But again the sunny earth in front of them was crossed by fantastic wavering figures, the shadows of men and women.
“There they are!” exclaimed Mrs. Elliot. There was a touch of peevishness in her voice. “And we’ve had such a hunt to find you. Do you know what the time is?”
Mrs. Elliot and Mr. and Mrs. Thornbury now confronted them; Mrs. Elliot was holding out her watch, and playfully tapping it upon the face. Hewet was recalled to the fact that this was a party for which he was responsible, and he immediately led them back to the watch-tower, where they were to have tea before starting home again. A bright crimson scarf fluttered from the top of the wall, which Mr. Perrott and Evelyn were tying to a stone as the others came up. The heat had changed just so far that instead of sitting in the shadow they sat in the sun, which was still hot enough to paint their faces red and yellow, and to colour great sections of the earth beneath them.
“There’s nothing half so nice as tea!” said Mrs. Thornbury, taking her cup.
“Nothing,” said Helen. “Can’t you remember as a child chopping up hay—” she spoke much more quickly than usual, and kept her eye fixed upon Mrs. Thornbury, “and pretending it was tea, and getting scolded by the nurses—why I can’t imagine, except that nurses are such brutes, won’t allow pepper instead of salt though there’s no earthly harm in it. Weren’t your nurses just the same?”
During this speech Susan came into the group, and sat down by Helen’s side. A few minutes later Mr. Venning strolled up from the opposite direction. He was a little flushed, and in the mood to answer hilariously whatever was said to him.
“What have you been doing to that old chap’s grave?” he asked, pointing to the red flag which floated from the top of the stones.
“We have tried to make him forget his misfortune in having died three hundred years ago,” said Mr. Perrott.
“It would be awful—to be dead!” ejaculated Evelyn M.
“To be dead?” said Hewet. “I don’t think it would be awful. It’s quite easy to imagine. When you go to bed tonight fold your hands so—breathe slower and slower—” He lay back with his hands clasped upon his breast, and his eyes shut, “Now,” he murmured in an even monotonous voice, “I shall never, never, never move again.” His body, lying flat among them, did for a moment suggest death.
“This is a horrible exhibition, Mr. Hewet!” cried Mrs. Thornbury.
“More cake for us!” said Arthur.
“I assure you there’s nothing horrible about it,” said Hewet, sitting up and laying hands upon the cake.
“It’s so natural,” he repeated. “People with children should make them do that exercise every night.… Not that I look forward to being dead.”
“And when you allude to a grave,” said Mr. Thornbury, who spoke almost for the first time, “have you any authority for calling that ruin a grave? I am quite with you in refusing to accept the common interpretation which declares it to be the remains of an Elizabethan watch-tower—any more than I believe that the circular mounds or barrows which we find on the top of our English downs were camps. The antiquaries call everything a camp. I am always asking them, Well then, where do you think our ancestors kept their cattle? Half the camps in England are merely the ancient pound or barton as we call it in my part of the world. The argument that no one would keep his cattle in such exposed and inaccessible spots has no weight at all, if you reflect that in those days a man’s cattle were his capital, his stock-in-trade, his daughter’s dowries. Without cattle he was a serf, another man’s man.…” His eyes slowly lost their intensity, and he muttered a few concluding words under his breath, looking curiously old and forlorn.
Hughling Elliot, who might have been expected to engage the old gentleman in argument, was absent at the moment. He now came up holding out a large square of cotton upon which a fine design was printed in pleasant bright colours that made his hand look pale.
“A bargain,” he announced, laying it down on the cloth. “I’ve just bought it from the big man with the ear-rings. Fine, isn’t it? It wouldn’t suit every one, of course, but it’s just the thing—isn’t it, Hilda?—for Mrs. Raymond Parry.”
“Mrs. Raymond Parry!” cried Helen and Mrs. Thornbury at the same moment.
They looked at each other as though a mist hitherto obscuring their faces had been blown away.
“Ah—you have been to those wonderful parties too?” Mrs. Elliot asked with interest.
Mrs. Parry’s drawing-room, though thousands of miles away, behind a vast curve of water on a tiny piece of earth, came before their eyes. They who had had no solidity or anchorage before seemed to be attached to it somehow, and at once grown more substantial. Perhaps they had been in the drawing-room at the same moment; perhaps they had passed each other on the stairs; at any rate they knew some of the same people. They looked one another up and down with new interest. But they could do no more than look at each other, for there was no time to enjoy the fruits of the discovery. The donkeys were advancing, and it was advisable to begin the descent immediately, for the night fell so quickly that it would be dark before they were home again.
Accordingly, remounting in order, they filed off down the hillside. Scraps of talk came floating back from one to another. There were jokes to begin with, and laughter; some walked part of the way, and picked flowers, and sent stones bounding before them.
“Who writes the best Latin verse in your college, Hirst?” Mr. Elliot called back incongruously, and Mr. Hirst returned that he had no idea.
The dusk fell as suddenly as the natives had warned them, the hollows of the mountain on either side filling up with darkness and the path becoming so dim that it was surprising to hear the donkeys’ hooves still striking on hard rock. Silence fell upon one, and then upon another, until they were all silent, their minds spilling out into the deep blue air. The way seemed shorter in the dark than in the day; and soon the lights of the town were seen on the flat far beneath them.
Suddenly some one cried, “Ah!”
In a moment the slow yellow drop rose again from the plain below; it rose, paused, opened like a flower, and fell in a shower of drops.
“Fireworks,” they cried.
Another went up more quickly; and then another; they could almost hear it twist and roar.
“Some Saint’s day, I suppose,” said a voice. The rush and embrace of the rockets as they soared up into the air seemed like the fiery way in which lovers suddenly rose and united, leaving the crowd gazing up at them with strained white faces. But Susan and Arthur, riding down the hill, never said a word to each other, and kept accurately apart.
Then the fireworks became erratic, and soon they ceased altogether, and the rest of the journey was made almost in darkness, the mountain being a great shadow behind them, and bushes and trees little shadows which threw darkness across the road. Among the plane-trees they separated, bundling into carriages and driving off, without saying good-night, or saying it only in a half-muffled way.
It was so late that there was no time for normal conversation between their arrival at the hotel and their retirement to bed. But Hirst wandered into Hewet’s room with a collar in his hand.
“Well, Hewet,” he remarked, on the crest of a gigantic yawn, “that was a great success, I consider.” He yawned. “But take care you’re not landed with that young woman.… I don’t really like young women.…”
Hewet was too much drugged by hours in the open air to make any reply. In fact every one of the party was sound asleep within ten minutes or so of each other, with the exception of Susan Warrington. She lay for a considerable time looking blankly at the wall opposite, her hands clasped above her heart, and her light burning by her side. All articulate thought had long ago deserted her;