Chapter 19

"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 coarse."

"I dare say, my dear. You didn't come out of a cab, and you never are. I like being coarse, 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."

"Don't 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 damnable—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 it would be necessary to 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 tea-pot, 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 with him. 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 Reproach 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 bazaar 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 him, "brought you a letter, I know." It was extraordinary how detached she was from her vital personal concern in him. It seemed relegated to some background of her nature while she occupied herself with the play of circumstances 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."