The sea was calm and motionless, its hardly stirring waves clearer and more translucent in their green depths than when blown upon by impatient winds or touched by shameless and glaring light.
A soft opalescent haze lay upon the houses, turning their gables, their chimneys, their porches, and their roofs, into a pearl-dim mystery of vague illusive forms; forms that might have arisen out of the “perilous sea” itself, on some “beachéd margent” woven of the stuff of dreams.
The queer old-fashioned ornaments of the room where the friends ate their meal took to themselves, as Nance in her dreamy emotion drew them into the circle of her thoughts, a singular and symbolic power. They seemed suggestive, these quaint things, of all that world of little casually accumulated mementoes and memories with which our troubled and turbulent humanity strews its path and fills the places of its passionate sojourning. Mother-of-pearl shells, faded antimacassars, china dogs, fruit under glass-cases, old faded photographs of long-since dead people, illuminated texts embroidered in bright wool, tarnished christening mugs of children that were now old women, portraits of celebrities from days when Victoria herself was in her cradle, all the sweet impossible bric-a-brac of a tea-parlour in a village shop surrounded them as they sat there, and thrilled at least two of their hearts — for Linda’s mood was as receptive and as sensitive as Nance’s — with an indescribable sense of the pathos of human life.
It was of “life”—in general terms — that Dr. Haughty was speaking, as the two young girls gave themselves up to the influence of the hour and played lightly with their food.
“It’s all nonsense,” the doctor cried, “this confounded perpetual pessimism! Why can’t these people read Rabelais and Montaigne, and drink noble wine out of great casks? Why can’t they choose from among the company of their friends gay and honest wenches and sport with them under pleasant trees? Why can’t they get married to comfortable and comely girls and regale themselves in cool and well-appointed kitchens?”
He helped himself as he spoke to another slice of salmon and sprinkled salt upon a plateful of tomatoes and lettuce.
“Whose pessimism are you talking about, Fingal?” inquired Nance, playing up to his humour.
“Don’t get it only for me,” Mr. Traherne cried, addressing the demure and freckled damsel who waited on them. “I’m asking for a glass of ale, Doctor. They can send out for it. But I don’t want it unless—”
The Doctor’s eyes shone across the table at him like soft lamps of sound antique wisdom. “Burton’s,” he exclaimed emphatically. “None of friend Renshaw’s stuff! Burton’s! And let it be that old dark mahogany-coloured liquor we drank once under the elm-trees at Ashbourne.”
The waitress regarded him with a coquettish smile. She laboured under the perpetual illusion that every word the Doctor uttered was some elaborate and recondite gallantry directed towards herself.
The conversation ran on in lively spasmodic waywardness. It was not long before the ale appeared, of the very body and colour suggested by the Doctor’s memories. Nance refused to touch it.
“Have some ginger-pop, instead, then,” murmured Fingal, pouring the brown ale into a china jug decorated with painted pansies. “Linda would like some of that, I know.”
The priest held out his glass in the direction of the jug.
“A thousand deep-sea devils — pardon me, Nance, dear! — carry off these pessimists,” went on the Doctor, filling up the clergyman’s glass and his own with ritualistic solemnity while the little maid, the victim of an irrepressible laughing-fit, retired to fetch ginger-beer. “Let us remember how the great Voltaire served God and defended all honest people. Here’s to Voltaire’s memory and a fig for these neurotic scribblers who haven’t the gall to put out their tongues!” He raised his glass to his lips, his eyes shining with humorous enjoyment.
“What scribblers are you talking about?” inquired Nance, peeling a golden apple and glancing at the misty roofs through the window at her side.
“All of these twopenny-halfpenny moderns,” cried the Doctor, “who haven’t the gall in their stomachs to take the world by the scruff of its neck and lash out. A fig for them! Our poor dear Adrian, when he gets cured, will write something — you mark my words — that’ll make ’em stir themselves and sit up!”
“But Adrian is pessimistic too, isn’t he?” said Nance, looking wistfully at the speaker.
“Nonsense!” cried the Doctor. “Adrian has more Attic salt in him than you women guess. I believe, myself, that this book of his will be worthy to be put beside the ‘Thoughts ‘of Pascal. Have you ever seen Pascal’s face? He isn’t as good-looking as Adrian but he has the same intellectual fury.”
“What’s your opinion, Fingal,” remarked Mr. Traherne, peering anxiously into the pansied jug, “about the art of making life endurable?”
Dr. Raughty surveyed him with a placid and equable smile. “Courage and gaiety,” he said, “are the only recipe, and I don’t mind sprinkling these, in spite of our modern philosophers, with a little milk of human kindness.”
The priest nodded over what was left of his ale. “De fructu operum tuorum, Domine, satiabitur terra: ut educas panem de terra, et vinum laetificet cor hominis; ut exhilaret faciem in oleo, et panis cor hominis confirmet,” he muttered, stretching out his long legs under the table and tilting back his chair.
“What the devil does all that mean?” asked the Doctor a little peevishly. “Can’t you praise God in simple English? Nance and I couldn’t catch a word except ‘wine’ and ‘bread’ and ‘oil.’”
Mr. Traherne looked unspeakably ashamed. “I’m sorry, Nance,” he murmured, sitting up very straight and pulling himself together. “It was out of place. It was rude. I’m not sure that it wasn’t profane. I’m sorry, Fingal!”
“It’s a beautiful afternoon,” said Nance, keeping her eyes on the little street, whose very pavements reflected the soft opalescent light which was spreading itself over Rodmoor.
“Ah!” cried Dr. Raughty, “we left that out in our summary of the compensations of life. You left that out, too, Hamish, from your ‘fructu’ and ‘panem’ and ‘vinum’ and the rest. But, after all, that is what we come back to in the end. The sky, the earth, the sea, — the great cool spaces of night — the sun, like a huge splendid god; the moon, like a sweet passionate nun; and the admirable stars, like gems in some great world-peacock’s tail — yes, my darlings, we come back to these in the end!”
He rose from his seat and with shining eyes surveyed his guests.
“By the body of Mistress Bacbuc,” he cried, in a loud voice, “we do wrong to sit here any longer! Let’s go down to the sands and cool our heads. Here, Maggie! Madge! Marjorie! Where the deuce has that girl gone? There she is! Get me the bill, will you, and bring me a finger-bowl.”
Mr. Traherne laid his hand gently on the doctor’s arm. “I’m afraid we’ve been behaving badly, Fingal,” he whispered. “We’ve been drinking ale and forgetting our good manners. Do I look all right? I mean, do I look as if I’d been drinking mahogany-coloured Burton? Do I look as usual?”
The doctor surveyed him with grave intentness. “You look,” he said at last,” “something between Friar John and Bishop Berkeley. “He gave him a little push.” Go and talk to the girls while I buy them chocolates.”
Having paid the bill, he occupied himself in selecting with delicate nicety a little box of sweet-meats for each of his friends, choosing one for Nance with a picture of Leda and the Swan upon it and one for Linda with a portrait of the Empress Josephine.