________________________
_ 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. The time of Elizabeth
was only distant from the present time by a moment of space
compared with the ages which had passed since the water had run
between those banks, and the green thickets swarmed there,
and the small trees had grown to huge wrinkled trees in solitude.
Changing only with the change of the sun and the clouds, the waving
green mass had stood there for century after century, and the water
had run between its banks ceaselessly, sometimes washing away
earth and sometimes the branches of trees, while in other parts
of the world one town had risen upon the ruins of another town,
and the men in the towns had become more and more articulate
and unlike each other. A few miles of this river were visible
from the top of the mountain where some weeks before the party
from the hotel had picnicked. Susan and Arthur had seen it as they
kissed each other, and Terence and Rachel as they sat talking
about Richmond, and Evelyn and Perrott as they strolled about,
imagining that they were great captains sent to colonise the world.
They had seen the broad blue mark across the sand where it flowed
into the sea, and the green cloud of trees mass themselves about it
farther up, and finally hide its waters altogether from sight.
At intervals for the first twenty miles or so houses were scattered
on the bank; by degrees the houses became huts, and, later still,
there was neither hut nor house, but trees and grass, which were
seen only by hunters, explorers, or merchants, marching or sailing,
but making no settlement.
By leaving Santa Marina early in the morning, driving twenty
miles and riding eight, the party, which was composed finally
of six English people, reached the river-side as the night fell.
They came cantering through the trees--Mr. and Mrs. Flushing,
Helen Ambrose, Rachel, Terence, and St. John. The tired little
horses then stopped automatically, and the English dismounted.
Mrs. Flushing strode to the river-bank in high spirits. The day had
been long and hot, but she had enjoyed the speed and the open air;
she had left the hotel which she hated, and she found the company
to her liking. The river was swirling past in the darkness;
they could just distinguish the smooth moving surface of the water,
and the air was full of the sound of it. They stood in an empty
space in the midst of great tree-trunks, and out there a little green
light moving slightly up and down showed them where the steamer lay
in which they were to embark.
When they all stood upon its deck they found that it was a very
small boat which throbbed gently beneath them for a few minutes,
and then shoved smoothly through the water. They seemed to be
driving into the heart of the night, for the trees closed in
front of them, and they could hear all round them the rustling
of leaves. The great darkness had the usual effect of taking away
all desire for communication by making their words sound thin
and small; and, after walking round the deck three or four times,
they clustered together, yawning deeply, and looking at the same spot
of deep gloom on the banks. Murmuring very low in the rhythmical
tone of one oppressed by the air, Mrs. Flushing began to wonder
where they were to sleep, for they could not sleep downstairs,
they could not sleep in a doghole smelling of oil, they could not
sleep on deck, they could not sleep--She yawned profoundly. It was
as Helen had foreseen; the question of nakedness had risen already,
although they were half asleep, and almost invisible to each other.
With St. John's help she stretched an awning, and persuaded
Mrs. Flushing that she could take off her clothes behind this,
and that no one would notice if by chance some part of her which had
been concealed for forty-five years was laid bare to the human eye.
Mattresses were thrown down, rugs provided, and the three women
lay near each other in the soft open air.
The gentlemen, having smoked a certain number of cigarettes,
dropped the glowing ends into the river, and looked for a time at
the ripples wrinkling the black water beneath them, undressed too,
and lay down at the other end of the boat. They were very tired,
and curtained from each other by the darkness. The light from one
lantern fell upon a few ropes, a few planks of the deck, and the rail
of the boat, but beyond that there was unbroken darkness, no light
reached their faces, or the trees which were massed on the sides
of the river.
Soon Wilfrid Flushing slept, and Hirst slept. Hewet alone lay awake
looking straight up into the sky. The gentle motion and the black
shapes that were drawn ceaselessly across his eyes had the effect
of making it impossible for him to think. Rachel's presence so near
him lulled thought asleep. Being so near him, only a few paces off
at the other end of the boat, she made it as impossible for him
to think about her as it would have been impossible to see her if she
had stood quite close to him, her forehead against his forehead.
In some strange way the boat became identified with himself, and just
as it would have been useless for him to get up and steer the boat,
so was it useless for him to struggle any longer with the irresistible
force of his own feelings. He was drawn on and on away from all
he knew, slipping over barriers and past landmarks into unknown
waters as the boat glided over the smooth surface of the river.
In profound peace, enveloped in deeper unconsciousness than had been
his for many nights, he lay on deck watching the tree-tops change
their position slightly against the sky, and arch themselves,
and sink and tower huge, until he passed from seeing them into
dreams where he lay beneath the shadow of the vast trees, looking up
into the sky.
When they woke next morning they had gone a considerable way up
the river; on the right was a high yellow bank of sand tufted
with trees, on the left a swamp quivering with long reeds and tall
bamboos on the top of which, swaying slightly, perched vivid green
and yellow birds. The morning was hot and still. After breakfast they
drew chairs together and sat in an irregular semicircle in the bow.
An awning above their heads protected them from the heat of the sun,
and the breeze which the boat made aired them softly. Mrs. Flushing
was already dotting and striping her canvas, her head jerking this
way and that with the action of a bird nervously picking up grain;
the others had books or pieces of paper or embroidery on their knees,
at which they looked fitfully and again looked at the river ahead.
At one point Hewet read part of a poem aloud, but the number of
moving things entirely vanquished his words. He ceased to read,
and no one spoke. They moved on under the shelter of the trees.
There was now a covey of red birds feeding on one of the little islets
to the left, or again a blue-green parrot flew shrieking from tree
to tree. As they moved on the country grew wilder and wilder.
The trees and the undergrowth seemed to be strangling each other
near the ground in a multitudinous wrestle; while here and there
a splendid tree towered high above the swarm, shaking its thin green
umbrellas lightly in the upper air. Hewet looked at his books again.
The morning was peaceful as the night had been, only it was very
strange because he could see it was light, and he could see Rachel
and hear her voice and be near to her. He felt as if he were waiting,
as if somehow he were stationary among things that passed over him
and around him, voices, people's bodies, birds, only Rachel too
was waiting with him. He looked at her sometimes as if she must
know that they were waiting together, and being drawn on together,
without being able to offer any resistance. Again he read from
his book:
Whoever you are holding me now in your hand,
Without one thing all will be useless.
A bird gave a wild laugh, a monkey chuckled a malicious question,
and, as fire fades in the hot sunshine, his words flickered and went out.
By degrees as the river narrowed, and the high sandbanks fell
to level ground thickly grown with trees, the sounds of the forest
could be heard. It echoed like a hall. There were sudden cries;
and then long spaces of silence, such as there are in a cathedral
when a boy's voice has ceased and the echo of it still seems
to haunt about the remote places of the roof. Once Mr. Flushing
rose and spoke to a sailor, and even announced that some time
after luncheon the steamer would stop, and they could walk a little
way through the forest.
"There are tracks all through the trees there," he explained.
"We're no distance from civilisation yet."
He scrutinised his wife's painting. Too polite to praise it openly,
he contented himself with cutting off one half of the picture
with one hand, and giving a flourish in the air with the other.
"God!" Hirst exclaimed, staring straight ahead. "Don't you think
it's amazingly beautiful?"
"Beautiful?" Helen enquired. It seemed a strange little word,
and Hirst and herself both so small that she forgot to answer him.
Hewet felt that he must speak.
"That's where the Elizabethans got their style," he mused,
staring into the profusion of leaves and blossoms and prodigious fruits.
"Shakespeare? I hate Shakespeare!" Mrs. Flushing exclaimed;
and Wilfrid returned admiringly, "I believe you're the only person
who dares to say that, Alice." But Mrs. Flushing went on painting.
She did not appear to attach much value to her husband's compliment,
and painted steadily, sometimes muttering a half-audible word
or groan.
The morning was now very hot.
"Look at Hirst!" Mr. Flushing whispered. His sheet of paper
had slipped on to the deck, his head lay back, and he drew a long
snoring breath.
Terence picked up the sheet of paper and spread it out before Rachel.
It was a continuation of the poem on God which he had begun
in the chapel, and it was so indecent that Rachel did not
understand half of it although she saw that it was indecent.
Hewet began to fill in words where Hirst had left spaces,
but he soon ceased; his pencil rolled on deck. Gradually they
approached nearer and nearer to the bank on the right-hand side,
so that the light which covered them became definitely green,
falling through a shade of green leaves, and Mrs. Flushing set aside
her sketch and stared ahead of her in silence. Hirst woke up;
they were then called to luncheon, and while they ate it,
the steamer came to a standstill a little way out from the bank.
The boat which was towed behind them was brought to the side,
and the ladies were helped into it.
For protection against boredom, Helen put a book of memoirs beneath
her arm, and Mrs. Flushing her paint-box, and, thus equipped,
they allowed themselves to be set on shore on the verge of the forest.
They had not strolled more than a few hundred yards along the track
which ran parallel with the river before Helen professed to find
it was unbearably hot. The river breeze had ceased, and a hot
steamy atmosphere, thick with scents, came from the forest.
"I shall sit down here," she announced, pointing to the trunk of a tree
which had fallen long ago and was now laced across and across by creepers
and thong-like brambles. She seated herself, opened her parasol,
and looked at the river which was barred by the stems of trees.
She turned her back to the trees which disappeared in black shadow
behind her.
"I quite agree," said Mrs. Flushing, and proceeded to undo her
paint-box. Her husband strolled about to select an interesting
point of view for her. Hirst cleared a space on the ground by
Helen's side, and seated himself with great deliberation, as if he
did not mean to move until he had talked to her for a long time.
Terence and Rachel were left standing by themselves without occupation.
Terence saw that the time had come as it was fated to come,
but although he realised this he was completely calm and master
of himself. He chose to stand for a few moments talking to Helen,
and persuading her to leave her seat. Rachel joined him too
in advising her to come with them.
"Of all the people I've ever met," he said, "you're the least adventurous.
You might be sitting on green chairs in Hyde Park. Are you
going to sit there the whole afternoon? Aren't you going to walk?"
"Oh, no," said Helen, "one's only got to use one's eye.
There's everything here--everything," she repeated in a drowsy
tone of voice. "What will you gain by walking?"
"You'll be hot and disagreeable by tea-time, we shall be cool and sweet,"
put in Hirst. Into his eyes as he looked up at them had come yellow
and green reflections from the sky and the branches, robbing them
of their intentness, and he seemed to think what he did not say.
It was thus taken for granted by them both that Terence and Rachel
proposed to walk into the woods together; with one look at each
other they turned away.
"Good-bye!" cried Rachel.
"Good-by. Beware of snakes," Hirst replied. He settled himself
still more comfortably under the shade of the fallen tree and
Helen's figure. As they went, Mr. Flushing called after them,
"We must start in an hour. Hewet, please remember that. An hour."
Whether made by man, or for some reason preserved by nature,
there was a wide pathway striking through the forest at right
angles to the river. It resembled a drive in an English forest,
save that tropical bushes with their sword-like leaves grew at
the side, and the ground was covered with an unmarked springy
moss instead of grass, starred with little yellow flowers.
As they passed into the depths of the forest the light grew dimmer,
and the noises of the ordinary world were replaced by those creaking
and sighing sounds which suggest to the traveller in a forest that he
is walking at the bottom of the sea. The path narrowed and turned;
it was hedged in by dense creepers which knotted tree to tree,
and burst here and there into star-shaped crimson blossoms.
The sighing and creaking up above were broken every now and then
by the jarring cry of some startled animal. The atmosphere was close
and the air came at them in languid puffs of scent. The vast green
light was broken here and there by a round of pure yellow sunlight
which fell through some gap in the immense umbrella of green above,
and in these yellow spaces crimson and black butterflies were circling
and settling. Terence and Rachel hardly spoke.
Not only did the silence weigh upon them, but they were both unable
to frame any thoughts. There was something between them which had to be
spoken of. One of them had to begin, but which of them was it to be?
Then Hewet picked up a red fruit and threw it as high as he could.
When it dropped, he would speak. They heard the flapping of
great wings; they heard the fruit go pattering through the leaves
and eventually fall with a thud. The silence was again profound.
"Does this frighten you?" Terence asked when the sound of the fruit
falling had completely died away.
"No," she answered. "I like it."
She repeated "I like it." She was walking fast, and holding herself
more erect than usual. There was another pause.
"You like being with me?" Terence asked.
"Yes, with you," she replied.
He was silent for a moment. Silence seemed to have fallen upon
the world.
"That is what I have felt ever since I knew you," he replied.
"We are happy together." He did not seem to be speaking, or she
to be hearing.
"Very happy," she answered.
They continued to walk for some time in silence. Their steps
unconsciously quickened.
"We love each other," Terence said.
"We love each other," she repeated.
The silence was then broken by their voices which joined in tones
of strange unfamiliar sound which formed no words. Faster and
faster they walked; simultaneously they stopped, clasped each other
in their arms, then releasing themselves, dropped to the earth.
They sat side by side. Sounds stood out from the background making
a bridge across their silence; they heard the swish of the trees
and some beast croaking in a remote world.
"We love each other," Terence repeated, searching into her face.
Their faces were both very pale and quiet, and they said nothing.
He was afraid to kiss her again. By degrees she drew close to him,
and rested against him. In this position they sat for some time.
She said "Terence" once; he answered "Rachel."
"Terrible--terrible," she murmured after another pause,
but in saying this she was thinking as much of the persistent
churning of the water as of her own feeling. On and on it went
in the distance, the senseless and cruel churning of the water.
She observed that the tears were running down Terence's cheeks.
The next movement was on his part. A very long time seemed
to have passed. He took out his watch.
"Flushing said an hour. We've been gone more than half an hour."
"And it takes that to get back," said Rachel. She raised herself
very slowly. When she was standing up she stretched her arms
and drew a deep breath, half a sigh, half a yawn. She appeared
to be very tired. Her cheeks were white. "Which way?" she asked.
"There," said Terence.
They began to walk back down the mossy path again. The sighing and
creaking continued far overhead, and the jarring cries of animals.
The butterflies were circling still in the patches of yellow sunlight.
At first Terence was certain of his way, but as they walked he
became doubtful. They had to stop to consider, and then to return
and start once more, for although he was certain of the direction
of the river he was not certain of striking the point where they
had left the others. Rachel followed him, stopping where he stopped,
turning where he turned, ignorant of the way, ignorant why he stopped
or why he turned.
"I don't want to be late," he said, "because--" He put a flower into
her hand and her fingers closed upon it quietly. "We're so late--
so late--so horribly late," he repeated as if he were talking
in his sleep. "Ah--this is right. We turn here."
They found themselves again in the broad path, like the drive in
the English forest, where they had started when they left the others.
They walked on in silence as people walking in their sleep,
and were oddly conscious now and again of the mass of their bodies.
Then Rachel exclaimed suddenly, "Helen!"
In the sunny space at the edge of the forest they saw Helen
still sitting on the tree-trunk, her dress showing very white
in the sun, with Hirst still propped on his elbow by her side.
They stopped instinctively. At the sight of other people they could
not go on. They stood hand in hand for a minute or two in silence.
They could not bear to face other people.
"But we must go on," Rachel insisted at last, in the curious dull
tone of voice in which they had both been speaking, and with a
great effort they forced themselves to cover the short distance
which lay between them and the pair sitting on the tree-trunk.
As they approached, Helen turned round and looked at them.
She looked at them for some time without speaking, and when they
were close to her she said quietly:
"Did you meet Mr. Flushing? He has gone to find you. He thought
you must be lost, though I told him you weren't lost."
Hirst half turned round and threw his head back so that he looked
at the branches crossing themselves in the air above him.
"Well, was it worth the effort?" he enquired dreamily.
Hewet sat down on the grass by his side and began to fan himself.
Rachel had balanced herself near Helen on the end of the tree trunk.
"Very hot," she said.
"You look exhausted anyhow," said Hirst.
"It's fearfully close in those trees," Helen remarked, picking up
her book and shaking it free from the dried blades of grass
which had fallen between the leaves. Then they were all silent,
looking at the river swirling past in front of them between the
trunks of the trees until Mr. Flushing interrupted them. He broke
out of the trees a hundred yards to the left, exclaiming sharply:
"Ah, so you found the way after all. But it's late--much later
than we arranged, Hewet."
He was slightly annoyed, and in his capacity as leader of the expedition,
inclined to be dictatorial. He spoke quickly, using curiously sharp,
meaningless words.
"Being late wouldn't matter normally, of course," he said,
"but when it's a question of keeping the men up to time--"
He gathered them together and made them come down to the river-bank,
where the boat was waiting to row them out to the steamer.
The heat of the day was going down, and over their cups of tea
the Flushings tended to become communicative. It seemed to
Terence as he listened to them talking, that existence now went
on in two different layers. Here were the Flushings talking,
talking somewhere high up in the air above him, and he and Rachel
had dropped to the bottom of the world together. But with something
of a child's directness, Mrs. Flushing had also the instinct which
leads a child to suspect what its elders wish to keep hidden.
She fixed Terence with her vivid blue eyes and addressed herself
to him in particular. What would he do, she wanted to know,
if the boat ran upon a rock and sank.
"Would you care for anythin' but savin' yourself? Should I?
No, no," she laughed, "not one scrap--don't tell me. There's only
two creatures the ordinary woman cares about," she continued,
"her child and her dog; and I don't believe it's even two with men.
One reads a lot about love--that's why poetry's so dull.
But what happens in real life, he? It ain't love!" she cried.
Terence murmured something unintelligible. Mr. Flushing,
however, had recovered his urbanity. He was smoking a cigarette,
and he now answered his wife.
"You must always remember, Alice," he said, "that your upbringing
was very unnatural--unusual, I should say. They had no mother,"
he explained, dropping something of the formality of his tone;
"and a father--he was a very delightful man, I've no doubt,
but he cared only for racehorses and Greek statues. Tell them about
the bath, Alice."
"In the stable-yard," said Mrs. Flushing. "Covered with ice in winter.
We had to get in; if we didn't, we were whipped. The strong
ones lived--the others died. What you call survival of the fittest--
a most excellent plan, I daresay, if you've thirteen children!"
"And all this going on in the heart of England,
in the nineteenth century!" Mr. Flushing exclaimed, turning to Helen.
"I'd treat my children just the same if I had any," said Mrs. Flushing.
Every word sounded quite distinctly in Terence's ears; but what
were they saying, and who were they talking to, and who were they,
these fantastic people, detached somewhere high up in the air?
Now that they had drunk their tea, they rose and leant over the bow of
the boat. The sun was going down, and the water was dark and crimson.
The river had widened again, and they were passing a little island
set like a dark wedge in the middle of the stream. Two great white
birds with red lights on them stood there on stilt-like legs,
and the beach of the island was unmarked, save by the skeleton
print of birds' feet. The branches of the trees on the bank looked
more twisted and angular than ever, and the green of the leaves
was lurid and splashed with gold. Then Hirst began to talk,
leaning over the bow.
"It makes one awfully queer, don't you find?" he complained.
"These trees get on one's nerves--it's all so crazy.
God's undoubtedly mad. What sane person could have conceived
a wilderness like this, and peopled it with apes and alligators?
I should go mad if I lived here--raving mad."
Terence attempted to answer him, but Mrs. Ambrose replied instead.
She bade him look at the way things massed themselves--look at
the amazing colours, look at the shapes of the trees. She seemed
to be protecting Terence from the approach of the others.
"Yes," said Mr. Flushing. "And in my opinion," he continued,
"the absence of population to which Hirst objects is precisely
the significant touch. You must admit, Hirst, that a little Italian
town even would vulgarise the whole scene, would detract from
the vastness--the sense of elemental grandeur." He swept his hands
towards the forest, and paused for a moment, looking at the great
green mass, which was now falling silent. "I own it makes us seem
pretty small--us, not them." He nodded his head at a sailor who
leant over the side spitting into the river. "And that, I think,
is what my wife feels, the essential superiority of the peasant--"
Under cover of Mr. Flushing's words, which continued now gently
reasoning with St. John and persuading him, Terence drew Rachel
to the side, pointing ostensibly to a great gnarled tree-trunk
which had fallen and lay half in the water. He wished, at any rate,
to be near her, but he found that he could say nothing. They could
hear Mr. Flushing flowing on, now about his wife, now about art,
now about the future of the country, little meaningless words
floating high in air. As it was becoming cold he began to pace
the deck with Hirst. Fragments of their talk came out distinctly
as they passed--art, emotion, truth, reality.
"Is it true, or is it a dream?" Rachel murmured, when they had passed.
"It's true, it's true," he replied.
But the breeze freshened, and there was a general desire for movement.
When the party rearranged themselves under cover of rugs and cloaks,
Terence and Rachel were at opposite ends of the circle, and could
not speak to each other. But as the dark descended, the words of
the others seemed to curl up and vanish as the ashes of burnt paper,
and left them sitting perfectly silent at the bottom of the world.
Occasional starts of exquisite joy ran through them, and then they
were peaceful again. _
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