Faith was necessary for the knowledge of God. Only, there were fifty good reasons for supporting the non-existence of God. Besides, no one wanted to believe that any more. That was the point. And it was a shame for those two men to make her go all that way through a valley, while they were grubbing about in the wind. The next stile was a beast. She crossed it heavily. A long corner to turn, and there would be Starn to look at. There was that horse again, knotted and stiff and staring at her. It was too far to come. Miles behind her, a white road stood on its head over the hill that led to the green road that led to their house. She had come down that road, a long time ago, turning her back on the sea, to get to Starn, to meet an American, who would like her, not for long, and no one else— Someone had barbed-wired the gap, damn him! She flung herself on her back and wriggled under, jumping up with too great an effort. What was she really doing, out in this burning valley at mid-day? ‘They force me with more virtue than is convenient to me. Not innocently— How can we be innocent? I am going to let things go. A witch and a bitch they call me. They shall see.’ She flung into the inn at Starn, ashamed of her appearance, red and dusty, and ordered a long drink.
Cool, rested, made up, she went to the station. It is always pleasant to collect someone expected out of a train. She wished it had been someone she wanted, someone known or necessary to be known. Michael, who went with the house—Tony, she wished to know better—Vincent, she might get off with—the peacocks of her world. Then she reminded herself of the pleasure it would be to shew a stranger their land, as they knew it, equivocal, exquisite. From what she had observed of Americans, almost certain to be new.
Then she was flying through lanes, an attentive, intelligent old-young man beside her.
“God! What a beautiful place,” he said. When ‘beautiful’ is said, exactly and honestly, there is contact, or there should be. Then, “This is the England we think of. Hardy’s country, isn’t it?”
“Yes, don’t rely too much on the weather and the food.”
“Don’t worry about me. I’ve done some camping.”
Nice man. But when he stood in the verandah and looked about him, he said: “I couldn’t have imagined it.”
At tea, he said: “It seems to me that you have everything. No luxury, but all the beauty there is.”
Slightly overdoing the beauty business— Beauty is a too concentrated food. And what did he mean about luxury? There was a sort of lean splendour about their things, anyhow. Still, his repose and his careful manners flattered her. She wondered when the men would be back, smelling of turf and thyme, and settle him in. Not a sign of them, and she’d told him they’d gone out to get mushrooms, usually picked at dawn. She took him up to his room and left him. Alone, he sat down on the bed, pensive. “Lord!” he said, “how did I get here?” The properties of the room included a bidet, a chart of the coast, and a still-life of poisonous-looking wood flowers, Felix’s work. He thought that the berries were deadly night-shade, which they were. He looked out of the window, the verandah roof sloping beneath him, of slate flags, patched and bound with lichens and ferns, and wondered when and how it had all been put together. His eyes travelled to a yucca, bent like an old man, and opening in a single three-foot spike. Then the wood. He had come out of simple curiosity, and to see something in England off the regulation road. So that was what this Paris bunch did when they got home? What did they do? What was there to do? Where were the men who had asked him? Some kind of trick to leave him alone with the girl?
Getting mushrooms? He decided, for the first time, that mushrooms grew. And that he must carry on, attentively. With immense deliberation the sun was moving west. He stretched his neck out of the window, and saw the crest of the down turn black, and draw up like a tower. He drew in his head. He did not want to see that hill with the stars trembling over it. How did they light the place?
The wood sighed at him. Just like that. Two kinds of life he did not want. The ash-fair tree-tall young woman downstairs, and the elaborate piece of leaf and wood, that was one thing and many. The wood and the woman might be interchangeable, and it wasn’t the sort of thing you wanted on a visit. He had nerves, too, a great sensibility to take impressions. Always in relation to people. Life to him was an elaborate theatre, without scenery. Here the scenery seemed to be the play.
