________________________________________________
_ Thanks to Mr. Flushing's discipline, the right stages of the river
were reached at the right hours, and when next morning after
breakfast the chairs were again drawn out in a semicircle in the bow,
the launch was within a few miles of the native camp which was
the limit of the journey. Mr. Flushing, as he sat down, advised them
to keep their eyes fixed on the left bank, where they would soon
pass a clearing, and in that clearing, was a hut where Mackenzie,
the famous explorer, had died of fever some ten years ago,
almost within reach of civilisation--Mackenzie, he repeated,
the man who went farther inland than any one's been yet. Their eyes
turned that way obediently. The eyes of Rachel saw nothing.
Yellow and green shapes did, it is true, pass before them, but she
only knew that one was large and another small; she did not know
that they were trees. These directions to look here and there
irritated her, as interruptions irritate a person absorbed in thought,
although she was not thinking of anything. She was annoyed with all
that was said, and with the aimless movements of people's bodies,
because they seemed to interfere with her and to prevent her from
speaking to Terence. Very soon Helen saw her staring moodily
at a coil of rope, and making no effort to listen. Mr. Flushing
and St. John were engaged in more or less continuous conversation
about the future of the country from a political point of view,
and the degree to which it had been explored; the others, with their
legs stretched out, or chins poised on the hands, gazed in silence.
Mrs. Ambrose looked and listened obediently enough, but inwardly
she was prey to an uneasy mood not readily to be ascribed to any
one cause. Looking on shore as Mr. Flushing bade her, she thought
the country very beautiful, but also sultry and alarming.
She did not like to feel herself the victim of unclassified emotions,
and certainly as the launch slipped on and on, in the hot morning sun,
she felt herself unreasonably moved. Whether the unfamiliarity
of the forest was the cause of it, or something less definite,
she could not determine. Her mind left the scene and occupied itself
with anxieties for Ridley, for her children, for far-off things,
such as old age and poverty and death. Hirst, too, was depressed.
He had been looking forward to this expedition as to a holiday, for,
once away from the hotel, surely wonderful things would happen,
instead of which nothing happened, and here they were as uncomfortable,
as restrained, as self-conscious as ever. That, of course, was what
came of looking forward to anything; one was always disappointed.
He blamed Wilfrid Flushing, who was so well dressed and so formal;
he blamed Hewet and Rachel. Why didn't they talk? He looked at
them sitting silent and self-absorbed, and the sight annoyed him.
He supposed that they were engaged, or about to become engaged,
but instead of being in the least romantic or exciting, that was as dull
as everything else; it annoyed him, too, to think that they were in love.
He drew close to Helen and began to tell her how uncomfortable his night
had been, lying on the deck, sometimes too hot, sometimes too cold,
and the stars so bright that he couldn't get to sleep. He had lain
awake all night thinking, and when it was light enough to see,
he had written twenty lines of his poem on God, and the awful thing
was that he'd practically proved the fact that God did not exist.
He did not see that he was teasing her, and he went on to wonder
what would happen if God did exist--"an old gentleman in a beard and
a long blue dressing gown, extremely testy and disagreeable as he's
bound to be? Can you suggest a rhyme? God, rod, sod--all used;
any others?"
Although he spoke much as usual, Helen could have seen, had she looked,
that he was also impatient and disturbed. But she was not called upon
to answer, for Mr. Flushing now exclaimed "There!" They looked at the hut
on the bank, a desolate place with a large rent in the roof, and the
ground round it yellow, scarred with fires and scattered with rusty open tins.
"Did they find his dead body there?" Mrs. Flushing exclaimed,
leaning forward in her eagerness to see the spot where the explorer
had died.
"They found his body and his skins and a notebook," her husband replied.
But the boat had soon carried them on and left the place behind.
It was so hot that they scarcely moved, except now to change
a foot, or, again, to strike a match. Their eyes, concentrated upon
the bank, were full of the same green reflections, and their lips
were slightly pressed together as though the sights they were passing
gave rise to thoughts, save that Hirst's lips moved intermittently
as half consciously he sought rhymes for God. Whatever the thoughts
of the others, no one said anything for a considerable space.
They had grown so accustomed to the wall of trees on either side
that they looked up with a start when the light suddenly widened
out and the trees came to an end.
"It almost reminds one of an English park," said Mr. Flushing.
Indeed no change could have been greater. On both banks of the river lay
an open lawn-like space, grass covered and planted, for the gentleness
and order of the place suggested human care, with graceful trees
on the top of little mounds. As far as they could gaze, this lawn
rose and sank with the undulating motion of an old English park.
The change of scene naturally suggested a change of position,
grateful to most of them. They rose and leant over the rail.
"It might be Arundel or Windsor," Mr. Flushing continued, "if you
cut down that bush with the yellow flowers; and, by Jove, look!"
Rows of brown backs paused for a moment and then leapt with a motion
as if they were springing over waves out of sight.
for a moment no one of them could believe that they had really
seen live animals in the open--a herd of wild deer, and the sight
aroused a childlike excitement in them, dissipating their gloom.
"I've never in my life seen anything bigger than a hare!"
Hirst exclaimed with genuine excitement. "What an ass I was not
to bring my Kodak!"
Soon afterwards the launch came gradually to a standstill,
and the captain explained to Mr. Flushing that it would be pleasant
for the passengers if they now went for a stroll on shore; if they
chose to return within an hour, he would take them on to the village;
if they chose to walk--it was only a mile or two farther on--
he would meet them at the landing-place.
The matter being settled, they were once more put on shore:
the sailors, producing raisins and tobacco, leant upon the rail
and watched the six English, whose coats and dresses looked so
strange upon the green, wander off. A joke that was by no means
proper set them all laughing, and then they turned round and lay
at their ease upon the deck.
Directly they landed, Terence and Rachel drew together slightly
in advance of the others.
"Thank God!" Terence exclaimed, drawing a long breath. "At last
we're alone."
"And if we keep ahead we can talk," said Rachel.
Nevertheless, although their position some yards in advance of
the others made it possible for them to say anything they chose,
they were both silent.
"You love me?" Terence asked at length, breaking the silence painfully.
To speak or to be silent was equally an effort, for when they
were silent they were keenly conscious of each other's presence,
and yet words were either too trivial or too large.
She murmured inarticulately, ending, "And you?"
"Yes, yes," he replied; but there were so many things to be said,
and now that they were alone it seemed necessary to bring themselves
still more near, and to surmount a barrier which had grown up
since they had last spoken. It was difficult, frightening even,
oddly embarrassing. At one moment he was clear-sighted, and,
at the next, confused.
"Now I'm going to begin at the beginning," he said resolutely.
"I'm going to tell you what I ought to have told you before.
In the first place, I've never been in love with other women,
but I've had other women. Then I've great faults. I'm very lazy,
I'm moody--" He persisted, in spite of her exclamation, "You've got
to know the worst of me. I'm lustful. I'm overcome by a sense
of futility--incompetence. I ought never to have asked you to marry me,
I expect. I'm a bit of a snob; I'm ambitious--"
"Oh, our faults!" she cried. "What do they matter?" Then she demanded,
"Am I in love--is this being in love--are we to marry each other?"
Overcome by the charm of her voice and her presence, he exclaimed,
"Oh, you're free, Rachel. To you, time will make no difference,
or marriage or--"
The voices of the others behind them kept floating, now farther,
now nearer, and Mrs. Flushing's laugh rose clearly by itself.
"Marriage?" Rachel repeated.
The shouts were renewed behind, warning them that they were bearing
too far to the left. Improving their course, he continued,
"Yes, marriage." The feeling that they could not be united until
she knew all about him made him again endeavour to explain.
"All that's been bad in me, the things I've put up with--
the second best--"
She murmured, considered her own life, but could not describe
how it looked to her now.
"And the loneliness!" he continued. A vision of walking with her
through the streets of London came before his eyes. "We will go for
walks together," he said. The simplicity of the idea relieved them,
and for the first time they laughed. They would have liked had
they dared to take each other by the hand, but the consciousness
of eyes fixed on them from behind had not yet deserted them.
"Books, people, sights--Mrs. Nutt, Greeley, Hutchinson," Hewet murmured.
With every word the mist which had enveloped them, making them
seem unreal to each other, since the previous afternoon melted
a little further, and their contact became more and more natural.
Up through the sultry southern landscape they saw the world they knew
appear clearer and more vividly than it had ever appeared before As
upon that occasion at the hotel when she had sat in the window,
the world once more arranged itself beneath her gaze very vividly
and in its true proportions. She glanced curiously at Terence
from time to time, observing his grey coat and his purple tie;
observing the man with whom she was to spend the rest of her life.
After one of these glances she murmured, "Yes, I'm in love.
There's no doubt; I'm in love with you."
Nevertheless, they remained uncomfortably apart; drawn so
close together, as she spoke, that there seemed no division
between them, and the next moment separate and far away again.
Feeling this painfully, she exclaimed, "It will be a fight."
But as she looked at him she perceived from the shape of his eyes,
the lines about his mouth, and other peculiarities that he pleased her,
and she added:
"Where I want to fight, you have compassion. You're finer than I am;
you're much finer."
He returned her glance and smiled, perceiving, much as she had done,
the very small individual things about her which made her delightful
to him. She was his for ever. This barrier being surmounted,
innumerable delights lay before them both.
"I'm not finer," he answered. "I'm only older, lazier; a man,
not a woman."
"A man," she repeated, and a curious sense of possession coming
over her, it struck her that she might now touch him; she put out
her hand and lightly touched his cheek. His fingers followed where
hers had been, and the touch of his hand upon his face brought back
the overpowering sense of unreality. This body of his was unreal;
the whole world was unreal.
"What's happened?" he began. "Why did I ask you to marry me?
How did it happen?"
"Did you ask me to marry you?" she wondered. They faded far away
from each other, and neither of them could remember what had been said.
"We sat upon the ground," he recollected.
"We sat upon the ground," she confirmed him. The recollection of sitting
upon the ground, such as it was, seemed to unite them again, and they
walked on in silence, their minds sometimes working with difficulty
and sometimes ceasing to work, their eyes alone perceiving the things
round them. Now he would attempt again to tell her his faults,
and why he loved her; and she would describe what she had felt at this
time or at that time, and together they would interpret her feeling.
So beautiful was the sound of their voices that by degrees they
scarcely listened to the words they framed. Long silences came between
their words, which were no longer silences of struggle and confusion
but refreshing silences, in which trivial thoughts moved easily.
They began to speak naturally of ordinary things, of the flowers
and the trees, how they grew there so red, like garden flowers
at home, and there bent and crooked like the arm of a twisted old man.
Very gently and quietly, almost as if it were the blood singing
in her veins, or the water of the stream running over stones,
Rachel became conscious of a new feeling within her. She wondered
for a moment what it was, and then said to herself, with a little
surprise at recognising in her own person so famous a thing:
"This is happiness, I suppose." And aloud to Terence she spoke,
"This is happiness."
On the heels of her words he answered, "This is happiness,"
upon which they guessed that the feeling had sprung in both of them
the same time. They began therefore to describe how this felt
and that felt, how like it was and yet how different; for they
were very different.
Voices crying behind them never reached through the waters in which
they were now sunk. The repetition of Hewet's name in short,
dissevered syllables was to them the crack of a dry branch
or the laughter of a bird. The grasses and breezes sounding and
murmuring all round them, they never noticed that the swishing of
the grasses grew louder and louder, and did not cease with the lapse
of the breeze. A hand dropped abrupt as iron on Rachel's shoulder;
it might have been a bolt from heaven. She fell beneath it,
and the grass whipped across her eyes and filled her mouth and ears.
Through the waving stems she saw a figure, large and shapeless
against the sky. Helen was upon her. Rolled this way and that,
now seeing only forests of green, and now the high blue heaven;
she was speechless and almost without sense. At last she lay still,
all the grasses shaken round her and before her by her panting.
Over her loomed two great heads, the heads of a man and woman,
of Terence and Helen.
Both were flushed, both laughing, and the lips were moving;
they came together and kissed in the air above her. Broken fragments
of speech came down to her on the ground. She thought she heard them
speak of love and then of marriage. Raising herself and sitting up,
she too realised Helen's soft body, the strong and hospitable arms,
and happiness swelling and breaking in one vast wave. When this
fell away, and the grasses once more lay low, and the sky
became horizontal, and the earth rolled out flat on each side,
and the trees stood upright, she was the first to perceive a
little row of human figures standing patiently in the distance.
For the moment she could not remember who they were.
"Who are they?" she asked, and then recollected.
Falling into line behind Mr. Flushing, they were careful to leave
at least three yards' distance between the toe of his boot
and the rim of her skirt.
He led them across a stretch of green by the river-bank and then
through a grove of trees, and bade them remark the signs of human
habitation, the blackened grass, the charred tree-stumps, and there,
through the trees, strange wooden nests, drawn together in an arch
where the trees drew apart, the village which was the goal of their journey.
Stepping cautiously, they observed the women, who were squatting on
the ground in triangular shapes, moving their hands, either plaiting
straw or in kneading something in bowls. But when they had looked
for a moment undiscovered, they were seen, and Mr. Flushing,
advancing into the centre of the clearing, was engaged in talk
with a lean majestic man, whose bones and hollows at once made
the shapes of the Englishman's body appear ugly and unnatural.
The women took no notice of the strangers, except that their hands
paused for a moment and their long narrow eyes slid round and fixed
upon them with the motionless inexpensive gaze of those removed
from each other far far beyond the plunge of speech. Their hands
moved again, but the stare continued. It followed them as they walked,
as they peered into the huts where they could distinguish guns leaning
in the corner, and bowls upon the floor, and stacks of rushes;
in the dusk the solemn eyes of babies regarded them, and old women
stared out too. As they sauntered about, the stare followed them,
passing over their legs, their bodies, their heads, curiously not
without hostility, like the crawl of a winter fly. As she drew
apart her shawl and uncovered her breast to the lips of her baby,
the eyes of a woman never left their faces, although they moved
uneasily under her stare, and finally turned away, rather than stand
there looking at her any longer. When sweetmeats were offered them,
they put out great red hands to take them, and felt themselves
treading cumbrously like tight-coated soldiers among these soft
instinctive people. But soon the life of the village took no notice
of them; they had become absorbed in it. The women's hands became
busy again with the straw; their eyes dropped. If they moved,
it was to fetch something from the hut, or to catch a straying child,
or to cross the space with a jar balanced on their heads;
if they spoke, it was to cry some harsh unintelligible cry.
Voices rose when a child was beaten, and fell again; voices rose
in song, which slid up a little way and down a little way,
and settled again upon the same low and melancholy note.
Seeking each other, Terence and Rachel drew together under a tree.
Peaceful, and even beautiful at first, the sight of the women,
who had given up looking at them, made them now feel very cold
and melancholy.
"Well," Terence sighed at length, "it makes us seem insignificant,
doesn't it?"
Rachel agreed. So it would go on for ever and ever, she said,
those women sitting under the trees, the trees and the river.
They turned away and began to walk through the trees, leaning, without fear
of discovery, upon each other's arms. They had not gone far before
they began to assure each other once more that they were in love,
were happy, were content; but why was it so painful being in love,
why was there so much pain in happiness?
The sight of the village indeed affected them all curiously though
all differently. St. John had left the others and was walking slowly
down to the river, absorbed in his own thoughts, which were bitter
and unhappy, for he felt himself alone; and Helen, standing by herself
in the sunny space among the native women, was exposed to presentiments
of disaster. The cries of the senseless beasts rang in her ears
high and low in the air, as they ran from tree-trunk to tree-top.
How small the little figures looked wandering through the trees!
She became acutely conscious of the little limbs, the thin veins,
the delicate flesh of men and women, which breaks so easily and lets
the life escape compared with these great trees and deep waters.
A falling branch, a foot that slips, and the earth has crushed them
or the water drowned them. Thus thinking, she kept her eyes anxiously
fixed upon the lovers, as if by doing so she could protect them
from their fate. Turning, she found the Flushings by her side.
They were talking about the things they had bought and arguing
whether they were really old, and whether there were not signs
here and there of European influence. Helen was appealed to.
She was made to look at a brooch, and then at a pair of ear-rings.
But all the time she blamed them for having come on this expedition,
for having ventured too far and exposed themselves. Then she roused
herself and tried to talk, but in a few moments she caught herself
seeing a picture of a boat upset on the river in England, at midday.
It was morbid, she knew, to imagine such things; nevertheless she
sought out the figures of the others between the trees, and whenever
she saw them she kept her eyes fixed on them, so that she might be
able to protect them from disaster.
But when the sun went down and the steamer turned and began
to steam back towards civilisation, again her fears were calmed.
In the semi-darkness the chairs on deck and the people sitting
in them were angular shapes, the mouth being indicated by a tiny
burning spot, and the arm by the same spot moving up or down as the
cigar or cigarette was lifted to and from the lips. Words crossed
the darkness, but, not knowing where they fell, seemed to lack energy
and substance. Deep sights proceeded regularly, although with some
attempt at suppression, from the large white mound which represented
the person of Mrs. Flushing. The day had been long and very hot,
and now that all the colours were blotted out the cool night air
seemed to press soft fingers upon the eyelids, sealing them down.
Some philosophical remark directed, apparently, at St. John Hirst
missed its aim, and hung so long suspended in the air until it
was engulfed by a yawn, that it was considered dead, and this
gave the signal for stirring of legs and murmurs about sleep.
The white mound moved, finally lengthened itself and disappeared,
and after a few turns and paces St. John and Mr. Flushing withdrew,
leaving the three chairs still occupied by three silent bodies.
The light which came from a lamp high on the mast and a sky pale
with stars left them with shapes but without features; but even
in this darkness the withdrawal of the others made them feel each
other very near, for they were all thinking of the same thing.
For some time no one spoke, then Helen said with a sigh, "So you're both
very happy?"
As if washed by the air her voice sounded more spiritual and softer
than usual. Voices at a little distance answered her, "Yes."
Through the darkness she was looking at them both, and trying to
distinguish him. What was there for her to say? Rachel had passed
beyond her guardianship. A voice might reach her ears, but never
again would it carry as far as it had carried twenty-four hours ago.
Nevertheless, speech seemed to be due from her before she went to bed.
She wished to speak, but she felt strangely old and depressed.
"D'you realise what you're doing?" she demanded. "She's young,
you're both young; and marriage--" Here she ceased. They begged
her, however, to continue, with such earnestness in their voices,
as if they only craved advice, that she was led to add:
"Marriage! well, it's not easy."
"That's what we want to know," they answered, and she guessed
that now they were looking at each other.
"It depends on both of you," she stated. Her face was turned
towards Terence, and although he could hardly see her, he believed
that her words really covered a genuine desire to know more about him.
He raised himself from his semi-recumbent position and proceeded
to tell her what she wanted to know. He spoke as lightly as he
could in order to take away her depression.
"I'm twenty-seven, and I've about seven hundred a year," he began.
"My temper is good on the whole, and health excellent, though Hirst
detects a gouty tendency. Well, then, I think I'm very intelligent."
He paused as if for confirmation.
Helen agreed.
"Though, unfortunately, rather lazy. I intend to allow Rachel
to be a fool if she wants to, and--Do you find me on the whole
satisfactory in other respects?" he asked shyly.
"Yes, I like what I know of you," Helen replied.
"But then--one knows so little."
"We shall live in London," he continued, "and--" With one voice
they suddenly enquired whether she did not think them the happiest
people that she had ever known.
"Hush," she checked them, "Mrs. Flushing, remember. She's behind us."
Then they fell silent, and Terence and Rachel felt instinctively
that their happiness had made her sad, and, while they were anxious
to go on talking about themselves, they did not like to.
"We've talked too much about ourselves," Terence said. "Tell us--"
"Yes, tell us--" Rachel echoed. They were both in the mood to believe
that every one was capable of saying something very profound.
"What can I tell you?" Helen reflected, speaking more to herself
in a rambling style than as a prophetess delivering a message.
She forced herself to speak.
"After all, though I scold Rachel, I'm not much wiser myself.
I'm older, of course, I'm half-way through, and you're just beginning.
It's puzzling--sometimes, I think, disappointing; the great things
aren't as great, perhaps, as one expects--but it's interesting--
Oh, yes, you're certain to find it interesting--And so it goes on,"
they became conscious here of the procession of dark trees into which,
as far as they could see, Helen was now looking, "and there are
pleasures where one doesn't expect them (you must write to your father),
and you'll be very happy, I've no doubt. But I must go to bed,
and if you are sensible you will follow in ten minutes, and so,"
she rose and stood before them, almost featureless and very large,
"Good-night." She passed behind the curtain.
After sitting in silence for the greater part of the ten minutes
she allowed them, they rose and hung over the rail. Beneath them
the smooth black water slipped away very fast and silently.
The spark of a cigarette vanished behind them. "A beautiful voice,"
Terence murmured.
Rachel assented. Helen had a beautiful voice.
After a silence she asked, looking up into the sky, "Are we on
the deck of a steamer on a river in South America? Am I Rachel,
are you Terence?"
The great black world lay round them. As they were drawn smoothly
along it seemed possessed of immense thickness and endurance.
They could discern pointed tree-tops and blunt rounded tree-tops.
Raising their eyes above the trees, they fixed them on the stars
and the pale border of sky above the trees. The little points of
frosty light infinitely far away drew their eyes and held them fixed,
so that it seemed as if they stayed a long time and fell a great
distance when once more they realised their hands grasping the rail
and their separate bodies standing side by side.
"You'd forgotten completely about me," Terence reproached her,
taking her arm and beginning to pace the deck, "and I never forget you."
"Oh, no," she whispered, she had not forgotten, only the stars--
the night--the dark--
"You're like a bird half asleep in its nest, Rachel. You're asleep.
You're talking in your sleep."
Half asleep, and murmuring broken words, they stood in the angle
made by the bow of the boat. It slipped on down the river.
Now a bell struck on the bridge, and they heard the lapping of water
as it rippled away on either side, and once a bird startled in its
sleep creaked, flew on to the next tree, and was silent again.
The darkness poured down profusely, and left them with scarcely
any feeling of life, except that they were standing there together
in the darkness. _
Read next: CHAPTER 22
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