“Not long ago,” said Hilda, “I had a chat with him. We sat on the grass in the middle of the Maidan, and there was nothing to interfere with my impressions.”
“What were your impressions? No!” Alicia cried. “No! Don't tell me. It is all so peaceful now, and simple, and straightforward. You think such extraordinary things. He comes here quite often, to talk about her. He is coming this afternoon. So I have impressions too—and they are just as good.”
“All right.” Hilda crossed her knees more comfortably. “WHAT did you say the Surgeon-Major paid for those Teheran tiles?”
“Something absurd—I've forgotten. He writes to her regularly, diary letters, by every mail.”
“Do you tell him what to put into them?”
“Hilda, sometimes—you're positively gross.”
“I daresay, my dear. You didn't come out of a cab, and you never are. I like being gross, I feel nearer to nature then, but I don't say that as an excuse. I like the smell of warm kitchens and the talk of bus-drivers, and bread and herrings for my tea—all the low satisfactions appeal to me. Beer, too, and hand-organs.”
“I don't know when to believe you. He talks about her quite freely, and—and so do I. She is really interesting in her way.”
“And in perspective.”
“Why should you be odiously smart. He and Stephen”—her glance was tentative—“have made it up.”
“Oh?”
“He admits now that Stephen was justified, from his point of view. But of course that is easy enough when you have come off best.”
“Of course.”
“Hilda, what do you THINK?”
“Oh, I think it's deplorable—you have always known what I think. Have you seen him lately—I mean your cousin?”
“He lunched with us yesterday. He was more enthusiastic than ever about you.”
“I wish you could tell me that he hadn't mentioned my name. I don't want his enthusiasm. The pit gives one that.”
“Hilda, tell me; what is your idea of—of what it ought to be? What is the principal part of it? Not enthusiasm—adoration?”
“Goodness, no! Something quite different and quite simple—too simple to explain. Besides, it is a thing that requires the completest ignorance to discuss comfortably. Do you want me to vivisect my soul? You yourself, can you talk about what most possesses you?”
“Oh,” protested Alicia, “I wasn't thinking about myself,” and at the same moment the door opened and Hilda said, “Ah! Mr. Lindsay.”
There was a hint of the unexpected in Duff's response to Miss Howe's greeting, and a suggestion in the way he sat down that this made a difference, and that he must find other things to say. He found them with facility, while Hilda decided that she would finish her tea before she went. Alicia, busy with the urn, seemed satisfied to abandon them to each other, to take a decorative place in the conversation, interrupting it with brief inquiries about cream and sugar. Alicia waited, it was her way; she sank almost palpably into the tapestries until some reviving circumstance should bring her out again, a process which was quite compatible with her little laughs and comments. She waited, offering repose, and unconscious even of that. You know Hilda Howe as a creature of bold reflections. Looking at Alicia Livingstone behind the teapot, the conviction visited her that a sex three-quarters of this fibre explained the monastic clergy.
“It is reported that you have performed the wonderful, the impossible,” Lindsay said; “that Llewellyn Stanhope goes home solvent.”
“I don't know how he can help it now. But I have to be very firm. He's on his knees to me to do Ibsen. I tell him I will if he'll combine with Jimmy Finnigan and bring the Surprise Party on between the acts. The only way it would go, in this capital.”
“Oh, do produce Ibsen,” Alicia exclaimed; “I've never seen one of his plays—doesn't it sound terrible!”
“If people will elect to live upon a coral strand—oh, I should like to, for you and Duff here, but Ibsen is the very last man to deliver to a scratch company. He must have equal merit, or there's no meaning. You see he makes none of the vulgar appeals. It would be a tame travesty—nobody could redeem it alone. You must keep to the old situations, the reliable old dodges, when you play in any part of Asia.”
“I never shall cease to regret that I didn't see you in The Offence of Galilee?” Duff said. “Everyone who knows the least bit about it said you were marvellous in that.”
“Marvellous,” said Alicia
Hilda gazed straight before her for an instant without speaking. The others looked at her absent eyes. “A bazar trick or two helped me,” she said, and glanced with vivacity at any other subject that might be hanging on the wall, or visible out of the window.
“And are you really invincible about not putting it on again in Calcutta?” Duff asked.
“Not in Calcutta, or anywhere. The rest hate it—nobody has a chance but me,” Hilda said, and got up.
“Oh, I don't know,” Alicia began, but Miss Howe was already half-way out of the discussion, in the direction of the door. There was often a brusqueness in her comings and goings, but she usually left a flavour of herself behind. One turned with facility to talk about her, this being the easiest way of applying the stimulus that came of talking to her. It was more conspicuous than either of these two realised that they accepted her retreat without a word, that there was even between them a consciousness of satisfaction that she had gone.
“This morning's mail,” said Alicia, smiling brightly at Lindsay, “brought you a letter, I know.” It was extraordinary how detached she could be from her vital personal concern in him. It seemed relegated to some background of her nature while she occupied herself with the immediate play of circumstance or was lost in her observation of him.
“How kind of you to think of it,” Lindsay said. “This was the first by which I could possibly hear from England.”
“Ah, well, now you will have no more anxiety. Letters from on board ship are always difficult to write and unsatisfactory,” Alicia said. Miss Filbert's had been postcards, with a wide unoccupied margin at the bottom.
“The Sutlej seems to have arrived on the third; that's a day later, isn't it, than we made out she would be?”
Alicia consulted her memory, and found she couldn't be sure. Lindsay was vexed by a similar uncertainty, but they agreed that the date was early in the month.
“Did they get comfortably through the Canal? I remember being tied up there for forty-eight hours once.”
“I don't think she says, so I fancy it must have been all right. The voyage is bound to do her good. I've asked the Simpsons to watch particularly for any sign of malaria later, though. One can't possibly know what she may have imported from that slum in Bentinck Street.”
“And what was it like after Gibraltar?” Alicia asked, with a barely perceptible glance at the envelope edges showing over his breast-pocket.
“I'll look,” and he sorted one out. It was pink and glossy, with a diagonal water-stripe. Lindsay drew out the single sheet it contained, and she could see that every line was ruled and faintly pencilled. “Let me see,” said he. “To begin at the beginning. 'We arrived home on the third,'—you see it was the third,—'making very slow progress the last day on account of a fog in the Channel'—ah, a fog in the Channel!—'which was a great disappointment to some on board who were impatient to meet their loved ones. One lady had not seen her family of five for seven years. She said she would like to get out and swim, and you could not wonder. She was my s—stable companion.”
“Quaint!” said Alicia.
“She has picked up the expression on board. 'So—so she told me this.' Oh yes. 'Now that it is all over I have written the voyage down among my mercies in spite of three days' sickness, when you could keep nothing on—' What are those two words, Miss Livingstone? I can't quite make them out.”
“'Your'—cambric?—stom—'stomach'—'your stomach.'”
“Oh, quite so. Thanks!—'in the Bay of Biscay.' You see it WAS rough after Gib. 'Everybody was'—yes. 'The captain read Church of England prayers on Sunday mornings, in which I had no objection to join, and we had mangoes every day for a week after leaving Ceylon.'”
“Miss Filbert was so fond of mangoes,” Alicia said.
“Was she? 'The passengers got up two dances, and quite a number of gentlemen invited me, but I declined with thanks, though I would not say it is wrong in itself.'” Lindsay seemed to waver; her glance went near enough to him to show her that his face had a red tinge of embarrassment. He looked at the letter uncertainly, on the point of folding it up.
“You see she hasn't danced for so long,” Alicia put in quickly; “she would naturally hesitate about beginning again with anybody but you. I shouldn't wonder,” she added gently, “if she never does, with anybody else.”
“I know it's an idea some women have,” he replied. “I think it's rather—nice.”
“And her impressions of the Simpsons—and Plymouth?”
“She goes on to that.” He reconsulted the letter. “'Mr. and Mrs. Simpson met me as expected and welcomed me very affably.' She has got hold of a wrong impression there, I fancy; the Simpsons couldn't be 'affable.' 'They seem very kind and pleasant for such stylish people, and their house is lovely, with electric light in the parlour and hot and cold water throughout. They seem very earnest people and have family prayers regularly, but I have not yet been asked to lead. Four servants come in to prayers. Mr. and Mrs. Simpson are deeply interested in the work of the Army, though I think Plymouth as a whole is more taken up with the C.M.S.; but we cannot have all things.' Dear me, yes! I remember those evangelical teas and the disappointment that I could not speak more definitely about the work among the Sontalis.”
“Fancy her having caught the spirit of the place already!” exclaimed Alicia. “He went on: 'Mr. and Mrs. Simpson have a beautiful garden and grow most of their own vegetables. We sit in it a great deal and I think of all that has passed. I hope ever that it has been for the best and pray for you always. Oh that your feet may be set in the right path and that we may walk hand in hand upon the way to Zion!'” Lindsay lowered his voice and read the last sentences rapidly, as if the propulsion of the first part of the letter sent him through them. Then he stopped abruptly, and Alicia looked up.
“That's all, only,” he added, with an awkward smile, “the usual formula.”
“'God bless you'?” she asked, and he nodded.
“It has a more genuine ring than most formulas,” she observed.
“Yes, hasn't it? May I have another cup?” He restored the pink sheet to its pink envelope, and both to his breast-pocket, while she poured out the other cup, but Miss Filbert was still present with them. They went on talking about her, and entirely in the tone of congratulation—the suitability of the Simpsons, the suitability of Plymouth, the probability that she would entirely recover, in its balmy atmosphere, her divine singing voice. Plymouth certainly was in no sense a tonic, but Miss Filbert didn't need a tonic; she was too much inclined to be strung up as it was. What she wanted was the soothing, quieting influence of just Plymouth's meetings and just Plymouth's teas. The charms that so sweetly and definitely characterised her would expand there; it was a delightful flowery environment for them, and she couldn't fail to improve in health. Devonshire's visitors got tremendously well fed, with fish items of especial excellence.
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