“About books now. What have you read? Just Shakespeare and the Bible?”
“I haven’t read many classics,” Rachel stated. She was slightly annoyed by his jaunty and rather unnatural manner, while his masculine acquirements induced her to take a very modest view of her own power.
“D’you mean to tell me you’ve reached the age of twenty-four without reading Gibbon?” he demanded.
“Yes, I have,” she answered.
“Mon Dieu!” he exclaimed, throwing out his hands. “You must begin tomorrow. I shall send you my copy. What I want to know is—” he looked at her critically. “You see, the problem is, can one really talk to you? Have you got a mind, or are you like the rest of your sex? You seem to me absurdly young compared with men of your age.”
Rachel looked at him but said nothing.
“About Gibbon,” he continued. “D’you think you’ll be able to appreciate him? He’s the test, of course. It’s awfully difficult to tell about women,” he continued, “how much, I mean, is due to lack of training, and how much is native incapacity. I don’t see myself why you shouldn’t understand—only I suppose you’ve led an absurd life until now—you’ve just walked in a crocodile, I suppose, with your hair down your back.”
The music was again beginning. Hirst’s eye wandered about the room in search of Mrs. Ambrose. With the best will in the world he was conscious that they were not getting on well together.
“I’d like awfully to lend you books,” he said, buttoning his gloves, and rising from his seat. “We shall meet again. I’m going to leave you now.”
He got up and left her.
Rachel looked round. She felt herself surrounded, like a child at a party, by the faces of strangers all hostile to her, with hooked noses and sneering, indifferent eyes. She was by a window, she pushed it open with a jerk. She stepped out into the garden. Her eyes swam with tears of rage.
“Damn that man!” she exclaimed, having acquired some of Helen’s words. “Damn his insolence!”
She stood in the middle of the pale square of light which the window she had opened threw upon the grass. The forms of great black trees rose massively in front of her. She stood still, looking at them, shivering slightly with anger and excitement. She heard the trampling and swinging of the dancers behind her, and the rhythmic sway of the waltz music.
“There are trees,” she said aloud. Would the trees make up for St. John Hirst? She would be a Persian princess far from civilisation, riding her horse upon the mountains alone, and making her women sing to her in the evening, far from all this, from the strife and men and women—a form came out of the shadow; a little red light burnt high up in its blackness.
“Miss Vinrace, is it?” said Hewet, peering at her. “You were dancing with Hirst?”
“He’s made me furious!” she cried vehemently. “No one’s any right to be insolent!”
“Insolent?” Hewet repeated, taking his cigar from his mouth in surprise. “Hirst—insolent?”
“It’s insolent to—” said Rachel, and stopped. She did not know exactly why she had been made so angry. With a great effort she pulled herself together.
“Oh, well,” she added, the vision of Helen and her mockery before her, “I dare say I’m a fool.” She made as though she were going back into the ballroom, but Hewet stopped her.
“Please explain to me,” he said. “I feel sure Hirst didn’t mean to hurt you.”
When Rachel tried to explain, she found it very difficult. She could not say that she found the vision of herself walking in a crocodile with her hair down her back peculiarly unjust and horrible, nor could she explain why Hirst’s assumption of the superiority of his nature and experience had seemed to her not only galling but terrible—as if a gate had clanged in her face. Pacing up and down the terrace beside Hewet she said bitterly:
“It’s no good; we should live separate; we cannot understand each other; we only bring out what’s worst.”
Hewet brushed aside her generalisation as to the natures of the two sexes, for such generalisations bored him and seemed to him generally untrue. But, knowing Hirst, he guessed fairly accurately what had happened, and, though secretly much amused, was determined that Rachel should not store the incident away in her mind to take its place in the view she had of life.
“Now you’ll hate him,” he said, “which is wrong. Poor old Hirst—he can’t help his method. And really, Miss Vinrace, he was doing his best; he was paying you a compliment—he was trying—he was trying—” he could not finish for the laughter that overcame him.
Rachel veered round suddenly and laughed out too. She saw that there was something ridiculous about Hirst, and perhaps about herself.
“It’s his way of making friends, I suppose,” she laughed. “Well—I shall do my part. I shall begin—‘Ugly in body, repulsive in mind as you are, Mr. Hirst—”
“Hear, hear!” cried Hewet. “That’s the way to treat him. You see, Miss Vinrace, you must make allowances for Hirst. He’s lived all his life in front of a looking-glass, so to speak, in a beautiful panelled room, hung with Japanese prints and lovely old chairs and tables, just one splash of colour, you know, in the right place,—between the windows I think it is,—and there he sits hour after hour with his toes on the fender, talking about philosophy and God and his liver and his heart and the hearts of his friends. They’re all broken. You can’t expect him to be at his best in a ballroom. He wants a cosy, smoky, masculine place, where he can stretch his legs out, and only speak when he’s got something to say. For myself, I find it rather dreary. But I do respect it. They’re all so much in earnest. They do take the serious things very seriously.”
The description of Hirst’s way of life interested Rachel so much that she almost forgot her private grudge against him, and her respect revived.
“They are really very clever then?” she asked.
“Of course they are. So far as brains go I think it’s true what he said the other day; they’re the cleverest people in England. But—you ought to take him in hand,” he added. “There’s a great deal more in him than’s ever been got at. He wants some one to laugh at him.… The idea of Hirst telling you that you’ve had no experiences! Poor old Hirst!”
They had been pacing up and down the terrace while they talked, and now one by one the dark windows were uncurtained by an invisible hand, and panes of light fell regularly at equal intervals upon the grass. They stopped to look in at the drawing-room, and perceived Mr. Pepper writing alone at a table.
“There’s Pepper writing to his aunt,” said Hewet. “She must be a very remarkable old lady, eighty-five he tells me, and he takes her for walking tours in the New Forest.… Pepper!” he cried, rapping on the window. “Go and do your duty. Miss Allan expects you.”
When they came to the windows of the ballroom, the swing of the dancers and the lilt of the music was irresistible.
“Shall we?” said Hewet, and they clasped hands and swept off magnificently into the great swirling pool. Although this was only the second time they had met, the first time they had seen a man and woman kissing each other, and the second time Mr. Hewet had found that a young woman angry is very like a child. So that when they joined hands in the dance they felt more at their ease than is usual.
It