The dispute took place in the parlour of Pacific Villa. Gareth jerked his head away from the window—beyond which he had vistaed green water shot through and through with light ... cool damp places to sit in ... jerked his head away—to contemplation of his own photograph upon the mantelpiece—another one pinned to the wall—and yet another ... they were all over the house. Gareth had an inexplicable fondness for being photographed; threw away money upon it; hailed any opportunity of being snapshotted by amateurs. Inexplicable—but not to Kathleen. Kathleen understood this trait in his character: it gave him a feeling of support to be everywhere confronted by the square indomitable lines of his own physiognomy; it was an objective proof of his being and existence which queerly reassured him in those moods when he could not find himself; when grip of his will and expression of his purpose seemed alike slippery and unsubstantial. Gareth, limned on his photographs, was very like the man he thought himself.... Kathleen knew! Sometimes, when he was poring over a newly acquired likeness, he would be aware of her gaze upon him, faintly mocking, all too comprehensive ... despairingly, he wished she had not such a keen perception; wished he could think she attributed his weakness to mere vanity ... but she knew—and knew that he knew it. They moved and lived among these unspoken knowledges.
This particular morning, however, something in the firm lines of his jaw (as portrayed by Messrs. Hankin of Kilburn) moved him to a spurt of self-emulation.
"We go to Ilfracombe," he said; and his jaw set into firm lines. "It shall be managed—somehow."
He expected a sarcastic comment—but Kathleen yielded for once without arguing. She entertained no illusions that Gareth's present stern resolve to "manage it somehow" concealed any power of coping strongly with future difficulties. But sufficient unto the struggle ... she was depleted ... sick of being opposition party. She too wanted the rocks and the pools and the valleys....
She wrote to Mrs. Worley to expect them.
After a steeply downhill drive from the station to the town, and then again steeply uphill to a sturdy red-brick mansion blocking out sight of the sea, they were told that Mrs. Worley and the others were dining at the far end of the garden. There was resentment in the servant's tone which, it was discovered later, arose from an eccentric preference of the Worleys for carting about their meals in all weathers to any sort of inconvenient spot, provided it be not their own dining-room.
... A confused impression of a group squatting on the grass under the wall: Jim Collins, gnome-like, head sunk between his high humped shoulders, grinning them a welcome; echoed shrilly by Lulu, in a sort of draggled fancy-costume representing "Summer." An ugly nimble little man with bronze skin and slanting yellow eyes: beside him, a placid graceful woman, tall and beautifully dressed; prone on the turf, a good-looking schoolboy in flannels, munching in a bored condescending fashion; two oldish ladies disputing over the salad: finally, Trixie Worley, stout and mysterious, tiny features dotted in vast tracts of bursting mauve complexion; and her husband Fred, who was in the eleventh instalment of one of his serial anecdotes, which lasted, with full data, and allowing for interruptions, all day, and sometimes reached the point by evening.
Mrs. Worley came forward at sight of the new-comers, and beckoned them aside:
"May I speak to you——?" her accents were sepulchral to an extreme, contrasting comically with her wee round mouth, and nose that was a mere pimple of disproportion. Gareth and Kathleen moved aside with her, wondering what portentous announcement was in store....