He fell to entertaining the ladies in the most amiable manner. To Edwarda he was polite and kind, often fatherly, and pedantically instructive, as he had been so many times before. She spoke of some date or other, saying: “I was born in '38,” and he asked, “Eighteen hundred and thirty-eight, I suppose you mean?” And if she had answered, “No, in nineteen hundred and thirty-eight,” he would have shown no embarrassment, but only corrected her again, and said, “I think you must be mistaken.” When I said anything myself, he listened politely and attentively, and did not ignore me.
A young girl came up to me with a greeting. I did not recognize her; I could not remember her at all, and I said a few words in surprise, and she laughed. It was one of the Dean's daughters. I had met her the day we went to the island before, and had invited her to my hut. We talked together a little.
An hour or so passed by. I was feeling dull, and drank from the wine poured out for me, and mixed with the others, chatting with them all. Again I made a mistake here and there: I was on doubtful ground, and could not tell at the moment how to answer any little civility; now and then I talked incoherently, or even found nothing at all to say, and this troubled me. Over by the big rock which we were using as a table sat the Doctor, gesticulating.
“Soul--what is the soul?” he was saying. The Dean's daughter had accused him of being a free-thinker--well, and should not a man think freely? People imagined hell as a sort of house down under the ground, with the devil as host--or rather as sovereign lord. Then he spoke of the altar picture in the chapel, a figure of the Christ, with a few Jews and Jewesses; water into wine--well and good. But Christ had a halo round His head. And what was a halo? Simply a yellow hoop fixed on three hairs.
Two of the ladies clasped their hands aghast, but the Doctor extricated himself, and said jestingly:
“Sounds horrible, doesn't it? I admit it. But if you repeat it and repeat it again to yourself seven or eight times, and then think it over a little, it soon sounds easier... Ladies, your very good health!”
And he knelt on the grass before the two ladies, and instead of taking his hat off and laying it before him he held it straight up in the air with one hand, and emptied his glass with his head bent back. I was altogether carried away by his wonderful ease of manner, and would have drunk with him myself but that his glass was empty.