"I shouldn't like to say what _she_ is!" she chuckled, surveying a tall woman dressed conspicuously in white, with paint in the hollows of her cheeks, who was always late, and always attended by a shabby female follower, at which remark Susan blushed, and wondered why her aunt said such things.
Lunch went on methodically, until each of the seven courses was left in fragments and the fruit was merely a toy, to be peeled and sliced as a child destroys a daisy, petal by petal. The food served as an extinguisher upon any faint flame of the human spirit that might survive the midday heat, but Susan sat in her room afterwards, turning over and over the delightful fact that Mr. Venning had come to her in the garden, and had sat there quite half an hour while she read aloud to her aunt. Men and women sought different corners where they could lie unobserved, and from two to four it might be said without exaggeration that the hotel was inhabited by bodies without souls. Disastrous would have been the result if a fire or a death had suddenly demanded something heroic of human nature, but tragedies come in the hungry hours. Towards four o'clock the human spirit again began to lick the body, as a flame licks a black promontory of coal. Mrs. Paley felt it unseemly to open her toothless jaw so widely, though there was no one near, and Mrs. Elliot surveyed her found flushed face anxiously in the looking-glass.
Half an hour later, having removed the traces of sleep, they met each other in the hall, and Mrs. Paley observed that she was going to have her tea.
"You like your tea too, don't you?" she said, and invited Mrs. Elliot, whose husband was still out, to join her at a special table which she had placed for her under a tree.
"A little silver goes a long way in this country," she chuckled.
She sent Susan back to fetch another cup.
"They have such excellent biscuits here," she said, contemplating a plateful. "Not sweet biscuits, which I don't like--dry biscuits . . . Have you been sketching?"
"Oh, I've done two or three little daubs," said Mrs. Elliot, speaking rather louder than usual. "But it's so difficult after Oxfordshire, where there are so many trees. The light's so strong here.
Some people admire it, I know, but I find it very fatiguing."
"I really don't need cooking, Susan," said Mrs. Paley, when her niece returned. "I must trouble you to move me." Everything had to be moved. Finally the old lady was placed so that the light wavered over her, as though she were a fish in a net. Susan poured out tea, and was just remarking that they were having hot weather in Wiltshire too, when Mr. Venning asked whether he might join them.
"It's so nice to find a young man who doesn't despise tea," said Mrs. Paley, regaining her good humour. "One of my nephews the other day asked for a glass of sherry--at five o'clock! I told him he could get it at the public house round the corner, but not in my drawing room."
"I'd rather go without lunch than tea," said Mr. Venning.
"That's not strictly true. I want both."
Mr. Venning was a dark young man, about thirty-two years of age, very slapdash and confident in his manner, although at this moment obviously a little excited. His friend Mr. Perrott was a barrister, and as Mr. Perrott refused to go anywhere without Mr. Venning it was necessary, when Mr. Perrott came to Santa Marina about a Company, for Mr. Venning to come too. He was a barrister also, but he loathed a profession which kept him indoors over books, and directly his widowed mother died he was going, so he confided to Susan, to take up flying seriously, and become partner in a large business for ****** aeroplanes. The talk rambled on. It dealt, of course, with the beauties and singularities of the place, the streets, the people, and the quantities of unowned yellow dogs.
"Don't you think it dreadfully cruel the way they treat dogs in this country?" asked Mrs. Paley.
"I'd have 'em all shot," said Mr. Venning.
"Oh, but the darling puppies," said Susan.
"Jolly little chaps," said Mr. Venning. "Look here, you've got nothing to eat." A great wedge of cake was handed Susan on the point of a trembling knife. Her hand trembled too as she took it.
"I have such a dear dog at home," said Mrs. Elliot.
"My parrot can't stand dogs," said Mrs. Paley, with the air of one ****** a confidence. "I always suspect that he (or she) was teased by a dog when I was abroad."
"You didn't get far this morning, Miss Warrington," said Mr. Venning.
