He went to bed, slept well, and was down early for breakfast. The Consetts came in later, but to a table at the other end of the room. During the meal the waiter asked him if he would care to join an excursion to visit an ancient hermitage some score miles away over the hills. “It is quite interesting sir,” he recommended, “and if you have nothing else in mind, it would make a pleasant trip.”
“Are most of the others going?”
“Practically everybody, sir, except the fishing gentlemen.”
“I don’t want to have a lot of walking to do.”
“There is hardly any—you just drive right there by car.”
“All right, I daresay I’ll go.”
It was a chance, he realised, and perhaps a better one than many others.
Four large five-seater touring-cars were drawn up outside the hotel. The excursionists arranged themselves as they chose, usually, of course, manoeuvring to be with their friends. It was natural that he should wait rather diffidently until most had taken positions, and that, as an odd man, he should be fitted into the back seat of one of the cars with two other persons. Partly by luck and partly by his own contrivance, those two compulsory fellow- passengers were the Consetts. He was at one side of the car, Mrs. Consett at the other; the girl sat in between them. The driver and a large picnic-hamper shared the seat in front.
The convoy set off at eleven o’clock through lanes full of wildflowers and spattered with sunshine from a dappled sky. The harbour, reaching out into the long narrow inlet, gleamed like a sword-blade; the hills were purple-grey and a little hazy in the distance. He passed some merely polite remark about the weather, and the girl answered him in the same key. But the woman, seizing the opportunity, began to talk. She talked in a strong, copious stream, with never-flagging zest and ever-increasing emphasis. Wasn’t Ireland lovely?—had he visited Killarney?—had he been on the lake and un to the Gap of Dunloe? They had—a most beautiful and romantic excursion, but the flies had been a nuisance during the picnic-lunch, and the food from the hotel had been just awful. It was a curious thing, but the hotels over this side seemed to have no idea…etc., etc.
He listened, occasionally venturing some remark. He said, in response to questioning, that he had never been to America, but had travelled a little in Europe. That opened further flood-gates. He received a full and detailed account of the Consett odyssey from the very day it had begun at Philadelphia. Paris, Interlaken, the Rhine, Münich, Innsbruck, Rome, Algiers, Seville (for Easter), Biarritz, Lourdes, Chartres, Ostend, the battlefields, London, Oxford, Cambridge, Stratford-on-Avon, Dublin…how much they had seen, even if how little! They had loved it all, of course, and Mrs. Consett added, across the girl, as it were: “Mary is just eighteen, you see, and it is such an impressionable age, I think, and I do so want her to see the world when she is young, because later on, you know, one can never be sure of getting such chances—in America so many women live narrow, self- centred lives after they marry—they think they’re seeing the world if they spend a week in New York. My own brothers and sisters, for instance, who live in Colorado, have never travelled further than Los Angeles, and even I never saw Europe till Mary and I landed last fail. And now, though I’m terribly ashamed to think of what I’d missed for so long, Vet I’m just glad to now that Mary’s seeing all these marvellous places at an age when everything means most—the Coliseum at Rome, for instance, and Westminster Abbey, and Shakespeare’s dear little house, and those quaint little jaunting-cars they have at Killarney—have you been on them? We had a most amusing driver to take us—so amusingly Irish—I quite intended to make notes of some of his remarks when I got back to the hotel, but I was just too tired after the long drive, and it was such a beautiful drive—rather like parts of Virginia…” And so on, and so on.
They reached the hermitage about noon; it was a collection of ruins on an island off the shore of a lake—the latter overshadowed by gloomy mountains and reached by a narrow, twisting road over a high pass. The island was still a place of pilgrimage, and many of the arched cells in which the hermits had lived were littered with tawdry votive offerings—beads, buttons, lead-pencils, pieces of ribbon—a quaint miscellany for the rains and winds to disintegrate. The tourists made the usual vague inspection and turned with relief to the more exciting business of finding a place for lunch. Fothergill still remained with the Consetts; indeed, rather to his private amusement, he realised that it would have been difficult to be rid of them in any case. Mrs. Consett had by that time given him the almost complete history of her family and was engaged on a minute explanation of the way in which her husband had made money out of steam-laundries. From that, as the picnic-lunch progressed, she passed on to a sententious discussion of family life in general and of the upbringing of children in particular. At this point a sudden commotion amongst the rest of the party gave the girl an excuse to move away, for which Fothergill did not blame her, though it left him rather unhappily at the mercy of Mrs. Consett. Soon, however, an opportunity arose for himself also; the men of the party began to pack up the hampers and carry them to the cars. He attached himself to their enterprise for a sufficiently reasonable time, and then strolled off on his own, deliberately oblivious of the fact that Mrs. Consett was waiting for him to resume his rôle of listener. He walked towards the lake and across the causeway to the island—a curious place, of interest to him because, with its childlike testimonies of faith, it reminded him of things he had seen in Russia. Was it too fanciful, he wondered, to imagine a spiritual kinship between the countries? He was thus reflecting when he saw the open doors of a small modern chapel built amidst a grove of trees; and inside the building, which was scarcely bigger than the room of a small house, he caught sight of the girl. She heard his footsteps and turned round, smiling slightly.
“I didn’t notice this place when we first went round,” he remarked, approaching.
“Neither did I. It’s really so tiny, isn’t it?—quite the tiniest I’ve ever seen. And isn’t it terribly ugly?”
It was—garishly so in a style which again reminded him of Russia. The comparison was so much on his mind that without any ulterior motive he added: “I’ve seen the same sort of thing abroad—especially in Russia. Simple people always love crude colours and too much ornament.”
She seized on that one vital word. “You know Russia, then?”
“Fairly well. I used to live there.”
“Did you like it?”
“Very much, in some ways.”
“I wish mother and I could have gone there, but I suppose it isn’t really safe for tourists yet.”
“I daresay it would be safe enough, but I should think it would hardly be comfortable.”
“Oh, then it wouldn’t do at all.” She laughed in a way which Fothergill liked instantly and exceedingly—a deep fresh laugh as from some spring-like fountain of humour. “Mother hates hotels where you don’t get a private bathroom next to your bedroom.”
“She can’t be very keen on Roone’s, then.”
“I don’t think she is, but I just love it. I’d hate to find everything exactly like the Plaza at New York. Besides, I don’t think it really matters if you miss the morning bath once now and again.”