Rachel, who was slow to accept the fact that only a very few things can be said even by people who know each other well, insisted on knowing what he meant.
"Whether we've ever been in love?" she enquired. "Is that the kind of question you mean?"
Again Helen laughed at her, benignantly strewing her with handfuls of the long tasselled grass, for she was so brave and so foolish.
"Oh, Rachel," she cried. "It's like having a puppy in the house having you with one--a puppy that brings one's underclothes down into the hall."
But again the sunny earth in front of them was crossed by fantastic wavering figures, the shadows of men and women.
"There they are!" exclaimed Mrs. Elliot. There was a touch of peevishness in her voice. "And we've had _such_ a hunt to find you.
Do you know what the time is?"
Mrs. Elliot and Mr. and Mrs. Thornbury now confronted them; Mrs. Elliot was holding out her watch, and playfully tapping it upon the face.
Hewet was recalled to the fact that this was a party for which he was responsible, and he immediately led them back to the watch-tower, where they were to have tea before starting home again. A bright crimson scarf fluttered from the top of the wall, which Mr. Perrott and Evelyn were tying to a stone as the others came up. The heat had changed just so far that instead of sitting in the shadow they sat in the sun, which was still hot enough to paint their faces red and yellow, and to colour great sections of the earth beneath them.
"There's nothing half so nice as tea!" said Mrs. Thornbury, taking her cup.
"Nothing," said Helen. "Can't you remember as a child chopping up hay--" she spoke much more quickly than usual, and kept her eye fixed upon Mrs. Thornbury, "and pretending it was tea, and getting scolded by the nurses--why I can't imagine, except that nurses are such brutes, won't allow pepper instead of salt though there's no earthly harm in it. Weren't your nurses just the same?"
During this speech Susan came into the group, and sat down by Helen's side. A few minutes later Mr. Venning strolled up from the opposite direction. He was a little flushed, and in the mood to answer hilariously whatever was said to him.
"What have you been doing to that old chap's grave?" he asked, pointing to the red flag which floated from the top of the stones.
"We have tried to make him forget his misfortune in having died three hundred years ago," said Mr. Perrott.
"It would be awful--to be dead!" ejaculated Evelyn M.
"To be dead?" said Hewet. "I don't think it would be awful.
It's quite easy to imagine. When you go to bed to-night fold your hands so--breathe slower and slower--" He lay back with his hands clasped upon his breast, and his eyes shut, "Now," he murmured in an even monotonous voice, "I shall never, never, never move again."
His body, lying flat among them, did for a moment suggest death.
"This is a horrible exhibition, Mr. Hewet!" cried Mrs. Thornbury.
"More cake for us!" said Arthur.
"I assure you there's nothing horrible about it," said Hewet, sitting up and laying hands upon the cake.
"It's so natural," he repeated. "People with children should make them do that exercise every night. . . . Not that I look forward to being dead."
"And when you allude to a grave," said Mr. Thornbury, who spoke almost for the first time, "have you any authority for calling that ruin a grave?
I am quite with you in refusing to accept the common interpretation which declares it to be the remains of an Elizabethan watch-tower-- any more than I believe that the circular mounds or barrows which we find on the top of our English downs were camps.
The antiquaries call everything a camp. I am always asking them, Well then, where do you think our ancestors kept their cattle?
Half the camps in England are merely the ancient pound or barton as we call it in my part of the world. The argument that no one would keep his cattle in such exposed and inaccessible spots has no weight at all, if you reflect that in those days a man's cattle were his capital, his stock-in-trade, his daughter's dowries.
Without cattle he was a serf, another man's man. . . ." His eyes slowly lost their intensity, and he muttered a few concluding words under his breath, looking curiously old and forlorn.
