第68章 Chapter XIV(4)

Lying on a sofa and looking at the ceiling, perhaps. He could imagine her doing that, and Helen in an arm-chair, with her hands on the arm of it, so--looking ahead of her, with her great big eyes-- oh no, they'd be talking, of course, about the dance. But suppose Rachel was going away in a day or two, suppose this was the end of her visit, and her father had arrived in one of the steamers anchored in the bay,--it was intolerable to know so little.

Therefore he exclaimed, "How d'you know what you feel, Hirst?" to stop himself from thinking.

But Hirst did not help him, and the other people with their aimless movements and their unknown lives were disturbing, so that he longed for the empty darkness. The first thing he looked for when he stepped out of the hall door was the light of the Ambroses' villa. When he had definitely decided that a certain light apart from the others higher up the hill was their light, he was considerably reassured.

There seemed to be at once a little stability in all this incoherence.

Without any definite plan in his head, he took the turning to the right and walked through the town and came to the wall by the meeting of the roads, where he stopped. The booming of the sea was audible.

The dark-blue mass of the mountains rose against the paler blue of the sky. There was no moon, but myriads of stars, and lights were anchored up and down in the dark waves of earth all round him.

He had meant to go back, but the single light of the Ambroses' villa had now become three separate lights, and he was tempted to go on.

He might as well make sure that Rachel was still there. Walking fast, he soon stood by the iron gate of their garden, and pushed it open; the outline of the house suddenly appeared sharply before his eyes, and the thin column of the verandah cutting across the palely lit gravel of the terrace. He hesitated. At the back of the house some one was rattling cans. He approached the front; the light on the terrace showed him that the sitting-rooms were on that side.

He stood as near the light as he could by the corner of the house, the leaves of a creeper brushing his face. After a moment he could hear a voice. The voice went on steadily; it was not talking, but from the continuity of the sound it was a voice reading aloud.

He crept a little closer; he crumpled the leaves together so as to stop their rustling about his ears. It might be Rachel's voice.

He left the shadow and stepped into the radius of the light, and then heard a sentence spoken quite distinctly.

"And there we lived from the year 1860 to 1895, the happiest years of my parents' lives, and there in 1862 my brother Maurice was born, to the delight of his parents, as he was destined to be the delight of all who knew him."

The voice quickened, and the tone became conclusive rising slightly in pitch, as if these words were at the end of the chapter.

Hewet drew back again into the shadow. There was a long silence.

He could just hear chairs being moved inside. He had almost decided to go back, when suddenly two figures appeared at the window, not six feet from him.

"It was Maurice Fielding, of course, that your mother was engaged to," said Helen's voice. She spoke reflectively, looking out into the dark garden, and thinking evidently as much of the look of the night as of what she was saying.

"Mother?" said Rachel. Hewet's heart leapt, and he noticed the fact.

Her voice, though low, was full of surprise.

"You didn't know that?" said Helen.

"I never knew there'd been any one else," said Rachel. She was clearly surprised, but all they said was said low and inexpressively, because they were speaking out into the cool dark night.

"More people were in love with her than with any one I've ever known,"

Helen stated. She had that power--she enjoyed things. She wasn't beautiful, but--I was thinking of her last night at the dance.

She got on with every kind of person, and then she made it all so amazingly--funny."

It appeared that Helen was going back into the past, choosing her words deliberately, comparing Theresa with the people she had known since Theresa died.

"I don't know how she did it," she continued, and ceased, and there was a long pause, in which a little owl called first here, then there, as it moved from tree to tree in the garden.

"That's so like Aunt Lucy and Aunt Katie," said Rachel at last.

"They always make out that she was very sad and very good."

"Then why, for goodness' sake, did they do nothing but criticize her when she was alive?" said Helen. Very gentle their voices sounded, as if they fell through the waves of the sea.

"If I were to die to-morrow . . ." she began.

The broken sentences had an extraordinary beauty and detachment in Hewet's ears, and a kind of mystery too, as though they were spoken by people in their sleep.

"No, Rachel," Helen's voice continued, "I'm not going to walk in the garden; it's damp--it's sure to be damp; besides, I see at least a dozen toads."

"Toads? Those are stones, Helen. Come out. It's nicer out.

The flowers smell," Rachel replied.

Hewet drew still farther back. His heart was beating very quickly.

Apparently Rachel tried to pull Helen out on to the terrace, and helen resisted. There was a certain amount of scuffling, entreating, resisting, and laughter from both of them. Then a man's form appeared. Hewet could not hear what they were all saying.

In a minute they had gone in; he could hear bolts grating then; there was dead silence, and all the lights went out.

He turned away, still crumpling and uncrumpling a handful of leaves which he had torn from the wall. An exquisite sense of pleasure and relief possessed him; it was all so solid and peaceful after the ball at the hotel, whether he was in love with them or not, and he was not in love with them; no, but it was good that they should be alive.

After standing still for a minute or two he turned and began to walk towards the gate. With the movement of his body, the excitement, the romance and the richness of life crowded into his brain.