In spite of the pale light and the sinister mystery of the tanks in front of her the Queen laughed aloud. The pursuing echoes made Kalliope’s English irresistibly absurd. Then she pondered. Men—whether “blighters” in Kalliope’s mouth conveyed reproach or were simply a synonym for men she did not know—men in a ship—“mucky” described the ship as little probably as “damn boxes” described the packing-cases of furniture or “bloody” her trunks of clothes. Men in a ship had brought the tanks, had rowed them—“go row” was plain enough—ashore in boats.
“But who,” said the Queen, “and why?”
Kalliope was beaten. Who and why were too much for her, as indeed they have been for people far wiser than she. Are not all theology and all philosophy attempts, and for the most part vain attempts, to deal with just those two words, who and why?
“Blighters,” said Kalliope, and the echoes repeated her words with emphasis, “blighters, blighters, blighters,” till the Queen came to believe it.
Then Kalliope, memory wakened in her, grew suddenly hopeful. She began to hum a tune, very softly at first, making more than one false start; but getting it nearly right at last. The Queen recognized it. She had heard it a hundred times in old days at prayers in the chapel of her college. It was a hymn tune. The words came back to her at once. “Glorious things of thee are spoken, Zion, city of our God.” She took Kalliope by the arm and led her back to the boat.
“Come away,” she said, “quick, quick. I’m going mad.”
Kalliope entered into the spirit of a new game. She ran down across the rolling pebbles.
“Go row,” she said. “Quick, quick.”
The boat, Kalliope pushing, dragging, rowing, burst from the cavern, fled beyond the shadow of the cliffs, glided into the blaze of sunshine and the sparkling water of the outer bay. The Queen lay back in the stern and laughed. Kalliope, resting on her oars, laughed too. The Queen’s laughter passed into an uncontrollable fit. Tears rolled down her cheeks. Her sides were sore. She gasped for breath. The thought of that row of portentously solemn grey tanks was irresistibly comic. They looked like stranded codfish with their tongues out. They looked like a series of caricatures of an American politician, a square-headed ponderous man, who had once dined with her father. He had the same appearance of imbecile gravity, the same enormous pomposity. The copper spouts were so many exaggerated versions of his nose.
Her imagination flew to a vision of the men who had brought the tanks and cisterns there in a “mucky ship.” She seemed to see them, thin scarecrows of men, crawling over the rusty sides of some battered tramp steamer; mournful men with brown faces and skinny arms, singing their hymn with sharp cracked voices while they laboured at their utterly preposterous task. Laughter conquered the Queen. She lay back helpless in the merciless grip of uncontrollable merriment. Kalliope could not laugh so much. The joke was beyond her. She sat with a wavering half-smile on her lips watching the Queen. The box of chocolates lay in the bottom of the boat. Kalliope stretched her foot out, touched the box, pushed it gently towards the Queen. It seemed to her waste of a golden opportunity to leave the box, no more than half empty, at their feet. The movement broke the spell of the Queen’s laughter. She picked up the box, pushed chocolates into Kalliope’s mouth, filled her own with them.