“Yes, we all flatter ourselves that we are observing life, when we are merely noting the occasions when some musty old notion of ours happens, by chance, to get fulfilled.”
Hubert Temperley at once roused Miss Du Prel’s interest by the large stores of information that he had to pour forth on the history of the district, from its earliest times to the present. He recalled the days when these lands that looked so smooth and tended had been mere wastes of marsh and forest.
How quickly these great changes were accomplished! Valeria stood on the brow of a wide corn-field, looking out over the sleeping country. A century, after all, was not much more than one person’s lifetime, yet in scarcely nine of these—nine little troubled lifetimes—what incredible things had occurred in this island of ours! How did it all come about? “Not assuredly,” Valeria remarked with sudden malice, “by taking things as they stood, and making the best of them with imbecile impatience. If everyone had done that, what sort of an England should I have had stretching before my eyes at this moment?”
“You would not have been here to see,” said Hadria, lazily rolling stones down the hill with her foot. “We should all of us have been dancing round some huge log-fire on the borders of a primeval forest, and instead of browsing on salads, as we did to-day, we should be sustaining ourselves on the unholy nourishment of boiled parent or grilled aunt.”
Mr. Temperley’s refined appearance and manner seemed to raise an incarnate protest against this revolting picture. For some occult reason, the imagination of all was at work especially and exclusively on the figure of that polished gentleman in war-paint and feathers, sporting round the cauldron that contained the boiled earthly remains of his relations.
Mr. Fleming betrayed the common thought by remarking that it would be very becoming to him.
“Ah! I wish we were all savages in feathers and war-paint, dancing on the edge of some wild forest, with nothing but the sea and the sky for limits!”
Miss Du Prel surprised her audience by this earnest aspiration.
“Do you feel inclined to revert?” Hadria enquired. “Because if so, I shall be glad to join you.”
“I think there is a slight touch of the savage about Mrs. Temperley,” observed Fleming pensively. “I mean, don’t you know—of course——.”