initial commit of ebook 144HEADmain

1 files changed, 15328 insertions, 0 deletions

diff --git a/old/144-0.txt b/old/144-0.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..f38281c
--- /dev/null
+++ b/old/144-0.txt
@@ -0,0 +1,15328 @@
+The Project Gutenberg eBook of The Voyage Out, by Virginia Woolf
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere in the United States and
+most other parts of the world at no cost and with almost no restrictions
+whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms
+of the Project Gutenberg License included with this eBook or online at
+www.gutenberg.org. If you are not located in the United States, you
+will have to check the laws of the country where you are located before
+using this eBook.
+
+Title: The Voyage Out
+
+Author: Virginia Woolf
+
+Release Date: July, 1994 [eBook #144]
+[Most recently updated: June 7, 2021]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: UTF-8
+
+Produced by: Judith Boss and David Widger
+
+*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE VOYAGE OUT ***
+
+
+
+
+The Voyage Out
+
+by Virginia Woolf
+
+
+Contents
+
+ CHAPTER I.
+ CHAPTER II.
+ CHAPTER III.
+ CHAPTER IV.
+ CHAPTER V.
+ CHAPTER VI.
+ CHAPTER VII.
+ CHAPTER VIII.
+ CHAPTER IX.
+ CHAPTER X.
+ CHAPTER XI.
+ CHAPTER XII.
+ CHAPTER XIII.
+ CHAPTER XIV.
+ CHAPTER XV.
+ CHAPTER XVI.
+ CHAPTER XVII.
+ CHAPTER XVIII.
+ CHAPTER XIX.
+ CHAPTER XX.
+ CHAPTER XXI.
+ CHAPTER XXII.
+ CHAPTER XXIII.
+ CHAPTER XXIV.
+ CHAPTER XXV.
+ CHAPTER XXVI.
+ CHAPTER XXVII.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER I
+
+
+As the streets that lead from the Strand to the Embankment are very
+narrow, it is better not to walk down them arm-in-arm. If you persist,
+lawyers’ clerks will have to make flying leaps into the mud; young lady
+typists will have to fidget behind you. In the streets of London where
+beauty goes unregarded, eccentricity must pay the penalty, and it is
+better not to be very tall, to wear a long blue cloak, or to beat the
+air with your left hand.
+
+One afternoon in the beginning of October when the traffic was becoming
+brisk a tall man strode along the edge of the pavement with a lady on
+his arm. Angry glances struck upon their backs. The small, agitated
+figures—for in comparison with this couple most people looked
+small—decorated with fountain pens, and burdened with despatch-boxes,
+had appointments to keep, and drew a weekly salary, so that there was
+some reason for the unfriendly stare which was bestowed upon Mr.
+Ambrose’s height and upon Mrs. Ambrose’s cloak. But some enchantment
+had put both man and woman beyond the reach of malice and unpopularity.
+In his case one might guess from the moving lips that it was thought;
+and in hers from the eyes fixed stonily straight in front of her at a
+level above the eyes of most that it was sorrow. It was only by
+scorning all she met that she kept herself from tears, and the friction
+of people brushing past her was evidently painful. After watching the
+traffic on the Embankment for a minute or two with a stoical gaze she
+twitched her husband’s sleeve, and they crossed between the swift
+discharge of motor cars. When they were safe on the further side, she
+gently withdrew her arm from his, allowing her mouth at the same time
+to relax, to tremble; then tears rolled down, and leaning her elbows on
+the balustrade, she shielded her face from the curious. Mr. Ambrose
+attempted consolation; he patted her shoulder; but she showed no signs
+of admitting him, and feeling it awkward to stand beside a grief that
+was greater than his, he crossed his arms behind him, and took a turn
+along the pavement.
+
+The embankment juts out in angles here and there, like pulpits; instead
+of preachers, however, small boys occupy them, dangling string,
+dropping pebbles, or launching wads of paper for a cruise. With their
+sharp eye for eccentricity, they were inclined to think Mr. Ambrose
+awful; but the quickest witted cried “Bluebeard!” as he passed. In case
+they should proceed to tease his wife, Mr. Ambrose flourished his stick
+at them, upon which they decided that he was grotesque merely, and four
+instead of one cried “Bluebeard!” in chorus.
+
+Although Mrs. Ambrose stood quite still, much longer than is natural,
+the little boys let her be. Some one is always looking into the river
+near Waterloo Bridge; a couple will stand there talking for half an
+hour on a fine afternoon; most people, walking for pleasure,
+contemplate for three minutes; when, having compared the occasion with
+other occasions, or made some sentence, they pass on. Sometimes the
+flats and churches and hotels of Westminster are like the outlines of
+Constantinople in a mist; sometimes the river is an opulent purple,
+sometimes mud-coloured, sometimes sparkling blue like the sea. It is
+always worth while to look down and see what is happening. But this
+lady looked neither up nor down; the only thing she had seen, since she
+stood there, was a circular iridescent patch slowly floating past with
+a straw in the middle of it. The straw and the patch swam again and
+again behind the tremulous medium of a great welling tear, and the tear
+rose and fell and dropped into the river. Then there struck close upon
+her ears—
+
+Lars Porsena of Clusium
+By the nine Gods he swore—
+
+
+and then more faintly, as if the speaker had passed her on his walk—
+
+That the Great House of Tarquin
+Should suffer wrong no more.
+
+
+Yes, she knew she must go back to all that, but at present she must
+weep. Screening her face she sobbed more steadily than she had yet
+done, her shoulders rising and falling with great regularity. It was
+this figure that her husband saw when, having reached the polished
+Sphinx, having entangled himself with a man selling picture postcards,
+he turned; the stanza instantly stopped. He came up to her, laid his
+hand on her shoulder, and said, “Dearest.” His voice was supplicating.
+But she shut her face away from him, as much as to say, “You can’t
+possibly understand.”
+
+As he did not leave her, however, she had to wipe her eyes, and to
+raise them to the level of the factory chimneys on the other bank. She
+saw also the arches of Waterloo Bridge and the carts moving across
+them, like the line of animals in a shooting gallery. They were seen
+blankly, but to see anything was of course to end her weeping and begin
+to walk.
+
+“I would rather walk,” she said, her husband having hailed a cab
+already occupied by two city men.
+
+The fixity of her mood was broken by the action of walking. The
+shooting motor cars, more like spiders in the moon than terrestrial
+objects, the thundering drays, the jingling hansoms, and little black
+broughams, made her think of the world she lived in. Somewhere up there
+above the pinnacles where the smoke rose in a pointed hill, her
+children were now asking for her, and getting a soothing reply. As for
+the mass of streets, squares, and public buildings which parted them,
+she only felt at this moment how little London had done to make her
+love it, although thirty of her forty years had been spent in a street.
+She knew how to read the people who were passing her; there were the
+rich who were running to and from each others’ houses at this hour;
+there were the bigoted workers driving in a straight line to their
+offices; there were the poor who were unhappy and rightly malignant.
+Already, though there was sunlight in the haze, tattered old men and
+women were nodding off to sleep upon the seats. When one gave up seeing
+the beauty that clothed things, this was the skeleton beneath.
+
+A fine rain now made her still more dismal; vans with the odd names of
+those engaged in odd industries—Sprules, Manufacturer of Saw-dust;
+Grabb, to whom no piece of waste paper comes amiss—fell flat as a bad
+joke; bold lovers, sheltered behind one cloak, seemed to her sordid,
+past their passion; the flower women, a contented company, whose talk
+is always worth hearing, were sodden hags; the red, yellow, and blue
+flowers, whose heads were pressed together, would not blaze. Moreover,
+her husband walking with a quick rhythmic stride, jerking his free hand
+occasionally, was either a Viking or a stricken Nelson; the sea-gulls
+had changed his note.
+
+“Ridley, shall we drive? Shall we drive, Ridley?”
+
+Mrs. Ambrose had to speak sharply; by this time he was far away.
+
+The cab, by trotting steadily along the same road, soon withdrew them
+from the West End, and plunged them into London. It appeared that this
+was a great manufacturing place, where the people were engaged in
+making things, as though the West End, with its electric lamps, its
+vast plate-glass windows all shining yellow, its carefully-finished
+houses, and tiny live figures trotting on the pavement, or bowled along
+on wheels in the road, was the finished work. It appeared to her a very
+small bit of work for such an enormous factory to have made. For some
+reason it appeared to her as a small golden tassel on the edge of a
+vast black cloak.
+
+Observing that they passed no other hansom cab, but only vans and
+waggons, and that not one of the thousand men and women she saw was
+either a gentleman or a lady, Mrs. Ambrose understood that after all it
+is the ordinary thing to be poor, and that London is the city of
+innumerable poor people. Startled by this discovery and seeing herself
+pacing a circle all the days of her life round Picadilly Circus she was
+greatly relieved to pass a building put up by the London County Council
+for Night Schools.
+
+“Lord, how gloomy it is!” her husband groaned. “Poor creatures!”
+
+What with the misery for her children, the poor, and the rain, her mind
+was like a wound exposed to dry in the air.
+
+At this point the cab stopped, for it was in danger of being crushed
+like an egg-shell. The wide Embankment which had had room for
+cannonballs and squadrons, had now shrunk to a cobbled lane steaming
+with smells of malt and oil and blocked by waggons. While her husband
+read the placards pasted on the brick announcing the hours at which
+certain ships would sail for Scotland, Mrs. Ambrose did her best to
+find information. From a world exclusively occupied in feeding waggons
+with sacks, half obliterated too in a fine yellow fog, they got neither
+help nor attention. It seemed a miracle when an old man approached,
+guessed their condition, and proposed to row them out to their ship in
+the little boat which he kept moored at the bottom of a flight of
+steps. With some hesitation they trusted themselves to him, took their
+places, and were soon waving up and down upon the water, London having
+shrunk to two lines of buildings on either side of them, square
+buildings and oblong buildings placed in rows like a child’s avenue of
+bricks.
+
+The river, which had a certain amount of troubled yellow light in it,
+ran with great force; bulky barges floated down swiftly escorted by
+tugs; police boats shot past everything; the wind went with the
+current. The open rowing-boat in which they sat bobbed and curtseyed
+across the line of traffic. In mid-stream the old man stayed his hands
+upon the oars, and as the water rushed past them, remarked that once he
+had taken many passengers across, where now he took scarcely any. He
+seemed to recall an age when his boat, moored among rushes, carried
+delicate feet across to lawns at Rotherhithe.
+
+“They want bridges now,” he said, indicating the monstrous outline of
+the Tower Bridge. Mournfully Helen regarded him, who was putting water
+between her and her children. Mournfully she gazed at the ship they
+were approaching; anchored in the middle of the stream they could dimly
+read her name—_Euphrosyne_.
+
+Very dimly in the falling dusk they could see the lines of the rigging,
+the masts and the dark flag which the breeze blew out squarely behind.
+
+As the little boat sidled up to the steamer, and the old man shipped
+his oars, he remarked once more pointing above, that ships all the
+world over flew that flag the day they sailed. In the minds of both the
+passengers the blue flag appeared a sinister token, and this the moment
+for presentiments, but nevertheless they rose, gathered their things
+together, and climbed on deck.
+
+Down in the saloon of her father’s ship, Miss Rachel Vinrace, aged
+twenty-four, stood waiting her uncle and aunt nervously. To begin with,
+though nearly related, she scarcely remembered them; to go on with,
+they were elderly people, and finally, as her father’s daughter she
+must be in some sort prepared to entertain them. She looked forward to
+seeing them as civilised people generally look forward to the first
+sight of civilised people, as though they were of the nature of an
+approaching physical discomfort—a tight shoe or a draughty window. She
+was already unnaturally braced to receive them. As she occupied herself
+in laying forks severely straight by the side of knives, she heard a
+man’s voice saying gloomily:
+
+“On a dark night one would fall down these stairs head foremost,” to
+which a woman’s voice added, “And be killed.”
+
+As she spoke the last words the woman stood in the doorway. Tall,
+large-eyed, draped in purple shawls, Mrs. Ambrose was romantic and
+beautiful; not perhaps sympathetic, for her eyes looked straight and
+considered what they saw. Her face was much warmer than a Greek face;
+on the other hand it was much bolder than the face of the usual pretty
+Englishwoman.
+
+“Oh, Rachel, how d’you do,” she said, shaking hands.
+
+“How are you, dear,” said Mr. Ambrose, inclining his forehead to be
+kissed. His niece instinctively liked his thin angular body, and the
+big head with its sweeping features, and the acute, innocent eyes.
+
+“Tell Mr. Pepper,” Rachel bade the servant. Husband and wife then sat
+down on one side of the table, with their niece opposite to them.
+
+“My father told me to begin,” she explained. “He is very busy with the
+men. . . . You know Mr. Pepper?”
+
+A little man who was bent as some trees are by a gale on one side of
+them had slipped in. Nodding to Mr. Ambrose, he shook hands with Helen.
+
+“Draughts,” he said, erecting the collar of his coat.
+
+“You are still rheumatic?” asked Helen. Her voice was low and
+seductive, though she spoke absently enough, the sight of town and
+river being still present to her mind.
+
+“Once rheumatic, always rheumatic, I fear,” he replied. “To some extent
+it depends on the weather, though not so much as people are apt to
+think.”
+
+“One does not die of it, at any rate,” said Helen.
+
+“As a general rule—no,” said Mr. Pepper.
+
+“Soup, Uncle Ridley?” asked Rachel.
+
+“Thank you, dear,” he said, and, as he held his plate out, sighed
+audibly, “Ah! she’s not like her mother.” Helen was just too late in
+thumping her tumbler on the table to prevent Rachel from hearing, and
+from blushing scarlet with embarrassment.
+
+“The way servants treat flowers!” she said hastily. She drew a green
+vase with a crinkled lip towards her, and began pulling out the tight
+little chrysanthemums, which she laid on the table-cloth, arranging
+them fastidiously side by side.
+
+There was a pause.
+
+“You knew Jenkinson, didn’t you, Ambrose?” asked Mr. Pepper across the
+table.
+
+“Jenkinson of Peterhouse?”
+
+“He’s dead,” said Mr. Pepper.
+
+“Ah, dear!—I knew him—ages ago,” said Ridley. “He was the hero of the
+punt accident, you remember? A queer card. Married a young woman out of
+a tobacconist’s, and lived in the Fens—never heard what became of him.”
+
+“Drink—drugs,” said Mr. Pepper with sinister conciseness. “He left a
+commentary. Hopeless muddle, I’m told.”
+
+“The man had really great abilities,” said Ridley.
+
+“His introduction to Jellaby holds its own still,” went on Mr. Pepper,
+“which is surprising, seeing how text-books change.”
+
+“There was a theory about the planets, wasn’t there?” asked Ridley.
+
+“A screw loose somewhere, no doubt of it,” said Mr. Pepper, shaking his
+head.
+
+Now a tremor ran through the table, and a light outside swerved. At the
+same time an electric bell rang sharply again and again.
+
+“We’re off,” said Ridley.
+
+A slight but perceptible wave seemed to roll beneath the floor; then it
+sank; then another came, more perceptible. Lights slid right across the
+uncurtained window. The ship gave a loud melancholy moan.
+
+“We’re off!” said Mr. Pepper. Other ships, as sad as she, answered her
+outside on the river. The chuckling and hissing of water could be
+plainly heard, and the ship heaved so that the steward bringing plates
+had to balance himself as he drew the curtain. There was a pause.
+
+“Jenkinson of Cats—d’you still keep up with him?” asked Ambrose.
+
+“As much as one ever does,” said Mr. Pepper. “We meet annually. This
+year he has had the misfortune to lose his wife, which made it painful,
+of course.”
+
+“Very painful,” Ridley agreed.
+
+“There’s an unmarried daughter who keeps house for him, I believe, but
+it’s never the same, not at his age.”
+
+Both gentlemen nodded sagely as they carved their apples.
+
+“There was a book, wasn’t there?” Ridley enquired.
+
+“There _was_ a book, but there never _will_ be a book,” said Mr. Pepper
+with such fierceness that both ladies looked up at him.
+
+“There never will be a book, because some one else has written it for
+him,” said Mr. Pepper with considerable acidity. “That’s what comes of
+putting things off, and collecting fossils, and sticking Norman arches
+on one’s pigsties.”
+
+“I confess I sympathise,” said Ridley with a melancholy sigh. “I have a
+weakness for people who can’t begin.”
+
+“. . . The accumulations of a lifetime wasted,” continued Mr. pepper.
+“He had accumulations enough to fill a barn.”
+
+“It’s a vice that some of us escape,” said Ridley. “Our friend Miles
+has another work out to-day.”
+
+Mr. Pepper gave an acid little laugh. “According to my calculations,”
+he said, “he has produced two volumes and a half annually, which,
+allowing for time spent in the cradle and so forth, shows a commendable
+industry.”
+
+“Yes, the old Master’s saying of him has been pretty well realised,”
+said Ridley.
+
+“A way they had,” said Mr. Pepper. “You know the Bruce collection?—not
+for publication, of course.”
+
+“I should suppose not,” said Ridley significantly. “For a Divine he
+was—remarkably free.”
+
+“The Pump in Neville’s Row, for example?” enquired Mr. Pepper.
+
+“Precisely,” said Ambrose.
+
+Each of the ladies, being after the fashion of their sex, highly
+trained in promoting men’s talk without listening to it, could
+think—about the education of children, about the use of fog sirens in
+an opera—without betraying herself. Only it struck Helen that Rachel
+was perhaps too still for a hostess, and that she might have done
+something with her hands.
+
+“Perhaps—?” she said at length, upon which they rose and left, vaguely
+to the surprise of the gentlemen, who had either thought them attentive
+or had forgotten their presence.
+
+“Ah, one could tell strange stories of the old days,” they heard Ridley
+say, as he sank into his chair again. Glancing back, at the doorway,
+they saw Mr. Pepper as though he had suddenly loosened his clothes, and
+had become a vivacious and malicious old ape.
+
+Winding veils round their heads, the women walked on deck. They were
+now moving steadily down the river, passing the dark shapes of ships at
+anchor, and London was a swarm of lights with a pale yellow canopy
+drooping above it. There were the lights of the great theatres, the
+lights of the long streets, lights that indicated huge squares of
+domestic comfort, lights that hung high in air. No darkness would ever
+settle upon those lamps, as no darkness had settled upon them for
+hundreds of years. It seemed dreadful that the town should blaze for
+ever in the same spot; dreadful at least to people going away to
+adventure upon the sea, and beholding it as a circumscribed mound,
+eternally burnt, eternally scarred. From the deck of the ship the great
+city appeared a crouched and cowardly figure, a sedentary miser.
+
+Leaning over the rail, side by side, Helen said, “Won’t you be cold?”
+Rachel replied, “No. . . . How beautiful!” she added a moment later.
+Very little was visible—a few masts, a shadow of land here, a line of
+brilliant windows there. They tried to make head against the wind.
+
+“It blows—it blows!” gasped Rachel, the words rammed down her throat.
+Struggling by her side, Helen was suddenly overcome by the spirit of
+movement, and pushed along with her skirts wrapping themselves round
+her knees, and both arms to her hair. But slowly the intoxication of
+movement died down, and the wind became rough and chilly. They looked
+through a chink in the blind and saw that long cigars were being smoked
+in the dining-room; they saw Mr. Ambrose throw himself violently
+against the back of his chair, while Mr. Pepper crinkled his cheeks as
+though they had been cut in wood. The ghost of a roar of laughter came
+out to them, and was drowned at once in the wind. In the dry
+yellow-lighted room Mr. Pepper and Mr. Ambrose were oblivious of all
+tumult; they were in Cambridge, and it was probably about the year
+1875.
+
+“They’re old friends,” said Helen, smiling at the sight. “Now, is there
+a room for us to sit in?”
+
+Rachel opened a door.
+
+“It’s more like a landing than a room,” she said. Indeed it had nothing
+of the shut stationary character of a room on shore. A table was rooted
+in the middle, and seats were stuck to the sides. Happily the tropical
+suns had bleached the tapestries to a faded blue-green colour, and the
+mirror with its frame of shells, the work of the steward’s love, when
+the time hung heavy in the southern seas, was quaint rather than ugly.
+Twisted shells with red lips like unicorn’s horns ornamented the
+mantelpiece, which was draped by a pall of purple plush from which
+depended a certain number of balls. Two windows opened on to the deck,
+and the light beating through them when the ship was roasted on the
+Amazons had turned the prints on the opposite wall to a faint yellow
+colour, so that “The Coliseum” was scarcely to be distinguished from
+Queen Alexandra playing with her Spaniels. A pair of wicker arm-chairs
+by the fireside invited one to warm one’s hands at a grate full of gilt
+shavings; a great lamp swung above the table—the kind of lamp which
+makes the light of civilisation across dark fields to one walking in
+the country.
+
+“It’s odd that every one should be an old friend of Mr. Pepper’s,”
+Rachel started nervously, for the situation was difficult, the room
+cold, and Helen curiously silent.
+
+“I suppose you take him for granted?” said her aunt.
+
+“He’s like this,” said Rachel, lighting on a fossilised fish in a
+basin, and displaying it.
+
+“I expect you’re too severe,” Helen remarked.
+
+Rachel immediately tried to qualify what she had said against her
+belief.
+
+“I don’t really know him,” she said, and took refuge in facts,
+believing that elderly people really like them better than feelings.
+She produced what she knew of William Pepper. She told Helen that he
+always called on Sundays when they were at home; he knew about a great
+many things—about mathematics, history, Greek, zoology, economics, and
+the Icelandic Sagas. He had turned Persian poetry into English prose,
+and English prose into Greek iambics; he was an authority upon coins;
+and—one other thing—oh yes, she thought it was vehicular traffic.
+
+He was here either to get things out of the sea, or to write upon the
+probable course of Odysseus, for Greek after all was his hobby.
+
+“I’ve got all his pamphlets,” she said. “Little pamphlets. Little
+yellow books.” It did not appear that she had read them.
+
+“Has he ever been in love?” asked Helen, who had chosen a seat.
+
+This was unexpectedly to the point.
+
+“His heart’s a piece of old shoe leather,” Rachel declared, dropping
+the fish. But when questioned she had to own that she had never asked
+him.
+
+“I shall ask him,” said Helen.
+
+“The last time I saw you, you were buying a piano,” she continued. “Do
+you remember—the piano, the room in the attic, and the great plants
+with the prickles?”
+
+“Yes, and my aunts said the piano would come through the floor, but at
+their age one wouldn’t mind being killed in the night?” she enquired.
+
+“I heard from Aunt Bessie not long ago,” Helen stated. “She is afraid
+that you will spoil your arms if you insist upon so much practising.”
+
+“The muscles of the forearm—and then one won’t marry?”
+
+“She didn’t put it quite like that,” replied Mrs. Ambrose.
+
+“Oh, no—of course she wouldn’t,” said Rachel with a sigh.
+
+Helen looked at her. Her face was weak rather than decided, saved from
+insipidity by the large enquiring eyes; denied beauty, now that she was
+sheltered indoors, by the lack of colour and definite outline.
+Moreover, a hesitation in speaking, or rather a tendency to use the
+wrong words, made her seem more than normally incompetent for her
+years. Mrs. Ambrose, who had been speaking much at random, now
+reflected that she certainly did not look forward to the intimacy of
+three or four weeks on board ship which was threatened. Women of her
+own age usually boring her, she supposed that girls would be worse. She
+glanced at Rachel again. Yes! how clear it was that she would be
+vacillating, emotional, and when you said something to her it would
+make no more lasting impression than the stroke of a stick upon water.
+There was nothing to take hold of in girls—nothing hard, permanent,
+satisfactory. Did Willoughby say three weeks, or did he say four? She
+tried to remember.
+
+At this point, however, the door opened and a tall burly man entered
+the room, came forward and shook Helen’s hand with an emotional kind of
+heartiness, Willoughby himself, Rachel’s father, Helen’s
+brother-in-law. As a great deal of flesh would have been needed to make
+a fat man of him, his frame being so large, he was not fat; his face
+was a large framework too, looking, by the smallness of the features
+and the glow in the hollow of the cheek, more fitted to withstand
+assaults of the weather than to express sentiments and emotions, or to
+respond to them in others.
+
+“It is a great pleasure that you have come,” he said, “for both of us.”
+
+Rachel murmured in obedience to her father’s glance.
+
+“We’ll do our best to make you comfortable. And Ridley. We think it an
+honour to have charge of him. Pepper’ll have some one to contradict
+him—which I daren’t do. You find this child grown, don’t you? A young
+woman, eh?”
+
+Still holding Helen’s hand he drew his arm round Rachel’s shoulder,
+thus making them come uncomfortably close, but Helen forbore to look.
+
+“You think she does us credit?” he asked.
+
+“Oh yes,” said Helen.
+
+“Because we expect great things of her,” he continued, squeezing his
+daughter’s arm and releasing her. “But about you now.” They sat down
+side by side on the little sofa. “Did you leave the children well?
+They’ll be ready for school, I suppose. Do they take after you or
+Ambrose? They’ve got good heads on their shoulders, I’ll be bound?”
+
+At this Helen immediately brightened more than she had yet done, and
+explained that her son was six and her daughter ten. Everybody said
+that her boy was like her and her girl like Ridley. As for brains, they
+were quick brats, she thought, and modestly she ventured on a little
+story about her son,—how left alone for a minute he had taken the pat
+of butter in his fingers, run across the room with it, and put it on
+the fire—merely for the fun of the thing, a feeling which she could
+understand.
+
+“And you had to show the young rascal that these tricks wouldn’t do,
+eh?”
+
+“A child of six? I don’t think they matter.”
+
+“I’m an old-fashioned father.”
+
+“Nonsense, Willoughby; Rachel knows better.”
+
+Much as Willoughby would doubtless have liked his daughter to praise
+him she did not; her eyes were unreflecting as water, her fingers still
+toying with the fossilised fish, her mind absent. The elder people went
+on to speak of arrangements that could be made for Ridley’s comfort—a
+table placed where he couldn’t help looking at the sea, far from
+boilers, at the same time sheltered from the view of people passing.
+Unless he made this a holiday, when his books were all packed, he would
+have no holiday whatever; for out at Santa Marina Helen knew, by
+experience, that he would work all day; his boxes, she said, were
+packed with books.
+
+“Leave it to me—leave it to me!” said Willoughby, obviously intending
+to do much more than she asked of him. But Ridley and Mr. Pepper were
+heard fumbling at the door.
+
+“How are you, Vinrace?” said Ridley, extending a limp hand as he came
+in, as though the meeting were melancholy to both, but on the whole
+more so to him.
+
+Willoughby preserved his heartiness, tempered by respect. For the
+moment nothing was said.
+
+“We looked in and saw you laughing,” Helen remarked. “Mr. Pepper had
+just told a very good story.”
+
+“Pish. None of the stories were good,” said her husband peevishly.
+
+“Still a severe judge, Ridley?” enquired Mr. Vinrace.
+
+“We bored you so that you left,” said Ridley, speaking directly to his
+wife.
+
+As this was quite true Helen did not attempt to deny it, and her next
+remark, “But didn’t they improve after we’d gone?” was unfortunate, for
+her husband answered with a droop of his shoulders, “If possible they
+got worse.”
+
+The situation was now one of considerable discomfort for every one
+concerned, as was proved by a long interval of constraint and silence.
+Mr. Pepper, indeed, created a diversion of a kind by leaping on to his
+seat, both feet tucked under him, with the action of a spinster who
+detects a mouse, as the draught struck at his ankles. Drawn up there,
+sucking at his cigar, with his arms encircling his knees, he looked
+like the image of Buddha, and from this elevation began a discourse,
+addressed to nobody, for nobody had called for it, upon the unplumbed
+depths of ocean. He professed himself surprised to learn that although
+Mr. Vinrace possessed ten ships, regularly plying between London and
+Buenos Aires, not one of them was bidden to investigate the great white
+monsters of the lower waters.
+
+“No, no,” laughed Willoughby, “the monsters of the earth are too many
+for me!”
+
+Rachel was heard to sigh, “Poor little goats!”
+
+“If it weren’t for the goats there’d be no music, my dear; music
+depends upon goats,” said her father rather sharply, and Mr. Pepper
+went on to describe the white, hairless, blind monsters lying curled on
+the ridges of sand at the bottom of the sea, which would explode if you
+brought them to the surface, their sides bursting asunder and
+scattering entrails to the winds when released from pressure, with
+considerable detail and with such show of knowledge, that Ridley was
+disgusted, and begged him to stop.
+
+From all this Helen drew her own conclusions, which were gloomy enough.
+Pepper was a bore; Rachel was an unlicked girl, no doubt prolific of
+confidences, the very first of which would be: “You see, I don’t get on
+with my father.” Willoughby, as usual, loved his business and built his
+Empire, and between them all she would be considerably bored. Being a
+woman of action, however, she rose, and said that for her part she was
+going to bed. At the door she glanced back instinctively at Rachel,
+expecting that as two of the same sex they would leave the room
+together. Rachel rose, looked vaguely into Helen’s face, and remarked
+with her slight stammer, “I’m going out to t-t-triumph in the wind.”
+
+Mrs. Ambrose’s worst suspicions were confirmed; she went down the
+passage lurching from side to side, and fending off the wall now with
+her right arm, now with her left; at each lurch she exclaimed
+emphatically, “Damn!”
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER II
+
+
+Uncomfortable as the night, with its rocking movement, and salt smells,
+may have been, and in one case undoubtedly was, for Mr. Pepper had
+insufficient clothes upon his bed, the breakfast next morning wore a
+kind of beauty. The voyage had begun, and had begun happily with a soft
+blue sky, and a calm sea. The sense of untapped resources, things to
+say as yet unsaid, made the hour significant, so that in future years
+the entire journey perhaps would be represented by this one scene, with
+the sound of sirens hooting in the river the night before, somehow
+mixing in.
+
+The table was cheerful with apples and bread and eggs. Helen handed
+Willoughby the butter, and as she did so cast her eye on him and
+reflected, “And she married you, and she was happy, I suppose.”
+
+She went off on a familiar train of thought, leading on to all kinds of
+well-known reflections, from the old wonder, why Theresa had married
+Willoughby?
+
+“Of course, one sees all that,” she thought, meaning that one sees that
+he is big and burly, and has a great booming voice, and a fist and a
+will of his own; “but—” here she slipped into a fine analysis of him
+which is best represented by one word, “sentimental,” by which she
+meant that he was never simple and honest about his feelings. For
+example, he seldom spoke of the dead, but kept anniversaries with
+singular pomp. She suspected him of nameless atrocities with regard to
+his daughter, as indeed she had always suspected him of bullying his
+wife. Naturally she fell to comparing her own fortunes with the
+fortunes of her friend, for Willoughby’s wife had been perhaps the one
+woman Helen called friend, and this comparison often made the staple of
+their talk. Ridley was a scholar, and Willoughby was a man of business.
+Ridley was bringing out the third volume of Pindar when Willoughby was
+launching his first ship. They built a new factory the very year the
+commentary on Aristotle—was it?—appeared at the University Press. “And
+Rachel,” she looked at her, meaning, no doubt, to decide the argument,
+which was otherwise too evenly balanced, by declaring that Rachel was
+not comparable to her own children. “She really might be six years
+old,” was all she said, however, this judgment referring to the smooth
+unmarked outline of the girl’s face, and not condemning her otherwise,
+for if Rachel were ever to think, feel, laugh, or express herself,
+instead of dropping milk from a height as though to see what kind of
+drops it made, she might be interesting though never exactly pretty.
+She was like her mother, as the image in a pool on a still summer’s day
+is like the vivid flushed face that hangs over it.
+
+Meanwhile Helen herself was under examination, though not from either
+of her victims. Mr. Pepper considered her; and his meditations, carried
+on while he cut his toast into bars and neatly buttered them, took him
+through a considerable stretch of autobiography. One of his penetrating
+glances assured him that he was right last night in judging that Helen
+was beautiful. Blandly he passed her the jam. She was talking nonsense,
+but not worse nonsense than people usually do talk at breakfast, the
+cerebral circulation, as he knew to his cost, being apt to give trouble
+at that hour. He went on saying “No” to her, on principle, for he never
+yielded to a woman on account of her sex. And here, dropping his eyes
+to his plate, he became autobiographical. He had not married himself
+for the sufficient reason that he had never met a woman who commanded
+his respect. Condemned to pass the susceptible years of youth in a
+railway station in Bombay, he had seen only coloured women, military
+women, official women; and his ideal was a woman who could read Greek,
+if not Persian, was irreproachably fair in the face, and able to
+understand the small things he let fall while undressing. As it was he
+had contracted habits of which he was not in the least ashamed. Certain
+odd minutes every day went to learning things by heart; he never took a
+ticket without noting the number; he devoted January to Petronius,
+February to Catullus, March to the Etruscan vases perhaps; anyhow he
+had done good work in India, and there was nothing to regret in his
+life except the fundamental defects which no wise man regrets, when the
+present is still his. So concluding he looked up suddenly and smiled.
+Rachel caught his eye.
+
+“And now you’ve chewed something thirty-seven times, I suppose?” she
+thought, but said politely aloud, “Are your legs troubling you to-day,
+Mr. Pepper?”
+
+“My shoulder blades?” he asked, shifting them painfully. “Beauty has no
+effect upon uric acid that I’m aware of,” he sighed, contemplating the
+round pane opposite, through which the sky and sea showed blue. At the
+same time he took a little parchment volume from his pocket and laid it
+on the table. As it was clear that he invited comment, Helen asked him
+the name of it. She got the name; but she got also a disquisition upon
+the proper method of making roads. Beginning with the Greeks, who had,
+he said, many difficulties to contend with, he continued with the
+Romans, passed to England and the right method, which speedily became
+the wrong method, and wound up with such a fury of denunciation
+directed against the road-makers of the present day in general, and the
+road-makers of Richmond Park in particular, where Mr. Pepper had the
+habit of cycling every morning before breakfast, that the spoons fairly
+jingled against the coffee cups, and the insides of at least four rolls
+mounted in a heap beside Mr. Pepper’s plate.
+
+“Pebbles!” he concluded, viciously dropping another bread pellet upon
+the heap. “The roads of England are mended with pebbles! ‘With the
+first heavy rainfall,’ I’ve told ’em, ‘your road will be a swamp.’
+Again and again my words have proved true. But d’you suppose they
+listen to me when I tell ’em so, when I point out the consequences, the
+consequences to the public purse, when I recommend ’em to read
+Coryphaeus? No, Mrs. Ambrose, you will form no just opinion of the
+stupidity of mankind until you have sat upon a Borough Council!” The
+little man fixed her with a glance of ferocious energy.
+
+“I have had servants,” said Mrs. Ambrose, concentrating her gaze. “At
+this moment I have a nurse. She’s a good woman as they go, but she’s
+determined to make my children pray. So far, owing to great care on my
+part, they think of God as a kind of walrus; but now that my back’s
+turned—Ridley,” she demanded, swinging round upon her husband, “what
+shall we do if we find them saying the Lord’s Prayer when we get home
+again?”
+
+Ridley made the sound which is represented by “Tush.” But Willoughby,
+whose discomfort as he listened was manifested by a slight movement
+rocking of his body, said awkwardly, “Oh, surely, Helen, a little
+religion hurts nobody.”
+
+“I would rather my children told lies,” she replied, and while
+Willoughby was reflecting that his sister-in-law was even more
+eccentric than he remembered, pushed her chair back and swept upstairs.
+In a second they heard her calling back, “Oh, look! We’re out at sea!”
+
+They followed her on to the deck. All the smoke and the houses had
+disappeared, and the ship was out in a wide space of sea very fresh and
+clear though pale in the early light. They had left London sitting on
+its mud. A very thin line of shadow tapered on the horizon, scarcely
+thick enough to stand the burden of Paris, which nevertheless rested
+upon it. They were free of roads, free of mankind, and the same
+exhilaration at their freedom ran through them all. The ship was making
+her way steadily through small waves which slapped her and then fizzled
+like effervescing water, leaving a little border of bubbles and foam on
+either side. The colourless October sky above was thinly clouded as if
+by the trail of wood-fire smoke, and the air was wonderfully salt and
+brisk. Indeed it was too cold to stand still. Mrs. Ambrose drew her arm
+within her husband’s, and as they moved off it could be seen from the
+way in which her sloping cheek turned up to his that she had something
+private to communicate. They went a few paces and Rachel saw them kiss.
+
+Down she looked into the depth of the sea. While it was slightly
+disturbed on the surface by the passage of the _Euphrosyne_, beneath it
+was green and dim, and it grew dimmer and dimmer until the sand at the
+bottom was only a pale blur. One could scarcely see the black ribs of
+wrecked ships, or the spiral towers made by the burrowings of great
+eels, or the smooth green-sided monsters who came by flickering this
+way and that.
+
+—“And, Rachel, if any one wants me, I’m busy till one,” said her
+father, enforcing his words as he often did, when he spoke to his
+daughter, by a smart blow upon the shoulder.
+
+“Until one,” he repeated. “And you’ll find yourself some employment,
+eh? Scales, French, a little German, eh? There’s Mr. Pepper who knows
+more about separable verbs than any man in Europe, eh?” and he went off
+laughing. Rachel laughed, too, as indeed she had laughed ever since she
+could remember, without thinking it funny, but because she admired her
+father.
+
+But just as she was turning with a view perhaps to finding some
+employment, she was intercepted by a woman who was so broad and so
+thick that to be intercepted by her was inevitable. The discreet
+tentative way in which she moved, together with her sober black dress,
+showed that she belonged to the lower orders; nevertheless she took up
+a rock-like position, looking about her to see that no gentry were near
+before she delivered her message, which had reference to the state of
+the sheets, and was of the utmost gravity.
+
+“How ever we’re to get through this voyage, Miss Rachel, I really can’t
+tell,” she began with a shake of her head. “There’s only just sheets
+enough to go round, and the master’s has a rotten place you could put
+your fingers through. And the counterpanes. Did you notice the
+counterpanes? I thought to myself a poor person would have been ashamed
+of them. The one I gave Mr. Pepper was hardly fit to cover a dog. . . .
+No, Miss Rachel, they could _not_ be mended; they’re only fit for dust
+sheets. Why, if one sewed one’s finger to the bone, one would have
+one’s work undone the next time they went to the laundry.”
+
+Her voice in its indignation wavered as if tears were near.
+
+There was nothing for it but to descend and inspect a large pile of
+linen heaped upon a table. Mrs. Chailey handled the sheets as if she
+knew each by name, character, and constitution. Some had yellow stains,
+others had places where the threads made long ladders; but to the
+ordinary eye they looked much as sheets usually do look, very chill,
+white, cold, and irreproachably clean.
+
+Suddenly Mrs. Chailey, turning from the subject of sheets, dismissing
+them entirely, clenched her fists on the top of them, and proclaimed,
+“And you couldn’t ask a living creature to sit where I sit!”
+
+Mrs. Chailey was expected to sit in a cabin which was large enough, but
+too near the boilers, so that after five minutes she could hear her
+heart “go,” she complained, putting her hand above it, which was a
+state of things that Mrs. Vinrace, Rachel’s mother, would never have
+dreamt of inflicting—Mrs. Vinrace, who knew every sheet in her house,
+and expected of every one the best they could do, but no more.
+
+It was the easiest thing in the world to grant another room, and the
+problem of sheets simultaneously and miraculously solved itself, the
+spots and ladders not being past cure after all, but—
+
+“Lies! Lies! Lies!” exclaimed the mistress indignantly, as she ran up
+on to the deck. “What’s the use of telling me lies?”
+
+In her anger that a woman of fifty should behave like a child and come
+cringing to a girl because she wanted to sit where she had not leave to
+sit, she did not think of the particular case, and, unpacking her
+music, soon forgot all about the old woman and her sheets.
+
+Mrs. Chailey folded her sheets, but her expression testified to
+flatness within. The world no longer cared about her, and a ship was
+not a home. When the lamps were lit yesterday, and the sailors went
+tumbling above her head, she had cried; she would cry this evening; she
+would cry to-morrow. It was not home. Meanwhile she arranged her
+ornaments in the room which she had won too easily. They were strange
+ornaments to bring on a sea voyage—china pugs, tea-sets in miniature,
+cups stamped floridly with the arms of the city of Bristol, hair-pin
+boxes crusted with shamrock, antelopes’ heads in coloured plaster,
+together with a multitude of tiny photographs, representing downright
+workmen in their Sunday best, and women holding white babies. But there
+was one portrait in a gilt frame, for which a nail was needed, and
+before she sought it Mrs. Chailey put on her spectacles and read what
+was written on a slip of paper at the back:
+
+“This picture of her mistress is given to Emma Chailey by Willoughby
+Vinrace in gratitude for thirty years of devoted service.”
+
+Tears obliterated the words and the head of the nail.
+
+“So long as I can do something for your family,” she was saying, as she
+hammered at it, when a voice called melodiously in the passage:
+
+“Mrs. Chailey! Mrs. Chailey!”
+
+Chailey instantly tidied her dress, composed her face, and opened the
+door.
+
+“I’m in a fix,” said Mrs. Ambrose, who was flushed and out of breath.
+“You know what gentlemen are. The chairs too high—the tables too
+low—there’s six inches between the floor and the door. What I want’s a
+hammer, an old quilt, and have you such a thing as a kitchen table?
+Anyhow, between us”—she now flung open the door of her husband’s
+sitting room, and revealed Ridley pacing up and down, his forehead all
+wrinkled, and the collar of his coat turned up.
+
+“It’s as though they’d taken pains to torment me!” he cried, stopping
+dead. “Did I come on this voyage in order to catch rheumatism and
+pneumonia? Really one might have credited Vinrace with more sense. My
+dear,” Helen was on her knees under a table, “you are only making
+yourself untidy, and we had much better recognise the fact that we are
+condemned to six weeks of unspeakable misery. To come at all was the
+height of folly, but now that we are here I suppose that I can face it
+like a man. My diseases of course will be increased—I feel already
+worse than I did yesterday, but we’ve only ourselves to thank, and the
+children happily—”
+
+“Move! Move! Move!” cried Helen, chasing him from corner to corner with
+a chair as though he were an errant hen. “Out of the way, Ridley, and
+in half an hour you’ll find it ready.”
+
+She turned him out of the room, and they could hear him groaning and
+swearing as he went along the passage.
+
+“I daresay he isn’t very strong,” said Mrs. Chailey, looking at Mrs.
+Ambrose compassionately, as she helped to shift and carry.
+
+“It’s books,” sighed Helen, lifting an armful of sad volumes from the
+floor to the shelf. “Greek from morning to night. If ever Miss Rachel
+marries, Chailey, pray that she may marry a man who doesn’t know his
+ABC.”
+
+The preliminary discomforts and harshnesses, which generally make the
+first days of a sea voyage so cheerless and trying to the temper, being
+somehow lived through, the succeeding days passed pleasantly enough.
+October was well advanced, but steadily burning with a warmth that made
+the early months of the summer appear very young and capricious. Great
+tracts of the earth lay now beneath the autumn sun, and the whole of
+England, from the bald moors to the Cornish rocks, was lit up from dawn
+to sunset, and showed in stretches of yellow, green, and purple. Under
+that illumination even the roofs of the great towns glittered. In
+thousands of small gardens, millions of dark-red flowers were blooming,
+until the old ladies who had tended them so carefully came down the
+paths with their scissors, snipped through their juicy stalks, and laid
+them upon cold stone ledges in the village church. Innumerable parties
+of picnickers coming home at sunset cried, “Was there ever such a day
+as this?” “It’s you,” the young men whispered; “Oh, it’s you,” the
+young women replied. All old people and many sick people were drawn,
+were it only for a foot or two, into the open air, and prognosticated
+pleasant things about the course of the world. As for the confidences
+and expressions of love that were heard not only in cornfields but in
+lamplit rooms, where the windows opened on the garden, and men with
+cigars kissed women with grey hairs, they were not to be counted. Some
+said that the sky was an emblem of the life to come. Long-tailed birds
+clattered and screamed, and crossed from wood to wood, with golden eyes
+in their plumage.
+
+But while all this went on by land, very few people thought about the
+sea. They took it for granted that the sea was calm; and there was no
+need, as there is in many houses when the creeper taps on the bedroom
+windows, for the couples to murmur before they kiss, “Think of the
+ships to-night,” or “Thank Heaven, I’m not the man in the lighthouse!”
+For all they imagined, the ships when they vanished on the sky-line
+dissolved, like snow in water. The grown-up view, indeed, was not much
+clearer than the view of the little creatures in bathing drawers who
+were trotting in to the foam all along the coasts of England, and
+scooping up buckets full of water. They saw white sails or tufts of
+smoke pass across the horizon, and if you had said that these were
+waterspouts, or the petals of white sea flowers, they would have
+agreed.
+
+The people in ships, however, took an equally singular view of England.
+Not only did it appear to them to be an island, and a very small
+island, but it was a shrinking island in which people were imprisoned.
+One figured them first swarming about like aimless ants, and almost
+pressing each other over the edge; and then, as the ship withdrew, one
+figured them making a vain clamour, which, being unheard, either
+ceased, or rose into a brawl. Finally, when the ship was out of sight
+of land, it became plain that the people of England were completely
+mute. The disease attacked other parts of the earth; Europe shrank,
+Asia shrank, Africa and America shrank, until it seemed doubtful
+whether the ship would ever run against any of those wrinkled little
+rocks again. But, on the other hand, an immense dignity had descended
+upon her; she was an inhabitant of the great world, which has so few
+inhabitants, travelling all day across an empty universe, with veils
+drawn before her and behind. She was more lonely than the caravan
+crossing the desert; she was infinitely more mysterious, moving by her
+own power and sustained by her own resources. The sea might give her
+death or some unexampled joy, and none would know of it. She was a
+bride going forth to her husband, a virgin unknown of men; in her vigor
+and purity she might be likened to all beautiful things, for as a ship
+she had a life of her own.
+
+Indeed if they had not been blessed in their weather, one blue day
+being bowled up after another, smooth, round, and flawless, Mrs.
+Ambrose would have found it very dull. As it was, she had her
+embroidery frame set up on deck, with a little table by her side on
+which lay open a black volume of philosophy. She chose a thread from
+the vari-coloured tangle that lay in her lap, and sewed red into the
+bark of a tree, or yellow into the river torrent. She was working at a
+great design of a tropical river running through a tropical forest,
+where spotted deer would eventually browse upon masses of fruit,
+bananas, oranges, and giant pomegranates, while a troop of naked
+natives whirled darts into the air. Between the stitches she looked to
+one side and read a sentence about the Reality of Matter, or the Nature
+of Good. Round her men in blue jerseys knelt and scrubbed the boards,
+or leant over the rails and whistled, and not far off Mr. Pepper sat
+cutting up roots with a penknife. The rest were occupied in other parts
+of the ship: Ridley at his Greek—he had never found quarters more to
+his liking; Willoughby at his documents, for he used a voyage to work
+off arrears of business; and Rachel—Helen, between her sentences of
+philosophy, wondered sometimes what Rachel _did_ do with herself? She
+meant vaguely to go and see. They had scarcely spoken two words to each
+other since that first evening; they were polite when they met, but
+there had been no confidence of any kind. Rachel seemed to get on very
+well with her father—much better, Helen thought, than she ought to—and
+was as ready to let Helen alone as Helen was to let her alone.
+
+At that moment Rachel was sitting in her room doing absolutely nothing.
+When the ship was full this apartment bore some magnificent title and
+was the resort of elderly sea-sick ladies who left the deck to their
+youngsters. By virtue of the piano, and a mess of books on the floor,
+Rachel considered it her room, and there she would sit for hours
+playing very difficult music, reading a little German, or a little
+English when the mood took her, and doing—as at this moment—absolutely
+nothing.
+
+The way she had been educated, joined to a fine natural indolence, was
+of course partly the reason of it, for she had been educated as the
+majority of well-to-do girls in the last part of the nineteenth century
+were educated. Kindly doctors and gentle old professors had taught her
+the rudiments of about ten different branches of knowledge, but they
+would as soon have forced her to go through one piece of drudgery
+thoroughly as they would have told her that her hands were dirty. The
+one hour or the two hours weekly passed very pleasantly, partly owing
+to the other pupils, partly to the fact that the window looked upon the
+back of a shop, where figures appeared against the red windows in
+winter, partly to the accidents that are bound to happen when more than
+two people are in the same room together. But there was no subject in
+the world which she knew accurately. Her mind was in the state of an
+intelligent man’s in the beginning of the reign of Queen Elizabeth; she
+would believe practically anything she was told, invent reasons for
+anything she said. The shape of the earth, the history of the world,
+how trains worked, or money was invested, what laws were in force,
+which people wanted what, and why they wanted it, the most elementary
+idea of a system in modern life—none of this had been imparted to her
+by any of her professors or mistresses. But this system of education
+had one great advantage. It did not teach anything, but it put no
+obstacle in the way of any real talent that the pupil might chance to
+have. Rachel, being musical, was allowed to learn nothing but music;
+she became a fanatic about music. All the energies that might have gone
+into languages, science, or literature, that might have made her
+friends, or shown her the world, poured straight into music. Finding
+her teachers inadequate, she had practically taught herself. At the age
+of twenty-four she knew as much about music as most people do when they
+are thirty; and could play as well as nature allowed her to, which, as
+became daily more obvious, was a really generous allowance. If this one
+definite gift was surrounded by dreams and ideas of the most
+extravagant and foolish description, no one was any the wiser.
+
+Her education being thus ordinary, her circumstances were no more out
+of the common. She was an only child and had never been bullied and
+laughed at by brothers and sisters. Her mother having died when she was
+eleven, two aunts, the sisters of her father, brought her up, and they
+lived for the sake of the air in a comfortable house in Richmond. She
+was of course brought up with excessive care, which as a child was for
+her health; as a girl and a young woman was for what it seems almost
+crude to call her morals. Until quite lately she had been completely
+ignorant that for women such things existed. She groped for knowledge
+in old books, and found it in repulsive chunks, but she did not
+naturally care for books and thus never troubled her head about the
+censorship which was exercised first by her aunts, later by her father.
+Friends might have told her things, but she had few of her own
+age,—Richmond being an awkward place to reach,—and, as it happened, the
+only girl she knew well was a religious zealot, who in the fervour of
+intimacy talked about God, and the best ways of taking up one’s cross,
+a topic only fitfully interesting to one whose mind reached other
+stages at other times.
+
+But lying in her chair, with one hand behind her head, the other
+grasping the knob on the arm, she was clearly following her thoughts
+intently. Her education left her abundant time for thinking. Her eyes
+were fixed so steadily upon a ball on the rail of the ship that she
+would have been startled and annoyed if anything had chanced to obscure
+it for a second. She had begun her meditations with a shout of
+laughter, caused by the following translation from _Tristan_:
+
+In shrinking trepidation
+His shame he seems to hide
+While to the king his relation
+He brings the corpse-like Bride.
+Seems it so senseless what I say?
+
+
+She cried that it did, and threw down the book. Next she had picked up
+_Cowper’s Letters_, the classic prescribed by her father which had
+bored her, so that one sentence chancing to say something about the
+smell of broom in his garden, she had thereupon seen the little hall at
+Richmond laden with flowers on the day of her mother’s funeral,
+smelling so strong that now any flower-scent brought back the sickly
+horrible sensation; and so from one scene she passed, half-hearing,
+half-seeing, to another. She saw her Aunt Lucy arranging flowers in the
+drawing-room.
+
+“Aunt Lucy,” she volunteered, “I don’t like the smell of broom; it
+reminds me of funerals.”
+
+“Nonsense, Rachel,” Aunt Lucy replied; “don’t say such foolish things,
+dear. I always think it a particularly cheerful plant.”
+
+Lying in the hot sun her mind was fixed upon the characters of her
+aunts, their views, and the way they lived. Indeed this was a subject
+that lasted her hundreds of morning walks round Richmond Park, and
+blotted out the trees and the people and the deer. Why did they do the
+things they did, and what did they feel, and what was it all about?
+Again she heard Aunt Lucy talking to Aunt Eleanor. She had been that
+morning to take up the character of a servant, “And, of course, at
+half-past ten in the morning one expects to find the housemaid brushing
+the stairs.” How odd! How unspeakably odd! But she could not explain to
+herself why suddenly as her aunt spoke the whole system in which they
+lived had appeared before her eyes as something quite unfamiliar and
+inexplicable, and themselves as chairs or umbrellas dropped about here
+and there without any reason. She could only say with her slight
+stammer, “Are you f-f-fond of Aunt Eleanor, Aunt Lucy?” to which her
+aunt replied, with her nervous hen-like twitter of a laugh, “My dear
+child, what questions you do ask!”
+
+“How fond? Very fond!” Rachel pursued.
+
+“I can’t say I’ve ever thought ‘how,’” said Miss Vinrace. “If one cares
+one doesn’t think ‘how,’ Rachel,” which was aimed at the niece who had
+never yet “come” to her aunts as cordially as they wished.
+
+“But you know I care for you, don’t you, dear, because you’re your
+mother’s daughter, if for no other reason, and there _are_ plenty of
+other reasons”—and she leant over and kissed her with some emotion, and
+the argument was spilt irretrievably about the place like a bucket of
+milk.
+
+By these means Rachel reached that stage in thinking, if thinking it
+can be called, when the eyes are intent upon a ball or a knob and the
+lips cease to move. Her efforts to come to an understanding had only
+hurt her aunt’s feelings, and the conclusion must be that it is better
+not to try. To feel anything strongly was to create an abyss between
+oneself and others who feel strongly perhaps but differently. It was
+far better to play the piano and forget all the rest. The conclusion
+was very welcome. Let these odd men and women—her aunts, the Hunts,
+Ridley, Helen, Mr. Pepper, and the rest—be symbols,—featureless but
+dignified, symbols of age, of youth, of motherhood, of learning, and
+beautiful often as people upon the stage are beautiful. It appeared
+that nobody ever said a thing they meant, or ever talked of a feeling
+they felt, but that was what music was for. Reality dwelling in what
+one saw and felt, but did not talk about, one could accept a system in
+which things went round and round quite satisfactorily to other people,
+without often troubling to think about it, except as something
+superficially strange. Absorbed by her music she accepted her lot very
+complacently, blazing into indignation perhaps once a fortnight, and
+subsiding as she subsided now. Inextricably mixed in dreamy confusion,
+her mind seemed to enter into communion, to be delightfully expanded
+and combined with the spirit of the whitish boards on deck, with the
+spirit of the sea, with the spirit of Beethoven Op. 112, even with the
+spirit of poor William Cowper there at Olney. Like a ball of
+thistledown it kissed the sea, rose, kissed it again, and thus rising
+and kissing passed finally out of sight. The rising and falling of the
+ball of thistledown was represented by the sudden droop forward of her
+own head, and when it passed out of sight she was asleep.
+
+Ten minutes later Mrs. Ambrose opened the door and looked at her. It
+did not surprise her to find that this was the way in which Rachel
+passed her mornings. She glanced round the room at the piano, at the
+books, at the general mess. In the first place she considered Rachel
+aesthetically; lying unprotected she looked somehow like a victim
+dropped from the claws of a bird of prey, but considered as a woman, a
+young woman of twenty-four, the sight gave rise to reflections. Mrs.
+Ambrose stood thinking for at least two minutes. She then smiled,
+turned noiselessly away and went, lest the sleeper should waken, and
+there should be the awkwardness of speech between them.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER III
+
+
+Early next morning there was a sound as of chains being drawn roughly
+overhead; the steady heart of the _Euphrosyne_ slowly ceased to beat;
+and Helen, poking her nose above deck, saw a stationary castle upon a
+stationary hill. They had dropped anchor in the mouth of the Tagus, and
+instead of cleaving new waves perpetually, the same waves kept
+returning and washing against the sides of the ship.
+
+As soon as breakfast was done, Willoughby disappeared over the vessel’s
+side, carrying a brown leather case, shouting over his shoulder that
+every one was to mind and behave themselves, for he would be kept in
+Lisbon doing business until five o’clock that afternoon.
+
+At about that hour he reappeared, carrying his case, professing himself
+tired, bothered, hungry, thirsty, cold, and in immediate need of his
+tea. Rubbing his hands, he told them the adventures of the day: how he
+had come upon poor old Jackson combing his moustache before the glass
+in the office, little expecting his descent, had put him through such a
+morning’s work as seldom came his way; then treated him to a lunch of
+champagne and ortolans; paid a call upon Mrs. Jackson, who was fatter
+than ever, poor woman, but asked kindly after Rachel—and O Lord, little
+Jackson had confessed to a confounded piece of weakness—well, well, no
+harm was done, he supposed, but what was the use of his giving orders
+if they were promptly disobeyed? He had said distinctly that he would
+take no passengers on this trip. Here he began searching in his pockets
+and eventually discovered a card, which he planked down on the table
+before Rachel. On it she read, “Mr. and Mrs. Richard Dalloway, 23
+Browne Street, Mayfair.”
+
+“Mr. Richard Dalloway,” continued Vinrace, “seems to be a gentleman who
+thinks that because he was once a member of Parliament, and his wife’s
+the daughter of a peer, they can have what they like for the asking.
+They got round poor little Jackson anyhow. Said they must have
+passages—produced a letter from Lord Glenaway, asking me as a personal
+favour—overruled any objections Jackson made (I don’t believe they came
+to much), and so there’s nothing for it but to submit, I suppose.”
+
+But it was evident that for some reason or other Willoughby was quite
+pleased to submit, although he made a show of growling.
+
+The truth was that Mr. and Mrs. Dalloway had found themselves stranded
+in Lisbon. They had been travelling on the Continent for some weeks,
+chiefly with a view to broadening Mr. Dalloway’s mind. Unable for a
+season, by one of the accidents of political life, to serve his country
+in Parliament, Mr. Dalloway was doing the best he could to serve it out
+of Parliament. For that purpose the Latin countries did very well,
+although the East, of course, would have done better.
+
+“Expect to hear of me next in Petersburg or Teheran,” he had said,
+turning to wave farewell from the steps of the Travellers’. But a
+disease had broken out in the East, there was cholera in Russia, and he
+was heard of, not so romantically, in Lisbon. They had been through
+France; he had stopped at manufacturing centres where, producing
+letters of introduction, he had been shown over works, and noted facts
+in a pocket-book. In Spain he and Mrs. Dalloway had mounted mules, for
+they wished to understand how the peasants live. Are they ripe for
+rebellion, for example? Mrs. Dalloway had then insisted upon a day or
+two at Madrid with the pictures. Finally they arrived in Lisbon and
+spent six days which, in a journal privately issued afterwards, they
+described as of “unique interest.” Richard had audiences with
+ministers, and foretold a crisis at no distant date, “the foundations
+of government being incurably corrupt. Yet how blame, etc.”; while
+Clarissa inspected the royal stables, and took several snapshots
+showing men now exiled and windows now broken. Among other things she
+photographed Fielding’s grave, and let loose a small bird which some
+ruffian had trapped, “because one hates to think of anything in a cage
+where English people lie buried,” the diary stated. Their tour was
+thoroughly unconventional, and followed no meditated plan. The foreign
+correspondents of the _Times_ decided their route as much as anything
+else. Mr. Dalloway wished to look at certain guns, and was of opinion
+that the African coast is far more unsettled than people at home were
+inclined to believe. For these reasons they wanted a slow inquisitive
+kind of ship, comfortable, for they were bad sailors, but not
+extravagant, which would stop for a day or two at this port and at
+that, taking in coal while the Dalloways saw things for themselves.
+Meanwhile they found themselves stranded in Lisbon, unable for the
+moment to lay hands upon the precise vessel they wanted. They heard of
+the _Euphrosyne_, but heard also that she was primarily a cargo boat,
+and only took passengers by special arrangement, her business being to
+carry dry goods to the Amazons, and rubber home again. “By special
+arrangement,” however, were words of high encouragement to them, for
+they came of a class where almost everything was specially arranged, or
+could be if necessary. On this occasion all that Richard did was to
+write a note to Lord Glenaway, the head of the line which bears his
+title; to call on poor old Jackson; to represent to him how Mrs.
+Dalloway was so-and-so, and he had been something or other else, and
+what they wanted was such and such a thing. It was done. They parted
+with compliments and pleasure on both sides, and here, a week later,
+came the boat rowing up to the ship in the dusk with the Dalloways on
+board of it; in three minutes they were standing together on the deck
+of the _Euphrosyne_. Their arrival, of course, created some stir, and
+it was seen by several pairs of eyes that Mrs. Dalloway was a tall
+slight woman, her body wrapped in furs, her head in veils, while Mr.
+Dalloway appeared to be a middle-sized man of sturdy build, dressed
+like a sportsman on an autumnal moor. Many solid leather bags of a rich
+brown hue soon surrounded them, in addition to which Mr. Dalloway
+carried a despatch box, and his wife a dressing-case suggestive of a
+diamond necklace and bottles with silver tops.
+
+“It’s so like Whistler!” she exclaimed, with a wave towards the shore,
+as she shook Rachel by the hand, and Rachel had only time to look at
+the grey hills on one side of her before Willoughby introduced Mrs.
+Chailey, who took the lady to her cabin.
+
+Momentary though it seemed, nevertheless the interruption was
+upsetting; every one was more or less put out by it, from Mr. Grice,
+the steward, to Ridley himself. A few minutes later Rachel passed the
+smoking-room, and found Helen moving arm-chairs. She was absorbed in
+her arrangements, and on seeing Rachel remarked confidentially:
+
+“If one can give men a room to themselves where they will sit, it’s all
+to the good. Arm-chairs are _the_ important things—” She began wheeling
+them about. “Now, does it still look like a bar at a railway station?”
+
+She whipped a plush cover off a table. The appearance of the place was
+marvellously improved.
+
+Again, the arrival of the strangers made it obvious to Rachel, as the
+hour of dinner approached, that she must change her dress; and the
+ringing of the great bell found her sitting on the edge of her berth in
+such a position that the little glass above the washstand reflected her
+head and shoulders. In the glass she wore an expression of tense
+melancholy, for she had come to the depressing conclusion, since the
+arrival of the Dalloways, that her face was not the face she wanted,
+and in all probability never would be.
+
+However, punctuality had been impressed on her, and whatever face she
+had, she must go in to dinner.
+
+These few minutes had been used by Willoughby in sketching to the
+Dalloways the people they were to meet, and checking them upon his
+fingers.
+
+“There’s my brother-in-law, Ambrose, the scholar (I daresay you’ve
+heard his name), his wife, my old friend Pepper, a very quiet fellow,
+but knows everything, I’m told. And that’s all. We’re a very small
+party. I’m dropping them on the coast.”
+
+Mrs. Dalloway, with her head a little on one side, did her best to
+recollect Ambrose—was it a surname?—but failed. She was made slightly
+uneasy by what she had heard. She knew that scholars married any
+one—girls they met in farms on reading parties; or little suburban
+women who said disagreeably, “Of course I know it’s my husband you
+want; not _me_.”
+
+But Helen came in at that point, and Mrs. Dalloway saw with relief that
+though slightly eccentric in appearance, she was not untidy, held
+herself well, and her voice had restraint in it, which she held to be
+the sign of a lady. Mr. Pepper had not troubled to change his neat ugly
+suit.
+
+“But after all,” Clarissa thought to herself as she followed Vinrace in
+to dinner, “_every one’s_ interesting really.”
+
+When seated at the table she had some need of that assurance, chiefly
+because of Ridley, who came in late, looked decidedly unkempt, and took
+to his soup in profound gloom.
+
+An imperceptible signal passed between husband and wife, meaning that
+they grasped the situation and would stand by each other loyally. With
+scarcely a pause Mrs. Dalloway turned to Willoughby and began:
+
+“What I find so tiresome about the sea is that there are no flowers in
+it. Imagine fields of hollyhocks and violets in mid-ocean! How divine!”
+
+“But somewhat dangerous to navigation,” boomed Richard, in the bass,
+like the bassoon to the flourish of his wife’s violin. “Why, weeds can
+be bad enough, can’t they, Vinrace? I remember crossing in the
+_Mauretania_ once, and saying to the Captain—Richards—did you know
+him?—‘Now tell me what perils you really dread most for your ship,
+Captain Richards?’ expecting him to say icebergs, or derelicts, or fog,
+or something of that sort. Not a bit of it. I’ve always remembered his
+answer. ‘_Sedgius aquatici_,’ he said, which I take to be a kind of
+duck-weed.”
+
+Mr. Pepper looked up sharply, and was about to put a question when
+Willoughby continued:
+
+“They’ve an awful time of it—those captains! Three thousand souls on
+board!”
+
+“Yes, indeed,” said Clarissa. She turned to Helen with an air of
+profundity. “I’m convinced people are wrong when they say it’s work
+that wears one; it’s responsibility. That’s why one pays one’s cook
+more than one’s housemaid, I suppose.”
+
+“According to that, one ought to pay one’s nurse double; but one
+doesn’t,” said Helen.
+
+“No; but think what a joy to have to do with babies, instead of
+saucepans!” said Mrs. Dalloway, looking with more interest at Helen, a
+probable mother.
+
+“I’d much rather be a cook than a nurse,” said Helen. “Nothing would
+induce me to take charge of children.”
+
+“Mothers always exaggerate,” said Ridley. “A well-bred child is no
+responsibility. I’ve travelled all over Europe with mine. You just wrap
+’em up warm and put ’em in the rack.”
+
+Helen laughed at that. Mrs. Dalloway exclaimed, looking at Ridley:
+
+“How like a father! My husband’s just the same. And then one talks of
+the equality of the sexes!”
+
+“Does one?” said Mr. Pepper.
+
+“Oh, some do!” cried Clarissa. “My husband had to pass an irate lady
+every afternoon last session who said nothing else, I imagine.”
+
+“She sat outside the house; it was very awkward,” said Dalloway. “At
+last I plucked up courage and said to her, ‘My good creature, you’re
+only in the way where you are. You’re hindering me, and you’re doing no
+good to yourself.’”
+
+“And then she caught him by the coat, and would have scratched his eyes
+out—” Mrs. Dalloway put in.
+
+“Pooh—that’s been exaggerated,” said Richard. “No, I pity them, I
+confess. The discomfort of sitting on those steps must be awful.”
+
+“Serve them right,” said Willoughby curtly.
+
+“Oh, I’m entirely with you there,” said Dalloway. “Nobody can condemn
+the utter folly and futility of such behaviour more than I do; and as
+for the whole agitation, well! may I be in my grave before a woman has
+the right to vote in England! That’s all I say.”
+
+The solemnity of her husband’s assertion made Clarissa grave.
+
+“It’s unthinkable,” she said. “Don’t tell me you’re a suffragist?” she
+turned to Ridley.
+
+“I don’t care a fig one way or t’other,” said Ambrose. “If any creature
+is so deluded as to think that a vote does him or her any good, let him
+have it. He’ll soon learn better.”
+
+“You’re not a politician, I see,” she smiled.
+
+“Goodness, no,” said Ridley.
+
+“I’m afraid your husband won’t approve of me,” said Dalloway aside, to
+Mrs. Ambrose. She suddenly recollected that he had been in Parliament.
+
+“Don’t you ever find it rather dull?” she asked, not knowing exactly
+what to say.
+
+Richard spread his hands before him, as if inscriptions were to be read
+in the palms of them.
+
+“If you ask me whether I ever find it rather dull,” he said, “I am
+bound to say yes; on the other hand, if you ask me what career do you
+consider on the whole, taking the good with the bad, the most enjoyable
+and enviable, not to speak of its more serious side, of all careers,
+for a man, I am bound to say, ‘The Politician’s.’”
+
+“The Bar or politics, I agree,” said Willoughby. “You get more run for
+your money.”
+
+“All one’s faculties have their play,” said Richard. “I may be treading
+on dangerous ground; but what I feel about poets and artists in general
+is this: on your own lines, you can’t be beaten—granted; but off your
+own lines—puff—one has to make allowances. Now, I shouldn’t like to
+think that any one had to make allowances for me.”
+
+“I don’t quite agree, Richard,” said Mrs. Dalloway. “Think of Shelley.
+I feel that there’s almost everything one wants in ‘Adonais.’”
+
+“Read ‘Adonais’ by all means,” Richard conceded. “But whenever I hear
+of Shelley I repeat to myself the words of Matthew Arnold, ‘What a set!
+What a set!’”
+
+This roused Ridley’s attention. “Matthew Arnold? A detestable prig!” he
+snapped.
+
+“A prig—granted,” said Richard; “but, I think a man of the world.
+That’s where my point comes in. We politicians doubtless seem to you”
+(he grasped somehow that Helen was the representative of the arts) “a
+gross commonplace set of people; but we see both sides; we may be
+clumsy, but we do our best to get a grasp of things. Now your artists
+_find_ things in a mess, shrug their shoulders, turn aside to their
+visions—which I grant may be very beautiful—and _leave_ things in a
+mess. Now that seems to me evading one’s responsibilities. Besides, we
+aren’t all born with the artistic faculty.”
+
+“It’s dreadful,” said Mrs. Dalloway, who, while her husband spoke, had
+been thinking. “When I’m with artists I feel so intensely the delights
+of shutting oneself up in a little world of one’s own, with pictures
+and music and everything beautiful, and then I go out into the streets
+and the first child I meet with its poor, hungry, dirty little face
+makes me turn round and say, ‘No, I _can’t_ shut myself up—I _won’t_
+live in a world of my own. I should like to stop all the painting and
+writing and music until this kind of thing exists no longer.’ Don’t you
+feel,” she wound up, addressing Helen, “that life’s a perpetual
+conflict?” Helen considered for a moment. “No,” she said. “I don’t
+think I do.”
+
+There was a pause, which was decidedly uncomfortable. Mrs. Dalloway
+then gave a little shiver, and asked whether she might have her fur
+cloak brought to her. As she adjusted the soft brown fur about her neck
+a fresh topic struck her.
+
+“I own,” she said, “that I shall never forget the _Antigone_. I saw it
+at Cambridge years ago, and it’s haunted me ever since. Don’t you think
+it’s quite the most modern thing you ever saw?” she asked Ridley. “It
+seemed to me I’d known twenty Clytemnestras. Old Lady Ditchling for
+one. I don’t know a word of Greek, but I could listen to it for ever—”
+
+Here Mr. Pepper struck up:
+
+πολλὰ τὰ δεινά, κοὐδὲν ἀν-
+θρώπου δεινότερον πέλει.
+τοῦτο καὶ πολιοῦ πέραν
+πόντου χειμερίῳ νότῳ
+χωρεῖ, περιβρυχίοισι
+περῶν ὑπ᾽ οἴδμασι.
+
+
+Mrs. Dalloway looked at him with compressed lips.
+
+“I’d give ten years of my life to know Greek,” she said, when he had
+done.
+
+“I could teach you the alphabet in half an hour,” said Ridley, “and
+you’d read Homer in a month. I should think it an honour to instruct
+you.”
+
+Helen, engaged with Mr. Dalloway and the habit, now fallen into
+decline, of quoting Greek in the House of Commons, noted, in the great
+commonplace book that lies open beside us as we talk, the fact that all
+men, even men like Ridley, really prefer women to be fashionable.
+
+Clarissa exclaimed that she could think of nothing more delightful. For
+an instant she saw herself in her drawing-room in Browne Street with a
+Plato open on her knees—Plato in the original Greek. She could not help
+believing that a real scholar, if specially interested, could slip
+Greek into her head with scarcely any trouble.
+
+Ridley engaged her to come to-morrow.
+
+“If only your ship is going to treat us kindly!” she exclaimed, drawing
+Willoughby into play. For the sake of guests, and these were
+distinguished, Willoughby was ready with a bow of his head to vouch for
+the good behaviour even of the waves.
+
+“I’m dreadfully bad; and my husband’s not very good,” sighed Clarissa.
+
+“I am never sick,” Richard explained. “At least, I have only been
+actually sick once,” he corrected himself. “That was crossing the
+Channel. But a choppy sea, I confess, or still worse, a swell, makes me
+distinctly uncomfortable. The great thing is never to miss a meal. You
+look at the food, and you say, ‘I can’t’; you take a mouthful, and Lord
+knows how you’re going to swallow it; but persevere, and you often
+settle the attack for good. My wife’s a coward.”
+
+They were pushing back their chairs. The ladies were hesitating at the
+doorway.
+
+“I’d better show the way,” said Helen, advancing.
+
+Rachel followed. She had taken no part in the talk; no one had spoken
+to her; but she had listened to every word that was said. She had
+looked from Mrs. Dalloway to Mr. Dalloway, and from Mr. Dalloway back
+again. Clarissa, indeed, was a fascinating spectacle. She wore a white
+dress and a long glittering necklace. What with her clothes, and her
+arch delicate face, which showed exquisitely pink beneath hair turning
+grey, she was astonishingly like an eighteenth-century masterpiece—a
+Reynolds or a Romney. She made Helen and the others look coarse and
+slovenly beside her. Sitting lightly upright she seemed to be dealing
+with the world as she chose; the enormous solid globe spun round this
+way and that beneath her fingers. And her husband! Mr. Dalloway rolling
+that rich deliberate voice was even more impressive. He seemed to come
+from the humming oily centre of the machine where the polished rods are
+sliding, and the pistons thumping; he grasped things so firmly but so
+loosely; he made the others appear like old maids cheapening remnants.
+Rachel followed in the wake of the matrons, as if in a trance; a
+curious scent of violets came back from Mrs. Dalloway, mingling with
+the soft rustling of her skirts, and the tinkling of her chains. As she
+followed, Rachel thought with supreme self-abasement, taking in the
+whole course of her life and the lives of all her friends, “She said we
+lived in a world of our own. It’s true. We’re perfectly absurd.”
+
+“We sit in here,” said Helen, opening the door of the saloon.
+
+“You play?” said Mrs. Dalloway to Mrs. Ambrose, taking up the score of
+_Tristan_ which lay on the table.
+
+“My niece does,” said Helen, laying her hand on Rachel’s shoulder.
+
+“Oh, how I envy you!” Clarissa addressed Rachel for the first time.
+“D’you remember this? Isn’t it divine?” She played a bar or two with
+ringed fingers upon the page.
+
+“And then Tristan goes like this, and Isolde—oh!—it’s all too
+thrilling! Have you been to Bayreuth?”
+
+“No, I haven’t,” said Rachel.
+
+“Then that’s still to come. I shall never forget my first _Parsifal_—a
+grilling August day, and those fat old German women, come in their
+stuffy high frocks, and then the dark theatre, and the music beginning,
+and one couldn’t help sobbing. A kind man went and fetched me water, I
+remember; and I could only cry on his shoulder! It caught me here” (she
+touched her throat). “It’s like nothing else in the world! But where’s
+your piano?”
+
+“It’s in another room,” Rachel explained.
+
+“But you will play to us?” Clarissa entreated. “I can’t imagine
+anything nicer than to sit out in the moonlight and listen to
+music—only that sounds too like a schoolgirl! You know,” she said,
+turning to Helen, “I don’t think music’s altogether good for people—I’m
+afraid not.”
+
+“Too great a strain?” asked Helen.
+
+“Too emotional, somehow,” said Clarissa. “One notices it at once when a
+boy or girl takes up music as a profession. Sir William Broadley told
+me just the same thing. Don’t you hate the kind of attitudes people go
+into over Wagner—like this—” She cast her eyes to the ceiling, clasped
+her hands, and assumed a look of intensity. “It really doesn’t mean
+that they appreciate him; in fact, I always think it’s the other way
+round. The people who really care about an art are always the least
+affected. D’you know Henry Philips, the painter?” she asked.
+
+“I have seen him,” said Helen.
+
+“To look at, one might think he was a successful stockbroker, and not
+one of the greatest painters of the age. That’s what I like.”
+
+“There are a great many successful stockbrokers, if you like looking at
+them,” said Helen.
+
+Rachel wished vehemently that her aunt would not be so perverse.
+
+“When you see a musician with long hair, don’t you know instinctively
+that he’s bad?” Clarissa asked, turning to Rachel. “Watts and
+Joachim—they looked just like you and me.”
+
+“And how much nicer they’d have looked with curls!” said Helen. “The
+question is, are you going to aim at beauty or are you not?”
+
+“Cleanliness!” said Clarissa, “I do want a man to look clean!”
+
+“By cleanliness you really mean well-cut clothes,” said Helen.
+
+“There’s something one knows a gentleman by,” said Clarissa, “but one
+can’t say what it is.”
+
+“Take my husband now, does he look like a gentleman?”
+
+The question seemed to Clarissa in extraordinarily bad taste. “One of
+the things that can’t be said,” she would have put it. She could find
+no answer, but a laugh.
+
+“Well, anyhow,” she said, turning to Rachel, “I shall insist upon your
+playing to me to-morrow.”
+
+There was that in her manner that made Rachel love her.
+
+Mrs. Dalloway hid a tiny yawn, a mere dilation of the nostrils.
+
+“D’you know,” she said, “I’m extraordinarily sleepy. It’s the sea air.
+I think I shall escape.”
+
+A man’s voice, which she took to be that of Mr. Pepper, strident in
+discussion, and advancing upon the saloon, gave her the alarm.
+
+“Good-night—good-night!” she said. “Oh, I know my way—do pray for calm!
+Good-night!”
+
+Her yawn must have been the image of a yawn. Instead of letting her
+mouth droop, dropping all her clothes in a bunch as though they
+depended on one string, and stretching her limbs to the utmost end of
+her berth, she merely changed her dress for a dressing-gown, with
+innumerable frills, and wrapping her feet in a rug, sat down with a
+writing-pad on her knee. Already this cramped little cabin was the
+dressing room of a lady of quality. There were bottles containing
+liquids; there were trays, boxes, brushes, pins. Evidently not an inch
+of her person lacked its proper instrument. The scent which had
+intoxicated Rachel pervaded the air. Thus established, Mrs. Dalloway
+began to write. A pen in her hands became a thing one caressed paper
+with, and she might have been stroking and tickling a kitten as she
+wrote:
+
+Picture us, my dear, afloat in the very oddest ship you can imagine.
+It’s not the ship, so much as the people. One does come across queer
+sorts as one travels. I must say I find it hugely amusing. There’s the
+manager of the line—called Vinrace—a nice big Englishman, doesn’t say
+much—you know the sort. As for the rest—they might have come trailing
+out of an old number of _Punch_. They’re like people playing croquet in
+the ’sixties. How long they’ve all been shut up in this ship I don’t
+know—years and years I should say—but one feels as though one had
+boarded a little separate world, and they’d never been on shore, or
+done ordinary things in their lives. It’s what I’ve always said about
+literary people—they’re far the hardest of any to get on with. The
+worst of it is, these people—a man and his wife and a niece—might have
+been, one feels, just like everybody else, if they hadn’t got swallowed
+up by Oxford or Cambridge or some such place, and been made cranks of.
+The man’s really delightful (if he’d cut his nails), and the woman has
+quite a fine face, only she dresses, of course, in a potato sack, and
+wears her hair like a Liberty shopgirl’s. They talk about art, and
+think us such poops for dressing in the evening. However, I can’t help
+that; I’d rather die than come in to dinner without changing—wouldn’t
+you? It matters ever so much more than the soup. (It’s odd how things
+like that _do_ matter so much more than what’s generally supposed to
+matter. I’d rather have my head cut off than wear flannel next the
+skin.) Then there’s a nice shy girl—poor thing—I wish one could rake
+her out before it’s too late. She has quite nice eyes and hair, only,
+of course, she’ll get funny too. We ought to start a society for
+broadening the minds of the young—much more useful than missionaries,
+Hester! Oh, I’d forgotten there’s a dreadful little thing called
+Pepper. He’s just like his name. He’s indescribably insignificant, and
+rather queer in his temper, poor dear. It’s like sitting down to dinner
+with an ill-conditioned fox-terrier, only one can’t comb him out, and
+sprinkle him with powder, as one would one’s dog. It’s a pity,
+sometimes, one can’t treat people like dogs! The great comfort is that
+we’re away from newspapers, so that Richard will have a real holiday
+this time. Spain wasn’t a holiday. . . .
+
+“You coward!” said Richard, almost filling the room with his sturdy
+figure.
+
+“I did my duty at dinner!” cried Clarissa.
+
+“You’ve let yourself in for the Greek alphabet, anyhow.”
+
+“Oh, my dear! Who _is_ Ambrose?”
+
+“I gather that he was a Cambridge don; lives in London now, and edits
+classics.”
+
+“Did you ever see such a set of cranks? The woman asked me if I thought
+her husband looked like a gentleman!”
+
+“It was hard to keep the ball rolling at dinner, certainly,” said
+Richard. “Why is it that the women, in that class, are so much queerer
+than the men?”
+
+“They’re not half bad-looking, really—only—they’re so odd!”
+
+They both laughed, thinking of the same things, so that there was no
+need to compare their impressions.
+
+“I see I shall have quite a lot to say to Vinrace,” said Richard. “He
+knows Sutton and all that set. He can tell me a good deal about the
+conditions of ship-building in the North.”
+
+“Oh, I’m glad. The men always _are_ so much better than the women.”
+
+“One always has something to say to a man certainly,” said Richard.
+“But I’ve no doubt you’ll chatter away fast enough about the babies,
+Clarice.”
+
+“Has she got children? She doesn’t look like it somehow.”
+
+“Two. A boy and girl.”
+
+A pang of envy shot through Mrs. Dalloway’s heart.
+
+“We _must_ have a son, Dick,” she said.
+
+“Good Lord, what opportunities there are now for young men!” said
+Dalloway, for his talk had set him thinking. “I don’t suppose there’s
+been so good an opening since the days of Pitt.”
+
+“And it’s yours!” said Clarissa.
+
+“To be a leader of men,” Richard soliloquised. “It’s a fine career. My
+God—what a career!”
+
+The chest slowly curved beneath his waistcoat.
+
+“D’you know, Dick, I can’t help thinking of England,” said his wife
+meditatively, leaning her head against his chest. “Being on this ship
+seems to make it so much more vivid—what it really means to be English.
+One thinks of all we’ve done, and our navies, and the people in India
+and Africa, and how we’ve gone on century after century, sending out
+boys from little country villages—and of men like you, Dick, and it
+makes one feel as if one couldn’t bear _not_ to be English! Think of
+the light burning over the House, Dick! When I stood on deck just now I
+seemed to see it. It’s what one means by London.”
+
+“It’s the continuity,” said Richard sententiously. A vision of English
+history, King following King, Prime Minister Prime Minister, and Law
+Law had come over him while his wife spoke. He ran his mind along the
+line of conservative policy, which went steadily from Lord Salisbury to
+Alfred, and gradually enclosed, as though it were a lasso that opened
+and caught things, enormous chunks of the habitable globe.
+
+“It’s taken a long time, but we’ve pretty nearly done it,” he said; “it
+remains to consolidate.”
+
+“And these people don’t see it!” Clarissa exclaimed.
+
+“It takes all sorts to make a world,” said her husband. “There would
+never be a government if there weren’t an opposition.”
+
+“Dick, you’re better than I am,” said Clarissa. “You see round, where I
+only see _there_.” She pressed a point on the back of his hand.
+
+“That’s my business, as I tried to explain at dinner.”
+
+“What I like about you, Dick,” she continued, “is that you’re always
+the same, and I’m a creature of moods.”
+
+“You’re a pretty creature, anyhow,” he said, gazing at her with deeper
+eyes.
+
+“You think so, do you? Then kiss me.”
+
+He kissed her passionately, so that her half-written letter slid to the
+ground. Picking it up, he read it without asking leave.
+
+“Where’s your pen?” he said; and added in his little masculine hand:
+
+R.D. _loquitur_: Clarice has omitted to tell you that she looked
+exceedingly pretty at dinner, and made a conquest by which she has
+bound herself to learn the Greek alphabet. I will take this occasion of
+adding that we are both enjoying ourselves in these outlandish parts,
+and only wish for the presence of our friends (yourself and John, to
+wit) to make the trip perfectly enjoyable as it promises to be
+instructive. . . .
+
+
+Voices were heard at the end of the corridor. Mrs. Ambrose was speaking
+low; William Pepper was remarking in his definite and rather acid
+voice, “That is the type of lady with whom I find myself distinctly out
+of sympathy. She—”
+
+But neither Richard nor Clarissa profited by the verdict, for directly
+it seemed likely that they would overhear, Richard crackled a sheet of
+paper.
+
+“I often wonder,” Clarissa mused in bed, over the little white volume
+of Pascal which went with her everywhere, “whether it is really good
+for a woman to live with a man who is morally her superior, as Richard
+is mine. It makes one so dependent. I suppose I feel for him what my
+mother and women of her generation felt for Christ. It just shows that
+one can’t do without _something_.” She then fell into a sleep, which
+was as usual extremely sound and refreshing, but visited by fantastic
+dreams of great Greek letters stalking round the room, when she woke up
+and laughed to herself, remembering where she was and that the Greek
+letters were real people, lying asleep not many yards away. Then,
+thinking of the black sea outside tossing beneath the moon, she
+shuddered, and thought of her husband and the others as companions on
+the voyage. The dreams were not confined to her indeed, but went from
+one brain to another. They all dreamt of each other that night, as was
+natural, considering how thin the partitions were between them, and how
+strangely they had been lifted off the earth to sit next each other in
+mid-ocean, and see every detail of each other’s faces, and hear
+whatever they chanced to say.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IV
+
+
+Next morning Clarissa was up before anyone else. She dressed, and was
+out on deck, breathing the fresh air of a calm morning, and, making the
+circuit of the ship for the second time, she ran straight into the lean
+person of Mr. Grice, the steward. She apologised, and at the same time
+asked him to enlighten her: what were those shiny brass stands for,
+half glass on the top? She had been wondering, and could not guess.
+When he had done explaining, she cried enthusiastically:
+
+“I do think that to be a sailor must be the finest thing in the world!”
+
+“And what d’you know about it?” said Mr. Grice, kindling in a strange
+manner. “Pardon me. What does any man or woman brought up in England
+know about the sea? They profess to know; but they don’t.”
+
+The bitterness with which he spoke was ominous of what was to come. He
+led her off to his own quarters, and, sitting on the edge of a
+brass-bound table, looking uncommonly like a sea-gull, with her white
+tapering body and thin alert face, Mrs. Dalloway had to listen to the
+tirade of a fanatical man. Did she realise, to begin with, what a very
+small part of the world the land was? How peaceful, how beautiful, how
+benignant in comparison the sea? The deep waters could sustain Europe
+unaided if every earthly animal died of the plague to-morrow. Mr. Grice
+recalled dreadful sights which he had seen in the richest city of the
+world—men and women standing in line hour after hour to receive a mug
+of greasy soup. “And I thought of the good flesh down here waiting and
+asking to be caught. I’m not exactly a Protestant, and I’m not a
+Catholic, but I could almost pray for the days of popery to come
+again—because of the fasts.”
+
+As he talked he kept opening drawers and moving little glass jars. Here
+were the treasures which the great ocean had bestowed upon him—pale
+fish in greenish liquids, blobs of jelly with streaming tresses, fish
+with lights in their heads, they lived so deep.
+
+“They have swum about among bones,” Clarissa sighed.
+
+“You’re thinking of Shakespeare,” said Mr. Grice, and taking down a
+copy from a shelf well lined with books, recited in an emphatic nasal
+voice:
+
+“Full fathom five thy father lies,
+
+
+“A grand fellow, Shakespeare,” he said, replacing the volume.
+
+Clarissa was so glad to hear him say so.
+
+“Which is your favourite play? I wonder if it’s the same as mine?”
+
+“_Henry the Fifth_,” said Mr. Grice.
+
+“Joy!” cried Clarissa. “It is!”
+
+_Hamlet_ was what you might call too introspective for Mr. Grice, the
+sonnets too passionate; Henry the Fifth was to him the model of an
+English gentleman. But his favourite reading was Huxley, Herbert
+Spencer, and Henry George; while Emerson and Thomas Hardy he read for
+relaxation. He was giving Mrs. Dalloway his views upon the present
+state of England when the breakfast bell rung so imperiously that she
+had to tear herself away, promising to come back and be shown his
+sea-weeds.
+
+The party, which had seemed so odd to her the night before, was already
+gathered round the table, still under the influence of sleep, and
+therefore uncommunicative, but her entrance sent a little flutter like
+a breath of air through them all.
+
+“I’ve had the most interesting talk of my life!” she exclaimed, taking
+her seat beside Willoughby. “D’you realise that one of your men is a
+philosopher and a poet?”
+
+“A very interesting fellow—that’s what I always say,” said Willoughby,
+distinguishing Mr. Grice. “Though Rachel finds him a bore.”
+
+“He’s a bore when he talks about currents,” said Rachel. Her eyes were
+full of sleep, but Mrs. Dalloway still seemed to her wonderful.
+
+“I’ve never met a bore yet!” said Clarissa.
+
+“And I should say the world was full of them!” exclaimed Helen. But her
+beauty, which was radiant in the morning light, took the contrariness
+from her words.
+
+“I agree that it’s the worst one can possibly say of any one,” said
+Clarissa. “How much rather one would be a murderer than a bore!” she
+added, with her usual air of saying something profound. “One can fancy
+liking a murderer. It’s the same with dogs. Some dogs are awful bores,
+poor dears.”
+
+It happened that Richard was sitting next to Rachel. She was curiously
+conscious of his presence and appearance—his well-cut clothes, his
+crackling shirt-front, his cuffs with blue rings round them, and the
+square-tipped, very clean fingers with the red stone on the little
+finger of the left hand.
+
+“We had a dog who was a bore and knew it,” he said, addressing her in
+cool, easy tones. “He was a Skye terrier, one of those long chaps, with
+little feet poking out from their hair like—like caterpillars—no, like
+sofas I should say. Well, we had another dog at the same time, a black
+brisk animal—a Schipperke, I think, you call them. You can’t imagine a
+greater contrast. The Skye so slow and deliberate, looking up at you
+like some old gentleman in the club, as much as to say, ‘You don’t
+really mean it, do you?’ and the Schipperke as quick as a knife. I
+liked the Skye best, I must confess. There was something pathetic about
+him.”
+
+The story seemed to have no climax.
+
+“What happened to him?” Rachel asked.
+
+“That’s a very sad story,” said Richard, lowering his voice and peeling
+an apple. “He followed my wife in the car one day and got run over by a
+brute of a cyclist.”
+
+“Was he killed?” asked Rachel.
+
+But Clarissa at her end of the table had overheard.
+
+“Don’t talk of it!” she cried. “It’s a thing I can’t bear to think of
+to this day.”
+
+Surely the tears stood in her eyes?
+
+“That’s the painful thing about pets,” said Mr. Dalloway; “they die.
+The first sorrow I can remember was for the death of a dormouse. I
+regret to say that I sat upon it. Still, that didn’t make one any the
+less sorry. Here lies the duck that Samuel Johnson sat on, eh? I was
+big for my age.”
+
+“Then we had canaries,” he continued, “a pair of ring-doves, a lemur,
+and at one time a martin.”
+
+“Did you live in the country?” Rachel asked him.
+
+“We lived in the country for six months of the year. When I say ‘we’ I
+mean four sisters, a brother, and myself. There’s nothing like coming
+of a large family. Sisters particularly are delightful.”
+
+“Dick, you were horribly spoilt!” cried Clarissa across the table.
+
+“No, no. Appreciated,” said Richard.
+
+Rachel had other questions on the tip of her tongue; or rather one
+enormous question, which she did not in the least know how to put into
+words. The talk appeared too airy to admit of it.
+
+“Please tell me—everything.” That was what she wanted to say. He had
+drawn apart one little chink and showed astonishing treasures. It
+seemed to her incredible that a man like that should be willing to talk
+to her. He had sisters and pets, and once lived in the country. She
+stirred her tea round and round; the bubbles which swam and clustered
+in the cup seemed to her like the union of their minds.
+
+The talk meanwhile raced past her, and when Richard suddenly stated in
+a jocular tone of voice, “I’m sure Miss Vinrace, now, has secret
+leanings towards Catholicism,” she had no idea what to answer, and
+Helen could not help laughing at the start she gave.
+
+However, breakfast was over and Mrs. Dalloway was rising. “I always
+think religion’s like collecting beetles,” she said, summing up the
+discussion as she went up the stairs with Helen. “One person has a
+passion for black beetles; another hasn’t; it’s no good arguing about
+it. What’s _your_ black beetle now?”
+
+“I suppose it’s my children,” said Helen.
+
+“Ah—that’s different,” Clarissa breathed. “Do tell me. You have a boy,
+haven’t you? Isn’t it detestable, leaving them?”
+
+It was as though a blue shadow had fallen across a pool. Their eyes
+became deeper, and their voices more cordial. Instead of joining them
+as they began to pace the deck, Rachel was indignant with the
+prosperous matrons, who made her feel outside their world and
+motherless, and turning back, she left them abruptly. She slammed the
+door of her room, and pulled out her music. It was all old music—Bach
+and Beethoven, Mozart and Purcell—the pages yellow, the engraving rough
+to the finger. In three minutes she was deep in a very difficult, very
+classical fugue in A, and over her face came a queer remote impersonal
+expression of complete absorption and anxious satisfaction. Now she
+stumbled; now she faltered and had to play the same bar twice over; but
+an invisible line seemed to string the notes together, from which rose
+a shape, a building. She was so far absorbed in this work, for it was
+really difficult to find how all these sounds should stand together,
+and drew upon the whole of her faculties, that she never heard a knock
+at the door. It was burst impulsively open, and Mrs. Dalloway stood in
+the room leaving the door open, so that a strip of the white deck and
+of the blue sea appeared through the opening. The shape of the Bach
+fugue crashed to the ground.
+
+“Don’t let me interrupt,” Clarissa implored. “I heard you playing, and
+I couldn’t resist. I adore Bach!”
+
+Rachel flushed and fumbled her fingers in her lap. She stood up
+awkwardly.
+
+“It’s too difficult,” she said.
+
+“But you were playing quite splendidly! I ought to have stayed
+outside.”
+
+“No,” said Rachel.
+
+She slid _Cowper’s Letters_ and _Wuthering Heights_ out of the
+arm-chair, so that Clarissa was invited to sit there.
+
+“What a dear little room!” she said, looking round. “Oh, _Cowper’s
+Letters_! I’ve never read them. Are they nice?”
+
+“Rather dull,” said Rachel.
+
+“He wrote awfully well, didn’t he?” said Clarissa; “—if one likes that
+kind of thing—finished his sentences and all that. _Wuthering Heights_!
+Ah—that’s more in my line. I really couldn’t exist without the Brontes!
+Don’t you love them? Still, on the whole, I’d rather live without them
+than without Jane Austen.”
+
+Lightly and at random though she spoke, her manner conveyed an
+extraordinary degree of sympathy and desire to befriend.
+
+“Jane Austen? I don’t like Jane Austen,” said Rachel.
+
+“You monster!” Clarissa exclaimed. “I can only just forgive you. Tell
+me why?”
+
+“She’s so—so—well, so like a tight plait,” Rachel floundered.
+
+“Ah—I see what you mean. But I don’t agree. And you won’t when you’re
+older. At your age I only liked Shelley. I can remember sobbing over
+him in the garden.
+
+He has outsoared the shadow of our night,
+Envy and calumny and hate and pain—
+
+
+you remember?
+
+Can touch him not and torture not again
+From the contagion of the world’s slow stain.
+
+
+How divine!—and yet what nonsense!” She looked lightly round the room.
+“I always think it’s _living_, not dying, that counts. I really respect
+some snuffy old stockbroker who’s gone on adding up column after column
+all his days, and trotting back to his villa at Brixton with some old
+pug dog he worships, and a dreary little wife sitting at the end of the
+table, and going off to Margate for a fortnight—I assure you I know
+heaps like that—well, they seem to me _really_ nobler than poets whom
+every one worships, just because they’re geniuses and die young. But I
+don’t expect _you_ to agree with me!”
+
+She pressed Rachel’s shoulder.
+
+“Um-m-m—” she went on quoting—
+
+Unrest which men miscall delight—
+
+
+“when you’re my age you’ll see that the world is _crammed_ with
+delightful things. I think young people make such a mistake about
+that—not letting themselves be happy. I sometimes think that happiness
+is the only thing that counts. I don’t know you well enough to say, but
+I should guess you might be a little inclined to—when one’s young and
+attractive—I’m going to say it!—_every_thing’s at one’s feet.” She
+glanced round as much as to say, “not only a few stuffy books and
+Bach.”
+
+“I long to ask questions,” she continued. “You interest me so much. If
+I’m impertinent, you must just box my ears.”
+
+“And I—I want to ask questions,” said Rachel with such earnestness that
+Mrs. Dalloway had to check her smile.
+
+“D’you mind if we walk?” she said. “The air’s so delicious.”
+
+She snuffed it like a racehorse as they shut the door and stood on
+deck.
+
+“Isn’t it good to be alive?” she exclaimed, and drew Rachel’s arm
+within hers.
+
+“Look, look! How exquisite!”
+
+The shores of Portugal were beginning to lose their substance; but the
+land was still the land, though at a great distance. They could
+distinguish the little towns that were sprinkled in the folds of the
+hills, and the smoke rising faintly. The towns appeared to be very
+small in comparison with the great purple mountains behind them.
+
+“Honestly, though,” said Clarissa, having looked, “I don’t like views.
+They’re too inhuman.” They walked on.
+
+“How odd it is!” she continued impulsively. “This time yesterday we’d
+never met. I was packing in a stuffy little room in the hotel. We know
+absolutely nothing about each other—and yet—I feel as if I _did_ know
+you!”
+
+“You have children—your husband was in Parliament?”
+
+“You’ve never been to school, and you live—?”
+
+“With my aunts at Richmond.”
+
+“Richmond?”
+
+“You see, my aunts like the Park. They like the quiet.”
+
+“And you don’t! I understand!” Clarissa laughed.
+
+“I like walking in the Park alone; but not—with the dogs,” she
+finished.
+
+“No; and some people _are_ dogs; aren’t they?” said Clarissa, as if she
+had guessed a secret. “But not every one—oh no, not every one.”
+
+“Not every one,” said Rachel, and stopped.
+
+“I can quite imagine you walking alone,” said Clarissa: “and
+thinking—in a little world of your own. But how you will enjoy it—some
+day!”
+
+“I shall enjoy walking with a man—is that what you mean?” said Rachel,
+regarding Mrs. Dalloway with her large enquiring eyes.
+
+“I wasn’t thinking of a man particularly,” said Clarissa. “But you
+will.”
+
+“No. I shall never marry,” Rachel determined.
+
+“I shouldn’t be so sure of that,” said Clarissa. Her sidelong glance
+told Rachel that she found her attractive although she was inexplicably
+amused.
+
+“Why do people marry?” Rachel asked.
+
+“That’s what you’re going to find out,” Clarissa laughed.
+
+Rachel followed her eyes and found that they rested for a second, on
+the robust figure of Richard Dalloway, who was engaged in striking a
+match on the sole of his boot; while Willoughby expounded something,
+which seemed to be of great interest to them both.
+
+“There’s nothing like it,” she concluded. “Do tell me about the
+Ambroses. Or am I asking too many questions?”
+
+“I find you easy to talk to,” said Rachel.
+
+The short sketch of the Ambroses was, however, somewhat perfunctory,
+and contained little but the fact that Mr. Ambrose was her uncle.
+
+“Your mother’s brother?”
+
+When a name has dropped out of use, the lightest touch upon it tells.
+Mrs. Dalloway went on:
+
+“Are you like your mother?”
+
+“No; she was different,” said Rachel.
+
+She was overcome by an intense desire to tell Mrs. Dalloway things she
+had never told any one—things she had not realised herself until this
+moment.
+
+“I am lonely,” she began. “I want—” She did not know what she wanted,
+so that she could not finish the sentence; but her lip quivered.
+
+But it seemed that Mrs. Dalloway was able to understand without words.
+
+“I know,” she said, actually putting one arm round Rachel’s shoulder.
+“When I was your age I wanted too. No one understood until I met
+Richard. He gave me all I wanted. He’s man and woman as well.” Her eyes
+rested upon Mr. Dalloway, leaning upon the rail, still talking. “Don’t
+think I say that because I’m his wife—I see his faults more clearly
+than I see any one else’s. What one wants in the person one lives with
+is that they should keep one at one’s best. I often wonder what I’ve
+done to be so happy!” she exclaimed, and a tear slid down her cheek.
+She wiped it away, squeezed Rachel’s hand, and exclaimed:
+
+“How good life is!” At that moment, standing out in the fresh breeze,
+with the sun upon the waves, and Mrs. Dalloway’s hand upon her arm, it
+seemed indeed as if life which had been unnamed before was infinitely
+wonderful, and too good to be true.
+
+Here Helen passed them, and seeing Rachel arm-in-arm with a comparative
+stranger, looking excited, was amused, but at the same time slightly
+irritated. But they were immediately joined by Richard, who had enjoyed
+a very interesting talk with Willoughby and was in a sociable mood.
+
+“Observe my Panama,” he said, touching the brim of his hat. “Are you
+aware, Miss Vinrace, how much can be done to induce fine weather by
+appropriate headdress? I have determined that it is a hot summer day; I
+warn you that nothing you can say will shake me. Therefore I am going
+to sit down. I advise you to follow my example.” Three chairs in a row
+invited them to be seated.
+
+Leaning back, Richard surveyed the waves.
+
+“That’s a very pretty blue,” he said. “But there’s a little too much of
+it. Variety is essential to a view. Thus, if you have hills you ought
+to have a river; if a river, hills. The best view in the world in my
+opinion is that from Boars Hill on a fine day—it must be a fine day,
+mark you—A rug?—Oh, thank you, my dear . . . in that case you have also
+the advantage of associations—the Past.”
+
+“D’you want to talk, Dick, or shall I read aloud?”
+
+Clarissa had fetched a book with the rugs.
+
+“_Persuasion_,” announced Richard, examining the volume.
+
+“That’s for Miss Vinrace,” said Clarissa. “She can’t bear our beloved
+Jane.”
+
+“That—if I may say so—is because you have not read her,” said Richard.
+“She is incomparably the greatest female writer we possess.”
+
+“She is the greatest,” he continued, “and for this reason: she does not
+attempt to write like a man. Every other woman does; on that account, I
+don’t read ’em.”
+
+“Produce your instances, Miss Vinrace,” he went on, joining his
+finger-tips. “I’m ready to be converted.”
+
+He waited, while Rachel vainly tried to vindicate her sex from the
+slight he put upon it.
+
+“I’m afraid he’s right,” said Clarissa. “He generally is—the wretch!”
+
+“I brought _Persuasion_,” she went on, “because I thought it was a
+little less threadbare than the others—though, Dick, it’s no good
+_your_ pretending to know Jane by heart, considering that she always
+sends you to sleep!”
+
+“After the labours of legislation, I deserve sleep,” said Richard.
+
+“You’re not to think about those guns,” said Clarissa, seeing that his
+eye, passing over the waves, still sought the land meditatively, “or
+about navies, or empires, or anything.” So saying she opened the book
+and began to read:
+
+“‘Sir Walter Elliott, of Kellynch Hall, in Somersetshire, was a man
+who, for his own amusement, never took up any book but the
+_Baronetage_’—don’t you know Sir Walter?—‘There he found occupation for
+an idle hour, and consolation in a distressed one.’ She does write
+well, doesn’t she? ‘There—’” She read on in a light humorous voice. She
+was determined that Sir Walter should take her husband’s mind off the
+guns of Britain, and divert him in an exquisite, quaint, sprightly, and
+slightly ridiculous world. After a time it appeared that the sun was
+sinking in that world, and the points becoming softer. Rachel looked up
+to see what caused the change. Richard’s eyelids were closing and
+opening; opening and closing. A loud nasal breath announced that he no
+longer considered appearances, that he was sound asleep.
+
+“Triumph!” Clarissa whispered at the end of a sentence. Suddenly she
+raised her hand in protest. A sailor hesitated; she gave the book to
+Rachel, and stepped lightly to take the message—“Mr. Grice wished to
+know if it was convenient,” etc. She followed him. Ridley, who had
+prowled unheeded, started forward, stopped, and, with a gesture of
+disgust, strode off to his study. The sleeping politician was left in
+Rachel’s charge. She read a sentence, and took a look at him. In sleep
+he looked like a coat hanging at the end of a bed; there were all the
+wrinkles, and the sleeves and trousers kept their shape though no
+longer filled out by legs and arms. You can then best judge the age and
+state of the coat. She looked him all over until it seemed to her that
+he must protest.
+
+He was a man of forty perhaps; and here there were lines round his
+eyes, and there curious clefts in his cheeks. Slightly battered he
+appeared, but dogged and in the prime of life.
+
+“Sisters and a dormouse and some canaries,” Rachel murmured, never
+taking her eyes off him. “I wonder, I wonder.” She ceased, her chin
+upon her hand, still looking at him. A bell chimed behind them, and
+Richard raised his head. Then he opened his eyes which wore for a
+second the queer look of a shortsighted person’s whose spectacles are
+lost. It took him a moment to recover from the impropriety of having
+snored, and possibly grunted, before a young lady. To wake and find
+oneself left alone with one was also slightly disconcerting.
+
+“I suppose I’ve been dozing,” he said. “What’s happened to everyone?
+Clarissa?”
+
+“Mrs. Dalloway has gone to look at Mr. Grice’s fish,” Rachel replied.
+
+“I might have guessed,” said Richard. “It’s a common occurrence. And
+how have you improved the shining hour? Have you become a convert?”
+
+“I don’t think I’ve read a line,” said Rachel.
+
+“That’s what I always find. There are too many things to look at. I
+find nature very stimulating myself. My best ideas have come to me out
+of doors.”
+
+“When you were walking?”
+
+“Walking—riding—yachting—I suppose the most momentous conversations of
+my life took place while perambulating the great court at Trinity. I
+was at both universities. It was a fad of my father’s. He thought it
+broadening to the mind. I think I agree with him. I can remember—what
+an age ago it seems!—settling the basis of a future state with the
+present Secretary for India. We thought ourselves very wise. I’m not
+sure we weren’t. We were happy, Miss Vinrace, and we were young—gifts
+which make for wisdom.”
+
+“Have you done what you said you’d do?” she asked.
+
+“A searching question! I answer—Yes and No. If on the one hand I have
+not accomplished what I set out to accomplish—which of us does!—on the
+other I can fairly say this: I have not lowered my ideal.”
+
+He looked resolutely at a sea-gull, as though his ideal flew on the
+wings of the bird.
+
+“But,” said Rachel, “what _is_ your ideal?”
+
+“There you ask too much, Miss Vinrace,” said Richard playfully.
+
+She could only say that she wanted to know, and Richard was
+sufficiently amused to answer.
+
+“Well, how shall I reply? In one word—Unity. Unity of aim, of dominion,
+of progress. The dispersion of the best ideas over the greatest area.”
+
+“The English?”
+
+“I grant that the English seem, on the whole, whiter than most men,
+their records cleaner. But, good Lord, don’t run away with the idea
+that I don’t see the drawbacks—horrors—unmentionable things done in our
+very midst! I’m under no illusions. Few people, I suppose, have fewer
+illusions than I have. Have you ever been in a factory, Miss
+Vinrace!—No, I suppose not—I may say I hope not.”
+
+As for Rachel, she had scarcely walked through a poor street, and
+always under the escort of father, maid, or aunts.
+
+“I was going to say that if you’d ever seen the kind of thing that’s
+going on round you, you’d understand what it is that makes me and men
+like me politicians. You asked me a moment ago whether I’d done what I
+set out to do. Well, when I consider my life, there is one fact I admit
+that I’m proud of; owing to me some thousands of girls in
+Lancashire—and many thousands to come after them—can spend an hour
+every day in the open air which their mothers had to spend over their
+looms. I’m prouder of that, I own, than I should be of writing Keats
+and Shelley into the bargain!”
+
+It became painful to Rachel to be one of those who write Keats and
+Shelley. She liked Richard Dalloway, and warmed as he warmed. He seemed
+to mean what he said.
+
+“I know nothing!” she exclaimed.
+
+“It’s far better that you should know nothing,” he said paternally,
+“and you wrong yourself, I’m sure. You play very nicely, I’m told, and
+I’ve no doubt you’ve read heaps of learned books.”
+
+Elderly banter would no longer check her.
+
+“You talk of unity,” she said. “You ought to make me understand.”
+
+“I never allow my wife to talk politics,” he said seriously. “For this
+reason. It is impossible for human beings, constituted as they are,
+both to fight and to have ideals. If I have preserved mine, as I am
+thankful to say that in great measure I have, it is due to the fact
+that I have been able to come home to my wife in the evening and to
+find that she has spent her day in calling, music, play with the
+children, domestic duties—what you will; her illusions have not been
+destroyed. She gives me courage to go on. The strain of public life is
+very great,” he added.
+
+This made him appear a battered martyr, parting every day with some of
+the finest gold, in the service of mankind.
+
+“I can’t think,” Rachel exclaimed, “how any one does it!”
+
+“Explain, Miss Vinrace,” said Richard. “This is a matter I want to
+clear up.”
+
+His kindness was genuine, and she determined to take the chance he gave
+her, although to talk to a man of such worth and authority made her
+heart beat.
+
+“It seems to me like this,” she began, doing her best first to
+recollect and then to expose her shivering private visions.
+
+“There’s an old widow in her room, somewhere, let us suppose in the
+suburbs of Leeds.”
+
+Richard bent his head to show that he accepted the widow.
+
+“In London you’re spending your life, talking, writing things, getting
+bills through, missing what seems natural. The result of it all is that
+she goes to her cupboard and finds a little more tea, a few lumps of
+sugar, or a little less tea and a newspaper. Widows all over the
+country I admit do this. Still, there’s the mind of the widow—the
+affections; those you leave untouched. But you waste you own.”
+
+“If the widow goes to her cupboard and finds it bare,” Richard
+answered, “her spiritual outlook we may admit will be affected. If I
+may pick holes in your philosophy, Miss Vinrace, which has its merits,
+I would point out that a human being is not a set of compartments, but
+an organism. Imagination, Miss Vinrace; use your imagination; that’s
+where you young Liberals fail. Conceive the world as a whole. Now for
+your second point; when you assert that in trying to set the house in
+order for the benefit of the young generation I am wasting my higher
+capabilities, I totally disagree with you. I can conceive no more
+exalted aim—to be the citizen of the Empire. Look at it in this way,
+Miss Vinrace; conceive the state as a complicated machine; we citizens
+are parts of that machine; some fulfil more important duties; others
+(perhaps I am one of them) serve only to connect some obscure parts of
+the mechanism, concealed from the public eye. Yet if the meanest screw
+fails in its task, the proper working of the whole is imperilled.”
+
+It was impossible to combine the image of a lean black widow, gazing
+out of her window, and longing for some one to talk to, with the image
+of a vast machine, such as one sees at South Kensington, thumping,
+thumping, thumping. The attempt at communication had been a failure.
+
+“We don’t seem to understand each other,” she said.
+
+“Shall I say something that will make you very angry?” he replied.
+
+“It won’t,” said Rachel.
+
+“Well, then; no woman has what I may call the political instinct. You
+have very great virtues; I am the first, I hope, to admit that; but I
+have never met a woman who even saw what is meant by statesmanship. I
+am going to make you still more angry. I hope that I never shall meet
+such a woman. Now, Miss Vinrace, are we enemies for life?”
+
+Vanity, irritation, and a thrusting desire to be understood, urged her
+to make another attempt.
+
+“Under the streets, in the sewers, in the wires, in the telephones,
+there is something alive; is that what you mean? In things like
+dust-carts, and men mending roads? You feel that all the time when you
+walk about London, and when you turn on a tap and the water comes?”
+
+“Certainly,” said Richard. “I understand you to mean that the whole of
+modern society is based upon cooperative effort. If only more people
+would realise that, Miss Vinrace, there would be fewer of your old
+widows in solitary lodgings!”
+
+Rachel considered.
+
+“Are you a Liberal or are you a Conservative?” she asked.
+
+“I call myself a Conservative for convenience sake,” said Richard,
+smiling. “But there is more in common between the two parties than
+people generally allow.”
+
+There was a pause, which did not come on Rachel’s side from any lack of
+things to say; as usual she could not say them, and was further
+confused by the fact that the time for talking probably ran short. She
+was haunted by absurd jumbled ideas—how, if one went back far enough,
+everything perhaps was intelligible; everything was in common; for the
+mammoths who pastured in the fields of Richmond High Street had turned
+into paving stones and boxes full of ribbon, and her aunts.
+
+“Did you say you lived in the country when you were a child?” she
+asked.
+
+Crude as her manners seemed to him, Richard was flattered. There could
+be no doubt that her interest was genuine.
+
+“I did,” he smiled.
+
+“And what happened?” she asked. “Or do I ask too many questions?”
+
+“I’m flattered, I assure you. But—let me see—what happened? Well,
+riding, lessons, sisters. There was an enchanted rubbish heap, I
+remember, where all kinds of queer things happened. Odd, what things
+impress children! I can remember the look of the place to this day.
+It’s a fallacy to think that children are happy. They’re not; they’re
+unhappy. I’ve never suffered so much as I did when I was a child.”
+
+“Why?” she asked.
+
+“I didn’t get on well with my father,” said Richard shortly. “He was a
+very able man, but hard. Well—it makes one determined not to sin in
+that way oneself. Children never forget injustice. They forgive heaps
+of things grown-up people mind; but that sin is the unpardonable sin.
+Mind you—I daresay I was a difficult child to manage; but when I think
+what I was ready to give! No, I was more sinned against than sinning.
+And then I went to school, where I did very fairly well; and and then,
+as I say, my father sent me to both universities. . . . D’you know,
+Miss Vinrace, you’ve made me think? How little, after all, one can tell
+anybody about one’s life! Here I sit; there you sit; both, I doubt not,
+chock-full of the most interesting experiences, ideas, emotions; yet
+how communicate? I’ve told you what every second person you meet might
+tell you.”
+
+“I don’t think so,” she said. “It’s the way of saying things, isn’t it,
+not the things?”
+
+“True,” said Richard. “Perfectly true.” He paused. “When I look back
+over my life—I’m forty-two—what are the great facts that stand out?
+What were the revelations, if I may call them so? The misery of the
+poor and—” (he hesitated and pitched over) “love!”
+
+Upon that word he lowered his voice; it was a word that seemed to
+unveil the skies for Rachel.
+
+“It’s an odd thing to say to a young lady,” he continued. “But have you
+any idea what—what I mean by that? No, of course not. I don’t use the
+word in a conventional sense. I use it as young men use it. Girls are
+kept very ignorant, aren’t they? Perhaps it’s wise—perhaps—You _don’t_
+know?”
+
+He spoke as if he had lost consciousness of what he was saying.
+
+“No; I don’t,” she said, scarcely speaking above her breath.
+
+“Warships, Dick! Over there! Look!” Clarissa, released from Mr. Grice,
+appreciative of all his seaweeds, skimmed towards them, gesticulating.
+
+She had sighted two sinister grey vessels, low in the water, and bald
+as bone, one closely following the other with the look of eyeless
+beasts seeking their prey. Consciousness returned to Richard instantly.
+
+“By George!” he exclaimed, and stood shielding his eyes.
+
+“Ours, Dick?” said Clarissa.
+
+“The Mediterranean Fleet,” he answered.
+
+The _Euphrosyne_ was slowly dipping her flag. Richard raised his hat.
+Convulsively Clarissa squeezed Rachel’s hand.
+
+“Aren’t you glad to be English!” she said.
+
+The warships drew past, casting a curious effect of discipline and
+sadness upon the waters, and it was not until they were again invisible
+that people spoke to each other naturally. At lunch the talk was all of
+valour and death, and the magnificent qualities of British admirals.
+Clarissa quoted one poet, Willoughby quoted another. Life on board a
+man-of-war was splendid, so they agreed, and sailors, whenever one met
+them, were quite especially nice and simple.
+
+This being so, no one liked it when Helen remarked that it seemed to
+her as wrong to keep sailors as to keep a Zoo, and that as for dying on
+a battle-field, surely it was time we ceased to praise courage—“or to
+write bad poetry about it,” snarled Pepper.
+
+But Helen was really wondering why Rachel, sitting silent, looked so
+queer and flushed.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER V
+
+
+She was not able to follow up her observations, however, or to come to
+any conclusion, for by one of those accidents which are liable to
+happen at sea, the whole course of their lives was now put out of
+order.
+
+Even at tea the floor rose beneath their feet and pitched too low
+again, and at dinner the ship seemed to groan and strain as though a
+lash were descending. She who had been a broad-backed dray-horse, upon
+whose hind-quarters pierrots might waltz, became a colt in a field. The
+plates slanted away from the knives, and Mrs. Dalloway’s face blanched
+for a second as she helped herself and saw the potatoes roll this way
+and that. Willoughby, of course, extolled the virtues of his ship, and
+quoted what had been said of her by experts and distinguished
+passengers, for he loved his own possessions. Still, dinner was uneasy,
+and directly the ladies were alone Clarissa owned that she would be
+better off in bed, and went, smiling bravely.
+
+Next morning the storm was on them, and no politeness could ignore it.
+Mrs. Dalloway stayed in her room. Richard faced three meals, eating
+valiantly at each; but at the third, certain glazed asparagus swimming
+in oil finally conquered him.
+
+“That beats me,” he said, and withdrew.
+
+“Now we are alone once more,” remarked William Pepper, looking round
+the table; but no one was ready to engage him in talk, and the meal
+ended in silence.
+
+On the following day they met—but as flying leaves meet in the air.
+Sick they were not; but the wind propelled them hastily into rooms,
+violently downstairs. They passed each other gasping on deck; they
+shouted across tables. They wore fur coats; and Helen was never seen
+without a bandanna on her head. For comfort they retreated to their
+cabins, where with tightly wedged feet they let the ship bounce and
+tumble. Their sensations were the sensations of potatoes in a sack on a
+galloping horse. The world outside was merely a violent grey tumult.
+For two days they had a perfect rest from their old emotions. Rachel
+had just enough consciousness to suppose herself a donkey on the summit
+of a moor in a hail-storm, with its coat blown into furrows; then she
+became a wizened tree, perpetually driven back by the salt Atlantic
+gale.
+
+Helen, on the other hand, staggered to Mrs. Dalloway’s door, knocked,
+could not be heard for the slamming of doors and the battering of wind,
+and entered.
+
+There were basins, of course. Mrs. Dalloway lay half-raised on a
+pillow, and did not open her eyes. Then she murmured, “Oh, Dick, is
+that you?”
+
+Helen shouted—for she was thrown against the washstand—“How are you?”
+
+Clarissa opened one eye. It gave her an incredibly dissipated
+appearance. “Awful!” she gasped. Her lips were white inside.
+
+Planting her feet wide, Helen contrived to pour champagne into a
+tumbler with a tooth-brush in it.
+
+“Champagne,” she said.
+
+“There’s a tooth-brush in it,” murmured Clarissa, and smiled; it might
+have been the contortion of one weeping. She drank.
+
+“Disgusting,” she whispered, indicating the basins. Relics of humour
+still played over her face like moonshine.
+
+“Want more?” Helen shouted. Speech was again beyond Clarissa’s reach.
+The wind laid the ship shivering on her side. Pale agonies crossed Mrs.
+Dalloway in waves. When the curtains flapped, grey lights puffed across
+her. Between the spasms of the storm, Helen made the curtain fast,
+shook the pillows, stretched the bed-clothes, and smoothed the hot
+nostrils and forehead with cold scent.
+
+“You _are_ good!” Clarissa gasped. “Horrid mess!”
+
+She was trying to apologise for white underclothes fallen and scattered
+on the floor. For one second she opened a single eye, and saw that the
+room was tidy.
+
+“That’s nice,” she gasped.
+
+Helen left her; far, far away she knew that she felt a kind of liking
+for Mrs. Dalloway. She could not help respecting her spirit and her
+desire, even in the throes of sickness, for a tidy bedroom. Her
+petticoats, however, rose above her knees.
+
+Quite suddenly the storm relaxed its grasp. It happened at tea; the
+expected paroxysm of the blast gave out just as it reached its climax
+and dwindled away, and the ship instead of taking the usual plunge went
+steadily. The monotonous order of plunging and rising, roaring and
+relaxing, was interfered with, and every one at table looked up and
+felt something loosen within them. The strain was slackened and human
+feelings began to peep again, as they do when daylight shows at the end
+of a tunnel.
+
+“Try a turn with me,” Ridley called across to Rachel.
+
+“Foolish!” cried Helen, but they went stumbling up the ladder. Choked
+by the wind their spirits rose with a rush, for on the skirts of all
+the grey tumult was a misty spot of gold. Instantly the world dropped
+into shape; they were no longer atoms flying in the void, but people
+riding a triumphant ship on the back of the sea. Wind and space were
+banished; the world floated like an apple in a tub, and the mind of
+man, which had been unmoored also, once more attached itself to the old
+beliefs.
+
+Having scrambled twice round the ship and received many sound cuffs
+from the wind, they saw a sailor’s face positively shine golden. They
+looked, and beheld a complete yellow circle of sun; next minute it was
+traversed by sailing stands of cloud, and then completely hidden. By
+breakfast the next morning, however, the sky was swept clean, the
+waves, although steep, were blue, and after their view of the strange
+under-world, inhabited by phantoms, people began to live among tea-pots
+and loaves of bread with greater zest than ever.
+
+Richard and Clarissa, however, still remained on the borderland. She
+did not attempt to sit up; her husband stood on his feet, contemplated
+his waistcoat and trousers, shook his head, and then lay down again.
+The inside of his brain was still rising and falling like the sea on
+the stage. At four o’clock he woke from sleep and saw the sunlight make
+a vivid angle across the red plush curtains and the grey tweed
+trousers. The ordinary world outside slid into his mind, and by the
+time he was dressed he was an English gentleman again.
+
+He stood beside his wife. She pulled him down to her by the lapel of
+his coat, kissed him, and held him fast for a minute.
+
+“Go and get a breath of air, Dick,” she said. “You look quite washed
+out. . . . How nice you smell! . . . And be polite to that woman. She
+was so kind to me.”
+
+Thereupon Mrs. Dalloway turned to the cool side of her pillow, terribly
+flattened but still invincible.
+
+Richard found Helen talking to her brother-in-law, over two dishes of
+yellow cake and smooth bread and butter.
+
+“You look very ill!” she exclaimed on seeing him. “Come and have some
+tea.”
+
+He remarked that the hands that moved about the cups were beautiful.
+
+“I hear you’ve been very good to my wife,” he said. “She’s had an awful
+time of it. You came in and fed her with champagne. Were you among the
+saved yourself?”
+
+“I? Oh, I haven’t been sick for twenty years—sea-sick, I mean.”
+
+“There are three stages of convalescence, I always say,” broke in the
+hearty voice of Willoughby. “The milk stage, the bread-and-butter
+stage, and the roast-beef stage. I should say you were at the
+bread-and-butter stage.” He handed him the plate.
+
+“Now, I should advise a hearty tea, then a brisk walk on deck; and by
+dinner-time you’ll be clamouring for beef, eh?” He went off laughing,
+excusing himself on the score of business.
+
+“What a splendid fellow he is!” said Richard. “Always keen on
+something.”
+
+“Yes,” said Helen, “he’s always been like that.”
+
+“This is a great undertaking of his,” Richard continued. “It’s a
+business that won’t stop with ships, I should say. We shall see him in
+Parliament, or I’m much mistaken. He’s the kind of man we want in
+Parliament—the man who has done things.”
+
+But Helen was not much interested in her brother-in-law.
+
+“I expect your head’s aching, isn’t it?” she asked, pouring a fresh
+cup.
+
+“Well, it is,” said Richard. “It’s humiliating to find what a slave one
+is to one’s body in this world. D’you know, I can never work without a
+kettle on the hob. As often as not I don’t drink tea, but I must feel
+that I can if I want to.”
+
+“That’s very bad for you,” said Helen.
+
+“It shortens one’s life; but I’m afraid, Mrs. Ambrose, we politicians
+must make up our minds to that at the outset. We’ve got to burn the
+candle at both ends, or—”
+
+“You’ve cooked your goose!” said Helen brightly.
+
+“We can’t make you take us seriously, Mrs. Ambrose,” he protested. “May
+I ask how you’ve spent your time? Reading—philosophy?” (He saw the
+black book.) “Metaphysics and fishing!” he exclaimed. “If I had to live
+again I believe I should devote myself to one or the other.” He began
+turning the pages.
+
+“‘Good, then, is indefinable,’” he read out. “How jolly to think that’s
+going on still! ‘So far as I know there is only one ethical writer,
+Professor Henry Sidgwick, who has clearly recognised and stated this
+fact.’ That’s just the kind of thing we used to talk about when we were
+boys. I can remember arguing until five in the morning with Duffy—now
+Secretary for India—pacing round and round those cloisters until we
+decided it was too late to go to bed, and we went for a ride instead.
+Whether we ever came to any conclusion—that’s another matter. Still,
+it’s the arguing that counts. It’s things like that that stand out in
+life. Nothing’s been quite so vivid since. It’s the philosophers, it’s
+the scholars,” he continued, “they’re the people who pass the torch,
+who keep the light burning by which we live. Being a politician doesn’t
+necessarily blind one to that, Mrs. Ambrose.”
+
+“No. Why should it?” said Helen. “But can you remember if your wife
+takes sugar?”
+
+She lifted the tray and went off with it to Mrs. Dalloway.
+
+Richard twisted a muffler twice round his throat and struggled up on
+deck. His body, which had grown white and tender in a dark room,
+tingled all over in the fresh air. He felt himself a man undoubtedly in
+the prime of life. Pride glowed in his eye as he let the wind buffet
+him and stood firm. With his head slightly lowered he sheered round
+corners, strode uphill, and met the blast. There was a collision. For a
+second he could not see what the body was he had run into. “Sorry.”
+“Sorry.” It was Rachel who apologised. They both laughed, too much
+blown about to speak. She drove open the door of her room and stepped
+into its calm. In order to speak to her, it was necessary that Richard
+should follow. They stood in a whirlpool of wind; papers began flying
+round in circles, the door crashed to, and they tumbled, laughing, into
+chairs. Richard sat upon Bach.
+
+“My word! What a tempest!” he exclaimed.
+
+“Fine, isn’t it?” said Rachel. Certainly the struggle and wind had
+given her a decision she lacked; red was in her cheeks, and her hair
+was down.
+
+“Oh, what fun!” he cried. “What am I sitting on? Is this your room? How
+jolly!” “There—sit there,” she commanded. Cowper slid once more.
+
+“How jolly to meet again,” said Richard. “It seems an age. _Cowper’s
+Letters_? . . . Bach? . . . _Wuthering Heights_? . . . Is this where
+you meditate on the world, and then come out and pose poor politicians
+with questions? In the intervals of sea-sickness I’ve thought a lot of
+our talk. I assure you, you made me think.”
+
+“I made you think! But why?”
+
+“What solitary icebergs we are, Miss Vinrace! How little we can
+communicate! There are lots of things I should like to tell you
+about—to hear your opinion of. Have you ever read Burke?”
+
+“Burke?” she repeated. “Who was Burke?”
+
+“No? Well, then I shall make a point of sending you a copy. _The Speech
+on the French Revolution_—_The American Rebellion_? Which shall it be,
+I wonder?” He noted something in his pocket-book. “And then you must
+write and tell me what you think of it. This reticence—this
+isolation—that’s what’s the matter with modern life! Now, tell me about
+yourself. What are your interests and occupations? I should imagine
+that you were a person with very strong interests. Of course you are!
+Good God! When I think of the age we live in, with its opportunities
+and possibilities, the mass of things to be done and enjoyed—why
+haven’t we ten lives instead of one? But about yourself?”
+
+“You see, I’m a woman,” said Rachel.
+
+“I know—I know,” said Richard, throwing his head back, and drawing his
+fingers across his eyes.
+
+“How strange to be a woman! A young and beautiful woman,” he continued
+sententiously, “has the whole world at her feet. That’s true, Miss
+Vinrace. You have an inestimable power—for good or for evil. What
+couldn’t you do—” he broke off.
+
+“What?” asked Rachel.
+
+“You have beauty,” he said. The ship lurched. Rachel fell slightly
+forward. Richard took her in his arms and kissed her. Holding her
+tight, he kissed her passionately, so that she felt the hardness of his
+body and the roughness of his cheek printed upon hers. She fell back in
+her chair, with tremendous beats of the heart, each of which sent black
+waves across her eyes. He clasped his forehead in his hands.
+
+“You tempt me,” he said. The tone of his voice was terrifying. He
+seemed choked in fright. They were both trembling. Rachel stood up and
+went. Her head was cold, her knees shaking, and the physical pain of
+the emotion was so great that she could only keep herself moving above
+the great leaps of her heart. She leant upon the rail of the ship, and
+gradually ceased to feel, for a chill of body and mind crept over her.
+Far out between the waves little black and white sea-birds were riding.
+Rising and falling with smooth and graceful movements in the hollows of
+the waves they seemed singularly detached and unconcerned.
+
+“You’re peaceful,” she said. She became peaceful too, at the same time
+possessed with a strange exultation. Life seemed to hold infinite
+possibilities she had never guessed at. She leant upon the rail and
+looked over the troubled grey waters, where the sunlight was fitfully
+scattered upon the crests of the waves, until she was cold and
+absolutely calm again. Nevertheless something wonderful had happened.
+
+At dinner, however, she did not feel exalted, but merely uncomfortable,
+as if she and Richard had seen something together which is hidden in
+ordinary life, so that they did not like to look at each other. Richard
+slid his eyes over her uneasily once, and never looked at her again.
+Formal platitudes were manufactured with effort, but Willoughby was
+kindled.
+
+“Beef for Mr. Dalloway!” he shouted. “Come now—after that walk you’re
+at the beef stage, Dalloway!”
+
+Wonderful masculine stories followed about Bright and Disraeli and
+coalition governments, wonderful stories which made the people at the
+dinner-table seem featureless and small. After dinner, sitting alone
+with Rachel under the great swinging lamp, Helen was struck by her
+pallor. It once more occurred to her that there was something strange
+in the girl’s behaviour.
+
+“You look tired. Are you tired?” she asked.
+
+“Not tired,” said Rachel. “Oh, yes, I suppose I am tired.”
+
+Helen advised bed, and she went, not seeing Richard again. She must
+have been very tired for she fell asleep at once, but after an hour or
+two of dreamless sleep, she dreamt. She dreamt that she was walking
+down a long tunnel, which grew so narrow by degrees that she could
+touch the damp bricks on either side. At length the tunnel opened and
+became a vault; she found herself trapped in it, bricks meeting her
+wherever she turned, alone with a little deformed man who squatted on
+the floor gibbering, with long nails. His face was pitted and like the
+face of an animal. The wall behind him oozed with damp, which collected
+into drops and slid down. Still and cold as death she lay, not daring
+to move, until she broke the agony by tossing herself across the bed,
+and woke crying “Oh!”
+
+Light showed her the familiar things: her clothes, fallen off the
+chair; the water jug gleaming white; but the horror did not go at once.
+She felt herself pursued, so that she got up and actually locked her
+door. A voice moaned for her; eyes desired her. All night long
+barbarian men harassed the ship; they came scuffling down the passages,
+and stopped to snuffle at her door. She could not sleep again.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VI
+
+
+“That’s the tragedy of life—as I always say!” said Mrs. Dalloway.
+“Beginning things and having to end them. Still, I’m not going to let
+_this_ end, if you’re willing.” It was the morning, the sea was calm,
+and the ship once again was anchored not far from another shore.
+
+She was dressed in her long fur cloak, with the veils wound around her
+head, and once more the rich boxes stood on top of each other so that
+the scene of a few days back seemed to be repeated.
+
+“D’you suppose we shall ever meet in London?” said Ridley ironically.
+“You’ll have forgotten all about me by the time you step out there.”
+
+He pointed to the shore of the little bay, where they could now see the
+separate trees with moving branches.
+
+“How horrid you are!” she laughed. “Rachel’s coming to see me
+anyhow—the instant you get back,” she said, pressing Rachel’s arm.
+“Now—you’ve no excuse!”
+
+With a silver pencil she wrote her name and address on the flyleaf of
+_Persuasion_, and gave the book to Rachel. Sailors were shouldering the
+luggage, and people were beginning to congregate. There were Captain
+Cobbold, Mr. Grice, Willoughby, Helen, and an obscure grateful man in a
+blue jersey.
+
+“Oh, it’s time,” said Clarissa. “Well, good-bye. I _do_ like you,” she
+murmured as she kissed Rachel. People in the way made it unnecessary
+for Richard to shake Rachel by the hand; he managed to look at her very
+stiffly for a second before he followed his wife down the ship’s side.
+
+The boat separating from the vessel made off towards the land, and for
+some minutes Helen, Ridley, and Rachel leant over the rail, watching.
+Once Mrs. Dalloway turned and waved; but the boat steadily grew smaller
+and smaller until it ceased to rise and fall, and nothing could be seen
+save two resolute backs.
+
+“Well, that’s over,” said Ridley after a long silence. “We shall never
+see _them_ again,” he added, turning to go to his books. A feeling of
+emptiness and melancholy came over them; they knew in their hearts that
+it was over, and that they had parted for ever, and the knowledge
+filled them with far greater depression than the length of their
+acquaintance seemed to justify. Even as the boat pulled away they could
+feel other sights and sounds beginning to take the place of the
+Dalloways, and the feeling was so unpleasant that they tried to resist
+it. For so, too, would they be forgotten.
+
+In much the same way as Mrs. Chailey downstairs was sweeping the
+withered rose-leaves off the dressing-table, so Helen was anxious to
+make things straight again after the visitors had gone. Rachel’s
+obvious languor and listlessness made her an easy prey, and indeed
+Helen had devised a kind of trap. That something had happened she now
+felt pretty certain; moreover, she had come to think that they had been
+strangers long enough; she wished to know what the girl was like,
+partly of course because Rachel showed no disposition to be known. So,
+as they turned from the rail, she said:
+
+“Come and talk to me instead of practising,” and led the way to the
+sheltered side where the deck-chairs were stretched in the sun. Rachel
+followed her indifferently. Her mind was absorbed by Richard; by the
+extreme strangeness of what had happened, and by a thousand feelings of
+which she had not been conscious before. She made scarcely any attempt
+to listen to what Helen was saying, as Helen indulged in commonplaces
+to begin with. While Mrs. Ambrose arranged her embroidery, sucked her
+silk, and threaded her needle, she lay back gazing at the horizon.
+
+“Did you like those people?” Helen asked her casually.
+
+“Yes,” she replied blankly.
+
+“You talked to him, didn’t you?”
+
+She said nothing for a minute.
+
+“He kissed me,” she said without any change of tone.
+
+Helen started, looked at her, but could not make out what she felt.
+
+“M-m-m’yes,” she said, after a pause. “I thought he was that kind of
+man.”
+
+“What kind of man?” said Rachel.
+
+“Pompous and sentimental.”
+
+“I like him,” said Rachel.
+
+“So you really didn’t mind?”
+
+For the first time since Helen had known her Rachel’s eyes lit up
+brightly.
+
+“I did mind,” she said vehemently. “I dreamt. I couldn’t sleep.”
+
+“Tell me what happened,” said Helen. She had to keep her lips from
+twitching as she listened to Rachel’s story. It was poured out abruptly
+with great seriousness and no sense of humour.
+
+“We talked about politics. He told me what he had done for the poor
+somewhere. I asked him all sorts of questions. He told me about his own
+life. The day before yesterday, after the storm, he came in to see me.
+It happened then, quite suddenly. He kissed me. I don’t know why.” As
+she spoke she grew flushed. “I was a good deal excited,” she continued.
+“But I didn’t mind till afterwards; when—” she paused, and saw the
+figure of the bloated little man again—“I became terrified.”
+
+From the look in her eyes it was evident she was again terrified. Helen
+was really at a loss what to say. From the little she knew of Rachel’s
+upbringing she supposed that she had been kept entirely ignorant as to
+the relations of men with women. With a shyness which she felt with
+women and not with men she did not like to explain simply what these
+are. Therefore she took the other course and belittled the whole
+affair.
+
+“Oh, well,” she said, “He was a silly creature, and if I were you, I’d
+think no more about it.”
+
+“No,” said Rachel, sitting bolt upright, “I shan’t do that. I shall
+think about it all day and all night until I find out exactly what it
+does mean.”
+
+“Don’t you ever read?” Helen asked tentatively.
+
+“_Cowper’s Letters_—that kind of thing. Father gets them for me or my
+Aunts.”
+
+Helen could hardly restrain herself from saying out loud what she
+thought of a man who brought up his daughter so that at the age of
+twenty-four she scarcely knew that men desired women and was terrified
+by a kiss. She had good reason to fear that Rachel had made herself
+incredibly ridiculous.
+
+“You don’t know many men?” she asked.
+
+“Mr. Pepper,” said Rachel ironically.
+
+“So no one’s ever wanted to marry you?”
+
+“No,” she answered ingenuously.
+
+Helen reflected that as, from what she had said, Rachel certainly would
+think these things out, it might be as well to help her.
+
+“You oughtn’t to be frightened,” she said. “It’s the most natural thing
+in the world. Men will want to kiss you, just as they’ll want to marry
+you. The pity is to get things out of proportion. It’s like noticing
+the noises people make when they eat, or men spitting; or, in short,
+any small thing that gets on one’s nerves.”
+
+Rachel seemed to be inattentive to these remarks.
+
+“Tell me,” she said suddenly, “what are those women in Piccadilly?”
+
+“In Picadilly? They are prostituted,” said Helen.
+
+“It _is_ terrifying—it _is_ disgusting,” Rachel asserted, as if she
+included Helen in the hatred.
+
+“It is,” said Helen. “But—”
+
+“I did like him,” Rachel mused, as if speaking to herself. “I wanted to
+talk to him; I wanted to know what he’d done. The women in Lancashire—”
+
+It seemed to her as she recalled their talk that there was something
+lovable about Richard, good in their attempted friendship, and
+strangely piteous in the way they had parted.
+
+The softening of her mood was apparent to Helen.
+
+“You see,” she said, “you must take things as they are; and if you want
+friendship with men you must run risks. Personally,” she continued,
+breaking into a smile, “I think it’s worth it; I don’t mind being
+kissed; I’m rather jealous, I believe, that Mr. Dalloway kissed you and
+didn’t kiss me. Though,” she added, “he bored me considerably.”
+
+But Rachel did not return the smile or dismiss the whole affair, as
+Helen meant her to. Her mind was working very quickly, inconsistently
+and painfully. Helen’s words hewed down great blocks which had stood
+there always, and the light which came in was cold. After sitting for a
+time with fixed eyes, she burst out:
+
+“So that’s why I can’t walk alone!”
+
+By this new light she saw her life for the first time a creeping
+hedged-in thing, driven cautiously between high walls, here turned
+aside, there plunged in darkness, made dull and crippled for ever—her
+life that was the only chance she had—a thousand words and actions
+became plain to her.
+
+“Because men are brutes! I hate men!” she exclaimed.
+
+“I thought you said you liked him?” said Helen.
+
+“I liked him, and I liked being kissed,” she answered, as if that only
+added more difficulties to her problem.
+
+Helen was surprised to see how genuine both shock and problem were, but
+she could think of no way of easing the difficulty except by going on
+talking. She wanted to make her niece talk, and so to understand why
+this rather dull, kindly, plausible politician had made so deep an
+impression on her, for surely at the age of twenty-four this was not
+natural.
+
+“And did you like Mrs. Dalloway too?” she asked.
+
+As she spoke she saw Rachel redden; for she remembered silly things she
+had said, and also, it occurred to her that she treated this exquisite
+woman rather badly, for Mrs. Dalloway had said that she loved her
+husband.
+
+“She was quite nice, but a thimble-pated creature,” Helen continued. “I
+never heard such nonsense! Chitter-chatter-chitter-chatter—fish and the
+Greek alphabet—never listened to a word any one said—chock-full of
+idiotic theories about the way to bring up children—I’d far rather talk
+to him any day. He was pompous, but he did at least understand what was
+said to him.”
+
+The glamour insensibly faded a little both from Richard and Clarissa.
+They had not been so wonderful after all, then, in the eyes of a mature
+person.
+
+“It’s very difficult to know what people are like,” Rachel remarked,
+and Helen saw with pleasure that she spoke more naturally. “I suppose I
+was taken in.”
+
+There was little doubt about that according to Helen, but she
+restrained herself and said aloud:
+
+“One has to make experiments.”
+
+“And they _were_ nice,” said Rachel. “They were extraordinarily
+interesting.” She tried to recall the image of the world as a live
+thing that Richard had given her, with drains like nerves, and bad
+houses like patches of diseased skin. She recalled his
+watch-words—Unity—Imagination, and saw again the bubbles meeting in her
+tea-cup as he spoke of sisters and canaries, boyhood and his father,
+her small world becoming wonderfully enlarged.
+
+“But all people don’t seem to you equally interesting, do they?” asked
+Mrs. Ambrose.
+
+Rachel explained that most people had hitherto been symbols; but that
+when they talked to one they ceased to be symbols, and became—“I could
+listen to them for ever!” she exclaimed. She then jumped up,
+disappeared downstairs for a minute, and came back with a fat red book.
+
+“_Who’s Who_,” she said, laying it upon Helen’s knee and turning the
+pages. “It gives short lives of people—for instance: ‘Sir Roland Beal;
+born 1852; parents from Moffatt; educated at Rugby; passed first into
+R.E.; married 1878 the daughter of T. Fishwick; served in the
+Bechuanaland Expedition 1884-85 (honourably mentioned). Clubs: United
+Service, Naval and Military. Recreations: an enthusiastic curler.’”
+
+Sitting on the deck at Helen’s feet she went on turning the pages and
+reading biographies of bankers, writers, clergymen, sailors, surgeons,
+judges, professors, statesmen, editors, philanthropists, merchants, and
+actresses; what clubs they belonged to, where they lived, what games
+they played, and how many acres they owned.
+
+She became absorbed in the book.
+
+Helen meanwhile stitched at her embroidery and thought over the things
+they had said. Her conclusion was that she would very much like to show
+her niece, if it were possible, how to live, or as she put it, how to
+be a reasonable person. She thought that there must be something wrong
+in this confusion between politics and kissing politicians, and that an
+elder person ought to be able to help.
+
+“I quite agree,” she said, “that people are very interesting; only—”
+Rachel, putting her finger between the pages, looked up enquiringly.
+
+“Only I think you ought to discriminate,” she ended. “It’s a pity to be
+intimate with people who are—well, rather second-rate, like the
+Dalloways, and to find it out later.”
+
+“But how does one know?” Rachel asked.
+
+“I really can’t tell you,” replied Helen candidly, after a moment’s
+thought. “You’ll have to find out for yourself. But try and—Why don’t
+you call me Helen?” she added. “‘Aunt’s’ a horrid name. I never liked
+my Aunts.”
+
+“I should like to call you Helen,” Rachel answered.
+
+“D’you think me very unsympathetic?”
+
+Rachel reviewed the points which Helen had certainly failed to
+understand; they arose chiefly from the difference of nearly twenty
+years in age between them, which made Mrs. Ambrose appear too humorous
+and cool in a matter of such moment.
+
+“No,” she said. “Some things you don’t understand, of course.”
+
+“Of course,” Helen agreed. “So now you can go ahead and be a person on
+your own account,” she added.
+
+The vision of her own personality, of herself as a real everlasting
+thing, different from anything else, unmergeable, like the sea or the
+wind, flashed into Rachel’s mind, and she became profoundly excited at
+the thought of living.
+
+“I can by m-m-myself,” she stammered, “in spite of you, in spite of the
+Dalloways, and Mr. Pepper, and Father, and my Aunts, in spite of
+these?” She swept her hand across a whole page of statesmen and
+soldiers.
+
+“In spite of them all,” said Helen gravely. She then put down her
+needle, and explained a plan which had come into her head as they
+talked. Instead of wandering on down the Amazons until she reached some
+sulphurous tropical port, where one had to lie within doors all day
+beating off insects with a fan, the sensible thing to do surely was to
+spend the season with them in their villa by the seaside, where among
+other advantages Mrs. Ambrose herself would be at hand to—“After all,
+Rachel,” she broke off, “it’s silly to pretend that because there’s
+twenty years’ difference between us we therefore can’t talk to each
+other like human beings.”
+
+“No; because we like each other,” said Rachel.
+
+“Yes,” Mrs. Ambrose agreed.
+
+That fact, together with other facts, had been made clear by their
+twenty minutes’ talk, although how they had come to these conclusions
+they could not have said.
+
+However they were come by, they were sufficiently serious to send Mrs.
+Ambrose a day or two later in search of her brother-in-law. She found
+him sitting in his room working, applying a stout blue pencil
+authoritatively to bundles of filmy paper. Papers lay to left and to
+right of him, there were great envelopes so gorged with papers that
+they spilt papers on to the table. Above him hung a photograph of a
+woman’s head. The need of sitting absolutely still before a Cockney
+photographer had given her lips a queer little pucker, and her eyes for
+the same reason looked as though she thought the whole situation
+ridiculous. Nevertheless it was the head of an individual and
+interesting woman, who would no doubt have turned and laughed at
+Willoughby if she could have caught his eye; but when he looked up at
+her he sighed profoundly. In his mind this work of his, the great
+factories at Hull which showed like mountains at night, the ships that
+crossed the ocean punctually, the schemes for combining this and that
+and building up a solid mass of industry, was all an offering to her;
+he laid his success at her feet; and was always thinking how to educate
+his daughter so that Theresa might be glad. He was a very ambitious
+man; and although he had not been particularly kind to her while she
+lived, as Helen thought, he now believed that she watched him from
+Heaven, and inspired what was good in him.
+
+Mrs. Ambrose apologised for the interruption, and asked whether she
+might speak to him about a plan of hers. Would he consent to leave his
+daughter with them when they landed, instead of taking her on up the
+Amazons?
+
+“We would take great care of her,” she added, “and we should really
+like it.”
+
+Willoughby looked very grave and carefully laid aside his papers.
+
+“She’s a good girl,” he said at length. “There is a likeness?”—he
+nodded his head at the photograph of Theresa and sighed. Helen looked
+at Theresa pursing up her lips before the Cockney photographer. It
+suggested her in an absurd human way, and she felt an intense desire to
+share some joke.
+
+“She’s the only thing that’s left to me,” sighed Willoughby. “We go on
+year after year without talking about these things—” He broke off. “But
+it’s better so. Only life’s very hard.”
+
+Helen was sorry for him, and patted him on the shoulder, but she felt
+uncomfortable when her brother-in-law expressed his feelings, and took
+refuge in praising Rachel, and explaining why she thought her plan
+might be a good one.
+
+“True,” said Willoughby when she had done. “The social conditions are
+bound to be primitive. I should be out a good deal. I agreed because
+she wished it. And of course I have complete confidence in you. . . .
+You see, Helen,” he continued, becoming confidential, “I want to bring
+her up as her mother would have wished. I don’t hold with these modern
+views—any more than you do, eh? She’s a nice quiet girl, devoted to her
+music—a little less of _that_ would do no harm. Still, it’s kept her
+happy, and we lead a very quiet life at Richmond. I should like her to
+begin to see more people. I want to take her about with me when I get
+home. I’ve half a mind to rent a house in London, leaving my sisters at
+Richmond, and take her to see one or two people who’d be kind to her
+for my sake. I’m beginning to realise,” he continued, stretching
+himself out, “that all this is tending to Parliament, Helen. It’s the
+only way to get things done as one wants them done. I talked to
+Dalloway about it. In that case, of course, I should want Rachel to be
+able to take more part in things. A certain amount of entertaining
+would be necessary—dinners, an occasional evening party. One’s
+constituents like to be fed, I believe. In all these ways Rachel could
+be of great help to me. So,” he wound up, “I should be very glad, if we
+arrange this visit (which must be upon a business footing, mind), if
+you could see your way to helping my girl, bringing her out—she’s a
+little shy now,—making a woman of her, the kind of woman her mother
+would have liked her to be,” he ended, jerking his head at the
+photograph.
+
+Willoughby’s selfishness, though consistent as Helen saw with real
+affection for his daughter, made her determined to have the girl to
+stay with her, even if she had to promise a complete course of
+instruction in the feminine graces. She could not help laughing at the
+notion of it—Rachel a Tory hostess!—and marvelling as she left him at
+the astonishing ignorance of a father.
+
+Rachel, when consulted, showed less enthusiasm than Helen could have
+wished. One moment she was eager, the next doubtful. Visions of a great
+river, now blue, now yellow in the tropical sun and crossed by bright
+birds, now white in the moon, now deep in shade with moving trees and
+canoes sliding out from the tangled banks, beset her. Helen promised a
+river. Then she did not want to leave her father. That feeling seemed
+genuine too, but in the end Helen prevailed, although when she had won
+her case she was beset by doubts, and more than once regretted the
+impulse which had entangled her with the fortunes of another human
+being.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VII
+
+
+From a distance the _Euphrosyne_ looked very small. Glasses were turned
+upon her from the decks of great liners, and she was pronounced a
+tramp, a cargo-boat, or one of those wretched little passenger steamers
+where people rolled about among the cattle on deck. The insect-like
+figures of Dalloways, Ambroses, and Vinraces were also derided, both
+from the extreme smallness of their persons and the doubt which only
+strong glasses could dispel as to whether they were really live
+creatures or only lumps on the rigging. Mr. Pepper with all his
+learning had been mistaken for a cormorant, and then, as unjustly,
+transformed into a cow. At night, indeed, when the waltzes were
+swinging in the saloon, and gifted passengers reciting, the little
+ship—shrunk to a few beads of light out among the dark waves, and one
+high in air upon the mast-head—seemed something mysterious and
+impressive to heated partners resting from the dance. She became a ship
+passing in the night—an emblem of the loneliness of human life, an
+occasion for queer confidences and sudden appeals for sympathy.
+
+On and on she went, by day and by night, following her path, until one
+morning broke and showed the land. Losing its shadow-like appearance it
+became first cleft and mountainous, next coloured grey and purple, next
+scattered with white blocks which gradually separated themselves, and
+then, as the progress of the ship acted upon the view like a
+field-glass of increasing power, became streets of houses. By nine
+o’clock the _Euphrosyne_ had taken up her position in the middle of a
+great bay; she dropped her anchor; immediately, as if she were a
+recumbent giant requiring examination, small boats came swarming about
+her. She rang with cries; men jumped on to her; her deck was thumped by
+feet. The lonely little island was invaded from all quarters at once,
+and after four weeks of silence it was bewildering to hear human
+speech. Mrs. Ambrose alone heeded none of this stir. She was pale with
+suspense while the boat with mail bags was making towards them.
+Absorbed in her letters she did not notice that she had left the
+_Euphrosyne_, and felt no sadness when the ship lifted up her voice and
+bellowed thrice like a cow separated from its calf.
+
+“The children are well!” she exclaimed. Mr. Pepper, who sat opposite
+with a great mound of bag and rug upon his knees, said, “Gratifying.”
+Rachel, to whom the end of the voyage meant a complete change of
+perspective, was too much bewildered by the approach of the shore to
+realise what children were well or why it was gratifying. Helen went on
+reading.
+
+Moving very slowly, and rearing absurdly high over each wave, the
+little boat was now approaching a white crescent of sand. Behind this
+was a deep green valley, with distinct hills on either side. On the
+slope of the right-hand hill white houses with brown roofs were
+settled, like nesting sea-birds, and at intervals cypresses striped the
+hill with black bars. Mountains whose sides were flushed with red, but
+whose crowns were bald, rose as a pinnacle, half-concealing another
+pinnacle behind it. The hour being still early, the whole view was
+exquisitely light and airy; the blues and greens of sky and tree were
+intense but not sultry. As they drew nearer and could distinguish
+details, the effect of the earth with its minute objects and colours
+and different forms of life was overwhelming after four weeks of the
+sea, and kept them silent.
+
+“Three hundred years odd,” said Mr. Pepper meditatively at length.
+
+As nobody said, “What?” he merely extracted a bottle and swallowed a
+pill. The piece of information that died within him was to the effect
+that three hundred years ago five Elizabethan barques had anchored
+where the _Euphrosyne_ now floated. Half-drawn up upon the beach lay an
+equal number of Spanish galleons, unmanned, for the country was still a
+virgin land behind a veil. Slipping across the water, the English
+sailors bore away bars of silver, bales of linen, timbers of cedar
+wood, golden crucifixes knobbed with emeralds. When the Spaniards came
+down from their drinking, a fight ensued, the two parties churning up
+the sand, and driving each other into the surf. The Spaniards, bloated
+with fine living upon the fruits of the miraculous land, fell in heaps;
+but the hardy Englishmen, tawny with sea-voyaging, hairy for lack of
+razors, with muscles like wire, fangs greedy for flesh, and fingers
+itching for gold, despatched the wounded, drove the dying into the sea,
+and soon reduced the natives to a state of superstitious wonderment.
+Here a settlement was made; women were imported; children grew. All
+seemed to favour the expansion of the British Empire, and had there
+been men like Richard Dalloway in the time of Charles the First, the
+map would undoubtedly be red where it is now an odious green. But it
+must be supposed that the political mind of that age lacked
+imagination, and, merely for want of a few thousand pounds and a few
+thousand men, the spark died that should have been a conflagration.
+From the interior came Indians with subtle poisons, naked bodies, and
+painted idols; from the sea came vengeful Spaniards and rapacious
+Portuguese; exposed to all these enemies (though the climate proved
+wonderfully kind and the earth abundant) the English dwindled away and
+all but disappeared. Somewhere about the middle of the seventeenth
+century a single sloop watched its season and slipped out by night,
+bearing within it all that was left of the great British colony, a few
+men, a few women, and perhaps a dozen dusky children. English history
+then denies all knowledge of the place. Owing to one cause and another
+civilisation shifted its centre to a spot some four or five hundred
+miles to the south, and to-day Santa Marina is not much larger than it
+was three hundred years ago. In population it is a happy compromise,
+for Portuguese fathers wed Indian mothers, and their children
+intermarry with the Spanish. Although they get their ploughs from
+Manchester, they make their coats from their own sheep, their silk from
+their own worms, and their furniture from their own cedar trees, so
+that in arts and industries the place is still much where it was in
+Elizabethan days.
+
+The reasons which had drawn the English across the sea to found a small
+colony within the last ten years are not so easily described, and will
+never perhaps be recorded in history books. Granted facility of travel,
+peace, good trade, and so on, there was besides a kind of
+dissatisfaction among the English with the older countries and the
+enormous accumulations of carved stone, stained glass, and rich brown
+painting which they offered to the tourist. The movement in search of
+something new was of course infinitely small, affecting only a handful
+of well-to-do people. It began by a few schoolmasters serving their
+passage out to South America as the pursers of tramp steamers. They
+returned in time for the summer term, when their stories of the
+splendours and hardships of life at sea, the humours of sea-captains,
+the wonders of night and dawn, and the marvels of the place delighted
+outsiders, and sometimes found their way into print. The country itself
+taxed all their powers of description, for they said it was much bigger
+than Italy, and really nobler than Greece. Again, they declared that
+the natives were strangely beautiful, very big in stature, dark,
+passionate, and quick to seize the knife. The place seemed new and full
+of new forms of beauty, in proof of which they showed handkerchiefs
+which the women had worn round their heads, and primitive carvings
+coloured bright greens and blues. Somehow or other, as fashions do, the
+fashion spread; an old monastery was quickly turned into a hotel, while
+a famous line of steamships altered its route for the convenience of
+passengers.
+
+Oddly enough it happened that the least satisfactory of Helen Ambrose’s
+brothers had been sent out years before to make his fortune, at any
+rate to keep clear of race-horses, in the very spot which had now
+become so popular. Often, leaning upon the column in the verandah, he
+had watched the English ships with English schoolmasters for pursers
+steaming into the bay. Having at length earned enough to take a
+holiday, and being sick of the place, he proposed to put his villa, on
+the slope of the mountain, at his sister’s disposal. She, too, had been
+a little stirred by the talk of a new world, where there was always sun
+and never a fog, which went on around her, and the chance, when they
+were planning where to spend the winter out of England, seemed too good
+to be missed. For these reasons she determined to accept Willoughby’s
+offer of free passages on his ship, to place the children with their
+grand-parents, and to do the thing thoroughly while she was about it.
+
+Taking seats in a carriage drawn by long-tailed horses with pheasants’
+feathers erect between their ears, the Ambroses, Mr. Pepper, and Rachel
+rattled out of the harbour. The day increased in heat as they drove up
+the hill. The road passed through the town, where men seemed to be
+beating brass and crying “Water,” where the passage was blocked by
+mules and cleared by whips and curses, where the women walked barefoot,
+their heads balancing baskets, and cripples hastily displayed mutilated
+members; it issued among steep green fields, not so green but that the
+earth showed through. Great trees now shaded all but the centre of the
+road, and a mountain stream, so shallow and so swift that it plaited
+itself into strands as it ran, raced along the edge. Higher they went,
+until Ridley and Rachel walked behind; next they turned along a lane
+scattered with stones, where Mr. Pepper raised his stick and silently
+indicated a shrub, bearing among sparse leaves a voluminous purple
+blossom; and at a rickety canter the last stage of the way was
+accomplished.
+
+The villa was a roomy white house, which, as is the case with most
+continental houses, looked to an English eye frail, ramshackle, and
+absurdly frivolous, more like a pagoda in a tea-garden than a place
+where one slept. The garden called urgently for the services of
+gardener. Bushes waved their branches across the paths, and the blades
+of grass, with spaces of earth between them, could be counted. In the
+circular piece of ground in front of the verandah were two cracked
+vases, from which red flowers drooped, with a stone fountain between
+them, now parched in the sun. The circular garden led to a long garden,
+where the gardener’s shears had scarcely been, unless now and then,
+when he cut a bough of blossom for his beloved. A few tall trees shaded
+it, and round bushes with wax-like flowers mobbed their heads together
+in a row. A garden smoothly laid with turf, divided by thick hedges,
+with raised beds of bright flowers, such as we keep within walls in
+England, would have been out of place upon the side of this bare hill.
+There was no ugliness to shut out, and the villa looked straight across
+the shoulder of a slope, ribbed with olive trees, to the sea.
+
+The indecency of the whole place struck Mrs. Chailey forcibly. There
+were no blinds to shut out the sun, nor was there any furniture to
+speak of for the sun to spoil. Standing in the bare stone hall, and
+surveying a staircase of superb breadth, but cracked and carpetless,
+she further ventured the opinion that there were rats, as large as
+terriers at home, and that if one put one’s foot down with any force
+one would come through the floor. As for hot water—at this point her
+investigations left her speechless.
+
+“Poor creature!” she murmured to the sallow Spanish servant-girl who
+came out with the pigs and hens to receive them, “no wonder you hardly
+look like a human being!” Maria accepted the compliment with an
+exquisite Spanish grace. In Chailey’s opinion they would have done
+better to stay on board an English ship, but none knew better than she
+that her duty commanded her to stay.
+
+When they were settled in, and in train to find daily occupation, there
+was some speculation as to the reasons which induced Mr. Pepper to
+stay, taking up his lodging in the Ambroses’ house. Efforts had been
+made for some days before landing to impress upon him the advantages of
+the Amazons.
+
+“That great stream!” Helen would begin, gazing as if she saw a
+visionary cascade, “I’ve a good mind to go with you myself,
+Willoughby—only I can’t. Think of the sunsets and the moonrises—I
+believe the colours are unimaginable.”
+
+“There are wild peacocks,” Rachel hazarded.
+
+“And marvellous creatures in the water,” Helen asserted.
+
+“One might discover a new reptile,” Rachel continued.
+
+“There’s certain to be a revolution, I’m told,” Helen urged.
+
+The effect of these subterfuges was a little dashed by Ridley, who,
+after regarding Pepper for some moments, sighed aloud, “Poor fellow!”
+and inwardly speculated upon the unkindness of women.
+
+He stayed, however, in apparent contentment for six days, playing with
+a microscope and a notebook in one of the many sparsely furnished
+sitting-rooms, but on the evening of the seventh day, as they sat at
+dinner, he appeared more restless than usual. The dinner-table was set
+between two long windows which were left uncurtained by Helen’s orders.
+Darkness fell as sharply as a knife in this climate, and the town then
+sprang out in circles and lines of bright dots beneath them. Buildings
+which never showed by day showed by night, and the sea flowed right
+over the land judging by the moving lights of the steamers. The sight
+fulfilled the same purpose as an orchestra in a London restaurant, and
+silence had its setting. William Pepper observed it for some time; he
+put on his spectacles to contemplate the scene.
+
+“I’ve identified the big block to the left,” he observed, and pointed
+with his fork at a square formed by several rows of lights.
+
+“One should infer that they can cook vegetables,” he added.
+
+“An hotel?” said Helen.
+
+“Once a monastery,” said Mr. Pepper.
+
+Nothing more was said then, but, the day after, Mr. Pepper returned
+from a midday walk, and stood silently before Helen who was reading in
+the verandah.
+
+“I’ve taken a room over there,” he said.
+
+“You’re not going?” she exclaimed.
+
+“On the whole—yes,” he remarked. “No private cook _can_ cook
+vegetables.”
+
+Knowing his dislike of questions, which she to some extent shared,
+Helen asked no more. Still, an uneasy suspicion lurked in her mind that
+William was hiding a wound. She flushed to think that her words, or her
+husband’s, or Rachel’s had penetrated and stung. She was half-moved to
+cry, “Stop, William; explain!” and would have returned to the subject
+at luncheon if William had not shown himself inscrutable and chill,
+lifting fragments of salad on the point of his fork, with the gesture
+of a man pronging seaweed, detecting gravel, suspecting germs.
+
+“If you all die of typhoid I won’t be responsible!” he snapped.
+
+“If you die of dulness, neither will I,” Helen echoed in her heart.
+
+She reflected that she had never yet asked him whether he had been in
+love. They had got further and further from that subject instead of
+drawing nearer to it, and she could not help feeling it a relief when
+William Pepper, with all his knowledge, his microscope, his note-books,
+his genuine kindliness and good sense, but a certain dryness of soul,
+took his departure. Also she could not help feeling it sad that
+friendships should end thus, although in this case to have the room
+empty was something of a comfort, and she tried to console herself with
+the reflection that one never knows how far other people feel the
+things they might be supposed to feel.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VIII
+
+
+The next few months passed away, as many years can pass away, without
+definite events, and yet, if suddenly disturbed, it would be seen that
+such months or years had a character unlike others. The three months
+which had passed had brought them to the beginning of March. The
+climate had kept its promise, and the change of season from winter to
+spring had made very little difference, so that Helen, who was sitting
+in the drawing-room with a pen in her hand, could keep the windows open
+though a great fire of logs burnt on one side of her. Below, the sea
+was still blue and the roofs still brown and white, though the day was
+fading rapidly. It was dusk in the room, which, large and empty at all
+times, now appeared larger and emptier than usual. Her own figure, as
+she sat writing with a pad on her knee, shared the general effect of
+size and lack of detail, for the flames which ran along the branches,
+suddenly devouring little green tufts, burnt intermittently and sent
+irregular illuminations across her face and the plaster walls. There
+were no pictures on the walls but here and there boughs laden with
+heavy-petalled flowers spread widely against them. Of the books fallen
+on the bare floor and heaped upon the large table, it was only possible
+in this light to trace the outline.
+
+Mrs. Ambrose was writing a very long letter. Beginning “Dear Bernard,”
+it went on to describe what had been happening in the Villa San
+Gervasio during the past three months, as, for instance, that they had
+had the British Consul to dinner, and had been taken over a Spanish
+man-of-war, and had seen a great many processions and religious
+festivals, which were so beautiful that Mrs. Ambrose couldn’t conceive
+why, if people must have a religion, they didn’t all become Roman
+Catholics. They had made several expeditions though none of any length.
+It was worth coming if only for the sake of the flowering trees which
+grew wild quite near the house, and the amazing colours of sea and
+earth. The earth, instead of being brown, was red, purple, green. “You
+won’t believe me,” she added, “there is no colour like it in England.”
+She adopted, indeed, a condescending tone towards that poor island,
+which was now advancing chilly crocuses and nipped violets in nooks, in
+copses, in cosy corners, tended by rosy old gardeners in mufflers, who
+were always touching their hats and bobbing obsequiously. She went on
+to deride the islanders themselves. Rumours of London all in a ferment
+over a General Election had reached them even out here. “It seems
+incredible,” she went on, “that people should care whether Asquith is
+in or Austen Chamberlain out, and while you scream yourselves hoarse
+about politics you let the only people who are trying for something
+good starve or simply laugh at them. When have you ever encouraged a
+living artist? Or bought his best work? Why are you all so ugly and so
+servile? Here the servants are human beings. They talk to one as if
+they were equals. As far as I can tell there are no aristocrats.”
+
+Perhaps it was the mention of aristocrats that reminded her of Richard
+Dalloway and Rachel, for she ran on with the same penful to describe
+her niece.
+
+“It’s an odd fate that has put me in charge of a girl,” she wrote,
+“considering that I have never got on well with women, or had much to
+do with them. However, I must retract some of the things that I have
+said against them. If they were properly educated I don’t see why they
+shouldn’t be much the same as men—as satisfactory I mean; though, of
+course, very different. The question is, how should one educate them.
+The present method seems to me abominable. This girl, though
+twenty-four, had never heard that men desired women, and, until I
+explained it, did not know how children were born. Her ignorance upon
+other matters as important” (here Mrs. Ambrose’s letter may not be
+quoted) . . . “was complete. It seems to me not merely foolish but
+criminal to bring people up like that. Let alone the suffering to them,
+it explains why women are what they are—the wonder is they’re no worse.
+I have taken it upon myself to enlighten her, and now, though still a
+good deal prejudiced and liable to exaggerate, she is more or less a
+reasonable human being. Keeping them ignorant, of course, defeats its
+own object, and when they begin to understand they take it all much too
+seriously. My brother-in-law really deserved a catastrophe—which he
+won’t get. I now pray for a young man to come to my help; some one, I
+mean, who would talk to her openly, and prove how absurd most of her
+ideas about life are. Unluckily such men seem almost as rare as the
+women. The English colony certainly doesn’t provide one; artists,
+merchants, cultivated people—they are stupid, conventional, and
+flirtatious. . . .” She ceased, and with her pen in her hand sat
+looking into the fire, making the logs into caves and mountains, for it
+had grown too dark to go on writing. Moreover, the house began to stir
+as the hour of dinner approached; she could hear the plates being
+chinked in the dining-room next door, and Chailey instructing the
+Spanish girl where to put things down in vigorous English. The bell
+rang; she rose, met Ridley and Rachel outside, and they all went in to
+dinner.
+
+Three months had made but little difference in the appearance either of
+Ridley or Rachel; yet a keen observer might have thought that the girl
+was more definite and self-confident in her manner than before. Her
+skin was brown, her eyes certainly brighter, and she attended to what
+was said as though she might be going to contradict it. The meal began
+with the comfortable silence of people who are quite at their ease
+together. Then Ridley, leaning on his elbow and looking out of the
+window, observed that it was a lovely night.
+
+“Yes,” said Helen. She added, “The season’s begun,” looking at the
+lights beneath them. She asked Maria in Spanish whether the hotel was
+not filling up with visitors. Maria informed her with pride that there
+would come a time when it was positively difficult to buy eggs—the
+shopkeepers would not mind what prices they asked; they would get them,
+at any rate, from the English.
+
+“That’s an English steamer in the bay,” said Rachel, looking at a
+triangle of lights below. “She came in early this morning.”
+
+“Then we may hope for some letters and send ours back,” said Helen.
+
+For some reason the mention of letters always made Ridley groan, and
+the rest of the meal passed in a brisk argument between husband and
+wife as to whether he was or was not wholly ignored by the entire
+civilised world.
+
+“Considering the last batch,” said Helen, “you deserve beating. You
+were asked to lecture, you were offered a degree, and some silly woman
+praised not only your books but your beauty—she said he was what
+Shelley would have been if Shelley had lived to fifty-five and grown a
+beard. Really, Ridley, I think you’re the vainest man I know,” she
+ended, rising from the table, “which I may tell you is saying a good
+deal.”
+
+Finding her letter lying before the fire she added a few lines to it,
+and then announced that she was going to take the letters now—Ridley
+must bring his—and Rachel?
+
+“I hope you’ve written to your Aunts? It’s high time.”
+
+The women put on cloaks and hats, and after inviting Ridley to come
+with them, which he emphatically refused to do, exclaiming that Rachel
+he expected to be a fool, but Helen surely knew better, they turned to
+go. He stood over the fire gazing into the depths of the looking-glass,
+and compressing his face into the likeness of a commander surveying a
+field of battle, or a martyr watching the flames lick his toes, rather
+than that of a secluded Professor.
+
+Helen laid hold of his beard.
+
+“Am I a fool?” she said.
+
+“Let me go, Helen.”
+
+“Am I a fool?” she repeated.
+
+“Vile woman!” he exclaimed, and kissed her.
+
+“We’ll leave you to your vanities,” she called back as they went out of
+the door.
+
+It was a beautiful evening, still light enough to see a long way down
+the road, though the stars were coming out. The pillar-box was let into
+a high yellow wall where the lane met the road, and having dropped the
+letters into it, Helen was for turning back.
+
+“No, no,” said Rachel, taking her by the wrist. “We’re going to see
+life. You promised.”
+
+“Seeing life” was the phrase they used for their habit of strolling
+through the town after dark. The social life of Santa Marina was
+carried on almost entirely by lamp-light, which the warmth of the
+nights and the scents culled from flowers made pleasant enough. The
+young women, with their hair magnificently swept in coils, a red flower
+behind the ear, sat on the doorsteps, or issued out on to balconies,
+while the young men ranged up and down beneath, shouting up a greeting
+from time to time and stopping here and there to enter into amorous
+talk. At the open windows merchants could be seen making up the day’s
+account, and older women lifting jars from shelf to shelf. The streets
+were full of people, men for the most part, who interchanged their
+views of the world as they walked, or gathered round the wine-tables at
+the street corner, where an old cripple was twanging his guitar
+strings, while a poor girl cried her passionate song in the gutter. The
+two Englishwomen excited some friendly curiosity, but no one molested
+them.
+
+Helen sauntered on, observing the different people in their shabby
+clothes, who seemed so careless and so natural, with satisfaction.
+
+“Just think of the Mall to-night!” she exclaimed at length. “It’s the
+fifteenth of March. Perhaps there’s a Court.” She thought of the crowd
+waiting in the cold spring air to see the grand carriages go by. “It’s
+very cold, if it’s not raining,” she said. “First there are men selling
+picture postcards; then there are wretched little shop-girls with round
+bandboxes; then there are bank clerks in tail coats; and then—any
+number of dressmakers. People from South Kensington drive up in a hired
+fly; officials have a pair of bays; earls, on the other hand, are
+allowed one footman to stand up behind; dukes have two, royal dukes—so
+I was told—have three; the king, I suppose, can have as many as he
+likes. And the people believe in it!”
+
+Out here it seemed as though the people of England must be shaped in
+the body like the kings and queens, knights and pawns of the
+chessboard, so strange were their differences, so marked and so
+implicitly believed in.
+
+They had to part in order to circumvent a crowd.
+
+“They believe in God,” said Rachel as they regained each other. She
+meant that the people in the crowd believed in Him; for she remembered
+the crosses with bleeding plaster figures that stood where foot-paths
+joined, and the inexplicable mystery of a service in a Roman Catholic
+church.
+
+“We shall never understand!” she sighed.
+
+They had walked some way and it was now night, but they could see a
+large iron gate a little way farther down the road on their left.
+
+“Do you mean to go right up to the hotel?” Helen asked.
+
+Rachel gave the gate a push; it swung open, and, seeing no one about
+and judging that nothing was private in this country, they walked
+straight on. An avenue of trees ran along the road, which was
+completely straight. The trees suddenly came to an end; the road turned
+a corner, and they found themselves confronted by a large square
+building. They had come out upon the broad terrace which ran round the
+hotel and were only a few feet distant from the windows. A row of long
+windows opened almost to the ground. They were all of them uncurtained,
+and all brilliantly lighted, so that they could see everything inside.
+Each window revealed a different section of the life of the hotel. They
+drew into one of the broad columns of shadow which separated the
+windows and gazed in. They found themselves just outside the
+dining-room. It was being swept; a waiter was eating a bunch of grapes
+with his leg across the corner of a table. Next door was the kitchen,
+where they were washing up; white cooks were dipping their arms into
+cauldrons, while the waiters made their meal voraciously off broken
+meats, sopping up the gravy with bits of crumb. Moving on, they became
+lost in a plantation of bushes, and then suddenly found themselves
+outside the drawing-room, where the ladies and gentlemen, having dined
+well, lay back in deep arm-chairs, occasionally speaking or turning
+over the pages of magazines. A thin woman was flourishing up and down
+the piano.
+
+“What is a dahabeeyah, Charles?” the distinct voice of a widow, seated
+in an arm-chair by the window, asked her son.
+
+It was the end of the piece, and his answer was lost in the general
+clearing of throats and tapping of knees.
+
+“They’re all old in this room,” Rachel whispered.
+
+Creeping on, they found that the next window revealed two men in
+shirt-sleeves playing billiards with two young ladies.
+
+“He pinched my arm!” the plump young woman cried, as she missed her
+stroke.
+
+“Now you two—no ragging,” the young man with the red face reproved
+them, who was marking.
+
+“Take care or we shall be seen,” whispered Helen, plucking Rachel by
+the arm. Incautiously her head had risen to the middle of the window.
+
+Turning the corner they came to the largest room in the hotel, which
+was supplied with four windows, and was called the Lounge, although it
+was really a hall. Hung with armour and native embroideries, furnished
+with divans and screens, which shut off convenient corners, the room
+was less formal than the others, and was evidently the haunt of youth.
+Signor Rodriguez, whom they knew to be the manager of the hotel, stood
+quite near them in the doorway surveying the scene—the gentlemen
+lounging in chairs, the couples leaning over coffee-cups, the game of
+cards in the centre under profuse clusters of electric light. He was
+congratulating himself upon the enterprise which had turned the
+refectory, a cold stone room with pots on trestles, into the most
+comfortable room in the house. The hotel was very full, and proved his
+wisdom in decreeing that no hotel can flourish without a lounge.
+
+The people were scattered about in couples or parties of four, and
+either they were actually better acquainted, or the informal room made
+their manners easier. Through the open window came an uneven humming
+sound like that which rises from a flock of sheep pent within hurdles
+at dusk. The card-party occupied the centre of the foreground.
+
+Helen and Rachel watched them play for some minutes without being able
+to distinguish a word. Helen was observing one of the men intently. He
+was a lean, somewhat cadaverous man of about her own age, whose profile
+was turned to them, and he was the partner of a highly-coloured girl,
+obviously English by birth.
+
+Suddenly, in the strange way in which some words detach themselves from
+the rest, they heard him say quite distinctly:—
+
+“All you want is practice, Miss Warrington; courage and practice—one’s
+no good without the other.”
+
+“Hughling Elliot! Of course!” Helen exclaimed. She ducked her head
+immediately, for at the sound of his name he looked up. The game went
+on for a few minutes, and was then broken up by the approach of a
+wheeled chair, containing a voluminous old lady who paused by the table
+and said:—
+
+“Better luck to-night, Susan?”
+
+“All the luck’s on our side,” said a young man who until now had kept
+his back turned to the window. He appeared to be rather stout, and had
+a thick crop of hair.
+
+“Luck, Mr. Hewet?” said his partner, a middle-aged lady with
+spectacles. “I assure you, Mrs. Paley, our success is due solely to our
+brilliant play.”
+
+“Unless I go to bed early I get practically no sleep at all,” Mrs.
+Paley was heard to explain, as if to justify her seizure of Susan, who
+got up and proceeded to wheel the chair to the door.
+
+“They’ll get some one else to take my place,” she said cheerfully. But
+she was wrong. No attempt was made to find another player, and after
+the young man had built three stories of a card-house, which fell down,
+the players strolled off in different directions.
+
+Mr. Hewet turned his full face towards the window. They could see that
+he had large eyes obscured by glasses; his complexion was rosy, his
+lips clean-shaven; and, seen among ordinary people, it appeared to be
+an interesting face. He came straight towards them, but his eyes were
+fixed not upon the eavesdroppers but upon a spot where the curtain hung
+in folds.
+
+“Asleep?” he said.
+
+Helen and Rachel started to think that some one had been sitting near
+to them unobserved all the time. There were legs in the shadow. A
+melancholy voice issued from above them.
+
+“Two women,” it said.
+
+A scuffling was heard on the gravel. The women had fled. They did not
+stop running until they felt certain that no eye could penetrate the
+darkness and the hotel was only a square shadow in the distance, with
+red holes regularly cut in it.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IX
+
+
+An hour passed, and the downstairs rooms at the hotel grew dim and were
+almost deserted, while the little box-like squares above them were
+brilliantly irradiated. Some forty or fifty people were going to bed.
+The thump of jugs set down on the floor above could be heard and the
+clink of china, for there was not as thick a partition between the
+rooms as one might wish, so Miss Allan, the elderly lady who had been
+playing bridge, determined, giving the wall a smart rap with her
+knuckles. It was only matchboard, she decided, run up to make many
+little rooms of one large one. Her grey petticoats slipped to the
+ground, and, stooping, she folded her clothes with neat, if not loving
+fingers, screwed her hair into a plait, wound her father’s great gold
+watch, and opened the complete works of Wordsworth. She was reading the
+“Prelude,” partly because she always read the “Prelude” abroad, and
+partly because she was engaged in writing a short _Primer of English
+Literature_—_Beowulf to Swinburne_—which would have a paragraph on
+Wordsworth. She was deep in the fifth book, stopping indeed to pencil a
+note, when a pair of boots dropped, one after another, on the floor
+above her. She looked up and speculated. Whose boots were they, she
+wondered. She then became aware of a swishing sound next door—a woman,
+clearly, putting away her dress. It was succeeded by a gentle tapping
+sound, such as that which accompanies hair-dressing. It was very
+difficult to keep her attention fixed upon the “Prelude.” Was it Susan
+Warrington tapping? She forced herself, however, to read to the end of
+the book, when she placed a mark between the pages, sighed contentedly,
+and then turned out the light.
+
+Very different was the room through the wall, though as like in shape
+as one egg-box is like another. As Miss Allan read her book, Susan
+Warrington was brushing her hair. Ages have consecrated this hour, and
+the most majestic of all domestic actions, to talk of love between
+women; but Miss Warrington being alone could not talk; she could only
+look with extreme solicitude at her own face in the glass. She turned
+her head from side to side, tossing heavy locks now this way now that;
+and then withdrew a pace or two, and considered herself seriously.
+
+“I’m nice-looking,” she determined. “Not pretty—possibly,” she drew
+herself up a little. “Yes—most people would say I was handsome.”
+
+She was really wondering what Arthur Venning would say she was. Her
+feeling about him was decidedly queer. She would not admit to herself
+that she was in love with him or that she wanted to marry him, yet she
+spent every minute when she was alone in wondering what he thought of
+her, and in comparing what they had done to-day with what they had done
+the day before.
+
+“He didn’t ask me to play, but he certainly followed me into the hall,”
+she meditated, summing up the evening. She was thirty years of age, and
+owing to the number of her sisters and the seclusion of life in a
+country parsonage had as yet had no proposal of marriage. The hour of
+confidences was often a sad one, and she had been known to jump into
+bed, treating her hair unkindly, feeling herself overlooked by life in
+comparison with others. She was a big, well-made woman, the red lying
+upon her cheeks in patches that were too well defined, but her serious
+anxiety gave her a kind of beauty.
+
+She was just about to pull back the bed-clothes when she exclaimed,
+“Oh, but I’m forgetting,” and went to her writing-table. A brown volume
+lay there stamped with the figure of the year. She proceeded to write
+in the square ugly hand of a mature child, as she wrote daily year
+after year, keeping the diaries, though she seldom looked at them.
+
+“A.M.—Talked to Mrs. H. Elliot about country neighbours. She knows the
+Manns; also the Selby-Carroways. How small the world is! Like her. Read
+a chapter of _Miss Appleby’s Adventure_ to Aunt E. P.M.—Played
+lawn-tennis with Mr. Perrott and Evelyn M. Don’t _like_ Mr. P. Have a
+feeling that he is not ‘quite,’ though clever certainly. Beat them. Day
+splendid, view wonderful. One gets used to no trees, though much too
+bare at first. Cards after dinner. Aunt E. cheerful, though twingy, she
+says. Mem.: _ask about damp sheets_.”
+
+She knelt in prayer, and then lay down in bed, tucking the blankets
+comfortably about her, and in a few minutes her breathing showed that
+she was asleep. With its profoundly peaceful sighs and hesitations it
+resembled that of a cow standing up to its knees all night through in
+the long grass.
+
+A glance into the next room revealed little more than a nose, prominent
+above the sheets. Growing accustomed to the darkness, for the windows
+were open and showed grey squares with splinters of starlight, one
+could distinguish a lean form, terribly like the body of a dead person,
+the body indeed of William Pepper, asleep too. Thirty-six,
+thirty-seven, thirty-eight—here were three Portuguese men of business,
+asleep presumably, since a snore came with the regularity of a great
+ticking clock. Thirty-nine was a corner room, at the end of the
+passage, but late though it was—“One” struck gently downstairs—a line
+of light under the door showed that some one was still awake.
+
+“How late you are, Hugh!” a woman, lying in bed, said in a peevish but
+solicitous voice. Her husband was brushing his teeth, and for some
+moments did not answer.
+
+“You should have gone to sleep,” he replied. “I was talking to
+Thornbury.”
+
+“But you know that I never can sleep when I’m waiting for you,” she
+said.
+
+To that he made no answer, but only remarked, “Well then, we’ll turn
+out the light.” They were silent.
+
+The faint but penetrating pulse of an electric bell could now be heard
+in the corridor. Old Mrs. Paley, having woken hungry but without her
+spectacles, was summoning her maid to find the biscuit-box. The maid
+having answered the bell, drearily respectful even at this hour though
+muffled in a mackintosh, the passage was left in silence. Downstairs
+all was empty and dark; but on the upper floor a light still burnt in
+the room where the boots had dropped so heavily above Miss Allan’s
+head. Here was the gentleman who, a few hours previously, in the shade
+of the curtain, had seemed to consist entirely of legs. Deep in an
+arm-chair he was reading the third volume of Gibbon’s _History of the
+Decline and Fall of Rome_ by candle-light. As he read he knocked the
+ash automatically, now and again, from his cigarette and turned the
+page, while a whole procession of splendid sentences entered his
+capacious brow and went marching through his brain in order. It seemed
+likely that this process might continue for an hour or more, until the
+entire regiment had shifted its quarters, had not the door opened, and
+the young man, who was inclined to be stout, come in with large naked
+feet.
+
+“Oh, Hirst, what I forgot to say was—”
+
+“Two minutes,” said Hirst, raising his finger.
+
+He safely stowed away the last words of the paragraph.
+
+“What was it you forgot to say?” he asked.
+
+“D’you think you _do_ make enough allowance for feelings?” asked Mr.
+Hewet. He had again forgotten what he had meant to say.
+
+After intense contemplation of the immaculate Gibbon Mr. Hirst smiled
+at the question of his friend. He laid aside his book and considered.
+
+“I should call yours a singularly untidy mind,” he observed. “Feelings?
+Aren’t they just what we do allow for? We put love up there, and all
+the rest somewhere down below.” With his left hand he indicated the top
+of a pyramid, and with his right the base.
+
+“But you didn’t get out of bed to tell me that,” he added severely.
+
+“I got out of bed,” said Hewet vaguely, “merely to talk I suppose.”
+
+“Meanwhile I shall undress,” said Hirst. When naked of all but his
+shirt, and bent over the basin, Mr. Hirst no longer impressed one with
+the majesty of his intellect, but with the pathos of his young yet ugly
+body, for he stooped, and he was so thin that there were dark lines
+between the different bones of his neck and shoulders.
+
+“Women interest me,” said Hewet, who, sitting on the bed with his chin
+resting on his knees, paid no attention to the undressing of Mr. Hirst.
+
+“They’re so stupid,” said Hirst. “You’re sitting on my pyjamas.”
+
+“I suppose they _are_ stupid?” Hewet wondered.
+
+“There can’t be two opinions about that, I imagine,” said Hirst,
+hopping briskly across the room, “unless you’re in love—that fat woman
+Warrington?” he enquired.
+
+“Not one fat woman—all fat women,” Hewet sighed.
+
+“The women I saw to-night were not fat,” said Hirst, who was taking
+advantage of Hewet’s company to cut his toe-nails.
+
+“Describe them,” said Hewet.
+
+“You know I can’t describe things!” said Hirst. “They were much like
+other women, I should think. They always are.”
+
+“No; that’s where we differ,” said Hewet. “I say everything’s
+different. No two people are in the least the same. Take you and me
+now.”
+
+“So I used to think once,” said Hirst. “But now they’re all types.
+Don’t take us,—take this hotel. You could draw circles round the whole
+lot of them, and they’d never stray outside.”
+
+(“You can kill a hen by doing that”), Hewet murmured.
+
+“Mr. Hughling Elliot, Mrs. Hughling Elliot, Miss Allan, Mr. and Mrs.
+Thornbury—one circle,” Hirst continued. “Miss Warrington, Mr. Arthur
+Venning, Mr. Perrott, Evelyn M. another circle; then there are a whole
+lot of natives; finally ourselves.”
+
+“Are we all alone in our circle?” asked Hewet.
+
+“Quite alone,” said Hirst. “You try to get out, but you can’t. You only
+make a mess of things by trying.”
+
+“I’m not a hen in a circle,” said Hewet. “I’m a dove on a tree-top.”
+
+“I wonder if this is what they call an ingrowing toe-nail?” said Hirst,
+examining the big toe on his left foot.
+
+“I flit from branch to branch,” continued Hewet. “The world is
+profoundly pleasant.” He lay back on the bed, upon his arms.
+
+“I wonder if it’s really nice to be as vague as you are?” asked Hirst,
+looking at him. “It’s the lack of continuity—that’s what’s so odd about
+you,” he went on. “At the age of twenty-seven, which is nearly thirty,
+you seem to have drawn no conclusions. A party of old women excites you
+still as though you were three.”
+
+Hewet contemplated the angular young man who was neatly brushing the
+rims of his toe-nails into the fire-place in silence for a moment.
+
+“I respect you, Hirst,” he remarked.
+
+“I envy you—some things,” said Hirst. “One: your capacity for not
+thinking; two: people like you better than they like me. Women like
+you, I suppose.”
+
+“I wonder whether that isn’t really what matters most?” said Hewet.
+Lying now flat on the bed he waved his hand in vague circles above him.
+
+“Of course it is,” said Hirst. “But that’s not the difficulty. The
+difficulty is, isn’t it, to find an appropriate object?”
+
+“There are no female hens in your circle?” asked Hewet.
+
+“Not the ghost of one,” said Hirst.
+
+Although they had known each other for three years Hirst had never yet
+heard the true story of Hewet’s loves. In general conversation it was
+taken for granted that they were many, but in private the subject was
+allowed to lapse. The fact that he had money enough to do no work, and
+that he had left Cambridge after two terms owing to a difference with
+the authorities, and had then travelled and drifted, made his life
+strange at many points where his friends’ lives were much of a piece.
+
+“I don’t see your circles—I don’t see them,” Hewet continued. “I see a
+thing like a teetotum spinning in and out—knocking into things—dashing
+from side to side—collecting numbers—more and more and more, till the
+whole place is thick with them. Round and round they go—out there, over
+the rim—out of sight.”
+
+His fingers showed that the waltzing teetotums had spun over the edge
+of the counterpane and fallen off the bed into infinity.
+
+“Could you contemplate three weeks alone in this hotel?” asked Hirst,
+after a moment’s pause.
+
+Hewet proceeded to think.
+
+“The truth of it is that one never is alone, and one never is in
+company,” he concluded.
+
+“Meaning?” said Hirst.
+
+“Meaning? Oh, something about bubbles—auras—what d’you call ’em? You
+can’t see my bubble; I can’t see yours; all we see of each other is a
+speck, like the wick in the middle of that flame. The flame goes about
+with us everywhere; it’s not ourselves exactly, but what we feel; the
+world is short, or people mainly; all kinds of people.”
+
+“A nice streaky bubble yours must be!” said Hirst.
+
+“And supposing my bubble could run into some one else’s bubble—”
+
+“And they both burst?” put in Hirst.
+
+“Then—then—then—” pondered Hewet, as if to himself, “it would be an
+e-nor-mous world,” he said, stretching his arms to their full width, as
+though even so they could hardly clasp the billowy universe, for when
+he was with Hirst he always felt unusually sanguine and vague.
+
+“I don’t think you altogether as foolish as I used to, Hewet,” said
+Hirst. “You don’t know what you mean but you try to say it.”
+
+“But aren’t you enjoying yourself here?” asked Hewet.
+
+“On the whole—yes,” said Hirst. “I like observing people. I like
+looking at things. This country is amazingly beautiful. Did you notice
+how the top of the mountain turned yellow to-night? Really we must take
+our lunch and spend the day out. You’re getting disgustingly fat.” He
+pointed at the calf of Hewet’s bare leg.
+
+“We’ll get up an expedition,” said Hewet energetically. “We’ll ask the
+entire hotel. We’ll hire donkeys and—”
+
+“Oh, Lord!” said Hirst, “do shut it! I can see Miss Warrington and Miss
+Allan and Mrs. Elliot and the rest squatting on the stones and
+quacking, ‘How jolly!’”
+
+“We’ll ask Venning and Perrott and Miss Murgatroyd—every one we can lay
+hands on,” went on Hewet. “What’s the name of the little old
+grasshopper with the eyeglasses? Pepper?—Pepper shall lead us.”
+
+“Thank God, you’ll never get the donkeys,” said Hirst.
+
+“I must make a note of that,” said Hewet, slowly dropping his feet to
+the floor. “Hirst escorts Miss Warrington; Pepper advances alone on a
+white ass; provisions equally distributed—or shall we hire a mule? The
+matrons—there’s Mrs. Paley, by Jove!—share a carriage.”
+
+“That’s where you’ll go wrong,” said Hirst. “Putting virgins among
+matrons.”
+
+“How long should you think that an expedition like that would take,
+Hirst?” asked Hewet.
+
+“From twelve to sixteen hours I would say,” said Hirst. “The time
+usually occupied by a first confinement.”
+
+“It will need considerable organisation,” said Hewet. He was now
+padding softly round the room, and stopped to stir the books on the
+table. They lay heaped one upon another.
+
+“We shall want some poets too,” he remarked. “Not Gibbon; no; d’you
+happen to have _Modern Love_ or _John Donne_? You see, I contemplate
+pauses when people get tired of looking at the view, and then it would
+be nice to read something rather difficult aloud.”
+
+“Mrs. Paley _will_ enjoy herself,” said Hirst.
+
+“Mrs. Paley will enjoy it certainly,” said Hewet. “It’s one of the
+saddest things I know—the way elderly ladies cease to read poetry. And
+yet how appropriate this is:
+
+I speak as one who plumbs
+    Life’s dim profound,
+One who at length can sound
+    Clear views and certain.
+But—after love what comes?
+    A scene that lours,
+A few sad vacant hours,
+    And then, the Curtain.
+
+
+I daresay Mrs. Paley is the only one of us who can really understand
+that.”
+
+“We’ll ask her,” said Hirst. “Please, Hewet, if you must go to bed,
+draw my curtain. Few things distress me more than the moonlight.”
+
+Hewet retreated, pressing the poems of Thomas Hardy beneath his arm,
+and in their beds next door to each other both the young men were soon
+asleep.
+
+Between the extinction of Hewet’s candle and the rising of a dusky
+Spanish boy who was the first to survey the desolation of the hotel in
+the early morning, a few hours of silence intervened. One could almost
+hear a hundred people breathing deeply, and however wakeful and
+restless it would have been hard to escape sleep in the middle of so
+much sleep. Looking out of the windows, there was only darkness to be
+seen. All over the shadowed half of the world people lay prone, and a
+few flickering lights in empty streets marked the places where their
+cities were built. Red and yellow omnibuses were crowding each other in
+Piccadilly; sumptuous women were rocking at a standstill; but here in
+the darkness an owl flitted from tree to tree, and when the breeze
+lifted the branches the moon flashed as if it were a torch. Until all
+people should awake again the houseless animals were abroad, the tigers
+and the stags, and the elephants coming down in the darkness to drink
+at pools. The wind at night blowing over the hills and woods was purer
+and fresher than the wind by day, and the earth, robbed of detail, more
+mysterious than the earth coloured and divided by roads and fields. For
+six hours this profound beauty existed, and then as the east grew
+whiter and whiter the ground swam to the surface, the roads were
+revealed, the smoke rose and the people stirred, and the sun shone upon
+the windows of the hotel at Santa Marina until they were uncurtained,
+and the gong blaring all through the house gave notice of breakfast.
+
+Directly breakfast was over, the ladies as usual circled vaguely,
+picking up papers and putting them down again, about the hall.
+
+“And what are you going to do to-day?” asked Mrs. Elliot drifting up
+against Miss Warrington.
+
+Mrs. Elliot, the wife of Hughling the Oxford Don, was a short woman,
+whose expression was habitually plaintive. Her eyes moved from thing to
+thing as though they never found anything sufficiently pleasant to rest
+upon for any length of time.
+
+“I’m going to try to get Aunt Emma out into the town,” said Susan.
+“She’s not seen a thing yet.”
+
+“I call it so spirited of her at her age,” said Mrs. Elliot, “coming
+all this way from her own fireside.”
+
+“Yes, we always tell her she’ll die on board ship,” Susan replied. “She
+was born on one,” she added.
+
+“In the old days,” said Mrs. Elliot, “a great many people were. I
+always pity the poor women so! We’ve got a lot to complain of!” She
+shook her head. Her eyes wandered about the table, and she remarked
+irrelevantly, “The poor little Queen of Holland! Newspaper reporters
+practically, one may say, at her bedroom door!”
+
+“Were you talking of the Queen of Holland?” said the pleasant voice of
+Miss Allan, who was searching for the thick pages of _The Times_ among
+a litter of thin foreign sheets.
+
+“I always envy any one who lives in such an excessively flat country,”
+she remarked.
+
+“How very strange!” said Mrs. Elliot. “I find a flat country so
+depressing.”
+
+“I’m afraid you can’t be very happy here then, Miss Allan,” said Susan.
+
+“On the contrary,” said Miss Allan, “I am exceedingly fond of
+mountains.” Perceiving _The Times_ at some distance, she moved off to
+secure it.
+
+“Well, I must find my husband,” said Mrs. Elliot, fidgeting away.
+
+“And I must go to my aunt,” said Miss Warrington, and taking up the
+duties of the day they moved away.
+
+Whether the flimsiness of foreign sheets and the coarseness of their
+type is any proof of frivolity and ignorance, there is no doubt that
+English people scarce consider news read there as news, any more than a
+programme bought from a man in the street inspires confidence in what
+it says. A very respectable elderly pair, having inspected the long
+tables of newspapers, did not think it worth their while to read more
+than the headlines.
+
+“The debate on the fifteenth should have reached us by now,” Mrs.
+Thornbury murmured. Mr. Thornbury, who was beautifully clean and had
+red rubbed into his handsome worn face like traces of paint on a
+weather-beaten wooden figure, looked over his glasses and saw that Miss
+Allan had _The Times_.
+
+The couple therefore sat themselves down in arm-chairs and waited.
+
+“Ah, there’s Mr. Hewet,” said Mrs. Thornbury. “Mr. Hewet,” she
+continued, “do come and sit by us. I was telling my husband how much
+you reminded me of a dear old friend of mine—Mary Umpleby. She was a
+most delightful woman, I assure you. She grew roses. We used to stay
+with her in the old days.”
+
+“No young man likes to have it said that he resembles an elderly
+spinster,” said Mr. Thornbury.
+
+“On the contrary,” said Mr. Hewet, “I always think it a compliment to
+remind people of some one else. But Miss Umpleby—why did she grow
+roses?”
+
+“Ah, poor thing,” said Mrs. Thornbury, “that’s a long story. She had
+gone through dreadful sorrows. At one time I think she would have lost
+her senses if it hadn’t been for her garden. The soil was very much
+against her—a blessing in disguise; she had to be up at dawn—out in all
+weathers. And then there are creatures that eat roses. But she
+triumphed. She always did. She was a brave soul.” She sighed deeply but
+at the same time with resignation.
+
+“I did not realise that I was monopolising the paper,” said Miss Allan,
+coming up to them.
+
+“We were so anxious to read about the debate,” said Mrs. Thornbury,
+accepting it on behalf of her husband.
+
+“One doesn’t realise how interesting a debate can be until one has sons
+in the navy. My interests are equally balanced, though; I have sons in
+the army too; and one son who makes speeches at the Union—my baby!”
+
+“Hirst would know him, I expect,” said Hewet.
+
+“Mr. Hirst has such an interesting face,” said Mrs. Thornbury. “But I
+feel one ought to be very clever to talk to him. Well, William?” she
+enquired, for Mr. Thornbury grunted.
+
+“They’re making a mess of it,” said Mr. Thornbury. He had reached the
+second column of the report, a spasmodic column, for the Irish members
+had been brawling three weeks ago at Westminster over a question of
+naval efficiency. After a disturbed paragraph or two, the column of
+print once more ran smoothly.
+
+“You have read it?” Mrs. Thornbury asked Miss Allan.
+
+“No, I am ashamed to say I have only read about the discoveries in
+Crete,” said Miss Allan.
+
+“Oh, but I would give so much to realise the ancient world!” cried Mrs.
+Thornbury. “Now that we old people are alone,—we’re on our second
+honeymoon,—I am really going to put myself to school again. After all
+we are _founded_ on the past, aren’t we, Mr. Hewet? My soldier son says
+that there is still a great deal to be learnt from Hannibal. One ought
+to know so much more than one does. Somehow when I read the paper, I
+begin with the debates first, and, before I’ve done, the door always
+opens—we’re a very large party at home—and so one never does think
+enough about the ancients and all they’ve done for us. But _you_ begin
+at the beginning, Miss Allan.”
+
+“When I think of the Greeks I think of them as naked black men,” said
+Miss Allan, “which is quite incorrect, I’m sure.”
+
+“And you, Mr. Hirst?” said Mrs. Thornbury, perceiving that the gaunt
+young man was near. “I’m sure you read everything.”
+
+“I confine myself to cricket and crime,” said Hirst. “The worst of
+coming from the upper classes,” he continued, “is that one’s friends
+are never killed in railway accidents.”
+
+Mr. Thornbury threw down the paper, and emphatically dropped his
+eyeglasses. The sheets fell in the middle of the group, and were eyed
+by them all.
+
+“It’s not gone well?” asked his wife solicitously.
+
+Hewet picked up one sheet and read, “A lady was walking yesterday in
+the streets of Westminster when she perceived a cat in the window of a
+deserted house. The famished animal—”
+
+“I shall be out of it anyway,” Mr. Thornbury interrupted peevishly.
+
+“Cats are often forgotten,” Miss Allan remarked.
+
+“Remember, William, the Prime Minister has reserved his answer,” said
+Mrs. Thornbury.
+
+“At the age of eighty, Mr. Joshua Harris of Eeles Park, Brondesbury,
+has had a son,” said Hirst.
+
+“. . . The famished animal, which had been noticed by workmen for some
+days, was rescued, but—by Jove! it bit the man’s hand to pieces!”
+
+“Wild with hunger, I suppose,” commented Miss Allan.
+
+“You’re all neglecting the chief advantage of being abroad,” said Mr.
+Hughling Elliot, who had joined the group. “You might read your news in
+French, which is equivalent to reading no news at all.”
+
+Mr. Elliot had a profound knowledge of Coptic, which he concealed as
+far as possible, and quoted French phrases so exquisitely that it was
+hard to believe that he could also speak the ordinary tongue. He had an
+immense respect for the French.
+
+“Coming?” he asked the two young men. “We ought to start before it’s
+really hot.”
+
+“I beg of you not to walk in the heat, Hugh,” his wife pleaded, giving
+him an angular parcel enclosing half a chicken and some raisins.
+
+“Hewet will be our barometer,” said Mr. Elliot. “He will melt before I
+shall.” Indeed, if so much as a drop had melted off his spare ribs, the
+bones would have lain bare. The ladies were left alone now, surrounding
+_The Times_ which lay upon the floor. Miss Allan looked at her father’s
+watch.
+
+“Ten minutes to eleven,” she observed.
+
+“Work?” asked Mrs. Thornbury.
+
+“Work,” replied Miss Allan.
+
+“What a fine creature she is!” murmured Mrs. Thornbury, as the square
+figure in its manly coat withdrew.
+
+“And I’m sure she has a hard life,” sighed Mrs. Elliot.
+
+“Oh, it _is_ a hard life,” said Mrs. Thornbury. “Unmarried
+women—earning their livings—it’s the hardest life of all.”
+
+“Yet she seems pretty cheerful,” said Mrs. Elliot.
+
+“It must be very interesting,” said Mrs. Thornbury. “I envy her her
+knowledge.”
+
+“But that isn’t what women want,” said Mrs. Elliot.
+
+“I’m afraid it’s all a great many can hope to have,” sighed Mrs.
+Thornbury. “I believe that there are more of us than ever now. Sir
+Harley Lethbridge was telling me only the other day how difficult it is
+to find boys for the navy—partly because of their teeth, it is true.
+And I have heard young women talk quite openly of—”
+
+“Dreadful, dreadful!” exclaimed Mrs. Elliot. “The crown, as one may
+call it, of a woman’s life. I, who know what it is to be childless—”
+she sighed and ceased.
+
+“But we must not be hard,” said Mrs. Thornbury. “The conditions are so
+much changed since I was a young woman.”
+
+“Surely _maternity_ does not change,” said Mrs. Elliot.
+
+“In some ways we can learn a great deal from the young,” said Mrs.
+Thornbury. “I learn so much from my own daughters.”
+
+“I believe that Hughling really doesn’t mind,” said Mrs. Elliot. “But
+then he has his work.”
+
+“Women without children can do so much for the children of others,”
+observed Mrs. Thornbury gently.
+
+“I sketch a great deal,” said Mrs. Elliot, “but that isn’t really an
+occupation. It’s so disconcerting to find girls just beginning doing
+better than one does oneself! And nature’s difficult—very difficult!”
+
+“Are there not institutions—clubs—that you could help?” asked Mrs.
+Thornbury.
+
+“They are so exhausting,” said Mrs. Elliot. “I look strong, because of
+my colour; but I’m not; the youngest of eleven never is.”
+
+“If the mother is careful before,” said Mrs. Thornbury judicially,
+“there is no reason why the size of the family should make any
+difference. And there is no training like the training that brothers
+and sisters give each other. I am sure of that. I have seen it with my
+own children. My eldest boy Ralph, for instance—”
+
+But Mrs. Elliot was inattentive to the elder lady’s experience, and her
+eyes wandered about the hall.
+
+“My mother had two miscarriages, I know,” she said suddenly. “The first
+because she met one of those great dancing bears—they shouldn’t be
+allowed; the other—it was a horrid story—our cook had a child and there
+was a dinner party. So I put my dyspepsia down to that.”
+
+“And a miscarriage is so much worse than a confinement,” Mrs. Thornbury
+murmured absentmindedly, adjusting her spectacles and picking up _The
+Times_. Mrs. Elliot rose and fluttered away.
+
+When she had heard what one of the million voices speaking in the paper
+had to say, and noticed that a cousin of hers had married a clergyman
+at Minehead—ignoring the drunken women, the golden animals of Crete,
+the movements of battalions, the dinners, the reforms, the fires, the
+indignant, the learned and benevolent, Mrs. Thornbury went upstairs to
+write a letter for the mail.
+
+The paper lay directly beneath the clock, the two together seeming to
+represent stability in a changing world. Mr. Perrott passed through;
+Mr. Venning poised for a second on the edge of a table. Mrs. Paley was
+wheeled past. Susan followed. Mr. Venning strolled after her.
+Portuguese military families, their clothes suggesting late rising in
+untidy bedrooms, trailed across, attended by confidential nurses
+carrying noisy children. As midday drew on, and the sun beat straight
+upon the roof, an eddy of great flies droned in a circle; iced drinks
+were served under the palms; the long blinds were pulled down with a
+shriek, turning all the light yellow. The clock now had a silent hall
+to tick in, and an audience of four or five somnolent merchants. By
+degrees white figures with shady hats came in at the door, admitting a
+wedge of the hot summer day, and shutting it out again. After resting
+in the dimness for a minute, they went upstairs. Simultaneously, the
+clock wheezed one, and the gong sounded, beginning softly, working
+itself into a frenzy, and ceasing. There was a pause. Then all those
+who had gone upstairs came down; cripples came, planting both feet on
+the same step lest they should slip; prim little girls came, holding
+the nurse’s finger; fat old men came still buttoning waistcoats. The
+gong had been sounded in the garden, and by degrees recumbent figures
+rose and strolled in to eat, since the time had come for them to feed
+again. There were pools and bars of shade in the garden even at midday,
+where two or three visitors could lie working or talking at their ease.
+
+Owing to the heat of the day, luncheon was generally a silent meal,
+when people observed their neighbors and took stock of any new faces
+there might be, hazarding guesses as to who they were and what they
+did. Mrs. Paley, although well over seventy and crippled in the legs,
+enjoyed her food and the peculiarities of her fellow-beings. She was
+seated at a small table with Susan.
+
+“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 round 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 making 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
+making 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.
+
+“It was hot,” she answered. Their conversation became private, owing to
+Mrs. Paley’s deafness and the long sad history which Mrs. Elliot had
+embarked upon of a wire-haired terrier, white with just one black spot,
+belonging to an uncle of hers, which had committed suicide. “Animals do
+commit suicide,” she sighed, as if she asserted a painful fact.
+
+“Couldn’t we explore the town this evening?” Mr. Venning suggested.
+
+“My aunt—” Susan began.
+
+“You deserve a holiday,” he said. “You’re always doing things for other
+people.”
+
+“But that’s my life,” she said, under cover of refilling the teapot.
+
+“That’s no one’s life,” he returned, “no young person’s. You’ll come?”
+
+“I should like to come,” she murmured.
+
+At this moment Mrs. Elliot looked up and exclaimed, “Oh, Hugh! He’s
+bringing some one,” she added.
+
+“He would like some tea,” said Mrs. Paley. “Susan, run and get some
+cups—there are the two young men.”
+
+“We’re thirsting for tea,” said Mr. Elliot. “You know Mr. Ambrose,
+Hilda? We met on the hill.”
+
+“He dragged me in,” said Ridley, “or I should have been ashamed. I’m
+dusty and dirty and disagreeable.” He pointed to his boots which were
+white with dust, while a dejected flower drooping in his buttonhole,
+like an exhausted animal over a gate, added to the effect of length and
+untidiness. He was introduced to the others. Mr. Hewet and Mr. Hirst
+brought chairs, and tea began again, Susan pouring cascades of water
+from pot to pot, always cheerfully, and with the competence of long
+use.
+
+“My wife’s brother,” Ridley explained to Hilda, whom he failed to
+remember, “has a house here, which he has lent us. I was sitting on a
+rock thinking of nothing at all when Elliot started up like a fairy in
+a pantomime.”
+
+“Our chicken got into the salt,” Hewet said dolefully to Susan. “Nor is
+it true that bananas include moisture as well as sustenance.”
+
+Hirst was already drinking.
+
+“We’ve been cursing you,” said Ridley in answer to Mrs. Elliot’s kind
+enquiries about his wife. “You tourists eat up all the eggs, Helen
+tells me. That’s an eye-sore too”—he nodded his head at the hotel.
+“Disgusting luxury, I call it. We live with pigs in the drawing-room.”
+
+“The food is not at all what it ought to be, considering the price,”
+said Mrs. Paley seriously. “But unless one goes to a hotel where is one
+to go to?”
+
+“Stay at home,” said Ridley. “I often wish I had! Everyone ought to
+stay at home. But, of course, they won’t.”
+
+Mrs. Paley conceived a certain grudge against Ridley, who seemed to be
+criticising her habits after an acquaintance of five minutes.
+
+“I believe in foreign travel myself,” she stated, “if one knows one’s
+native land, which I think I can honestly say I do. I should not allow
+any one to travel until they had visited Kent and Dorsetshire—Kent for
+the hops, and Dorsetshire for its old stone cottages. There is nothing
+to compare with them here.”
+
+“Yes—I always think that some people like the flat and other people
+like the downs,” said Mrs. Elliot rather vaguely.
+
+Hirst, who had been eating and drinking without interruption, now lit a
+cigarette, and observed, “Oh, but we’re all agreed by this time that
+nature’s a mistake. She’s either very ugly, appallingly uncomfortable,
+or absolutely terrifying. I don’t know which alarms me most—a cow or a
+tree. I once met a cow in a field by night. The creature looked at me.
+I assure you it turned my hair grey. It’s a disgrace that the animals
+should be allowed to go at large.”
+
+“And what did the cow think of _him_?” Venning mumbled to Susan, who
+immediately decided in her own mind that Mr. Hirst was a dreadful young
+man, and that although he had such an air of being clever he probably
+wasn’t as clever as Arthur, in the ways that really matter.
+
+“Wasn’t it Wilde who discovered the fact that nature makes no allowance
+for hip-bones?” enquired Hughling Elliot. He knew by this time exactly
+what scholarships and distinction Hirst enjoyed, and had formed a very
+high opinion of his capacities.
+
+But Hirst merely drew his lips together very tightly and made no reply.
+
+Ridley conjectured that it was now permissible for him to take his
+leave. Politeness required him to thank Mrs. Elliot for his tea, and to
+add, with a wave of his hand, “You must come up and see us.”
+
+The wave included both Hirst and Hewet, and Hewet answered, “I should
+like it immensely.”
+
+The party broke up, and Susan, who had never felt so happy in her life,
+was just about to start for her walk in the town with Arthur, when Mrs.
+Paley beckoned her back. She could not understand from the book how
+Double Demon patience is played; and suggested that if they sat down
+and worked it out together it would fill up the time nicely before
+dinner.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER X
+
+
+Among the promises which Mrs. Ambrose had made her niece should she
+stay was a room cut off from the rest of the house, large, private—a
+room in which she could play, read, think, defy the world, a fortress
+as well as a sanctuary. Rooms, she knew, became more like worlds than
+rooms at the age of twenty-four. Her judgment was correct, and when she
+shut the door Rachel entered an enchanted place, where the poets sang
+and things fell into their right proportions. Some days after the
+vision of the hotel by night she was sitting alone, sunk in an
+arm-chair, reading a brightly-covered red volume lettered on the back
+_Works of Henrik Ibsen_. Music was open on the piano, and books of
+music rose in two jagged pillars on the floor; but for the moment music
+was deserted.
+
+Far from looking bored or absent-minded, her eyes were concentrated
+almost sternly upon the page, and from her breathing, which was slow
+but repressed, it could be seen that her whole body was constrained by
+the working of her mind. At last she shut the book sharply, lay back,
+and drew a deep breath, expressive of the wonder which always marks the
+transition from the imaginary world to the real world.
+
+“What I want to know,” she said aloud, “is this: What is the truth?
+What’s the truth of it all?” She was speaking partly as herself, and
+partly as the heroine of the play she had just read. The landscape
+outside, because she had seen nothing but print for the space of two
+hours, now appeared amazingly solid and clear, but although there were
+men on the hill washing the trunks of olive trees with a white liquid,
+for the moment she herself was the most vivid thing in it—an heroic
+statue in the middle of the foreground, dominating the view. Ibsen’s
+plays always left her in that condition. She acted them for days at a
+time, greatly to Helen’s amusement; and then it would be Meredith’s
+turn and she became Diana of the Crossways. But Helen was aware that it
+was not all acting, and that some sort of change was taking place in
+the human being. When Rachel became tired of the rigidity of her pose
+on the back of the chair, she turned round, slid comfortably down into
+it, and gazed out over the furniture through the window opposite which
+opened on the garden. (Her mind wandered away from Nora, but she went
+on thinking of things that the book suggested to her, of women and
+life.)
+
+During the three months she had been here she had made up considerably,
+as Helen meant she should, for time spent in interminable walks round
+sheltered gardens, and the household gossip of her aunts. But Mrs.
+Ambrose would have been the first to disclaim any influence, or indeed
+any belief that to influence was within her power. She saw her less
+shy, and less serious, which was all to the good, and the violent leaps
+and the interminable mazes which had led to that result were usually
+not even guessed at by her. Talk was the medicine she trusted to, talk
+about everything, talk that was free, unguarded, and as candid as a
+habit of talking with men made natural in her own case. Nor did she
+encourage those habits of unselfishness and amiability founded upon
+insincerity which are put at so high a value in mixed households of men
+and women. She desired that Rachel should think, and for this reason
+offered books and discouraged too entire a dependence upon Bach and
+Beethoven and Wagner. But when Mrs. Ambrose would have suggested Defoe,
+Maupassant, or some spacious chronicle of family life, Rachel chose
+modern books, books in shiny yellow covers, books with a great deal of
+gilding on the back, which were tokens in her aunt’s eyes of harsh
+wrangling and disputes about facts which had no such importance as the
+moderns claimed for them. But she did not interfere. Rachel read what
+she chose, reading with the curious literalness of one to whom written
+sentences are unfamiliar, and handling words as though they were made
+of wood, separately of great importance, and possessed of shapes like
+tables or chairs. In this way she came to conclusions, which had to be
+remodelled according to the adventures of the day, and were indeed
+recast as liberally as any one could desire, leaving always a small
+grain of belief behind them.
+
+Ibsen was succeeded by a novel such as Mrs. Ambrose detested, whose
+purpose was to distribute the guilt of a woman’s downfall upon the
+right shoulders; a purpose which was achieved, if the reader’s
+discomfort were any proof of it. She threw the book down, looked out of
+the window, turned away from the window, and relapsed into an
+arm-chair.
+
+The morning was hot, and the exercise of reading left her mind
+contracting and expanding like the main-spring of a clock, and the
+small noises of midday, which one can ascribe to no definite cause, in
+a regular rhythm. It was all very real, very big, very impersonal, and
+after a moment or two she began to raise her first finger and to let it
+fall on the arm of her chair so as to bring back to herself some
+consciousness of her own existence. She was next overcome by the
+unspeakable queerness of the fact that she should be sitting in an
+arm-chair, in the morning, in the middle of the world. Who were the
+people moving in the house—moving things from one place to another? And
+life, what was that? It was only a light passing over the surface and
+vanishing, as in time she would vanish, though the furniture in the
+room would remain. Her dissolution became so complete that she could
+not raise her finger any more, and sat perfectly still, listening and
+looking always at the same spot. It became stranger and stranger. She
+was overcome with awe that things should exist at all. . . . She forgot
+that she had any fingers to raise. . . . The things that existed were
+so immense and so desolate. . . . She continued to be conscious of
+these vast masses of substance for a long stretch of time, the clock
+still ticking in the midst of the universal silence.
+
+“Come in,” she said mechanically, for a string in her brain seemed to
+be pulled by a persistent knocking at the door. With great slowness the
+door opened and a tall human being came towards her, holding out her
+arm and saying:
+
+“What am I to say to this?”
+
+The utter absurdity of a woman coming into a room with a piece of paper
+in her hand amazed Rachel.
+
+“I don’t know what to answer, or who Terence Hewet is,” Helen
+continued, in the toneless voice of a ghost. She put a paper before
+Rachel on which were written the incredible words:
+
+DEAR MRS. AMBROSE—I am getting up a picnic for next Friday, when we
+propose to start at eleven-thirty if the weather is fine, and to make
+the ascent of Monte Rosa. It will take some time, but the view should
+be magnificent. It would give me great pleasure if you and Miss Vinrace
+would consent to be of the party.—Yours sincerely,
+
+
+TERENCE HEWET
+
+
+Rachel read the words aloud to make herself believe in them. For the
+same reason she put her hand on Helen’s shoulder.
+
+“Books—books—books,” said Helen, in her absent-minded way. “More new
+books—I wonder what you find in them. . . .”
+
+For the second time Rachel read the letter, but to herself. This time,
+instead of seeming vague as ghosts, each word was astonishingly
+prominent; they came out as the tops of mountains come through a mist.
+_Friday_—_eleven-thirty_—_Miss Vinrace_. The blood began to run in her
+veins; she felt her eyes brighten.
+
+“We must go,” she said, rather surprising Helen by her decision. “We
+must certainly go”—such was the relief of finding that things still
+happened, and indeed they appeared the brighter for the mist
+surrounding them.
+
+“Monte Rosa—that’s the mountain over there, isn’t it?” said Helen; “but
+Hewet—who’s he? One of the young men Ridley met, I suppose. Shall I say
+yes, then? It may be dreadfully dull.”
+
+She took the letter back and went, for the messenger was waiting for
+her answer.
+
+The party which had been suggested a few nights ago in Mr. Hirst’s
+bedroom had taken shape and was the source of great satisfaction to Mr.
+Hewet, who had seldom used his practical abilities, and was pleased to
+find them equal to the strain. His invitations had been universally
+accepted, which was the more encouraging as they had been issued
+against Hirst’s advice to people who were very dull, not at all suited
+to each other, and sure not to come.
+
+“Undoubtedly,” he said, as he twirled and untwirled a note signed Helen
+Ambrose, “the gifts needed to make a great commander have been absurdly
+overrated. About half the intellectual effort which is needed to review
+a book of modern poetry has enabled me to get together seven or eight
+people, of opposite sexes, at the same spot at the same hour on the
+same day. What else is generalship, Hirst? What more did Wellington do
+on the field of Waterloo? It’s like counting the number of pebbles of a
+path, tedious but not difficult.”
+
+He was sitting in his bedroom, one leg over the arm of the chair, and
+Hirst was writing a letter opposite. Hirst was quick to point out that
+all the difficulties remained.
+
+“For instance, here are two women you’ve never seen. Suppose one of
+them suffers from mountain-sickness, as my sister does, and the other—”
+
+“Oh, the women are for you,” Hewet interrupted. “I asked them solely
+for your benefit. What you want, Hirst, you know, is the society of
+young women of your own age. You don’t know how to get on with women,
+which is a great defect, considering that half the world consists of
+women.”
+
+Hirst groaned that he was quite aware of that.
+
+But Hewet’s complacency was a little chilled as he walked with Hirst to
+the place where a general meeting had been appointed. He wondered why
+on earth he had asked these people, and what one really expected to get
+from bunching human beings up together.
+
+“Cows,” he reflected, “draw together in a field; ships in a calm; and
+we’re just the same when we’ve nothing else to do. But why do we do
+it?—is it to prevent ourselves from seeing to the bottom of things” (he
+stopped by a stream and began stirring it with his walking-stick and
+clouding the water with mud), “making cities and mountains and whole
+universes out of nothing, or do we really love each other, or do we, on
+the other hand, live in a state of perpetual uncertainty, knowing
+nothing, leaping from moment to moment as from world to world?—which
+is, on the whole, the view _I_ incline to.”
+
+He jumped over the stream; Hirst went round and joined him, remarking
+that he had long ceased to look for the reason of any human action.
+
+Half a mile further, they came to a group of plane trees and the
+salmon-pink farmhouse standing by the stream which had been chosen as
+meeting-place. It was a shady spot, lying conveniently just where the
+hill sprung out from the flat. Between the thin stems of the plane
+trees the young men could see little knots of donkeys pasturing, and a
+tall woman rubbing the nose of one of them, while another woman was
+kneeling by the stream lapping water out of her palms.
+
+As they entered the shady place, Helen looked up and then held out her
+hand.
+
+“I must introduce myself,” she said. “I am Mrs. Ambrose.”
+
+Having shaken hands, she said, “That’s my niece.”
+
+Rachel approached awkwardly. She held out her hand, but withdrew it.
+“It’s all wet,” she said.
+
+Scarcely had they spoken, when the first carriage drew up.
+
+The donkeys were quickly jerked into attention, and the second carriage
+arrived. By degrees the grove filled with people—the Elliots, the
+Thornburys, Mr. Venning and Susan, Miss Allan, Evelyn Murgatroyd, and
+Mr. Perrott. Mr. Hirst acted the part of hoarse energetic sheep-dog. By
+means of a few words of caustic Latin he had the animals marshalled,
+and by inclining a sharp shoulder he lifted the ladies. “What Hewet
+fails to understand,” he remarked, “is that we must break the back of
+the ascent before midday.” He was assisting a young lady, by name
+Evelyn Murgatroyd, as he spoke. She rose light as a bubble to her seat.
+With a feather drooping from a broad-brimmed hat, in white from top to
+toe, she looked like a gallant lady of the time of Charles the First
+leading royalist troops into action.
+
+“Ride with me,” she commanded; and, as soon as Hirst had swung himself
+across a mule, the two started, leading the cavalcade.
+
+“You’re not to call me Miss Murgatroyd. I hate it,” she said. “My
+name’s Evelyn. What’s yours?”
+
+“St. John,” he said.
+
+“I like that,” said Evelyn. “And what’s your friend’s name?”
+
+“His initials being R. S. T., we call him Monk,” said Hirst.
+
+“Oh, you’re all too clever,” she said. “Which way? Pick me a branch.
+Let’s canter.”
+
+She gave her donkey a sharp cut with a switch and started forward. The
+full and romantic career of Evelyn Murgatroyd is best hit off by her
+own words, “Call me Evelyn and I’ll call you St. John.” She said that
+on very slight provocation—her surname was enough—but although a great
+many young men had answered her already with considerable spirit she
+went on saying it and making choice of none. But her donkey stumbled to
+a jog-trot, and she had to ride in advance alone, for the path when it
+began to ascend one of the spines of the hill became narrow and
+scattered with stones. The cavalcade wound on like a jointed
+caterpillar, tufted with the white parasols of the ladies, and the
+panama hats of the gentlemen. At one point where the ground rose
+sharply, Evelyn M. jumped off, threw her reins to the native boy, and
+adjured St. John Hirst to dismount too. Their example was followed by
+those who felt the need of stretching.
+
+“I don’t see any need to get off,” said Miss Allan to Mrs. Elliot just
+behind her, “considering the difficulty I had getting on.”
+
+“These little donkeys stand anything, _n’est-ce pas_?” Mrs. Elliot
+addressed the guide, who obligingly bowed his head.
+
+“Flowers,” said Helen, stooping to pick the lovely little bright
+flowers which grew separately here and there. “You pinch their leaves
+and then they smell,” she said, laying one on Miss Allan’s knee.
+
+“Haven’t we met before?” asked Miss Allan, looking at her.
+
+“I was taking it for granted,” Helen laughed, for in the confusion of
+meeting they had not been introduced.
+
+“How sensible!” chirped Mrs. Elliot. “That’s just what one would always
+like—only unfortunately it’s not possible.”
+
+“Not possible?” said Helen. “Everything’s possible. Who knows what
+mayn’t happen before night-fall?” she continued, mocking the poor
+lady’s timidity, who depended so implicitly upon one thing following
+another that the mere glimpse of a world where dinner could be
+disregarded, or the table moved one inch from its accustomed place,
+filled her with fears for her own stability.
+
+Higher and higher they went, becoming separated from the world. The
+world, when they turned to look back, flattened itself out, and was
+marked with squares of thin green and grey.
+
+“Towns are very small,” Rachel remarked, obscuring the whole of Santa
+Marina and its suburbs with one hand. The sea filled in all the angles
+of the coast smoothly, breaking in a white frill, and here and there
+ships were set firmly in the blue. The sea was stained with purple and
+green blots, and there was a glittering line upon the rim where it met
+the sky. The air was very clear and silent save for the sharp noise of
+grasshoppers and the hum of bees, which sounded loud in the ear as they
+shot past and vanished. The party halted and sat for a time in a quarry
+on the hillside.
+
+“Amazingly clear,” exclaimed St. John, identifying one cleft in the
+land after another.
+
+Evelyn M. sat beside him, propping her chin on her hand. She surveyed
+the view with a certain look of triumph.
+
+“D’you think Garibaldi was ever up here?” she asked Mr. Hirst. Oh, if
+she had been his bride! If, instead of a picnic party, this was a party
+of patriots, and she, red-shirted like the rest, had lain among grim
+men, flat on the turf, aiming her gun at the white turrets beneath
+them, screening her eyes to pierce through the smoke! So thinking, her
+foot stirred restlessly, and she exclaimed:
+
+“I don’t call this _life_, do you?”
+
+“What do you call life?” said St. John.
+
+“Fighting—revolution,” she said, still gazing at the doomed city. “You
+only care for books, I know.”
+
+“You’re quite wrong,” said St. John.
+
+“Explain,” she urged, for there were no guns to be aimed at bodies, and
+she turned to another kind of warfare.
+
+“What do I care for? People,” he said.
+
+“Well, I _am_ surprised!” she exclaimed. “You look so awfully serious.
+Do let’s be friends and tell each other what we’re like. I hate being
+cautious, don’t you?”
+
+But St. John was decidedly cautious, as she could see by the sudden
+constriction of his lips, and had no intention of revealing his soul to
+a young lady. “The ass is eating my hat,” he remarked, and stretched
+out for it instead of answering her. Evelyn blushed very slightly and
+then turned with some impetuosity upon Mr. Perrott, and when they
+mounted again it was Mr. Perrott who lifted her to her seat.
+
+“When one has laid the eggs one eats the omelette,” said Hughling
+Elliot, exquisitely in French, a hint to the rest of them that it was
+time to ride on again.
+
+The midday sun which Hirst had foretold was beginning to beat down
+hotly. The higher they got the more of the sky appeared, until the
+mountain was only a small tent of earth against an enormous blue
+background. The English fell silent; the natives who walked beside the
+donkeys broke into queer wavering songs and tossed jokes from one to
+the other. The way grew very steep, and each rider kept his eyes fixed
+on the hobbling curved form of the rider and donkey directly in front
+of him. Rather more strain was being put upon their bodies than is
+quite legitimate in a party of pleasure, and Hewet overheard one or two
+slightly grumbling remarks.
+
+“Expeditions in such heat are perhaps a little unwise,” Mrs. Elliot
+murmured to Miss Allan.
+
+But Miss Allan returned, “I always like to get to the top”; and it was
+true, although she was a big woman, stiff in the joints, and unused to
+donkey-riding, but as her holidays were few she made the most of them.
+
+The vivacious white figure rode well in front; she had somehow
+possessed herself of a leafy branch and wore it round her hat like a
+garland. They went on for a few minutes in silence.
+
+“The view will be wonderful,” Hewet assured them, turning round in his
+saddle and smiling encouragement. Rachel caught his eye and smiled too.
+They struggled on for some time longer, nothing being heard but the
+clatter of hooves striving on the loose stones. Then they saw that
+Evelyn was off her ass, and that Mr. Perrott was standing in the
+attitude of a statesman in Parliament Square, stretching an arm of
+stone towards the view. A little to the left of them was a low ruined
+wall, the stump of an Elizabethan watch-tower.
+
+“I couldn’t have stood it much longer,” Mrs. Elliot confided to Mrs.
+Thornbury, but the excitement of being at the top in another moment and
+seeing the view prevented any one from answering her. One after another
+they came out on the flat space at the top and stood overcome with
+wonder. Before them they beheld an immense space—grey sands running
+into forest, and forest merging in mountains, and mountains washed by
+air, the infinite distances of South America. A river ran across the
+plain, as flat as the land, and appearing quite as stationary. The
+effect of so much space was at first rather chilling. They felt
+themselves very small, and for some time no one said anything. Then
+Evelyn exclaimed, “Splendid!” She took hold of the hand that was next
+her; it chanced to be Miss Allan’s hand.
+
+“North—South—East—West,” said Miss Allan, jerking her head slightly
+towards the points of the compass.
+
+Hewet, who had gone a little in front, looked up at his guests as if to
+justify himself for having brought them. He observed how strangely the
+people standing in a row with their figures bent slightly forward and
+their clothes plastered by the wind to the shape of their bodies
+resembled naked statues. On their pedestal of earth they looked
+unfamiliar and noble, but in another moment they had broken their rank,
+and he had to see to the laying out of food. Hirst came to his help,
+and they handed packets of chicken and bread from one to another.
+
+As St. John gave Helen her packet she looked him full in the face and
+said:
+
+“Do you remember—two women?”
+
+He looked at her sharply.
+
+“I do,” he answered.
+
+“So you’re the two women!” Hewet exclaimed, looking from Helen to
+Rachel.
+
+“Your lights tempted us,” said Helen. “We watched you playing cards,
+but we never knew that we were being watched.”
+
+“It was like a thing in a play,” Rachel added.
+
+“And Hirst couldn’t describe you,” said Hewet.
+
+It was certainly odd to have seen Helen and to find nothing to say
+about her.
+
+Hughling Elliot put up his eyeglass and grasped the situation.
+
+“I don’t know of anything more dreadful,” he said, pulling at the joint
+of a chicken’s leg, “than being seen when one isn’t conscious of it.
+One feels sure one has been caught doing something ridiculous—looking
+at one’s tongue in a hansom, for instance.”
+
+Now the others ceased to look at the view, and drawing together sat
+down in a circle round the baskets.
+
+“And yet those little looking-glasses in hansoms have a fascination of
+their own,” said Mrs. Thornbury. “One’s features look so different when
+one can only see a bit of them.”
+
+“There will soon be very few hansom cabs left,” said Mrs. Elliot. “And
+four-wheeled cabs—I assure you even at Oxford it’s almost impossible to
+get a four-wheeled cab.”
+
+“I wonder what happens to the horses,” said Susan.
+
+“Veal pie,” said Arthur.
+
+“It’s high time that horses should become extinct anyhow,” said Hirst.
+“They’re distressingly ugly, besides being vicious.”
+
+But Susan, who had been brought up to understand that the horse is the
+noblest of God’s creatures, could not agree, and Venning thought Hirst
+an unspeakable ass, but was too polite not to continue the
+conversation.
+
+“When they see us falling out of aeroplanes they get some of their own
+back, I expect,” he remarked.
+
+“You fly?” said old Mr. Thornbury, putting on his spectacles to look at
+him.
+
+“I hope to, some day,” said Arthur.
+
+Here flying was discussed at length, and Mrs. Thornbury delivered an
+opinion which was almost a speech to the effect that it would be quite
+necessary in time of war, and in England we were terribly behind-hand.
+“If I were a young fellow,” she concluded, “I should certainly
+qualify.” It was odd to look at the little elderly lady, in her grey
+coat and skirt, with a sandwich in her hand, her eyes lighting up with
+zeal as she imagined herself a young man in an aeroplane. For some
+reason, however, the talk did not run easily after this, and all they
+said was about drink and salt and the view. Suddenly Miss Allan, who
+was seated with her back to the ruined wall, put down her sandwich,
+picked something off her neck, and remarked, “I’m covered with little
+creatures.” It was true, and the discovery was very welcome. The ants
+were pouring down a glacier of loose earth heaped between the stones of
+the ruin—large brown ants with polished bodies. She held out one on the
+back of her hand for Helen to look at.
+
+“Suppose they sting?” said Helen.
+
+“They will not sting, but they may infest the victuals,” said Miss
+Allan, and measures were taken at once to divert the ants from their
+course. At Hewet’s suggestion it was decided to adopt the methods of
+modern warfare against an invading army. The table-cloth represented
+the invaded country, and round it they built barricades of baskets, set
+up the wine bottles in a rampart, made fortifications of bread and dug
+fosses of salt. When an ant got through it was exposed to a fire of
+bread-crumbs, until Susan pronounced that that was cruel, and rewarded
+those brave spirits with spoil in the shape of tongue. Playing this
+game they lost their stiffness, and even became unusually daring, for
+Mr. Perrott, who was very shy, said, “Permit me,” and removed an ant
+from Evelyn’s neck.
+
+“It would be no laughing matter really,” said Mrs. Elliot
+confidentially to Mrs. Thornbury, “if an ant did get between the vest
+and the skin.”
+
+The noise grew suddenly more clamorous, for it was discovered that a
+long line of ants had found their way on to the table-cloth by a back
+entrance, and if success could be gauged by noise, Hewet had every
+reason to think his party a success. Nevertheless he became, for no
+reason at all, profoundly depressed.
+
+“They are not satisfactory; they are ignoble,” he thought, surveying
+his guests from a little distance, where he was gathering together the
+plates. He glanced at them all, stooping and swaying and gesticulating
+round the table-cloth. Amiable and modest, respectable in many ways,
+lovable even in their contentment and desire to be kind, how mediocre
+they all were, and capable of what insipid cruelty to one another!
+There was Mrs. Thornbury, sweet but trivial in her maternal egoism;
+Mrs. Elliot, perpetually complaining of her lot; her husband a mere pea
+in a pod; and Susan—she had no self, and counted neither one way nor
+the other; Venning was as honest and as brutal as a schoolboy; poor old
+Thornbury merely trod his round like a horse in a mill; and the less
+one examined into Evelyn’s character the better, he suspected. Yet
+these were the people with money, and to them rather than to others was
+given the management of the world. Put among them some one more vital,
+who cared for life or for beauty, and what an agony, what a waste would
+they inflict on him if he tried to share with them and not to scourge!
+
+“There’s Hirst,” he concluded, coming to the figure of his friend; with
+his usual little frown of concentration upon his forehead he was
+peeling the skin off a banana. “And he’s as ugly as sin.” For the
+ugliness of St. John Hirst, and the limitations that went with it, he
+made the rest in some way responsible. It was their fault that he had
+to live alone. Then he came to Helen, attracted to her by the sound of
+her laugh. She was laughing at Miss Allan. “You wear combinations in
+this heat?” she said in a voice which was meant to be private. He liked
+the look of her immensely, not so much her beauty, but her largeness
+and simplicity, which made her stand out from the rest like a great
+stone woman, and he passed on in a gentler mood. His eye fell upon
+Rachel. She was lying back rather behind the others resting on one
+elbow; she might have been thinking precisely the same thoughts as
+Hewet himself. Her eyes were fixed rather sadly but not intently upon
+the row of people opposite her. Hewet crawled up to her on his knees,
+with a piece of bread in his hand.
+
+“What are you looking at?” he asked.
+
+She was a little startled, but answered directly, “Human beings.”
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XI
+
+
+One after another they rose and stretched themselves, and in a few
+minutes divided more or less into two separate parties. One of these
+parties was dominated by Hughling Elliot and Mrs. Thornbury, who,
+having both read the same books and considered the same questions, were
+now anxious to name the places beneath them and to hang upon them
+stores of information about navies and armies, political parties,
+natives and mineral products—all of which combined, they said, to prove
+that South America was the country of the future.
+
+Evelyn M. listened with her bright blue eyes fixed upon the oracles.
+
+“How it makes one long to be a man!” she exclaimed.
+
+Mr. Perrott answered, surveying the plain, that a country with a future
+was a very fine thing.
+
+“If I were you,” said Evelyn, turning to him and drawing her glove
+vehemently through her fingers, “I’d raise a troop and conquer some
+great territory and make it splendid. You’d want women for that. I’d
+love to start life from the very beginning as it ought to be—nothing
+squalid—but great halls and gardens and splendid men and women. But
+you—you only like Law Courts!”
+
+“And would you really be content without pretty frocks and sweets and
+all the things young ladies like?” asked Mr. Perrott, concealing a
+certain amount of pain beneath his ironical manner.
+
+“I’m not a young lady,” Evelyn flashed; she bit her underlip. “Just
+because I like splendid things you laugh at me. Why are there no men
+like Garibaldi now?” she demanded.
+
+“Look here,” said Mr. Perrott, “you don’t give me a chance. You think
+we ought to begin things fresh. Good. But I don’t see precisely—conquer
+a territory? They’re all conquered already, aren’t they?”
+
+“It’s not any territory in particular,” Evelyn explained. “It’s the
+idea, don’t you see? We lead such tame lives. And I feel sure you’ve
+got splendid things in you.”
+
+Hewet saw the scars and hollows in Mr. Perrott’s sagacious face relax
+pathetically. He could imagine the calculations which even then went on
+within his mind, as to whether he would be justified in asking a woman
+to marry him, considering that he made no more than five hundred a year
+at the Bar, owned no private means, and had an invalid sister to
+support. Mr. Perrott again knew that he was not “quite,” as Susan
+stated in her diary; not quite a gentleman she meant, for he was the
+son of a grocer in Leeds, had started life with a basket on his back,
+and now, though practically indistinguishable from a born gentleman,
+showed his origin to keen eyes in an impeccable neatness of dress, lack
+of freedom in manner, extreme cleanliness of person, and a certain
+indescribable timidity and precision with his knife and fork which
+might be the relic of days when meat was rare, and the way of handling
+it by no means gingerly.
+
+The two parties who were strolling about and losing their unity now
+came together, and joined each other in a long stare over the yellow
+and green patches of the heated landscape below. The hot air danced
+across it, making it impossible to see the roofs of a village on the
+plain distinctly. Even on the top of the mountain where a breeze played
+lightly, it was very hot, and the heat, the food, the immense space,
+and perhaps some less well-defined cause produced a comfortable
+drowsiness and a sense of happy relaxation in them. They did not say
+much, but felt no constraint in being silent.
+
+“Suppose we go and see what’s to be seen over there?” said Arthur to
+Susan, and the pair walked off together, their departure certainly
+sending some thrill of emotion through the rest.
+
+“An odd lot, aren’t they?” said Arthur. “I thought we should never get
+’em all to the top. But I’m glad we came, by Jove! I wouldn’t have
+missed this for something.”
+
+“I don’t _like_ Mr. Hirst,” said Susan inconsequently. “I suppose he’s
+very clever, but why should clever people be so—I expect he’s awfully
+nice, really,” she added, instinctively qualifying what might have
+seemed an unkind remark.
+
+“Hirst? Oh, he’s one of these learned chaps,” said Arthur
+indifferently. “He don’t look as if he enjoyed it. You should hear him
+talking to Elliot. It’s as much as I can do to follow ’em at all. . . .
+I was never good at my books.”
+
+With these sentences and the pauses that came between them they reached
+a little hillock, on the top of which grew several slim trees.
+
+“D’you mind if we sit down here?” said Arthur, looking about him. “It’s
+jolly in the shade—and the view—” They sat down, and looked straight
+ahead of them in silence for some time.
+
+“But I do envy those clever chaps sometimes,” Arthur remarked. “I don’t
+suppose they ever . . .” He did not finish his sentence.
+
+“I can’t see why you should envy them,” said Susan, with great
+sincerity.
+
+“Odd things happen to one,” said Arthur. “One goes along smoothly
+enough, one thing following another, and it’s all very jolly and plain
+sailing, and you think you know all about it, and suddenly one doesn’t
+know where one is a bit, and everything seems different from what it
+used to seem. Now to-day, coming up that path, riding behind you, I
+seemed to see everything as if—” he paused and plucked a piece of grass
+up by the roots. He scattered the little lumps of earth which were
+sticking to the roots—“As if it had a kind of meaning. You’ve made the
+difference to me,” he jerked out, “I don’t see why I shouldn’t tell
+you. I’ve felt it ever since I knew you. . . . It’s because I love
+you.”
+
+Even while they had been saying commonplace things Susan had been
+conscious of the excitement of intimacy, which seemed not only to lay
+bare something in her, but in the trees and the sky, and the progress
+of his speech which seemed inevitable was positively painful to her,
+for no human being had ever come so close to her before.
+
+She was struck motionless as his speech went on, and her heart gave
+great separate leaps at the last words. She sat with her fingers curled
+round a stone, looking straight in front of her down the mountain over
+the plain. So then, it had actually happened to her, a proposal of
+marriage.
+
+Arthur looked round at her; his face was oddly twisted. She was drawing
+her breath with such difficulty that she could hardly answer.
+
+“You might have known.” He seized her in his arms; again and again and
+again they clasped each other, murmuring inarticulately.
+
+“Well,” sighed Arthur, sinking back on the ground, “that’s the most
+wonderful thing that’s ever happened to me.” He looked as if he were
+trying to put things seen in a dream beside real things.
+
+There was a long silence.
+
+“It’s the most perfect thing in the world,” Susan stated, very gently
+and with great conviction. It was no longer merely a proposal of
+marriage, but of marriage with Arthur, with whom she was in love.
+
+In the silence that followed, holding his hand tightly in hers, she
+prayed to God that she might make him a good wife.
+
+“And what will Mr. Perrott say?” she asked at the end of it.
+
+“Dear old fellow,” said Arthur who, now that the first shock was over,
+was relaxing into an enormous sense of pleasure and contentment. “We
+must be very nice to him, Susan.”
+
+He told her how hard Perrott’s life had been, and how absurdly devoted
+he was to Arthur himself. He went on to tell her about his mother, a
+widow lady, of strong character. In return Susan sketched the portraits
+of her own family—Edith in particular, her youngest sister, whom she
+loved better than any one else, “except you, Arthur. . . . Arthur,” she
+continued, “what was it that you first liked me for?”
+
+“It was a buckle you wore one night at sea,” said Arthur, after due
+consideration. “I remember noticing—it’s an absurd thing to
+notice!—that you didn’t take peas, because I don’t either.”
+
+From this they went on to compare their more serious tastes, or rather
+Susan ascertained what Arthur cared about, and professed herself very
+fond of the same thing. They would live in London, perhaps have a
+cottage in the country near Susan’s family, for they would find it
+strange without her at first. Her mind, stunned to begin with, now flew
+to the various changes that her engagement would make—how delightful it
+would be to join the ranks of the married women—no longer to hang on to
+groups of girls much younger than herself—to escape the long solitude
+of an old maid’s life. Now and then her amazing good fortune overcame
+her, and she turned to Arthur with an exclamation of love.
+
+They lay in each other’s arms and had no notion that they were
+observed. Yet two figures suddenly appeared among the trees above them.
+“Here’s shade,” began Hewet, when Rachel suddenly stopped dead. They
+saw a man and woman lying on the ground beneath them, rolling slightly
+this way and that as the embrace tightened and slackened. The man then
+sat upright and the woman, who now appeared to be Susan Warrington, lay
+back upon the ground, with her eyes shut and an absorbed look upon her
+face, as though she were not altogether conscious. Nor could you tell
+from her expression whether she was happy, or had suffered something.
+When Arthur again turned to her, butting her as a lamb butts a ewe,
+Hewet and Rachel retreated without a word. Hewet felt uncomfortably
+shy.
+
+“I don’t like that,” said Rachel after a moment.
+
+“I can remember not liking it either,” said Hewet. “I can remember—”
+but he changed his mind and continued in an ordinary tone of voice,
+“Well, we may take it for granted that they’re engaged. D’you think
+he’ll ever fly, or will she put a stop to that?”
+
+But Rachel was still agitated; she could not get away from the sight
+they had just seen. Instead of answering Hewet she persisted.
+
+“Love’s an odd thing, isn’t it, making one’s heart beat.”
+
+“It’s so enormously important, you see,” Hewet replied. “Their lives
+are now changed for ever.”
+
+“And it makes one sorry for them too,” Rachel continued, as though she
+were tracing the course of her feelings. “I don’t know either of them,
+but I could almost burst into tears. That’s silly, isn’t it?”
+
+“Just because they’re in love,” said Hewet. “Yes,” he added after a
+moment’s consideration, “there’s something horribly pathetic about it,
+I agree.”
+
+And now, as they had walked some way from the grove of trees, and had
+come to a rounded hollow very tempting to the back, they proceeded to
+sit down, and the impression of the lovers lost some of its force,
+though a certain intensity of vision, which was probably the result of
+the sight, remained with them. As a day upon which any emotion has been
+repressed is different from other days, so this day was now different,
+merely because they had seen other people at a crisis of their lives.
+
+“A great encampment of tents they might be,” said Hewet, looking in
+front of him at the mountains. “Isn’t it like a water-colour too—you
+know the way water-colours dry in ridges all across the paper—I’ve been
+wondering what they looked like.”
+
+His eyes became dreamy, as though he were matching things, and reminded
+Rachel in their colour of the green flesh of a snail. She sat beside
+him looking at the mountains too. When it became painful to look any
+longer, the great size of the view seeming to enlarge her eyes beyond
+their natural limit, she looked at the ground; it pleased her to
+scrutinise this inch of the soil of South America so minutely that she
+noticed every grain of earth and made it into a world where she was
+endowed with the supreme power. She bent a blade of grass, and set an
+insect on the utmost tassel of it, and wondered if the insect realised
+his strange adventure, and thought how strange it was that she should
+have bent that tassel rather than any other of the million tassels.
+
+“You’ve never told me your name,” said Hewet suddenly. “Miss Somebody
+Vinrace. . . . I like to know people’s Christian names.”
+
+“Rachel,” she replied.
+
+“Rachel,” he repeated. “I have an aunt called Rachel, who put the life
+of Father Damien into verse. She is a religious fanatic—the result of
+the way she was brought up, down in Northamptonshire, never seeing a
+soul. Have you any aunts?”
+
+“I live with them,” said Rachel.
+
+“And I wonder what they’re doing now?” Hewet enquired.
+
+“They are probably buying wool,” Rachel determined. She tried to
+describe them. “They are small, rather pale women,” she began, “very
+clean. We live in Richmond. They have an old dog, too, who will only
+eat the marrow out of bones. . . . They are always going to church.
+They tidy their drawers a good deal.” But here she was overcome by the
+difficulty of describing people.
+
+“It’s impossible to believe that it’s all going on still!” she
+exclaimed.
+
+The sun was behind them and two long shadows suddenly lay upon the
+ground in front of them, one waving because it was made by a skirt, and
+the other stationary, because thrown by a pair of legs in trousers.
+
+“You look very comfortable!” said Helen’s voice above them.
+
+“Hirst,” said Hewet, pointing at the scissorlike shadow; he then rolled
+round to look up at them.
+
+“There’s room for us all here,” he said.
+
+When Hirst had seated himself comfortably, he said:
+
+“Did you congratulate the young couple?”
+
+It appeared that, coming to the same spot a few minutes after Hewet and
+Rachel, Helen and Hirst had seen precisely the same thing.
+
+“No, we didn’t congratulate them,” said Hewet. “They seemed very
+happy.”
+
+“Well,” said Hirst, pursing up his lips, “so long as I needn’t marry
+either of them—”
+
+“We were very much moved,” said Hewet.
+
+“I thought you would be,” said Hirst. “Which was it, Monk? The thought
+of the immortal passions, or the thought of new-born males to keep the
+Roman Catholics out? I assure you,” he said to Helen, “he’s capable of
+being moved by either.”
+
+Rachel was a good deal stung by his banter, which she felt to be
+directed equally against them both, but she could think of no repartee.
+
+“Nothing moves Hirst,” Hewet laughed; he did not seem to be stung at
+all. “Unless it were a transfinite number falling in love with a finite
+one—I suppose such things do happen, even in mathematics.”
+
+“On the contrary,” said Hirst with a touch of annoyance, “I consider
+myself a person of very strong passions.” It was clear from the way he
+spoke that he meant it seriously; he spoke of course for the benefit of
+the ladies.
+
+“By the way, Hirst,” said Hewet, after a pause, “I have a terrible
+confession to make. Your book—the poems of Wordsworth, which if you
+remember I took off your table just as we were starting, and certainly
+put in my pocket here—”
+
+“Is lost,” Hirst finished for him.
+
+“I consider that there is still a chance,” Hewet urged, slapping
+himself to right and left, “that I never did take it after all.”
+
+“No,” said Hirst. “It is here.” He pointed to his breast.
+
+“Thank God,” Hewet exclaimed. “I need no longer feel as though I’d
+murdered a child!”
+
+“I should think you were always losing things,” Helen remarked, looking
+at him meditatively.
+
+“I don’t lose things,” said Hewet. “I mislay them. That was the reason
+why Hirst refused to share a cabin with me on the voyage out.”
+
+“You came out together?” Helen enquired.
+
+“I propose that each member of this party now gives a short
+biographical sketch of himself or herself,” said Hirst, sitting
+upright. “Miss Vinrace, you come first; begin.”
+
+Rachel stated that she was twenty-four years of age, the daughter of a
+ship-owner, that she had never been properly educated; played the
+piano, had no brothers or sisters, and lived at Richmond with aunts,
+her mother being dead.
+
+“Next,” said Hirst, having taken in these facts; he pointed at Hewet.
+“I am the son of an English gentleman. I am twenty-seven,” Hewet began.
+“My father was a fox-hunting squire. He died when I was ten in the
+hunting field. I can remember his body coming home, on a shutter I
+suppose, just as I was going down to tea, and noticing that there was
+jam for tea, and wondering whether I should be allowed—”
+
+“Yes; but keep to the facts,” Hirst put in.
+
+“I was educated at Winchester and Cambridge, which I had to leave after
+a time. I have done a good many things since—”
+
+“Profession?”
+
+“None—at least—”
+
+“Tastes?”
+
+“Literary. I’m writing a novel.”
+
+“Brothers and sisters?”
+
+“Three sisters, no brother, and a mother.”
+
+“Is that all we’re to hear about you?” said Helen. She stated that she
+was very old—forty last October, and her father had been a solicitor in
+the city who had gone bankrupt, for which reason she had never had much
+education—they lived in one place after another—but an elder brother
+used to lend her books.
+
+“If I were to tell you everything—” she stopped and smiled. “It would
+take too long,” she concluded. “I married when I was thirty, and I have
+two children. My husband is a scholar. And now—it’s your turn,” she
+nodded at Hirst.
+
+“You’ve left out a great deal,” he reproved her. “My name is St. John
+Alaric Hirst,” he began in a jaunty tone of voice. “I’m twenty-four
+years old. I’m the son of the Reverend Sidney Hirst, vicar of Great
+Wappyng in Norfolk. Oh, I got scholarships
+everywhere—Westminster—King’s. I’m now a fellow of King’s. Don’t it
+sound dreary? Parents both alive (alas). Two brothers and one sister.
+I’m a very distinguished young man,” he added.
+
+“One of the three, or is it five, most distinguished men in England,”
+Hewet remarked.
+
+“Quite correct,” said Hirst.
+
+“That’s all very interesting,” said Helen after a pause. “But of course
+we’ve left out the only questions that matter. For instance, are we
+Christians?”
+
+“I am not,” “I am not,” both the young men replied.
+
+“I am,” Rachel stated.
+
+“You believe in a personal God?” Hirst demanded, turning round and
+fixing her with his eyeglasses.
+
+“I believe—I believe,” Rachel stammered, “I believe there are things we
+don’t know about, and the world might change in a minute and anything
+appear.”
+
+At this Helen laughed outright. “Nonsense,” she said. “You’re not a
+Christian. You’ve never thought what you are.—And there are lots of
+other questions,” she continued, “though perhaps we can’t ask them
+yet.” Although they had talked so freely they were all uncomfortably
+conscious that they really knew nothing about each other.
+
+“The important questions,” Hewet pondered, “the really interesting
+ones. I doubt that one ever does ask them.”
+
+Rachel, who was slow to accept the fact that only a very few things can
+be said even by people who know each other well, insisted on knowing
+what he meant.
+
+“Whether we’ve ever been in love?” she enquired. “Is that the kind of
+question you mean?”
+
+Again Helen laughed at her, benignantly strewing her with handfuls of
+the long tasselled grass, for she was so brave and so foolish.
+
+“Oh, Rachel,” she cried. “It’s like having a puppy in the house having
+you with one—a puppy that brings one’s underclothes down into the
+hall.”
+
+But again the sunny earth in front of them was crossed by fantastic
+wavering figures, the shadows of men and women.
+
+“There they are!” exclaimed Mrs. Elliot. There was a touch of
+peevishness in her voice. “And we’ve had _such_ a hunt to find you. Do
+you know what the time is?”
+
+Mrs. Elliot and Mr. and Mrs. Thornbury now confronted them; Mrs. Elliot
+was holding out her watch, and playfully tapping it upon the face.
+Hewet was recalled to the fact that this was a party for which he was
+responsible, and he immediately led them back to the watch-tower, where
+they were to have tea before starting home again. A bright crimson
+scarf fluttered from the top of the wall, which Mr. Perrott and Evelyn
+were tying to a stone as the others came up. The heat had changed just
+so far that instead of sitting in the shadow they sat in the sun, which
+was still hot enough to paint their faces red and yellow, and to colour
+great sections of the earth beneath them.
+
+“There’s nothing half so nice as tea!” said Mrs. Thornbury, taking her
+cup.
+
+“Nothing,” said Helen. “Can’t you remember as a child chopping up hay—”
+she spoke much more quickly than usual, and kept her eye fixed upon
+Mrs. Thornbury, “and pretending it was tea, and getting scolded by the
+nurses—why I can’t imagine, except that nurses are such brutes, won’t
+allow pepper instead of salt though there’s no earthly harm in it.
+Weren’t your nurses just the same?”
+
+During this speech Susan came into the group, and sat down by Helen’s
+side. A few minutes later Mr. Venning strolled up from the opposite
+direction. He was a little flushed, and in the mood to answer
+hilariously whatever was said to him.
+
+“What have you been doing to that old chap’s grave?” he asked, pointing
+to the red flag which floated from the top of the stones.
+
+“We have tried to make him forget his misfortune in having died three
+hundred years ago,” said Mr. Perrott.
+
+“It would be awful—to be dead!” ejaculated Evelyn M.
+
+“To be dead?” said Hewet. “I don’t think it would be awful. It’s quite
+easy to imagine. When you go to bed to-night fold your hands so—breathe
+slower and slower—” He lay back with his hands clasped upon his breast,
+and his eyes shut, “Now,” he murmured in an even monotonous voice, “I
+shall never, never, never move again.” His body, lying flat among them,
+did for a moment suggest death.
+
+“This is a horrible exhibition, Mr. Hewet!” cried Mrs. Thornbury.
+
+“More cake for us!” said Arthur.
+
+“I assure you there’s nothing horrible about it,” said Hewet, sitting
+up and laying hands upon the cake.
+
+“It’s so natural,” he repeated. “People with children should make them
+do that exercise every night. . . . Not that I look forward to being
+dead.”
+
+“And when you allude to a grave,” said Mr. Thornbury, who spoke almost
+for the first time, “have you any authority for calling that ruin a
+grave? I am quite with you in refusing to accept the common
+interpretation which declares it to be the remains of an Elizabethan
+watch-tower—any more than I believe that the circular mounds or barrows
+which we find on the top of our English downs were camps. The
+antiquaries call everything a camp. I am always asking them, Well then,
+where do you think our ancestors kept their cattle? Half the camps in
+England are merely the ancient pound or barton as we call it in my part
+of the world. The argument that no one would keep his cattle in such
+exposed and inaccessible spots has no weight at all, if you reflect
+that in those days a man’s cattle were his capital, his stock-in-trade,
+his daughter’s dowries. Without cattle he was a serf, another man’s
+man. . . .” His eyes slowly lost their intensity, and he muttered a few
+concluding words under his breath, looking curiously old and forlorn.
+
+Hughling Elliot, who might have been expected to engage the old
+gentleman in argument, was absent at the moment. He now came up holding
+out a large square of cotton upon which a fine design was printed in
+pleasant bright colours that made his hand look pale.
+
+“A bargain,” he announced, laying it down on the cloth. “I’ve just
+bought it from the big man with the ear-rings. Fine, isn’t it? It
+wouldn’t suit every one, of course, but it’s just the thing—isn’t it,
+Hilda?—for Mrs. Raymond Parry.”
+
+“Mrs. Raymond Parry!” cried Helen and Mrs. Thornbury at the same
+moment.
+
+They looked at each other as though a mist hitherto obscuring their
+faces had been blown away.
+
+“Ah—you have been to those wonderful parties too?” Mrs. Elliot asked
+with interest.
+
+Mrs. Parry’s drawing-room, though thousands of miles away, behind a
+vast curve of water on a tiny piece of earth, came before their eyes.
+They who had had no solidity or anchorage before seemed to be attached
+to it somehow, and at once grown more substantial. Perhaps they had
+been in the drawing-room at the same moment; perhaps they had passed
+each other on the stairs; at any rate they knew some of the same
+people. They looked one another up and down with new interest. But they
+could do no more than look at each other, for there was no time to
+enjoy the fruits of the discovery. The donkeys were advancing, and it
+was advisable to begin the descent immediately, for the night fell so
+quickly that it would be dark before they were home again.
+
+Accordingly, remounting in order, they filed off down the hillside.
+Scraps of talk came floating back from one to another. There were jokes
+to begin with, and laughter; some walked part of the way, and picked
+flowers, and sent stones bounding before them.
+
+“Who writes the best Latin verse in your college, Hirst?” Mr. Elliot
+called back incongruously, and Mr. Hirst returned that he had no idea.
+
+The dusk fell as suddenly as the natives had warned them, the hollows
+of the mountain on either side filling up with darkness and the path
+becoming so dim that it was surprising to hear the donkeys’ hooves
+still striking on hard rock. Silence fell upon one, and then upon
+another, until they were all silent, their minds spilling out into the
+deep blue air. The way seemed shorter in the dark than in the day; and
+soon the lights of the town were seen on the flat far beneath them.
+
+Suddenly some one cried, “Ah!”
+
+In a moment the slow yellow drop rose again from the plain below; it
+rose, paused, opened like a flower, and fell in a shower of drops.
+
+“Fireworks,” they cried.
+
+Another went up more quickly; and then another; they could almost hear
+it twist and roar.
+
+“Some Saint’s day, I suppose,” said a voice. The rush and embrace of
+the rockets as they soared up into the air seemed like the fiery way in
+which lovers suddenly rose and united, leaving the crowd gazing up at
+them with strained white faces. But Susan and Arthur, riding down the
+hill, never said a word to each other, and kept accurately apart.
+
+Then the fireworks became erratic, and soon they ceased altogether, and
+the rest of the journey was made almost in darkness, the mountain being
+a great shadow behind them, and bushes and trees little shadows which
+threw darkness across the road. Among the plane-trees they separated,
+bundling into carriages and driving off, without saying good-night, or
+saying it only in a half-muffled way.
+
+It was so late that there was no time for normal conversation between
+their arrival at the hotel and their retirement to bed. But Hirst
+wandered into Hewet’s room with a collar in his hand.
+
+“Well, Hewet,” he remarked, on the crest of a gigantic yawn, “that was
+a great success, I consider.” He yawned. “But take care you’re not
+landed with that young woman. . . . I don’t really like young women. .
+. .”
+
+Hewet was too much drugged by hours in the open air to make any reply.
+In fact every one of the party was sound asleep within ten minutes or
+so of each other, with the exception of Susan Warrington. She lay for a
+considerable time looking blankly at the wall opposite, her hands
+clasped above her heart, and her light burning by her side. All
+articulate thought had long ago deserted her; her heart seemed to have
+grown to the size of a sun, and to illuminate her entire body, shedding
+like the sun a steady tide of warmth.
+
+“I’m happy, I’m happy, I’m happy,” she repeated. “I love every one. I’m
+happy.”
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XII
+
+
+When Susan’s engagement had been approved at home, and made public to
+any one who took an interest in it at the hotel—and by this time the
+society at the hotel was divided so as to point to invisible
+chalk-marks such as Mr. Hirst had described, the news was felt to
+justify some celebration—an expedition? That had been done already. A
+dance then. The advantage of a dance was that it abolished one of those
+long evenings which were apt to become tedious and lead to absurdly
+early hours in spite of bridge.
+
+Two or three people standing under the erect body of the stuffed
+leopard in the hall very soon had the matter decided. Evelyn slid a
+pace or two this way and that, and pronounced that the floor was
+excellent. Signor Rodriguez informed them of an old Spaniard who
+fiddled at weddings—fiddled so as to make a tortoise waltz; and his
+daughter, although endowed with eyes as black as coal-scuttles, had the
+same power over the piano. If there were any so sick or so surly as to
+prefer sedentary occupations on the night in question to spinning and
+watching others spin, the drawing-room and billiard-room were theirs.
+Hewet made it his business to conciliate the outsiders as much as
+possible. To Hirst’s theory of the invisible chalk-marks he would pay
+no attention whatever. He was treated to a snub or two, but, in reward,
+found obscure lonely gentlemen delighted to have this opportunity of
+talking to their kind, and the lady of doubtful character showed every
+symptom of confiding her case to him in the near future. Indeed it was
+made quite obvious to him that the two or three hours between dinner
+and bed contained an amount of unhappiness, which was really pitiable,
+so many people had not succeeded in making friends.
+
+It was settled that the dance was to be on Friday, one week after the
+engagement, and at dinner Hewet declared himself satisfied.
+
+“They’re all coming!” he told Hirst. “Pepper!” he called, seeing
+William Pepper slip past in the wake of the soup with a pamphlet
+beneath his arm, “We’re counting on you to open the ball.”
+
+“You will certainly put sleep out of the question,” Pepper returned.
+
+“You are to take the floor with Miss Allan,” Hewet continued,
+consulting a sheet of pencilled notes.
+
+Pepper stopped and began a discourse upon round dances, country dances,
+morris dances, and quadrilles, all of which are entirely superior to
+the bastard waltz and spurious polka which have ousted them most
+unjustly in contemporary popularity—when the waiters gently pushed him
+on to his table in the corner.
+
+The dining-room at this moment had a certain fantastic resemblance to a
+farmyard scattered with grain on which bright pigeons kept descending.
+Almost all the ladies wore dresses which they had not yet displayed,
+and their hair rose in waves and scrolls so as to appear like carved
+wood in Gothic churches rather than hair. The dinner was shorter and
+less formal than usual, even the waiters seeming to be affected with
+the general excitement. Ten minutes before the clock struck nine the
+committee made a tour through the ballroom. The hall, when emptied of
+its furniture, brilliantly lit, adorned with flowers whose scent tinged
+the air, presented a wonderful appearance of ethereal gaiety.
+
+“It’s like a starlit sky on an absolutely cloudless night,” Hewet
+murmured, looking about him, at the airy empty room.
+
+“A heavenly floor, anyhow,” Evelyn added, taking a run and sliding two
+or three feet along.
+
+“What about those curtains?” asked Hirst. The crimson curtains were
+drawn across the long windows. “It’s a perfect night outside.”
+
+“Yes, but curtains inspire confidence,” Miss Allan decided. “When the
+ball is in full swing it will be time to draw them. We might even open
+the windows a little. . . . If we do it now elderly people will imagine
+there are draughts.”
+
+Her wisdom had come to be recognised, and held in respect. Meanwhile as
+they stood talking, the musicians were unwrapping their instruments,
+and the violin was repeating again and again a note struck upon the
+piano. Everything was ready to begin.
+
+After a few minutes’ pause, the father, the daughter, and the
+son-in-law who played the horn flourished with one accord. Like the
+rats who followed the piper, heads instantly appeared in the doorway.
+There was another flourish; and then the trio dashed spontaneously into
+the triumphant swing of the waltz. It was as though the room were
+instantly flooded with water. After a moment’s hesitation first one
+couple, then another, leapt into mid-stream, and went round and round
+in the eddies. The rhythmic swish of the dancers sounded like a
+swirling pool. By degrees the room grew perceptibly hotter. The smell
+of kid gloves mingled with the strong scent of flowers. The eddies
+seemed to circle faster and faster, until the music wrought itself into
+a crash, ceased, and the circles were smashed into little separate
+bits. The couples struck off in different directions, leaving a thin
+row of elderly people stuck fast to the walls, and here and there a
+piece of trimming or a handkerchief or a flower lay upon the floor.
+There was a pause, and then the music started again, the eddies
+whirled, the couples circled round in them, until there was a crash,
+and the circles were broken up into separate pieces.
+
+When this had happened about five times, Hirst, who leant against a
+window-frame, like some singular gargoyle, perceived that Helen Ambrose
+and Rachel stood in the doorway. The crowd was such that they could not
+move, but he recognised them by a piece of Helen’s shoulder and a
+glimpse of Rachel’s head turning round. He made his way to them; they
+greeted him with relief.
+
+“We are suffering the tortures of the damned,” said Helen.
+
+“This is my idea of hell,” said Rachel.
+
+Her eyes were bright and she looked bewildered.
+
+Hewet and Miss Allan, who had been waltzing somewhat laboriously,
+paused and greeted the newcomers.
+
+“This _is_ nice,” said Hewet. “But where is Mr. Ambrose?”
+
+“Pindar,” said Helen. “May a married woman who was forty in October
+dance? I can’t stand still.” She seemed to fade into Hewet, and they
+both dissolved in the crowd.
+
+“We must follow suit,” said Hirst to Rachel, and he took her resolutely
+by the elbow. Rachel, without being expert, danced well, because of a
+good ear for rhythm, but Hirst had no taste for music, and a few
+dancing lessons at Cambridge had only put him into possession of the
+anatomy of a waltz, without imparting any of its spirit. A single turn
+proved to them that their methods were incompatible; instead of fitting
+into each other their bones seemed to jut out in angles making smooth
+turning an impossibility, and cutting, moreover, into the circular
+progress of the other dancers.
+
+“Shall we stop?” said Hirst. Rachel gathered from his expression that
+he was annoyed.
+
+They staggered to seats in the corner, from which they had a view of
+the room. It was still surging, in waves of blue and yellow, striped by
+the black evening-clothes of the gentlemen.
+
+“An amazing spectacle,” Hirst remarked. “Do you dance much in London?”
+They were both breathing fast, and both a little excited, though each
+was determined not to show any excitement at all.
+
+“Scarcely ever. Do you?”
+
+“My people give a dance every Christmas.”
+
+“This isn’t half a bad floor,” Rachel said. Hirst did not attempt to
+answer her platitude. He sat quite silent, staring at the dancers.
+After three minutes the silence became so intolerable to Rachel that
+she was goaded to advance another commonplace about the beauty of the
+night. Hirst interrupted her ruthlessly.
+
+“Was that all nonsense what you said the other day about being a
+Christian and having no education?” he asked.
+
+“It was practically true,” she replied. “But I also play the piano very
+well,” she said, “better, I expect than any one in this room. You are
+the most distinguished man in England, aren’t you?” she asked shyly.
+
+“One of the three,” he corrected.
+
+Helen whirling past here tossed a fan into Rachel’s lap.
+
+“She is very beautiful,” Hirst remarked.
+
+They were again silent. Rachel was wondering whether he thought her
+also nice-looking; St. John was considering the immense difficulty of
+talking to girls who had no experience of life. Rachel had obviously
+never thought or felt or seen anything, and she might be intelligent or
+she might be just like all the rest. But Hewet’s taunt rankled in his
+mind—“you don’t know how to get on with women,” and he was determined
+to profit by this opportunity. Her evening-clothes bestowed on her just
+that degree of unreality and distinction which made it romantic to
+speak to her, and stirred a desire to talk, which irritated him because
+he did not know how to begin. He glanced at her, and she seemed to him
+very remote and inexplicable, very young and chaste. He drew a sigh,
+and began.
+
+“About books now. What have you read? Just Shakespeare and the Bible?”
+
+“I haven’t read many classics,” Rachel stated. She was slightly annoyed
+by his jaunty and rather unnatural manner, while his masculine
+acquirements induced her to take a very modest view of her own power.
+
+“D’you mean to tell me you’ve reached the age of twenty-four without
+reading Gibbon?” he demanded.
+
+“Yes, I have,” she answered.
+
+“Mon Dieu!” he exclaimed, throwing out his hands. “You must begin
+to-morrow. I shall send you my copy. What I want to know is—” he looked
+at her critically. “You see, the problem is, can one really talk to
+you? Have you got a mind, or are you like the rest of your sex? You
+seem to me absurdly young compared with men of your age.”
+
+Rachel looked at him but said nothing.
+
+“About Gibbon,” he continued. “D’you think you’ll be able to appreciate
+him? He’s the test, of course. It’s awfully difficult to tell about
+women,” he continued, “how much, I mean, is due to lack of training,
+and how much is native incapacity. I don’t see myself why you shouldn’t
+understand—only I suppose you’ve led an absurd life until now—you’ve
+just walked in a crocodile, I suppose, with your hair down your back.”
+
+The music was again beginning. Hirst’s eye wandered about the room in
+search of Mrs. Ambrose. With the best will in the world he was
+conscious that they were not getting on well together.
+
+“I’d like awfully to lend you books,” he said, buttoning his gloves,
+and rising from his seat. “We shall meet again. I’m going to leave you
+now.”
+
+He got up and left her.
+
+Rachel looked round. She felt herself surrounded, like a child at a
+party, by the faces of strangers all hostile to her, with hooked noses
+and sneering, indifferent eyes. She was by a window, she pushed it open
+with a jerk. She stepped out into the garden. Her eyes swam with tears
+of rage.
+
+“Damn that man!” she exclaimed, having acquired some of Helen’s words.
+“Damn his insolence!”
+
+She stood in the middle of the pale square of light which the window
+she had opened threw upon the grass. The forms of great black trees
+rose massively in front of her. She stood still, looking at them,
+shivering slightly with anger and excitement. She heard the trampling
+and swinging of the dancers behind her, and the rhythmic sway of the
+waltz music.
+
+“There are trees,” she said aloud. Would the trees make up for St. John
+Hirst? She would be a Persian princess far from civilisation, riding
+her horse upon the mountains alone, and making her women sing to her in
+the evening, far from all this, from the strife and men and women—a
+form came out of the shadow; a little red light burnt high up in its
+blackness.
+
+“Miss Vinrace, is it?” said Hewet, peering at her. “You were dancing
+with Hirst?”
+
+“He’s made me furious!” she cried vehemently. “No one’s any right to be
+insolent!”
+
+“Insolent?” Hewet repeated, taking his cigar from his mouth in
+surprise. “Hirst—insolent?”
+
+“It’s insolent to—” said Rachel, and stopped. She did not know exactly
+why she had been made so angry. With a great effort she pulled herself
+together.
+
+“Oh, well,” she added, the vision of Helen and her mockery before her,
+“I dare say I’m a fool.” She made as though she were going back into
+the ballroom, but Hewet stopped her.
+
+“Please explain to me,” he said. “I feel sure Hirst didn’t mean to hurt
+you.”
+
+When Rachel tried to explain, she found it very difficult. She could
+not say that she found the vision of herself walking in a crocodile
+with her hair down her back peculiarly unjust and horrible, nor could
+she explain why Hirst’s assumption of the superiority of his nature and
+experience had seemed to her not only galling but terrible—as if a gate
+had clanged in her face. Pacing up and down the terrace beside Hewet
+she said bitterly:
+
+“It’s no good; we should live separate; we cannot understand each
+other; we only bring out what’s worst.”
+
+Hewet brushed aside her generalisation as to the natures of the two
+sexes, for such generalisations bored him and seemed to him generally
+untrue. But, knowing Hirst, he guessed fairly accurately what had
+happened, and, though secretly much amused, was determined that Rachel
+should not store the incident away in her mind to take its place in the
+view she had of life.
+
+“Now you’ll hate him,” he said, “which is wrong. Poor old Hirst—he
+can’t help his method. And really, Miss Vinrace, he was doing his best;
+he was paying you a compliment—he was trying—he was trying—” he could
+not finish for the laughter that overcame him.
+
+Rachel veered round suddenly and laughed out too. She saw that there
+was something ridiculous about Hirst, and perhaps about herself.
+
+“It’s his way of making friends, I suppose,” she laughed. “Well—I shall
+do my part. I shall begin—‘Ugly in body, repulsive in mind as you are,
+Mr. Hirst—’”
+
+“Hear, hear!” cried Hewet. “That’s the way to treat him. You see, Miss
+Vinrace, you must make allowances for Hirst. He’s lived all his life in
+front of a looking-glass, so to speak, in a beautiful panelled room,
+hung with Japanese prints and lovely old chairs and tables, just one
+splash of colour, you know, in the right place,—between the windows I
+think it is,—and there he sits hour after hour with his toes on the
+fender, talking about philosophy and God and his liver and his heart
+and the hearts of his friends. They’re all broken. You can’t expect him
+to be at his best in a ballroom. He wants a cosy, smoky, masculine
+place, where he can stretch his legs out, and only speak when he’s got
+something to say. For myself, I find it rather dreary. But I do respect
+it. They’re all so much in earnest. They do take the serious things
+very seriously.”
+
+The description of Hirst’s way of life interested Rachel so much that
+she almost forgot her private grudge against him, and her respect
+revived.
+
+“They are really very clever then?” she asked.
+
+“Of course they are. So far as brains go I think it’s true what he said
+the other day; they’re the cleverest people in England. But—you ought
+to take him in hand,” he added. “There’s a great deal more in him
+than’s ever been got at. He wants some one to laugh at him. . . . The
+idea of Hirst telling you that you’ve had no experiences! Poor old
+Hirst!”
+
+They had been pacing up and down the terrace while they talked, and now
+one by one the dark windows were uncurtained by an invisible hand, and
+panes of light fell regularly at equal intervals upon the grass. They
+stopped to look in at the drawing-room, and perceived Mr. Pepper
+writing alone at a table.
+
+“There’s Pepper writing to his aunt,” said Hewet. “She must be a very
+remarkable old lady, eighty-five he tells me, and he takes her for
+walking tours in the New Forest. . . . Pepper!” he cried, rapping on
+the window. “Go and do your duty. Miss Allan expects you.”
+
+When they came to the windows of the ballroom, the swing of the dancers
+and the lilt of the music was irresistible.
+
+“Shall we?” said Hewet, and they clasped hands and swept off
+magnificently into the great swirling pool. Although this was only the
+second time they had met, the first time they had seen a man and woman
+kissing each other, and the second time Mr. Hewet had found that a
+young woman angry is very like a child. So that when they joined hands
+in the dance they felt more at their ease than is usual.
+
+It was midnight and the dance was now at its height. Servants were
+peeping in at the windows; the garden was sprinkled with the white
+shapes of couples sitting out. Mrs. Thornbury and Mrs. Elliot sat side
+by side under a palm tree, holding fans, handkerchiefs, and brooches
+deposited in their laps by flushed maidens. Occasionally they exchanged
+comments.
+
+“Miss Warrington _does_ look happy,” said Mrs. Elliot; they both
+smiled; they both sighed.
+
+“He has a great deal of character,” said Mrs. Thornbury, alluding to
+Arthur.
+
+“And character is what one wants,” said Mrs. Elliot. “Now that young
+man is _clever_ enough,” she added, nodding at Hirst, who came past
+with Miss Allan on his arm.
+
+“He does not look strong,” said Mrs. Thornbury. “His complexion is not
+good.—Shall I tear it off?” she asked, for Rachel had stopped,
+conscious of a long strip trailing behind her.
+
+“I hope you are enjoying yourselves?” Hewet asked the ladies.
+
+“This is a very familiar position for me!” smiled Mrs. Thornbury. “I
+have brought out five daughters—and they all loved dancing! You love it
+too, Miss Vinrace?” she asked, looking at Rachel with maternal eyes. “I
+know I did when I was your age. How I used to beg my mother to let me
+stay—and now I sympathise with the poor mothers—but I sympathise with
+the daughters too!”
+
+She smiled sympathetically, and at the same time rather keenly, at
+Rachel.
+
+“They seem to find a great deal to say to each other,” said Mrs.
+Elliot, looking significantly at the backs of the couple as they turned
+away. “Did you notice at the picnic? He was the only person who could
+make her utter.”
+
+“Her father is a very interesting man,” said Mrs. Thornbury. “He has
+one of the largest shipping businesses in Hull. He made a very able
+reply, you remember, to Mr. Asquith at the last election. It is so
+interesting to find that a man of his experience is a strong
+Protectionist.”
+
+She would have liked to discuss politics, which interested her more
+than personalities, but Mrs. Elliot would only talk about the Empire in
+a less abstract form.
+
+“I hear there are dreadful accounts from England about the rats,” she
+said. “A sister-in-law, who lives at Norwich, tells me it has been
+quite unsafe to order poultry. The plague—you see. It attacks the rats,
+and through them other creatures.”
+
+“And the local authorities are not taking proper steps?” asked Mrs.
+Thornbury.
+
+“That she does not say. But she describes the attitude of the educated
+people—who should know better—as callous in the extreme. Of course, my
+sister-in-law is one of those active modern women, who always takes
+things up, you know—the kind of woman one admires, though one does not
+feel, at least I do not feel—but then she has a constitution of iron.”
+
+Mrs. Elliot, brought back to the consideration of her own delicacy,
+here sighed.
+
+“A very animated face,” said Mrs. Thornbury, looking at Evelyn M. who
+had stopped near them to pin tight a scarlet flower at her breast. It
+would not stay, and, with a spirited gesture of impatience, she thrust
+it into her partner’s button-hole. He was a tall melancholy youth, who
+received the gift as a knight might receive his lady’s token.
+
+“Very trying to the eyes,” was Mrs. Eliot’s next remark, after watching
+the yellow whirl in which so few of the whirlers had either name or
+character for her, for a few minutes. Bursting out of the crowd, Helen
+approached them, and took a vacant chair.
+
+“May I sit by you?” she said, smiling and breathing fast. “I suppose I
+ought to be ashamed of myself,” she went on, sitting down, “at my age.”
+
+Her beauty, now that she was flushed and animated, was more expansive
+than usual, and both the ladies felt the same desire to touch her.
+
+“I _am_ enjoying myself,” she panted. “Movement—isn’t it amazing?”
+
+“I have always heard that nothing comes up to dancing if one is a good
+dancer,” said Mrs. Thornbury, looking at her with a smile.
+
+Helen swayed slightly as if she sat on wires.
+
+“I could dance for ever!” she said. “They ought to let themselves go
+more!” she exclaimed. “They ought to leap and swing. Look! How they
+mince!”
+
+“Have you seen those wonderful Russian dancers?” began Mrs. Elliot. But
+Helen saw her partner coming and rose as the moon rises. She was half
+round the room before they took their eyes off her, for they could not
+help admiring her, although they thought it a little odd that a woman
+of her age should enjoy dancing.
+
+Directly Helen was left alone for a minute she was joined by St. John
+Hirst, who had been watching for an opportunity.
+
+“Should you mind sitting out with me?” he asked. “I’m quite incapable
+of dancing.” He piloted Helen to a corner which was supplied with two
+arm-chairs, and thus enjoyed the advantage of semi-privacy. They sat
+down, and for a few minutes Helen was too much under the influence of
+dancing to speak.
+
+“Astonishing!” she exclaimed at last. “What sort of shape can she think
+her body is?” This remark was called forth by a lady who came past
+them, waddling rather than walking, and leaning on the arm of a stout
+man with globular green eyes set in a fat white face. Some support was
+necessary, for she was very stout, and so compressed that the upper
+part of her body hung considerably in advance of her feet, which could
+only trip in tiny steps, owing to the tightness of the skirt round her
+ankles. The dress itself consisted of a small piece of shiny yellow
+satin, adorned here and there indiscriminately with round shields of
+blue and green beads made to imitate hues of a peacock’s breast. On the
+summit of a frothy castle of hair a purple plume stood erect, while her
+short neck was encircled by a black velvet ribbon knobbed with gems,
+and golden bracelets were tightly wedged into the flesh of her fat
+gloved arms. She had the face of an impertinent but jolly little pig,
+mottled red under a dusting of powder.
+
+St. John could not join in Helen’s laughter.
+
+“It makes me sick,” he declared. “The whole thing makes me sick. . . .
+Consider the minds of those people—their feelings. Don’t you agree?”
+
+“I always make a vow never to go to another party of any description,”
+Helen replied, “and I always break it.”
+
+She leant back in her chair and looked laughingly at the young man. She
+could see that he was genuinely cross, if at the same time slightly
+excited.
+
+“However,” he said, resuming his jaunty tone, “I suppose one must just
+make up one’s mind to it.”
+
+“To what?”
+
+“There never will be more than five people in the world worth talking
+to.”
+
+Slowly the flush and sparkle in Helen’s face died away, and she looked
+as quiet and as observant as usual.
+
+“Five people?” she remarked. “I should say there were more than five.”
+
+“You’ve been very fortunate, then,” said Hirst. “Or perhaps I’ve been
+very unfortunate.” He became silent.
+
+“Should you say I was a difficult kind of person to get on with?” he
+asked sharply.
+
+“Most clever people are when they’re young,” Helen replied.
+
+“And of course I am—immensely clever,” said Hirst. “I’m infinitely
+cleverer than Hewet. It’s quite possible,” he continued in his
+curiously impersonal manner, “that I’m going to be one of the people
+who really matter. That’s utterly different from being clever, though
+one can’t expect one’s family to see it,” he added bitterly.
+
+Helen thought herself justified in asking, “Do you find your family
+difficult to get on with?”
+
+“Intolerable. . . . They want me to be a peer and a privy councillor.
+I’ve come out here partly in order to settle the matter. It’s got to be
+settled. Either I must go to the bar, or I must stay on in Cambridge.
+Of course, there are obvious drawbacks to each, but the arguments
+certainly do seem to me in favour of Cambridge. This kind of thing!” he
+waved his hand at the crowded ballroom. “Repulsive. I’m conscious of
+great powers of affection too. I’m not susceptible, of course, in the
+way Hewet is. I’m very fond of a few people. I think, for example, that
+there’s something to be said for my mother, though she is in many ways
+so deplorable. . . . At Cambridge, of course, I should inevitably
+become the most important man in the place, but there are other reasons
+why I dread Cambridge—” he ceased.
+
+“Are you finding me a dreadful bore?” he asked. He changed curiously
+from a friend confiding in a friend to a conventional young man at a
+party.
+
+“Not in the least,” said Helen. “I like it very much.”
+
+“You can’t think,” he exclaimed, speaking almost with emotion, “what a
+difference it makes finding someone to talk to! Directly I saw you I
+felt you might possibly understand me. I’m very fond of Hewet, but he
+hasn’t the remotest idea what I’m like. You’re the only woman I’ve ever
+met who seems to have the faintest conception of what I mean when I say
+a thing.”
+
+The next dance was beginning; it was the Barcarolle out of Hoffman,
+which made Helen beat her toe in time to it; but she felt that after
+such a compliment it was impossible to get up and go, and, besides
+being amused, she was really flattered, and the honesty of his conceit
+attracted her. She suspected that he was not happy, and was
+sufficiently feminine to wish to receive confidences.
+
+“I’m very old,” she sighed.
+
+“The odd thing is that I don’t find you old at all,” he replied. “I
+feel as though we were exactly the same age. Moreover—” here he
+hesitated, but took courage from a glance at her face, “I feel as if I
+could talk quite plainly to you as one does to a man—about the
+relations between the sexes, about . . . and . . .”
+
+In spite of his certainty a slight redness came into his face as he
+spoke the last two words.
+
+She reassured him at once by the laugh with which she exclaimed, “I
+should hope so!”
+
+He looked at her with real cordiality, and the lines which were drawn
+about his nose and lips slackened for the first time.
+
+“Thank God!” he exclaimed. “Now we can behave like civilised human
+beings.”
+
+Certainly a barrier which usually stands fast had fallen, and it was
+possible to speak of matters which are generally only alluded to
+between men and women when doctors are present, or the shadow of death.
+In five minutes he was telling her the history of his life. It was
+long, for it was full of extremely elaborate incidents, which led on to
+a discussion of the principles on which morality is founded, and thus
+to several very interesting matters, which even in this ballroom had to
+be discussed in a whisper, lest one of the pouter pigeon ladies or
+resplendent merchants should overhear them, and proceed to demand that
+they should leave the place. When they had come to an end, or, to speak
+more accurately, when Helen intimated by a slight slackening of her
+attention that they had sat there long enough, Hirst rose, exclaiming,
+“So there’s no reason whatever for all this mystery!”
+
+“None, except that we are English people,” she answered. She took his
+arm and they crossed the ball-room, making their way with difficulty
+between the spinning couples, who were now perceptibly dishevelled, and
+certainly to a critical eye by no means lovely in their shapes. The
+excitement of undertaking a friendship and the length of their talk had
+made them hungry, and they went in search of food to the dining-room,
+which was now full of people eating at little separate tables. In the
+doorway they met Rachel, going up to dance again with Arthur Venning.
+She was flushed and looked very happy, and Helen was struck by the fact
+that in this mood she was certainly more attractive than the generality
+of young women. She had never noticed it so clearly before.
+
+“Enjoying yourself?” she asked, as they stopped for a second.
+
+“Miss Vinrace,” Arthur answered for her, “has just made a confession;
+she’d no idea that dances could be so delightful.”
+
+“Yes!” Rachel exclaimed. “I’ve changed my view of life completely!”
+
+“You don’t say so!” Helen mocked. They passed on.
+
+“That’s typical of Rachel,” she said. “She changes her view of life
+about every other day. D’you know, I believe you’re just the person I
+want,” she said, as they sat down, “to help me complete her education?
+She’s been brought up practically in a nunnery. Her father’s too
+absurd. I’ve been doing what I can—but I’m too old, and I’m a woman.
+Why shouldn’t you talk to her—explain things to her—talk to her, I
+mean, as you talk to me?”
+
+“I have made one attempt already this evening,” said St. John. “I
+rather doubt that it was successful. She seems to me so very young and
+inexperienced. I have promised to lend her Gibbon.”
+
+“It’s not Gibbon exactly,” Helen pondered. “It’s the facts of life, I
+think—d’you see what I mean? What really goes on, what people feel,
+although they generally try to hide it? There’s nothing to be
+frightened of. It’s so much more beautiful than the pretences—always
+more interesting—always better, I should say, than _that_ kind of
+thing.”
+
+She nodded her head at a table near them, where two girls and two young
+men were chaffing each other very loudly, and carrying on an arch
+insinuating dialogue, sprinkled with endearments, about, it seemed, a
+pair of stockings or a pair of legs. One of the girls was flirting a
+fan and pretending to be shocked, and the sight was very unpleasant,
+partly because it was obvious that the girls were secretly hostile to
+each other.
+
+“In my old age, however,” Helen sighed, “I’m coming to think that it
+doesn’t much matter in the long run what one does: people always go
+their own way—nothing will ever influence them.” She nodded her head at
+the supper party.
+
+But St. John did not agree. He said that he thought one could really
+make a great deal of difference by one’s point of view, books and so
+on, and added that few things at the present time mattered more than
+the enlightenment of women. He sometimes thought that almost everything
+was due to education.
+
+In the ballroom, meanwhile, the dancers were being formed into squares
+for the lancers. Arthur and Rachel, Susan and Hewet, Miss Allan and
+Hughling Elliot found themselves together.
+
+Miss Allan looked at her watch.
+
+“Half-past one,” she stated. “And I have to despatch Alexander Pope
+to-morrow.”
+
+“Pope!” snorted Mr. Elliot. “Who reads Pope, I should like to know? And
+as for reading about him—No, no, Miss Allan; be persuaded you will
+benefit the world much more by dancing than by writing.” It was one of
+Mr. Elliot’s affectations that nothing in the world could compare with
+the delights of dancing—nothing in the world was so tedious as
+literature. Thus he sought pathetically enough to ingratiate himself
+with the young, and to prove to them beyond a doubt that though married
+to a ninny of a wife, and rather pale and bent and careworn by his
+weight of learning, he was as much alive as the youngest of them all.
+
+“It’s a question of bread and butter,” said Miss Allan calmly.
+“However, they seem to expect me.” She took up her position and pointed
+a square black toe.
+
+“Mr. Hewet, you bow to me.” It was evident at once that Miss Allan was
+the only one of them who had a thoroughly sound knowledge of the
+figures of the dance.
+
+After the lancers there was a waltz; after the waltz a polka; and then
+a terrible thing happened; the music, which had been sounding regularly
+with five-minute pauses, stopped suddenly. The lady with the great dark
+eyes began to swathe her violin in silk, and the gentleman placed his
+horn carefully in its case. They were surrounded by couples imploring
+them in English, in French, in Spanish, of one more dance, one only; it
+was still early. But the old man at the piano merely exhibited his
+watch and shook his head. He turned up the collar of his coat and
+produced a red silk muffler, which completely dashed his festive
+appearance. Strange as it seemed, the musicians were pale and
+heavy-eyed; they looked bored and prosaic, as if the summit of their
+desire was cold meat and beer, succeeded immediately by bed.
+
+Rachel was one of those who had begged them to continue. When they
+refused she began turning over the sheets of dance music which lay upon
+the piano. The pieces were generally bound in coloured covers, with
+pictures on them of romantic scenes—gondoliers astride on the crescent
+of the moon, nuns peering through the bars of a convent window, or
+young women with their hair down pointing a gun at the stars. She
+remembered that the general effect of the music to which they had
+danced so gaily was one of passionate regret for dead love and the
+innocent years of youth; dreadful sorrows had always separated the
+dancers from their past happiness.
+
+“No wonder they get sick of playing stuff like this,” she remarked
+reading a bar or two; “they’re really hymn tunes, played very fast,
+with bits out of Wagner and Beethoven.”
+
+“Do you play? Would you play? Anything, so long as we can dance to it!”
+From all sides her gift for playing the piano was insisted upon, and
+she had to consent. As very soon she had played the only pieces of
+dance music she could remember, she went on to play an air from a
+sonata by Mozart.
+
+“But that’s not a dance,” said some one pausing by the piano.
+
+“It is,” she replied, emphatically nodding her head. “Invent the
+steps.” Sure of her melody she marked the rhythm boldly so as to
+simplify the way. Helen caught the idea; seized Miss Allan by the arm,
+and whirled round the room, now curtseying, now spinning round, now
+tripping this way and that like a child skipping through a meadow.
+
+“This is the dance for people who don’t know how to dance!” she cried.
+The tune changed to a minuet; St. John hopped with incredible swiftness
+first on his left leg, then on his right; the tune flowed melodiously;
+Hewet, swaying his arms and holding out the tails of his coat, swam
+down the room in imitation of the voluptuous dreamy dance of an Indian
+maiden dancing before her Rajah. The tune marched; and Miss Allen
+advanced with skirts extended and bowed profoundly to the engaged pair.
+Once their feet fell in with the rhythm they showed a complete lack of
+self-consciousness. From Mozart Rachel passed without stopping to old
+English hunting songs, carols, and hymn tunes, for, as she had
+observed, any good tune, with a little management, became a tune one
+could dance to. By degrees every person in the room was tripping and
+turning in pairs or alone. Mr. Pepper executed an ingenious pointed
+step derived from figure-skating, for which he once held some local
+championship; while Mrs. Thornbury tried to recall an old country dance
+which she had seen danced by her father’s tenants in Dorsetshire in the
+old days. As for Mr. and Mrs. Elliot, they gallopaded round and round
+the room with such impetuosity that the other dancers shivered at their
+approach. Some people were heard to criticise the performance as a
+romp; to others it was the most enjoyable part of the evening.
+
+“Now for the great round dance!” Hewet shouted. Instantly a gigantic
+circle was formed, the dancers holding hands and shouting out, “D’you
+ken John Peel,” as they swung faster and faster and faster, until the
+strain was too great, and one link of the chain—Mrs. Thornbury—gave
+way, and the rest went flying across the room in all directions, to
+land upon the floor or the chairs or in each other’s arms as seemed
+most convenient.
+
+Rising from these positions, breathless and unkempt, it struck them for
+the first time that the electric lights pricked the air very vainly,
+and instinctively a great many eyes turned to the windows. Yes—there
+was the dawn. While they had been dancing the night had passed, and it
+had come. Outside, the mountains showed very pure and remote; the dew
+was sparkling on the grass, and the sky was flushed with blue, save for
+the pale yellows and pinks in the East. The dancers came crowding to
+the windows, pushed them open, and here and there ventured a foot upon
+the grass.
+
+“How silly the poor old lights look!” said Evelyn M. in a curiously
+subdued tone of voice. “And ourselves; it isn’t becoming.” It was true;
+the untidy hair, and the green and yellow gems, which had seemed so
+festive half an hour ago, now looked cheap and slovenly. The
+complexions of the elder ladies suffered terribly, and, as if conscious
+that a cold eye had been turned upon them, they began to say good-night
+and to make their way up to bed.
+
+Rachel, though robbed of her audience, had gone on playing to herself.
+From John Peel she passed to Bach, who was at this time the subject of
+her intense enthusiasm, and one by one some of the younger dancers came
+in from the garden and sat upon the deserted gilt chairs round the
+piano, the room being now so clear that they turned out the lights. As
+they sat and listened, their nerves were quieted; the heat and soreness
+of their lips, the result of incessant talking and laughing, was
+smoothed away. They sat very still as if they saw a building with
+spaces and columns succeeding each other rising in the empty space.
+Then they began to see themselves and their lives, and the whole of
+human life advancing very nobly under the direction of the music. They
+felt themselves ennobled, and when Rachel stopped playing they desired
+nothing but sleep.
+
+Susan rose. “I think this has been the happiest night of my life!” she
+exclaimed. “I do adore music,” she said, as she thanked Rachel. “It
+just seems to say all the things one can’t say oneself.” She gave a
+nervous little laugh and looked from one to another with great
+benignity, as though she would like to say something but could not find
+the words in which to express it. “Every one’s been so kind—so very
+kind,” she said. Then she too went to bed.
+
+The party having ended in the very abrupt way in which parties do end,
+Helen and Rachel stood by the door with their cloaks on, looking for a
+carriage.
+
+“I suppose you realise that there are no carriages left?” said St.
+John, who had been out to look. “You must sleep here.”
+
+“Oh, no,” said Helen; “we shall walk.”
+
+“May we come too?” Hewet asked. “We can’t go to bed. Imagine lying
+among bolsters and looking at one’s washstand on a morning like this—Is
+that where you live?” They had begun to walk down the avenue, and he
+turned and pointed at the white and green villa on the hillside, which
+seemed to have its eyes shut.
+
+“That’s not a light burning, is it?” Helen asked anxiously.
+
+“It’s the sun,” said St. John. The upper windows had each a spot of
+gold on them.
+
+“I was afraid it was my husband, still reading Greek,” she said. “All
+this time he’s been editing _Pindar_.”
+
+They passed through the town and turned up the steep road, which was
+perfectly clear, though still unbordered by shadows. Partly because
+they were tired, and partly because the early light subdued them, they
+scarcely spoke, but breathed in the delicious fresh air, which seemed
+to belong to a different state of life from the air at midday. When
+they came to the high yellow wall, where the lane turned off from the
+road, Helen was for dismissing the two young men.
+
+“You’ve come far enough,” she said. “Go back to bed.”
+
+But they seemed unwilling to move.
+
+“Let’s sit down a moment,” said Hewet. He spread his coat on the
+ground. “Let’s sit down and consider.” They sat down and looked out
+over the bay; it was very still, the sea was rippling faintly, and
+lines of green and blue were beginning to stripe it. There were no
+sailing boats as yet, but a steamer was anchored in the bay, looking
+very ghostly in the mist; it gave one unearthly cry, and then all was
+silent.
+
+Rachel occupied herself in collecting one grey stone after another and
+building them into a little cairn; she did it very quietly and
+carefully.
+
+“And so you’ve changed your view of life, Rachel?” said Helen.
+
+Rachel added another stone and yawned. “I don’t remember,” she said, “I
+feel like a fish at the bottom of the sea.” She yawned again. None of
+these people possessed any power to frighten her out here in the dawn,
+and she felt perfectly familiar even with Mr. Hirst.
+
+“My brain, on the contrary,” said Hirst, “is in a condition of abnormal
+activity.” He sat in his favourite position with his arms binding his
+legs together and his chin resting on the top of his knees. “I see
+through everything—absolutely everything. Life has no more mysteries
+for me.” He spoke with conviction, but did not appear to wish for an
+answer. Near though they sat, and familiar though they felt, they
+seemed mere shadows to each other.
+
+“And all those people down there going to sleep,” Hewet began dreamily,
+“thinking such different things,—Miss Warrington, I suppose, is now on
+her knees; the Elliots are a little startled, it’s not often _they_ get
+out of breath, and they want to get to sleep as quickly as possible;
+then there’s the poor lean young man who danced all night with Evelyn;
+he’s putting his flower in water and asking himself, ‘Is this
+love?’—and poor old Perrott, I daresay, can’t get to sleep at all, and
+is reading his favourite Greek book to console himself—and the
+others—no, Hirst,” he wound up, “I don’t find it simple at all.”
+
+“I have a key,” said Hirst cryptically. His chin was still upon his
+knees and his eyes fixed in front of him.
+
+A silence followed. Then Helen rose and bade them good-night. “But,”
+she said, “remember that you’ve got to come and see us.”
+
+They waved good-night and parted, but the two young men did not go back
+to the hotel; they went for a walk, during which they scarcely spoke,
+and never mentioned the names of the two women, who were, to a
+considerable extent, the subject of their thoughts. They did not wish
+to share their impressions. They returned to the hotel in time for
+breakfast.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIII
+
+
+There were many rooms in the villa, but one room which possessed a
+character of its own because the door was always shut, and no sound of
+music or laughter issued from it. Every one in the house was vaguely
+conscious that something went on behind that door, and without in the
+least knowing what it was, were influenced in their own thoughts by the
+knowledge that if the passed it the door would be shut, and if they
+made a noise Mr. Ambrose inside would be disturbed. Certain acts
+therefore possessed merit, and others were bad, so that life became
+more harmonious and less disconnected than it would have been had Mr.
+Ambrose given up editing _Pindar_, and taken to a nomad existence, in
+and out of every room in the house. As it was, every one was conscious
+that by observing certain rules, such as punctuality and quiet, by
+cooking well, and performing other small duties, one ode after another
+was satisfactorily restored to the world, and they shared the
+continuity of the scholar’s life. Unfortunately, as age puts one
+barrier between human beings, and learning another, and sex a third,
+Mr. Ambrose in his study was some thousand miles distant from the
+nearest human being, who in this household was inevitably a woman. He
+sat hour after hour among white-leaved books, alone like an idol in an
+empty church, still except for the passage of his hand from one side of
+the sheet to another, silent save for an occasional choke, which drove
+him to extend his pipe a moment in the air. As he worked his way
+further and further into the heart of the poet, his chair became more
+and more deeply encircled by books, which lay open on the floor, and
+could only be crossed by a careful process of stepping, so delicate
+that his visitors generally stopped and addressed him from the
+outskirts.
+
+On the morning after the dance, however, Rachel came into her uncle’s
+room and hailed him twice, “Uncle Ridley,” before he paid her any
+attention.
+
+At length he looked over his spectacles.
+
+“Well?” he asked.
+
+“I want a book,” she replied. “Gibbon’s _History of the Roman Empire_.
+May I have it?”
+
+She watched the lines on her uncle’s face gradually rearrange
+themselves at her question. It had been smooth as a mask before she
+spoke.
+
+“Please say that again,” said her uncle, either because he had not
+heard or because he had not understood.
+
+She repeated the same words and reddened slightly as she did so.
+
+“Gibbon! What on earth d’you want him for?” he enquired.
+
+“Somebody advised me to read it,” Rachel stammered.
+
+“But I don’t travel about with a miscellaneous collection of
+eighteenth-century historians!” her uncle exclaimed. “Gibbon! Ten big
+volumes at least.”
+
+Rachel said that she was sorry to interrupt, and was turning to go.
+
+“Stop!” cried her uncle. He put down his pipe, placed his book on one
+side, and rose and led her slowly round the room, holding her by the
+arm. “Plato,” he said, laying one finger on the first of a row of small
+dark books, “and Jorrocks next door, which is wrong. Sophocles, Swift.
+You don’t care for German commentators, I presume. French, then. You
+read French? You should read Balzac. Then we come to Wordsworth and
+Coleridge, Pope, Johnson, Addison, Wordsworth, Shelley, Keats. One
+thing leads to another. Why is Marlowe here? Mrs. Chailey, I presume.
+But what’s the use of reading if you don’t read Greek? After all, if
+you read Greek, you need never read anything else, pure waste of
+time—pure waste of time,” thus speaking half to himself, with quick
+movements of his hands; they had come round again to the circle of
+books on the floor, and their progress was stopped.
+
+“Well,” he demanded, “which shall it be?”
+
+“Balzac,” said Rachel, “or have you the _Speech on the American
+Revolution_, Uncle Ridley?”
+
+“_The Speech on the American Revolution_?” he asked. He looked at her
+very keenly again. “Another young man at the dance?”
+
+“No. That was Mr. Dalloway,” she confessed.
+
+“Good Lord!” he flung back his head in recollection of Mr. Dalloway.
+
+She chose for herself a volume at random, submitted it to her uncle,
+who, seeing that it was _La Cousine bette_, bade her throw it away if
+she found it too horrible, and was about to leave him when he demanded
+whether she had enjoyed her dance?
+
+He then wanted to know what people did at dances, seeing that he had
+only been to one thirty-five years ago, when nothing had seemed to him
+more meaningless and idiotic. Did they enjoy turning round and round to
+the screech of a fiddle? Did they talk, and say pretty things, and if
+so, why didn’t they do it, under reasonable conditions? As for
+himself—he sighed and pointed at the signs of industry lying all about
+him, which, in spite of his sigh, filled his face with such
+satisfaction that his niece thought good to leave. On bestowing a kiss
+she was allowed to go, but not until she had bound herself to learn at
+any rate the Greek alphabet, and to return her French novel when done
+with, upon which something more suitable would be found for her.
+
+As the rooms in which people live are apt to give off something of the
+same shock as their faces when seen for the first time, Rachel walked
+very slowly downstairs, lost in wonder at her uncle, and his books, and
+his neglect of dances, and his queer, utterly inexplicable, but
+apparently satisfactory view of life, when her eye was caught by a note
+with her name on it lying in the hall. The address was written in a
+small strong hand unknown to her, and the note, which had no beginning,
+ran:—
+
+I send the first volume of Gibbon as I promised. Personally I find
+little to be said for the moderns, but I’m going to send you Wedekind
+when I’ve done him. Donne? Have you read Webster and all that set? I
+envy you reading them for the first time. Completely exhausted after
+last night. And you?
+
+
+The flourish of initials which she took to be St. J. A. H., wound up
+the letter. She was very much flattered that Mr. Hirst should have
+remembered her, and fulfilled his promise so quickly.
+
+There was still an hour to luncheon, and with Gibbon in one hand, and
+Balzac in the other she strolled out of the gate and down the little
+path of beaten mud between the olive trees on the slope of the hill. It
+was too hot for climbing hills, but along the valley there were trees
+and a grass path running by the river bed. In this land where the
+population was centred in the towns it was possible to lose sight of
+civilisation in a very short time, passing only an occasional
+farmhouse, where the women were handling red roots in the courtyard; or
+a little boy lying on his elbows on the hillside surrounded by a flock
+of black strong-smelling goats. Save for a thread of water at the
+bottom, the river was merely a deep channel of dry yellow stones. On
+the bank grew those trees which Helen had said it was worth the voyage
+out merely to see. April had burst their buds, and they bore large
+blossoms among their glossy green leaves with petals of a thick
+wax-like substance coloured an exquisite cream or pink or deep crimson.
+But filled with one of those unreasonable exultations which start
+generally from an unknown cause, and sweep whole countries and skies
+into their embrace, she walked without seeing. The night was
+encroaching upon the day. Her ears hummed with the tunes she had played
+the night before; she sang, and the singing made her walk faster and
+faster. She did not see distinctly where she was going, the trees and
+the landscape appearing only as masses of green and blue, with an
+occasional space of differently coloured sky. Faces of people she had
+seen last night came before her; she heard their voices; she stopped
+singing, and began saying things over again or saying things
+differently, or inventing things that might have been said. The
+constraint of being among strangers in a long silk dress made it
+unusually exciting to stride thus alone. Hewet, Hirst, Mr. Venning,
+Miss Allan, the music, the light, the dark trees in the garden, the
+dawn,—as she walked they went surging round in her head, a tumultuous
+background from which the present moment, with its opportunity of doing
+exactly as she liked, sprung more wonderfully vivid even than the night
+before.
+
+So she might have walked until she had lost all knowledge of her way,
+had it not been for the interruption of a tree, which, although it did
+not grow across her path, stopped her as effectively as if the branches
+had struck her in the face. It was an ordinary tree, but to her it
+appeared so strange that it might have been the only tree in the world.
+Dark was the trunk in the middle, and the branches sprang here and
+there, leaving jagged intervals of light between them as distinctly as
+if it had but that second risen from the ground. Having seen a sight
+that would last her for a lifetime, and for a lifetime would preserve
+that second, the tree once more sank into the ordinary ranks of trees,
+and she was able to seat herself in its shade and to pick the red
+flowers with the thin green leaves which were growing beneath it. She
+laid them side by side, flower to flower and stalk to stalk, caressing
+them for walking alone. Flowers and even pebbles in the earth had their
+own life and disposition, and brought back the feelings of a child to
+whom they were companions. Looking up, her eye was caught by the line
+of the mountains flying out energetically across the sky like the lash
+of a curling whip. She looked at the pale distant sky, and the high
+bare places on the mountain-tops lying exposed to the sun. When she sat
+down she had dropped her books on to the earth at her feet, and now she
+looked down on them lying there, so square in the grass, a tall stem
+bending over and tickling the smooth brown cover of Gibbon, while the
+mottled blue Balzac lay naked in the sun. With a feeling that to open
+and read would certainly be a surprising experience, she turned the
+historian’s page and read that—
+
+His generals, in the early part of his reign, attempted the reduction
+of Aethiopia and Arabia Felix. They marched near a thousand miles to
+the south of the tropic; but the heat of the climate soon repelled the
+invaders and protected the unwarlike natives of those sequestered
+regions. . . . The northern countries of Europe scarcely deserved the
+expense and labour of conquest. The forests and morasses of Germany
+were filled with a hardy race of barbarians, who despised life when it
+was separated from freedom.
+
+
+Never had any words been so vivid and so beautiful—Arabia
+Felix—Aethiopia. But those were not more noble than the others, hardy
+barbarians, forests, and morasses. They seemed to drive roads back to
+the very beginning of the world, on either side of which the
+populations of all times and countries stood in avenues, and by passing
+down them all knowledge would be hers, and the book of the world turned
+back to the very first page. Such was her excitement at the
+possibilities of knowledge now opening before her that she ceased to
+read, and a breeze turning the page, the covers of Gibbon gently
+ruffled and closed together. She then rose again and walked on. Slowly
+her mind became less confused and sought the origins of her exaltation,
+which were twofold and could be limited by an effort to the persons of
+Mr. Hirst and Mr. Hewet. Any clear analysis of them was impossible
+owing to the haze of wonder in which they were enveloped. She could not
+reason about them as about people whose feelings went by the same rule
+as her own did, and her mind dwelt on them with a kind of physical
+pleasure such as is caused by the contemplation of bright things
+hanging in the sun. From them all life seemed to radiate; the very
+words of books were steeped in radiance. She then became haunted by a
+suspicion which she was so reluctant to face that she welcomed a trip
+and stumble over the grass because thus her attention was dispersed,
+but in a second it had collected itself again. Unconsciously she had
+been walking faster and faster, her body trying to outrun her mind; but
+she was now on the summit of a little hillock of earth which rose above
+the river and displayed the valley. She was no longer able to juggle
+with several ideas, but must deal with the most persistent, and a kind
+of melancholy replaced her excitement. She sank down on to the earth
+clasping her knees together, and looking blankly in front of her. For
+some time she observed a great yellow butterfly, which was opening and
+closing its wings very slowly on a little flat stone.
+
+“What is it to be in love?” she demanded, after a long silence; each
+word as it came into being seemed to shove itself out into an unknown
+sea. Hypnotised by the wings of the butterfly, and awed by the
+discovery of a terrible possibility in life, she sat for some time
+longer. When the butterfly flew away, she rose, and with her two books
+beneath her arm returned home again, much as a soldier prepared for
+battle.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIV
+
+
+The sun of that same day going down, dusk was saluted as usual at the
+hotel by an instantaneous sparkle of electric lights. The hours between
+dinner and bedtime were always difficult enough to kill, and the night
+after the dance they were further tarnished by the peevishness of
+dissipation. Certainly, in the opinion of Hirst and Hewet, who lay back
+in long arm-chairs in the middle of the hall, with their coffee-cups
+beside them, and their cigarettes in their hands, the evening was
+unusually dull, the women unusually badly dressed, the men unusually
+fatuous. Moreover, when the mail had been distributed half an hour ago
+there were no letters for either of the two young men. As every other
+person, practically, had received two or three plump letters from
+England, which they were now engaged in reading, this seemed hard, and
+prompted Hirst to make the caustic remark that the animals had been
+fed. Their silence, he said, reminded him of the silence in the
+lion-house when each beast holds a lump of raw meat in its paws. He
+went on, stimulated by this comparison, to liken some to
+hippopotamuses, some to canary birds, some to swine, some to parrots,
+and some to loathsome reptiles curled round the half-decayed bodies of
+sheep. The intermittent sounds—now a cough, now a horrible wheezing or
+throat-clearing, now a little patter of conversation—were just, he
+declared, what you hear if you stand in the lion-house when the bones
+are being mauled. But these comparisons did not rouse Hewet, who, after
+a careless glance round the room, fixed his eyes upon a thicket of
+native spears which were so ingeniously arranged as to run their points
+at you whichever way you approached them. He was clearly oblivious of
+his surroundings; whereupon Hirst, perceiving that Hewet’s mind was a
+complete blank, fixed his attention more closely upon his
+fellow-creatures. He was too far from them, however, to hear what they
+were saying, but it pleased him to construct little theories about them
+from their gestures and appearance.
+
+Mrs. Thornbury had received a great many letters. She was completely
+engrossed in them. When she had finished a page she handed it to her
+husband, or gave him the sense of what she was reading in a series of
+short quotations linked together by a sound at the back of her throat.
+“Evie writes that George has gone to Glasgow. ‘He finds Mr. Chadbourne
+so nice to work with, and we hope to spend Christmas together, but I
+should not like to move Betty and Alfred any great distance (no, quite
+right), though it is difficult to imagine cold weather in this heat. .
+. . Eleanor and Roger drove over in the new trap. . . . Eleanor
+certainly looked more like herself than I’ve seen her since the winter.
+She has put Baby on three bottles now, which I’m sure is wise (I’m sure
+it is too), and so gets better nights. . . . My hair still falls out. I
+find it on the pillow! But I am cheered by hearing from Tottie Hall
+Green. . . . Muriel is in Torquay enjoying herself greatly at dances.
+She _is_ going to show her black pug after all.’ . . . A line from
+Herbert—so busy, poor fellow! Ah! Margaret says, ‘Poor old Mrs.
+Fairbank died on the eighth, quite suddenly in the conservatory, only a
+maid in the house, who hadn’t the presence of mind to lift her up,
+which they think might have saved her, but the doctor says it might
+have come at any moment, and one can only feel thankful that it was in
+the house and not in the street (I should think so!). The pigeons have
+increased terribly, just as the rabbits did five years ago . . .’”
+While she read her husband kept nodding his head very slightly, but
+very steadily in sign of approval.
+
+Near by, Miss Allan was reading her letters too. They were not
+altogether pleasant, as could be seen from the slight rigidity which
+came over her large fine face as she finished reading them and replaced
+them neatly in their envelopes. The lines of care and responsibility on
+her face made her resemble an elderly man rather than a woman. The
+letters brought her news of the failure of last year’s fruit crop in
+New Zealand, which was a serious matter, for Hubert, her only brother,
+made his living on a fruit farm, and if it failed again, of course, he
+would throw up his place, come back to England, and what were they to
+do with him this time? The journey out here, which meant the loss of a
+term’s work, became an extravagance and not the just and wonderful
+holiday due to her after fifteen years of punctual lecturing and
+correcting essays upon English literature. Emily, her sister, who was a
+teacher also, wrote: “We ought to be prepared, though I have no doubt
+Hubert will be more reasonable this time.” And then went on in her
+sensible way to say that she was enjoying a very jolly time in the
+Lakes. “They are looking exceedingly pretty just now. I have seldom
+seen the trees so forward at this time of year. We have taken our lunch
+out several days. Old Alice is as young as ever, and asks after every
+one affectionately. The days pass very quickly, and term will soon be
+here. Political prospects _not_ good, I think privately, but do not
+like to damp Ellen’s enthusiasm. Lloyd George has taken the Bill up,
+but so have many before now, and we are where we are; but trust to find
+myself mistaken. Anyhow, we have our work cut out for us. . . . Surely
+Meredith lacks the _human_ note one likes in W. W.?” she concluded, and
+went on to discuss some questions of English literature which Miss
+Allan had raised in her last letter.
+
+At a little distance from Miss Allan, on a seat shaded and made
+semi-private by a thick clump of palm trees, Arthur and Susan were
+reading each other’s letters. The big slashing manuscripts of
+hockey-playing young women in Wiltshire lay on Arthur’s knee, while
+Susan deciphered tight little legal hands which rarely filled more than
+a page, and always conveyed the same impression of jocular and breezy
+goodwill.
+
+“I do hope Mr. Hutchinson will like me, Arthur,” she said, looking up.
+
+“Who’s your loving Flo?” asked Arthur.
+
+“Flo Graves—the girl I told you about, who was engaged to that dreadful
+Mr. Vincent,” said Susan. “Is Mr. Hutchinson married?” she asked.
+
+Already her mind was busy with benevolent plans for her friends, or
+rather with one magnificent plan—which was simple too—they were all to
+get married—at once—directly she got back. Marriage, marriage that was
+the right thing, the only thing, the solution required by every one she
+knew, and a great part of her meditations was spent in tracing every
+instance of discomfort, loneliness, ill-health, unsatisfied ambition,
+restlessness, eccentricity, taking things up and dropping them again,
+public speaking, and philanthropic activity on the part of men and
+particularly on the part of women to the fact that they wanted to
+marry, were trying to marry, and had not succeeded in getting married.
+If, as she was bound to own, these symptoms sometimes persisted after
+marriage, she could only ascribe them to the unhappy law of nature
+which decreed that there was only one Arthur Venning, and only one
+Susan who could marry him. Her theory, of course, had the merit of
+being fully supported by her own case. She had been vaguely
+uncomfortable at home for two or three years now, and a voyage like
+this with her selfish old aunt, who paid her fare but treated her as
+servant and companion in one, was typical of the kind of thing people
+expected of her. Directly she became engaged, Mrs. Paley behaved with
+instinctive respect, positively protested when Susan as usual knelt
+down to lace her shoes, and appeared really grateful for an hour of
+Susan’s company where she had been used to exact two or three as her
+right. She therefore foresaw a life of far greater comfort than she had
+been used to, and the change had already produced a great increase of
+warmth in her feelings towards other people.
+
+It was close on twenty years now since Mrs. Paley had been able to lace
+her own shoes or even to see them, the disappearance of her feet having
+coincided more or less accurately with the death of her husband, a man
+of business, soon after which event Mrs. Paley began to grow stout. She
+was a selfish, independent old woman, possessed of a considerable
+income, which she spent upon the upkeep of a house that needed seven
+servants and a charwoman in Lancaster Gate, and another with a garden
+and carriage-horses in Surrey. Susan’s engagement relieved her of the
+one great anxiety of her life—that her son Christopher should “entangle
+himself” with his cousin. Now that this familiar source of interest was
+removed, she felt a little low and inclined to see more in Susan than
+she used to. She had decided to give her a very handsome wedding
+present, a cheque for two hundred, two hundred and fifty, or possibly,
+conceivably—it depended upon the under-gardener and Huths’ bill for
+doing up the drawing-room—three hundred pounds sterling.
+
+She was thinking of this very question, revolving the figures, as she
+sat in her wheeled chair with a table spread with cards by her side.
+The Patience had somehow got into a muddle, and she did not like to
+call for Susan to help her, as Susan seemed to be busy with Arthur.
+
+“She’s every right to expect a handsome present from me, of course,”
+she thought, looking vaguely at the leopard on its hind legs, “and I’ve
+no doubt she does! Money goes a long way with every one. The young are
+very selfish. If I were to die, nobody would miss me but Dakyns, and
+she’ll be consoled by the will! However, I’ve got no reason to
+complain. . . . I can still enjoy myself. I’m not a burden to any-one.
+. . . I like a great many things a good deal, in spite of my legs.”
+
+Being slightly depressed, however, she went on to think of the only
+people she had known who had not seemed to her at all selfish or fond
+of money, who had seemed to her somehow rather finer than the general
+run; people she willingly acknowledged, who were finer than she was.
+There were only two of them. One was her brother, who had been drowned
+before her eyes, the other was a girl, her greatest friend, who had
+died in giving birth to her first child. These things had happened some
+fifty years ago.
+
+“They ought not to have died,” she thought. “However, they did—and we
+selfish old creatures go on.” The tears came to her eyes; she felt a
+genuine regret for them, a kind of respect for their youth and beauty,
+and a kind of shame for herself; but the tears did not fall; and she
+opened one of those innumerable novels which she used to pronounce good
+or bad, or pretty middling, or really wonderful. “I can’t think how
+people come to imagine such things,” she would say, taking off her
+spectacles and looking up with the old faded eyes, that were becoming
+ringed with white.
+
+Just behind the stuffed leopard Mr. Elliot was playing chess with Mr.
+Pepper. He was being defeated, naturally, for Mr. Pepper scarcely took
+his eyes off the board, and Mr. Elliot kept leaning back in his chair
+and throwing out remarks to a gentleman who had only arrived the night
+before, a tall handsome man, with a head resembling the head of an
+intellectual ram. After a few remarks of a general nature had passed,
+they were discovering that they knew some of the same people, as indeed
+had been obvious from their appearance directly they saw each other.
+
+“Ah yes, old Truefit,” said Mr. Elliot. “He has a son at Oxford. I’ve
+often stayed with them. It’s a lovely old Jacobean house. Some
+exquisite Greuzes—one or two Dutch pictures which the old boy kept in
+the cellars. Then there were stacks upon stacks of prints. Oh, the dirt
+in that house! He was a miser, you know. The boy married a daughter of
+Lord Pinwells. I know them too. The collecting mania tends to run in
+families. This chap collects buckles—men’s shoe-buckles they must be,
+in use between the years 1580 and 1660; the dates mayn’t be right, but
+fact’s as I say. Your true collector always has some unaccountable fad
+of that kind. On other points he’s as level-headed as a breeder of
+shorthorns, which is what he happens to be. Then the Pinwells, as you
+probably know, have their share of eccentricity too. Lady Maud, for
+instance—” he was interrupted here by the necessity of considering his
+move,—“Lady Maud has a horror of cats and clergymen, and people with
+big front teeth. I’ve heard her shout across a table, ‘Keep your mouth
+shut, Miss Smith; they’re as yellow as carrots!’ across a table, mind
+you. To me she’s always been civility itself. She dabbles in
+literature, likes to collect a few of us in her drawing-room, but
+mention a clergyman, a bishop even, nay, the Archbishop himself, and
+she gobbles like a turkey-cock. I’ve been told it’s a family
+feud—something to do with an ancestor in the reign of Charles the
+First. Yes,” he continued, suffering check after check, “I always like
+to know something of the grandmothers of our fashionable young men. In
+my opinion they preserve all that we admire in the eighteenth century,
+with the advantage, in the majority of cases, that they are personally
+clean. Not that one would insult old Lady Barborough by calling her
+clean. How often d’you think, Hilda,” he called out to his wife, “her
+ladyship takes a bath?”
+
+“I should hardly like to say, Hugh,” Mrs. Elliot tittered, “but wearing
+puce velvet, as she does even on the hottest August day, it somehow
+doesn’t show.”
+
+“Pepper, you have me,” said Mr. Elliot. “My chess is even worse than I
+remembered.” He accepted his defeat with great equanimity, because he
+really wished to talk.
+
+He drew his chair beside Mr. Wilfrid Flushing, the newcomer.
+
+“Are these at all in your line?” he asked, pointing at a case in front
+of them, where highly polished crosses, jewels, and bits of embroidery,
+the work of the natives, were displayed to tempt visitors.
+
+“Shams, all of them,” said Mr. Flushing briefly. “This rug, now, isn’t
+at all bad.” He stopped and picked up a piece of the rug at their feet.
+“Not old, of course, but the design is quite in the right tradition.
+Alice, lend me your brooch. See the difference between the old work and
+the new.”
+
+A lady, who was reading with great concentration, unfastened her brooch
+and gave it to her husband without looking at him or acknowledging the
+tentative bow which Mr. Elliot was desirous of giving her. If she had
+listened, she might have been amused by the reference to old Lady
+Barborough, her great-aunt, but, oblivious of her surroundings, she
+went on reading.
+
+The clock, which had been wheezing for some minutes like an old man
+preparing to cough, now struck nine. The sound slightly disturbed
+certain somnolent merchants, government officials, and men of
+independent means who were lying back in their chairs, chatting,
+smoking, ruminating about their affairs, with their eyes half shut;
+they raised their lids for an instant at the sound and then closed them
+again. They had the appearance of crocodiles so fully gorged by their
+last meal that the future of the world gives them no anxiety whatever.
+The only disturbance in the placid bright room was caused by a large
+moth which shot from light to light, whizzing over elaborate heads of
+hair, and causing several young women to raise their hands nervously
+and exclaim, “Some one ought to kill it!”
+
+Absorbed in their own thoughts, Hewet and Hirst had not spoken for a
+long time.
+
+When the clock struck, Hirst said:
+
+“Ah, the creatures begin to stir. . . .” He watched them raise
+themselves, look about them, and settle down again. “What I abhor most
+of all,” he concluded, “is the female breast. Imagine being Venning and
+having to get into bed with Susan! But the really repulsive thing is
+that they feel nothing at all—about what I do when I have a hot bath.
+They’re gross, they’re absurd, they’re utterly intolerable!”
+
+So saying, and drawing no reply from Hewet, he proceeded to think about
+himself, about science, about Cambridge, about the Bar, about Helen and
+what she thought of him, until, being very tired, he was nodding off to
+sleep.
+
+Suddenly Hewet woke him up.
+
+“How d’you know what you feel, Hirst?”
+
+“Are you in love?” asked Hirst. He put in his eyeglass.
+
+“Don’t be a fool,” said Hewet.
+
+“Well, I’ll sit down and think about it,” said Hirst. “One really ought
+to. If these people would only think about things, the world would be a
+far better place for us all to live in. Are you trying to think?”
+
+That was exactly what Hewet had been doing for the last half-hour, but
+he did not find Hirst sympathetic at the moment.
+
+“I shall go for a walk,” he said.
+
+“Remember we weren’t in bed last night,” said Hirst with a prodigious
+yawn.
+
+Hewet rose and stretched himself.
+
+“I want to go and get a breath of air,” he said.
+
+An unusual feeling had been bothering him all the evening and
+forbidding him to settle into any one train of thought. It was
+precisely as if he had been in the middle of a talk which interested
+him profoundly when some one came up and interrupted him. He could not
+finish the talk, and the longer he sat there the more he wanted to
+finish it. As the talk that had been interrupted was a talk with
+Rachel, he had to ask himself why he felt this, and why he wanted to go
+on talking to her. Hirst would merely say that he was in love with her.
+But he was not in love with her. Did love begin in that way, with the
+wish to go on talking? No. It always began in his case with definite
+physical sensations, and these were now absent, he did not even find
+her physically attractive. There was something, of course, unusual
+about her—she was young, inexperienced, and inquisitive, they had been
+more open with each other than was usually possible. He always found
+girls interesting to talk to, and surely these were good reasons why he
+should wish to go on talking to her; and last night, what with the
+crowd and the confusion, he had only been able to begin to talk to her.
+What was she doing now? Lying on a sofa and looking at the ceiling,
+perhaps. He could imagine her doing that, and Helen in an arm-chair,
+with her hands on the arm of it, so—looking ahead of her, with her
+great big eyes—oh no, they’d be talking, of course, about the dance.
+But suppose Rachel was going away in a day or two, suppose this was the
+end of her visit, and her father had arrived in one of the steamers
+anchored in the bay,—it was intolerable to know so little. Therefore he
+exclaimed, “How d’you know what you feel, Hirst?” to stop himself from
+thinking.
+
+But Hirst did not help him, and the other people with their aimless
+movements and their unknown lives were disturbing, so that he longed
+for the empty darkness. The first thing he looked for when he stepped
+out of the hall door was the light of the Ambroses’ villa. When he had
+definitely decided that a certain light apart from the others higher up
+the hill was their light, he was considerably reassured. There seemed
+to be at once a little stability in all this incoherence. Without any
+definite plan in his head, he took the turning to the right and walked
+through the town and came to the wall by the meeting of the roads,
+where he stopped. The booming of the sea was audible. The dark-blue
+mass of the mountains rose against the paler blue of the sky. There was
+no moon, but myriads of stars, and lights were anchored up and down in
+the dark waves of earth all round him. He had meant to go back, but the
+single light of the Ambroses’ villa had now become three separate
+lights, and he was tempted to go on. He might as well make sure that
+Rachel was still there. Walking fast, he soon stood by the iron gate of
+their garden, and pushed it open; the outline of the house suddenly
+appeared sharply before his eyes, and the thin column of the verandah
+cutting across the palely lit gravel of the terrace. He hesitated. At
+the back of the house some one was rattling cans. He approached the
+front; the light on the terrace showed him that the sitting-rooms were
+on that side. He stood as near the light as he could by the corner of
+the house, the leaves of a creeper brushing his face. After a moment he
+could hear a voice. The voice went on steadily; it was not talking, but
+from the continuity of the sound it was a voice reading aloud. He crept
+a little closer; he crumpled the leaves together so as to stop their
+rustling about his ears. It might be Rachel’s voice. He left the shadow
+and stepped into the radius of the light, and then heard a sentence
+spoken quite distinctly.
+
+“And there we lived from the year 1860 to 1895, the happiest years of
+my parents’ lives, and there in 1862 my brother Maurice was born, to
+the delight of his parents, as he was destined to be the delight of all
+who knew him.”
+
+The voice quickened, and the tone became conclusive rising slightly in
+pitch, as if these words were at the end of the chapter. Hewet drew
+back again into the shadow. There was a long silence. He could just
+hear chairs being moved inside. He had almost decided to go back, when
+suddenly two figures appeared at the window, not six feet from him.
+
+“It was Maurice Fielding, of course, that your mother was engaged to,”
+said Helen’s voice. She spoke reflectively, looking out into the dark
+garden, and thinking evidently as much of the look of the night as of
+what she was saying.
+
+“Mother?” said Rachel. Hewet’s heart leapt, and he noticed the fact.
+Her voice, though low, was full of surprise.
+
+“You didn’t know that?” said Helen.
+
+“I never knew there’d been any one else,” said Rachel. She was clearly
+surprised, but all they said was said low and inexpressively, because
+they were speaking out into the cool dark night.
+
+“More people were in love with her than with any one I’ve ever known,”
+Helen stated. “She had that power—she enjoyed things. She wasn’t
+beautiful, but—I was thinking of her last night at the dance. She got
+on with every kind of person, and then she made it all so
+amazingly—funny.”
+
+It appeared that Helen was going back into the past, choosing her words
+deliberately, comparing Theresa with the people she had known since
+Theresa died.
+
+“I don’t know how she did it,” she continued, and ceased, and there was
+a long pause, in which a little owl called first here, then there, as
+it moved from tree to tree in the garden.
+
+“That’s so like Aunt Lucy and Aunt Katie,” said Rachel at last. “They
+always make out that she was very sad and very good.”
+
+“Then why, for goodness’ sake, did they do nothing but criticize her
+when she was alive?” said Helen. Very gentle their voices sounded, as
+if they fell through the waves of the sea.
+
+“If I were to die to-morrow . . .” she began.
+
+The broken sentences had an extraordinary beauty and detachment in
+Hewet’s ears, and a kind of mystery too, as though they were spoken by
+people in their sleep.
+
+“No, Rachel,” Helen’s voice continued, “I’m not going to walk in the
+garden; it’s damp—it’s sure to be damp; besides, I see at least a dozen
+toads.”
+
+“Toads? Those are stones, Helen. Come out. It’s nicer out. The flowers
+smell,” Rachel replied.
+
+Hewet drew still farther back. His heart was beating very quickly.
+Apparently Rachel tried to pull Helen out on to the terrace, and Helen
+resisted. There was a certain amount of scuffling, entreating,
+resisting, and laughter from both of them. Then a man’s form appeared.
+Hewet could not hear what they were all saying. In a minute they had
+gone in; he could hear bolts grating then; there was dead silence, and
+all the lights went out.
+
+He turned away, still crumpling and uncrumpling a handful of leaves
+which he had torn from the wall. An exquisite sense of pleasure and
+relief possessed him; it was all so solid and peaceful after the ball
+at the hotel, whether he was in love with them or not, and he was not
+in love with them; no, but it was good that they should be alive.
+
+After standing still for a minute or two he turned and began to walk
+towards the gate. With the movement of his body, the excitement, the
+romance and the richness of life crowded into his brain. He shouted out
+a line of poetry, but the words escaped him, and he stumbled among
+lines and fragments of lines which had no meaning at all except for the
+beauty of the words. He shut the gate, and ran swinging from side to
+side down the hill, shouting any nonsense that came into his head.
+“Here am I,” he cried rhythmically, as his feet pounded to the left and
+to the right, “plunging along, like an elephant in the jungle,
+stripping the branches as I go (he snatched at the twigs of a bush at
+the roadside), roaring innumerable words, lovely words about
+innumerable things, running downhill and talking nonsense aloud to
+myself about roads and leaves and lights and women coming out into the
+darkness—about women—about Rachel, about Rachel.” He stopped and drew a
+deep breath. The night seemed immense and hospitable, and although so
+dark there seemed to be things moving down there in the harbour and
+movement out at sea. He gazed until the darkness numbed him, and then
+he walked on quickly, still murmuring to himself. “And I ought to be in
+bed, snoring and dreaming, dreaming, dreaming. Dreams and realities,
+dreams and realities, dreams and realities,” he repeated all the way up
+the avenue, scarcely knowing what he said, until he reached the front
+door. Here he paused for a second, and collected himself before he
+opened the door.
+
+His eyes were dazed, his hands very cold, and his brain excited and yet
+half asleep. Inside the door everything was as he had left it except
+that the hall was now empty. There were the chairs turning in towards
+each other where people had sat talking, and the empty glasses on
+little tables, and the newspapers scattered on the floor. As he shut
+the door he felt as if he were enclosed in a square box, and instantly
+shrivelled up. It was all very bright and very small. He stopped for a
+minute by the long table to find a paper which he had meant to read,
+but he was still too much under the influence of the dark and the fresh
+air to consider carefully which paper it was or where he had seen it.
+
+As he fumbled vaguely among the papers he saw a figure cross the tail
+of his eye, coming downstairs. He heard the swishing sound of skirts,
+and to his great surprise, Evelyn M. came up to him, laid her hand on
+the table as if to prevent him from taking up a paper, and said:
+
+“You’re just the person I wanted to talk to.” Her voice was a little
+unpleasant and metallic, her eyes were very bright, and she kept them
+fixed upon him.
+
+“To talk to me?” he repeated. “But I’m half asleep.”
+
+“But I think you understand better than most people,” she answered, and
+sat down on a little chair placed beside a big leather chair so that
+Hewet had to sit down beside her.
+
+“Well?” he said. He yawned openly, and lit a cigarette. He could not
+believe that this was really happening to him. “What is it?”
+
+“Are you really sympathetic, or is it just a pose?” she demanded.
+
+“It’s for you to say,” he replied. “I’m interested, I think.” He still
+felt numb all over and as if she was much too close to him.
+
+“Any one can be interested!” she cried impatiently. “Your friend Mr.
+Hirst’s interested, I daresay however, I do believe in you. You look as
+if you’d got a nice sister, somehow.” She paused, picking at some
+sequins on her knees, and then, as if she had made up her mind, she
+started off, “Anyhow, I’m going to ask your advice. D’you ever get into
+a state where you don’t know your own mind? That’s the state I’m in
+now. You see, last night at the dance Raymond Oliver,—he’s the tall
+dark boy who looks as if he had Indian blood in him, but he says he’s
+not really,—well, we were sitting out together, and he told me all
+about himself, how unhappy he is at home, and how he hates being out
+here. They’ve put him into some beastly mining business. He says it’s
+beastly—I should like it, I know, but that’s neither here nor there.
+And I felt awfully sorry for him, one couldn’t help being sorry for
+him, and when he asked me to let him kiss me, I did. I don’t see any
+harm in that, do you? And then this morning he said he’d thought I
+meant something more, and I wasn’t the sort to let any one kiss me. And
+we talked and talked. I daresay I was very silly, but one can’t help
+liking people when one’s sorry for them. I do like him most awfully—”
+She paused. “So I gave him half a promise, and then, you see, there’s
+Alfred Perrott.”
+
+“Oh, Perrott,” said Hewet.
+
+“We got to know each other on that picnic the other day,” she
+continued. “He seemed so lonely, especially as Arthur had gone off with
+Susan, and one couldn’t help guessing what was in his mind. So we had
+quite a long talk when you were looking at the ruins, and he told me
+all about his life, and his struggles, and how fearfully hard it had
+been. D’you know, he was a boy in a grocer’s shop and took parcels to
+people’s houses in a basket? That interested me awfully, because I
+always say it doesn’t matter how you’re born if you’ve got the right
+stuff in you. And he told me about his sister who’s paralysed, poor
+girl, and one can see she’s a great trial, though he’s evidently very
+devoted to her. I must say I do admire people like that! I don’t expect
+you do because you’re so clever. Well, last night we sat out in the
+garden together, and I couldn’t help seeing what he wanted to say, and
+comforting him a little, and telling him I did care—I really do—only,
+then, there’s Raymond Oliver. What I want you to tell me is, can one be
+in love with two people at once, or can’t one?”
+
+She became silent, and sat with her chin on her hands, looking very
+intent, as if she were facing a real problem which had to be discussed
+between them.
+
+“I think it depends what sort of person you are,” said Hewet. He looked
+at her. She was small and pretty, aged perhaps twenty-eight or
+twenty-nine, but though dashing and sharply cut, her features expressed
+nothing very clearly, except a great deal of spirit and good health.
+
+“Who are you, what are you; you see, I know nothing about you,” he
+continued.
+
+“Well, I was coming to that,” said Evelyn M. She continued to rest her
+chin on her hands and to look intently ahead of her. “I’m the daughter
+of a mother and no father, if that interests you,” she said. “It’s not
+a very nice thing to be. It’s what often happens in the country. She
+was a farmer’s daughter, and he was rather a swell—the young man up at
+the great house. He never made things straight—never married her—though
+he allowed us quite a lot of money. His people wouldn’t let him. Poor
+father! I can’t help liking him. Mother wasn’t the sort of woman who
+could keep him straight, anyhow. He was killed in the war. I believe
+his men worshipped him. They say great big troopers broke down and
+cried over his body on the battlefield. I wish I’d known him. Mother
+had all the life crushed out of her. The world—” She clenched her fist.
+“Oh, people can be horrid to a woman like that!” She turned upon Hewet.
+
+“Well,” she said, “d’you want to know any more about me?”
+
+“But you?” he asked, “Who looked after you?”
+
+“I’ve looked after myself mostly,” she laughed. “I’ve had splendid
+friends. I do like people! That’s the trouble. What would you do if you
+liked two people, both of them tremendously, and you couldn’t tell
+which most?”
+
+“I should go on liking them—I should wait and see. Why not?”
+
+“But one has to make up one’s mind,” said Evelyn. “Or are you one of
+the people who doesn’t believe in marriages and all that? Look
+here—this isn’t fair, I do all the telling, and you tell nothing.
+Perhaps you’re the same as your friend”—she looked at him suspiciously;
+“perhaps you don’t like me?”
+
+“I don’t know you,” said Hewet.
+
+“I know when I like a person directly I see them! I knew I liked you
+the very first night at dinner. Oh dear,” she continued impatiently,
+“what a lot of bother would be saved if only people would say the
+things they think straight out! I’m made like that. I can’t help it.”
+
+“But don’t you find it leads to difficulties?” Hewet asked.
+
+“That’s men’s fault,” she answered. “They always drag it in—love, I
+mean.”
+
+“And so you’ve gone on having one proposal after another,” said Hewet.
+
+“I don’t suppose I’ve had more proposals than most women,” said Evelyn,
+but she spoke without conviction.
+
+“Five, six, ten?” Hewet ventured.
+
+Evelyn seemed to intimate that perhaps ten was the right figure, but
+that it really was not a high one.
+
+“I believe you’re thinking me a heartless flirt,” she protested. “But I
+don’t care if you are. I don’t care what any one thinks of me. Just
+because one’s interested and likes to be friends with men, and talk to
+them as one talks to women, one’s called a flirt.”
+
+“But Miss Murgatroyd—”
+
+“I wish you’d call me Evelyn,” she interrupted.
+
+“After ten proposals do you honestly think that men are the same as
+women?”
+
+“Honestly, honestly,—how I hate that word! It’s always used by prigs,”
+cried Evelyn. “Honestly I think they ought to be. That’s what’s so
+disappointing. Every time one thinks it’s not going to happen, and
+every time it does.”
+
+“The pursuit of Friendship,” said Hewet. “The title of a comedy.”
+
+“You’re horrid,” she cried. “You don’t care a bit really. You might be
+Mr. Hirst.”
+
+“Well,” said Hewet, “let’s consider. Let us consider—” He paused,
+because for the moment he could not remember what it was that they had
+to consider. He was far more interested in her than in her story, for
+as she went on speaking his numbness had disappeared, and he was
+conscious of a mixture of liking, pity, and distrust. “You’ve promised
+to marry both Oliver and Perrott?” he concluded.
+
+“Not exactly promised,” said Evelyn. “I can’t make up my mind which I
+really like best. Oh how I detest modern life!” she flung off. “It must
+have been so much easier for the Elizabethans! I thought the other day
+on that mountain how I’d have liked to be one of those colonists, to
+cut down trees and make laws and all that, instead of fooling about
+with all these people who think one’s just a pretty young lady. Though
+I’m not. I really might _do_ something.” She reflected in silence for a
+minute. Then she said:
+
+“I’m afraid right down in my heart that Alfred Perrot _won’t_ do. He’s
+not strong, is he?”
+
+“Perhaps he couldn’t cut down a tree,” said Hewet. “Have you never
+cared for anybody?” he asked.
+
+“I’ve cared for heaps of people, but not to marry them,” she said. “I
+suppose I’m too fastidious. All my life I’ve wanted somebody I could
+look up to, somebody great and big and splendid. Most men are so
+small.”
+
+“What d’you mean by splendid?” Hewet asked. “People are—nothing more.”
+
+Evelyn was puzzled.
+
+“We don’t care for people because of their qualities,” he tried to
+explain. “It’s just them that we care for,”—he struck a match—“just
+that,” he said, pointing to the flames.
+
+“I see what you mean,” she said, “but I don’t agree. I do know why I
+care for people, and I think I’m hardly ever wrong. I see at once what
+they’ve got in them. Now I think you must be rather splendid; but not
+Mr. Hirst.”
+
+Hewlet shook his head.
+
+“He’s not nearly so unselfish, or so sympathetic, or so big, or so
+understanding,” Evelyn continued.
+
+Hewet sat silent, smoking his cigarette.
+
+“I should hate cutting down trees,” he remarked.
+
+“I’m not trying to flirt with you, though I suppose you think I am!”
+Evelyn shot out. “I’d never have come to you if I’d thought you’d
+merely think odious things of me!” The tears came into her eyes.
+
+“Do you never flirt?” he asked.
+
+“Of course I don’t,” she protested. “Haven’t I told you? I want
+friendship; I want to care for some one greater and nobler than I am,
+and if they fall in love with me it isn’t my fault; I don’t want it; I
+positively hate it.”
+
+Hewet could see that there was very little use in going on with the
+conversation, for it was obvious that Evelyn did not wish to say
+anything in particular, but to impress upon him an image of herself,
+being, for some reason which she would not reveal, unhappy, or
+insecure. He was very tired, and a pale waiter kept walking
+ostentatiously into the middle of the room and looking at them
+meaningly.
+
+“They want to shut up,” he said. “My advice is that you should tell
+Oliver and Perrott to-morrow that you’ve made up your mind that you
+don’t mean to marry either of them. I’m certain you don’t. If you
+change your mind you can always tell them so. They’re both sensible
+men; they’ll understand. And then all this bother will be over.” He got
+up.
+
+But Evelyn did not move. She sat looking up at him with her bright
+eager eyes, in the depths of which he thought he detected some
+disappointment, or dissatisfaction.
+
+“Good-night,” he said.
+
+“There are heaps of things I want to say to you still,” she said. “And
+I’m going to, some time. I suppose you must go to bed now?”
+
+“Yes,” said Hewet. “I’m half asleep.” He left her still sitting by
+herself in the empty hall.
+
+“Why is it that they _won’t_ be honest?” he muttered to himself as he
+went upstairs. Why was it that relations between different people were
+so unsatisfactory, so fragmentary, so hazardous, and words so dangerous
+that the instinct to sympathise with another human being was an
+instinct to be examined carefully and probably crushed? What had Evelyn
+really wished to say to him? What was she feeling left alone in the
+empty hall? The mystery of life and the unreality even of one’s own
+sensations overcame him as he walked down the corridor which led to his
+room. It was dimly lighted, but sufficiently for him to see a figure in
+a bright dressing-gown pass swiftly in front of him, the figure of a
+woman crossing from one room to another.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XV
+
+
+Whether too slight or too vague the ties that bind people casually
+meeting in a hotel at midnight, they possess one advantage at least
+over the bonds which unite the elderly, who have lived together once
+and so must live for ever. Slight they may be, but vivid and genuine,
+merely because the power to break them is within the grasp of each, and
+there is no reason for continuance except a true desire that continue
+they shall. When two people have been married for years they seem to
+become unconscious of each other’s bodily presence so that they move as
+if alone, speak aloud things which they do not expect to be answered,
+and in general seem to experience all the comfort of solitude without
+its loneliness. The joint lives of Ridley and Helen had arrived at this
+stage of community, and it was often necessary for one or the other to
+recall with an effort whether a thing had been said or only thought,
+shared or dreamt in private. At four o’clock in the afternoon two or
+three days later Mrs. Ambrose was standing brushing her hair, while her
+husband was in the dressing-room which opened out of her room, and
+occasionally, through the cascade of water—he was washing his face—she
+caught exclamations, “So it goes on year after year; I wish, I wish, I
+wish I could make an end of it,” to which she paid no attention.
+
+“It’s white? Or only brown?” Thus she herself murmured, examining a
+hair which gleamed suspiciously among the brown. She pulled it out and
+laid it on the dressing-table. She was criticising her own appearance,
+or rather approving of it, standing a little way back from the glass
+and looking at her own face with superb pride and melancholy, when her
+husband appeared in the doorway in his shirt sleeves, his face half
+obscured by a towel.
+
+“You often tell me I don’t notice things,” he remarked.
+
+“Tell me if this is a white hair, then?” she replied. She laid the hair
+on his hand.
+
+“There’s not a white hair on your head,” he exclaimed.
+
+“Ah, Ridley, I begin to doubt,” she sighed; and bowed her head under
+his eyes so that he might judge, but the inspection produced only a
+kiss where the line of parting ran, and husband and wife then proceeded
+to move about the room, casually murmuring.
+
+“What was that you were saying?” Helen remarked, after an interval of
+conversation which no third person could have understood.
+
+“Rachel—you ought to keep an eye upon Rachel,” he observed
+significantly, and Helen, though she went on brushing her hair, looked
+at him. His observations were apt to be true.
+
+“Young gentlemen don’t interest themselves in young women’s education
+without a motive,” he remarked.
+
+“Oh, Hirst,” said Helen.
+
+“Hirst and Hewet, they’re all the same to me—all covered with spots,”
+he replied. “He advises her to read Gibbon. Did you know that?”
+
+Helen did not know that, but she would not allow herself inferior to
+her husband in powers of observation. She merely said:
+
+“Nothing would surprise me. Even that dreadful flying man we met at the
+dance—even Mr. Dalloway—even—”
+
+“I advise you to be circumspect,” said Ridley. “There’s Willoughby,
+remember—Willoughby”; he pointed at a letter.
+
+Helen looked with a sigh at an envelope which lay upon her
+dressing-table. Yes, there lay Willoughby, curt, inexpressive,
+perpetually jocular, robbing a whole continent of mystery, enquiring
+after his daughter’s manners and morals—hoping she wasn’t a bore, and
+bidding them pack her off to him on board the very next ship if she
+were—and then grateful and affectionate with suppressed emotion, and
+then half a page about his own triumphs over wretched little natives
+who went on strike and refused to load his ships, until he roared
+English oaths at them, “popping my head out of the window just as I
+was, in my shirt sleeves. The beggars had the sense to scatter.”
+
+“If Theresa married Willoughby,” she remarked, turning the page with a
+hairpin, “one doesn’t see what’s to prevent Rachel—”
+
+But Ridley was now off on grievances of his own connected with the
+washing of his shirts, which somehow led to the frequent visits of
+Hughling Elliot, who was a bore, a pedant, a dry stick of a man, and
+yet Ridley couldn’t simply point at the door and tell him to go. The
+truth of it was, they saw too many people. And so on and so on, more
+conjugal talk pattering softly and unintelligibly, until they were both
+ready to go down to tea.
+
+The first thing that caught Helen’s eye as she came downstairs was a
+carriage at the door, filled with skirts and feathers nodding on the
+tops of hats. She had only time to gain the drawing-room before two
+names were oddly mispronounced by the Spanish maid, and Mrs. Thornbury
+came in slightly in advance of Mrs. Wilfrid Flushing.
+
+“Mrs. Wilfrid Flushing,” said Mrs. Thornbury, with a wave of her hand.
+“A friend of our common friend Mrs. Raymond Parry.”
+
+Mrs. Flushing shook hands energetically. She was a woman of forty
+perhaps, very well set up and erect, splendidly robust, though not as
+tall as the upright carriage of her body made her appear.
+
+She looked Helen straight in the face and said, “You have a charmin’
+house.”
+
+She had a strongly marked face, her eyes looked straight at you, and
+though naturally she was imperious in her manner she was nervous at the
+same time. Mrs. Thornbury acted as interpreter, making things smooth
+all round by a series of charming commonplace remarks.
+
+“I’ve taken it upon myself, Mr. Ambrose,” she said, “to promise that
+you will be so kind as to give Mrs. Flushing the benefit of your
+experience. I’m sure no one here knows the country as well as you do.
+No one takes such wonderful long walks. No one, I’m sure, has your
+encyclopaedic knowledge upon every subject. Mr. Wilfrid Flushing is a
+collector. He has discovered really beautiful things already. I had no
+notion that the peasants were so artistic—though of course in the
+past—”
+
+“Not old things—new things,” interrupted Mrs. Flushing curtly. “That
+is, if he takes my advice.”
+
+The Ambroses had not lived for many years in London without knowing
+something of a good many people, by name at least, and Helen remembered
+hearing of the Flushings. Mr. Flushing was a man who kept an old
+furniture shop; he had always said he would not marry because most
+women have red cheeks, and would not take a house because most houses
+have narrow staircases, and would not eat meat because most animals
+bleed when they are killed; and then he had married an eccentric
+aristocratic lady, who certainly was not pale, who looked as if she ate
+meat, who had forced him to do all the things he most disliked—and this
+then was the lady. Helen looked at her with interest. They had moved
+out into the garden, where the tea was laid under a tree, and Mrs.
+Flushing was helping herself to cherry jam. She had a peculiar jerking
+movement of the body when she spoke, which caused the canary-coloured
+plume on her hat to jerk too. Her small but finely-cut and vigorous
+features, together with the deep red of lips and cheeks, pointed to
+many generations of well-trained and well-nourished ancestors behind
+her.
+
+“Nothin’ that’s more than twenty years old interests me,” she
+continued. “Mouldy old pictures, dirty old books, they stick ’em in
+museums when they’re only fit for burnin’.”
+
+“I quite agree,” Helen laughed. “But my husband spends his life in
+digging up manuscripts which nobody wants.” She was amused by Ridley’s
+expression of startled disapproval.
+
+“There’s a clever man in London called John who paints ever so much
+better than the old masters,” Mrs. Flushing continued. “His pictures
+excite me—nothin’ that’s old excites me.”
+
+“But even his pictures will become old,” Mrs. Thornbury intervened.
+
+“Then I’ll have ’em burnt, or I’ll put it in my will,” said Mrs.
+Flushing.
+
+“And Mrs. Flushing lived in one of the most beautiful old houses in
+England—Chillingley,” Mrs. Thornbury explained to the rest of them.
+
+“If I’d my way I’d burn that to-morrow,” Mrs. Flushing laughed. She had
+a laugh like the cry of a jay, at once startling and joyless.
+
+“What does any sane person want with those great big houses?” she
+demanded. “If you go downstairs after dark you’re covered with black
+beetles, and the electric lights always goin’ out. What would you do if
+spiders came out of the tap when you turned on the hot water?” she
+demanded, fixing her eye on Helen.
+
+Mrs. Ambrose shrugged her shoulders with a smile.
+
+“This is what I like,” said Mrs. Flushing. She jerked her head at the
+Villa. “A little house in a garden. I had one once in Ireland. One
+could lie in bed in the mornin’ and pick roses outside the window with
+one’s toes.”
+
+“And the gardeners, weren’t they surprised?” Mrs. Thornbury enquired.
+
+“There were no gardeners,” Mrs. Flushing chuckled. “Nobody but me and
+an old woman without any teeth. You know the poor in Ireland lose their
+teeth after they’re twenty. But you wouldn’t expect a politician to
+understand that—Arthur Balfour wouldn’t understand that.”
+
+Ridley sighed that he never expected any one to understand anything,
+least of all politicians.
+
+“However,” he concluded, “there’s one advantage I find in extreme old
+age—nothing matters a hang except one’s food and one’s digestion. All I
+ask is to be left alone to moulder away in solitude. It’s obvious that
+the world’s going as fast as it can to—the Nethermost Pit, and all I
+can do is to sit still and consume as much of my own smoke as
+possible.” He groaned, and with a melancholy glance laid the jam on his
+bread, for he felt the atmosphere of this abrupt lady distinctly
+unsympathetic.
+
+“I always contradict my husband when he says that,” said Mrs. Thornbury
+sweetly. “You men! Where would you be if it weren’t for the women!”
+
+“Read the _Symposium_,” said Ridley grimly.
+
+“_Symposium_?” cried Mrs. Flushing. “That’s Latin or Greek? Tell me, is
+there a good translation?”
+
+“No,” said Ridley. “You will have to learn Greek.”
+
+Mrs. Flushing cried, “Ah, ah, ah! I’d rather break stones in the road.
+I always envy the men who break stones and sit on those nice little
+heaps all day wearin’ spectacles. I’d infinitely rather break stones
+than clean out poultry runs, or feed the cows, or—”
+
+Here Rachel came up from the lower garden with a book in her hand.
+
+“What’s that book?” said Ridley, when she had shaken hands.
+
+“It’s Gibbon,” said Rachel as she sat down.
+
+“_The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire_?” said Mrs. Thornbury. “A
+very wonderful book, I know. My dear father was always quoting it at
+us, with the result that we resolved never to read a line.”
+
+“Gibbon the historian?” enquired Mrs. Flushing. “I connect him with
+some of the happiest hours of my life. We used to lie in bed and read
+Gibbon—about the massacres of the Christians, I remember—when we were
+supposed to be asleep. It’s no joke, I can tell you, readin’ a great
+big book, in double columns, by a night-light, and the light that comes
+through a chink in the door. Then there were the moths—tiger moths,
+yellow moths, and horrid cockchafers. Louisa, my sister, would have the
+window open. I wanted it shut. We fought every night of our lives over
+that window. Have you ever seen a moth dyin’ in a night-light?” she
+enquired.
+
+Again there was an interruption. Hewet and Hirst appeared at the
+drawing-room window and came up to the tea-table.
+
+Rachel’s heart beat hard. She was conscious of an extraordinary
+intensity in everything, as though their presence stripped some cover
+off the surface of things; but the greetings were remarkably
+commonplace.
+
+“Excuse me,” said Hirst, rising from his chair directly he had sat
+down. He went into the drawing-room, and returned with a cushion which
+he placed carefully upon his seat.
+
+“Rheumatism,” he remarked, as he sat down for the second time.
+
+“The result of the dance?” Helen enquired.
+
+“Whenever I get at all run down I tend to be rheumatic,” Hirst stated.
+He bent his wrist back sharply. “I hear little pieces of chalk grinding
+together!”
+
+Rachel looked at him. She was amused, and yet she was respectful; if
+such a thing could be, the upper part of her face seemed to laugh, and
+the lower part to check its laughter.
+
+Hewet picked up the book that lay on the ground.
+
+“You like this?” he asked in an undertone.
+
+“No, I don’t like it,” she replied. She had indeed been trying all the
+afternoon to read it, and for some reason the glory which she had
+perceived at first had faded, and, read as she would, she could not
+grasp the meaning with her mind.
+
+“It goes round, round, round, like a roll of oil-cloth,” she hazarded.
+Evidently she meant Hewet alone to hear her words, but Hirst demanded,
+“What d’you mean?”
+
+She was instantly ashamed of her figure of speech, for she could not
+explain it in words of sober criticism.
+
+“Surely it’s the most perfect style, so far as style goes, that’s ever
+been invented,” he continued. “Every sentence is practically perfect,
+and the wit—”
+
+“Ugly in body, repulsive in mind,” she thought, instead of thinking
+about Gibbon’s style. “Yes, but strong, searching, unyielding in mind.”
+She looked at his big head, a disproportionate part of which was
+occupied by the forehead, and at the direct, severe eyes.
+
+“I give you up in despair,” he said. He meant it lightly, but she took
+it seriously, and believed that her value as a human being was lessened
+because she did not happen to admire the style of Gibbon. The others
+were talking now in a group about the native villages which Mrs.
+Flushing ought to visit.
+
+“I despair too,” she said impetuously. “How are you going to judge
+people merely by their minds?”
+
+“You agree with my spinster Aunt, I expect,” said St. John in his
+jaunty manner, which was always irritating because it made the person
+he talked to appear unduly clumsy and in earnest. “‘Be good, sweet
+maid’—I thought Mr. Kingsley and my Aunt were now obsolete.”
+
+“One can be very nice without having read a book,” she asserted. Very
+silly and simple her words sounded, and laid her open to derision.
+
+“Did I ever deny it?” Hirst enquired, raising his eyebrows.
+
+Most unexpectedly Mrs. Thornbury here intervened, either because it was
+her mission to keep things smooth or because she had long wished to
+speak to Mr. Hirst, feeling as she did that young men were her sons.
+
+“I have lived all my life with people like your Aunt, Mr. Hirst,” she
+said, leaning forward in her chair. Her brown squirrel-like eyes became
+even brighter than usual. “They have never heard of Gibbon. They only
+care for their pheasants and their peasants. They are great big men who
+look so fine on horseback, as people must have done, I think, in the
+days of the great wars. Say what you like against them—they are animal,
+they are unintellectual; they don’t read themselves, and they don’t
+want others to read, but they are some of the finest and the kindest
+human beings on the face of the earth! You would be surprised at some
+of the stories I could tell. You have never guessed, perhaps, at all
+the romances that go on in the heart of the country. There are the
+people, I feel, among whom Shakespeare will be born if he is ever born
+again. In those old houses, up among the Downs—”
+
+“My Aunt,” Hirst interrupted, “spends her life in East Lambeth among
+the degraded poor. I only quoted my Aunt because she is inclined to
+persecute people she calls ‘intellectual,’ which is what I suspect Miss
+Vinrace of doing. It’s all the fashion now. If you’re clever it’s
+always taken for granted that you’re completely without sympathy,
+understanding, affection—all the things that really matter. Oh, you
+Christians! You’re the most conceited, patronising, hypocritical set of
+old humbugs in the kingdom! Of course,” he continued, “I’m the first to
+allow your country gentlemen great merits. For one thing, they’re
+probably quite frank about their passions, which we are not. My father,
+who is a clergyman in Norfolk, says that there is hardly a squire in
+the country who does not—”
+
+“But about Gibbon?” Hewet interrupted. The look of nervous tension
+which had come over every face was relaxed by the interruption.
+
+“You find him monotonous, I suppose. But you know—” He opened the book,
+and began searching for passages to read aloud, and in a little time he
+found a good one which he considered suitable. But there was nothing in
+the world that bored Ridley more than being read aloud to, and he was
+besides scrupulously fastidious as to the dress and behaviour of
+ladies. In the space of fifteen minutes he had decided against Mrs.
+Flushing on the ground that her orange plume did not suit her
+complexion, that she spoke too loud, that she crossed her legs, and
+finally, when he saw her accept a cigarette that Hewet offered her, he
+jumped up, exclaiming something about “bar parlours,” and left them.
+Mrs. Flushing was evidently relieved by his departure. She puffed her
+cigarette, stuck her legs out, and examined Helen closely as to the
+character and reputation of their common friend Mrs. Raymond Parry. By
+a series of little strategems she drove her to define Mrs. Parry as
+somewhat elderly, by no means beautiful, very much made up—an insolent
+old harridan, in short, whose parties were amusing because one met odd
+people; but Helen herself always pitied poor Mr. Parry, who was
+understood to be shut up downstairs with cases full of gems, while his
+wife enjoyed herself in the drawing-room. “Not that I believe what
+people say against her—although she hints, of course—” Upon which Mrs.
+Flushing cried out with delight:
+
+“She’s my first cousin! Go on—go on!”
+
+When Mrs. Flushing rose to go she was obviously delighted with her new
+acquaintances. She made three or four different plans for meeting or
+going on an expedition, or showing Helen the things they had bought, on
+her way to the carriage. She included them all in a vague but
+magnificent invitation.
+
+As Helen returned to the garden again, Ridley’s words of warning came
+into her head, and she hesitated a moment and looked at Rachel sitting
+between Hirst and Hewet. But she could draw no conclusions, for Hewet
+was still reading Gibbon aloud, and Rachel, for all the expression she
+had, might have been a shell, and his words water rubbing against her
+ears, as water rubs a shell on the edge of a rock.
+
+Hewet’s voice was very pleasant. When he reached the end of the period
+Hewet stopped, and no one volunteered any criticism.
+
+“I do adore the aristocracy!” Hirst exclaimed after a moment’s pause.
+“They’re so amazingly unscrupulous. None of us would dare to behave as
+that woman behaves.”
+
+“What I like about them,” said Helen as she sat down, “is that they’re
+so well put together. Naked, Mrs. Flushing would be superb. Dressed as
+she dresses, it’s absurd, of course.”
+
+“Yes,” said Hirst. A shade of depression crossed his face. “I’ve never
+weighed more than ten stone in my life,” he said, “which is ridiculous,
+considering my height, and I’ve actually gone down in weight since we
+came here. I daresay that accounts for the rheumatism.” Again he jerked
+his wrist back sharply, so that Helen might hear the grinding of the
+chalk stones. She could not help smiling.
+
+“It’s no laughing matter for me, I assure you,” he protested. “My
+mother’s a chronic invalid, and I’m always expecting to be told that
+I’ve got heart disease myself. Rheumatism always goes to the heart in
+the end.”
+
+“For goodness’ sake, Hirst,” Hewet protested; “one might think you were
+an old cripple of eighty. If it comes to that, I had an aunt who died
+of cancer myself, but I put a bold face on it—” He rose and began
+tilting his chair backwards and forwards on its hind legs. “Is any one
+here inclined for a walk?” he said. “There’s a magnificent walk, up
+behind the house. You come out on to a cliff and look right down into
+the sea. The rocks are all red; you can see them through the water. The
+other day I saw a sight that fairly took my breath away—about twenty
+jelly-fish, semi-transparent, pink, with long streamers, floating on
+the top of the waves.”
+
+“Sure they weren’t mermaids?” said Hirst. “It’s much too hot to climb
+uphill.” He looked at Helen, who showed no signs of moving.
+
+“Yes, it’s too hot,” Helen decided.
+
+There was a short silence.
+
+“I’d like to come,” said Rachel.
+
+“But she might have said that anyhow,” Helen thought to herself as
+Hewet and Rachel went away together, and Helen was left alone with St.
+John, to St. John’s obvious satisfaction.
+
+He may have been satisfied, but his usual difficulty in deciding that
+one subject was more deserving of notice than another prevented him
+from speaking for some time. He sat staring intently at the head of a
+dead match, while Helen considered—so it seemed from the expression of
+her eyes—something not closely connected with the present moment.
+
+At last St. John exclaimed, “Damn! Damn everything! Damn everybody!” he
+added. “At Cambridge there are people to talk to.”
+
+“At Cambridge there are people to talk to,” Helen echoed him,
+rhythmically and absent-mindedly. Then she woke up. “By the way, have
+you settled what you’re going to do—is it to be Cambridge or the Bar?”
+
+He pursed his lips, but made no immediate answer, for Helen was still
+slightly inattentive. She had been thinking about Rachel and which of
+the two young men she was likely to fall in love with, and now sitting
+opposite to Hirst she thought, “He’s ugly. It’s a pity they’re so
+ugly.”
+
+She did not include Hewet in this criticism; she was thinking of the
+clever, honest, interesting young men she knew, of whom Hirst was a
+good example, and wondering whether it was necessary that thought and
+scholarship should thus maltreat their bodies, and should thus elevate
+their minds to a very high tower from which the human race appeared to
+them like rats and mice squirming on the flat.
+
+“And the future?” she reflected, vaguely envisaging a race of men
+becoming more and more like Hirst, and a race of women becoming more
+and more like Rachel. “Oh no,” she concluded, glancing at him, “one
+wouldn’t marry you. Well, then, the future of the race is in the hands
+of Susan and Arthur; no—that’s dreadful. Of farm labourers; no—not of
+the English at all, but of Russians and Chinese.” This train of thought
+did not satisfy her, and was interrupted by St. John, who began again:
+
+“I wish you knew Bennett. He’s the greatest man in the world.”
+
+“Bennett?” she enquired. Becoming more at ease, St. John dropped the
+concentrated abruptness of his manner, and explained that Bennett was a
+man who lived in an old windmill six miles out of Cambridge. He lived
+the perfect life, according to St. John, very lonely, very simple,
+caring only for the truth of things, always ready to talk, and
+extraordinarily modest, though his mind was of the greatest.
+
+“Don’t you think,” said St. John, when he had done describing him,
+“that kind of thing makes this kind of thing rather flimsy? Did you
+notice at tea how poor old Hewet had to change the conversation? How
+they were all ready to pounce upon me because they thought I was going
+to say something improper? It wasn’t anything, really. If Bennett had
+been there he’d have said exactly what he meant to say, or he’d have
+got up and gone. But there’s something rather bad for the character in
+that—I mean if one hasn’t got Bennett’s character. It’s inclined to
+make one bitter. Should you say that I was bitter?”
+
+Helen did not answer, and he continued:
+
+“Of course I am, disgustingly bitter, and it’s a beastly thing to be.
+But the worst of me is that I’m so envious. I envy every one. I can’t
+endure people who do things better than I do—perfectly absurd things
+too—waiters balancing piles of plates—even Arthur, because Susan’s in
+love with him. I want people to like me, and they don’t. It’s partly my
+appearance, I expect,” he continued, “though it’s an absolute lie to
+say I’ve Jewish blood in me—as a matter of fact we’ve been in Norfolk,
+Hirst of Hirstbourne Hall, for three centuries at least. It must be
+awfully soothing to be like you—every one liking one at once.”
+
+“I assure you they don’t,” Helen laughed.
+
+“They do,” said Hirst with conviction. “In the first place, you’re the
+most beautiful woman I’ve ever seen; in the second, you have an
+exceptionally nice nature.”
+
+If Hirst had looked at her instead of looking intently at his teacup he
+would have seen Helen blush, partly with pleasure, partly with an
+impulse of affection towards the young man who had seemed, and would
+seem again, so ugly and so limited. She pitied him, for she suspected
+that he suffered, and she was interested in him, for many of the things
+he said seemed to her true; she admired the morality of youth, and yet
+she felt imprisoned. As if her instinct were to escape to something
+brightly coloured and impersonal, which she could hold in her hands,
+she went into the house and returned with her embroidery. But he was
+not interested in her embroidery; he did not even look at it.
+
+“About Miss Vinrace,” he began,—“oh, look here, do let’s be St. John
+and Helen, and Rachel and Terence—what’s she like? Does she reason,
+does she feel, or is she merely a kind of footstool?”
+
+“Oh no,” said Helen, with great decision. From her observations at tea
+she was inclined to doubt whether Hirst was the person to educate
+Rachel. She had gradually come to be interested in her niece, and fond
+of her; she disliked some things about her very much, she was amused by
+others; but she felt her, on the whole, a live if unformed human being,
+experimental, and not always fortunate in her experiments, but with
+powers of some kind, and a capacity for feeling. Somewhere in the
+depths of her, too, she was bound to Rachel by the indestructible if
+inexplicable ties of sex. “She seems vague, but she’s a will of her
+own,” she said, as if in the interval she had run through her
+qualities.
+
+The embroidery, which was a matter for thought, the design being
+difficult and the colours wanting consideration, brought lapses into
+the dialogue when she seemed to be engrossed in her skeins of silk, or,
+with head a little drawn back and eyes narrowed, considered the effect
+of the whole. Thus she merely said, “Um-m-m” to St. John’s next remark,
+“I shall ask her to go for a walk with me.”
+
+Perhaps he resented this division of attention. He sat silent watching
+Helen closely.
+
+“You’re absolutely happy,” he proclaimed at last.
+
+“Yes?” Helen enquired, sticking in her needle.
+
+“Marriage, I suppose,” said St. John.
+
+“Yes,” said Helen, gently drawing her needle out.
+
+“Children?” St. John enquired.
+
+“Yes,” said Helen, sticking her needle in again. “I don’t know why I’m
+happy,” she suddenly laughed, looking him full in the face. There was a
+considerable pause.
+
+“There’s an abyss between us,” said St. John. His voice sounded as if
+it issued from the depths of a cavern in the rocks. “You’re infinitely
+simpler than I am. Women always are, of course. That’s the difficulty.
+One never knows how a woman gets there. Supposing all the time you’re
+thinking, ‘Oh, what a morbid young man!’”
+
+Helen sat and looked at him with her needle in her hand. From her
+position she saw his head in front of the dark pyramid of a
+magnolia-tree. With one foot raised on the rung of a chair, and her
+elbow out in the attitude for sewing, her own figure possessed the
+sublimity of a woman’s of the early world, spinning the thread of
+fate—the sublimity possessed by many women of the present day who fall
+into the attitude required by scrubbing or sewing. St. John looked at
+her.
+
+“I suppose you’ve never paid any a compliment in the course of your
+life,” he said irrelevantly.
+
+“I spoil Ridley rather,” Helen considered.
+
+“I’m going to ask you point blank—do you like me?”
+
+After a certain pause, she replied, “Yes, certainly.”
+
+“Thank God!” he exclaimed. “That’s one mercy. You see,” he continued
+with emotion, “I’d rather you liked me than any one I’ve ever met.”
+
+“What about the five philosophers?” said Helen, with a laugh, stitching
+firmly and swiftly at her canvas. “I wish you’d describe them.”
+
+Hirst had no particular wish to describe them, but when he began to
+consider them he found himself soothed and strengthened. Far away on
+the other side of the world as they were, in smoky rooms, and grey
+medieval courts, they appeared remarkable figures, free-spoken men with
+whom one could be at ease; incomparably more subtle in emotion than the
+people here. They gave him, certainly, what no woman could give him,
+not Helen even. Warming at the thought of them, he went on to lay his
+case before Mrs. Ambrose. Should he stay on at Cambridge or should he
+go to the Bar? One day he thought one thing, another day another. Helen
+listened attentively. At last, without any preface, she pronounced her
+decision.
+
+“Leave Cambridge and go to the Bar,” she said. He pressed her for her
+reasons.
+
+“I think you’d enjoy London more,” she said. It did not seem a very
+subtle reason, but she appeared to think it sufficient. She looked at
+him against the background of flowering magnolia. There was something
+curious in the sight. Perhaps it was that the heavy wax-like flowers
+were so smooth and inarticulate, and his face—he had thrown his hat
+away, his hair was rumpled, he held his eye-glasses in his hand, so
+that a red mark appeared on either side of his nose—was so worried and
+garrulous. It was a beautiful bush, spreading very widely, and all the
+time she had sat there talking she had been noticing the patches of
+shade and the shape of the leaves, and the way the great white flowers
+sat in the midst of the green. She had noticed it half-consciously,
+nevertheless the pattern had become part of their talk. She laid down
+her sewing, and began to walk up and down the garden, and Hirst rose
+too and paced by her side. He was rather disturbed, uncomfortable, and
+full of thought. Neither of them spoke.
+
+The sun was beginning to go down, and a change had come over the
+mountains, as if they were robbed of their earthly substance, and
+composed merely of intense blue mist. Long thin clouds of flamingo red,
+with edges like the edges of curled ostrich feathers, lay up and down
+the sky at different altitudes. The roofs of the town seemed to have
+sunk lower than usual; the cypresses appeared very black between the
+roofs, and the roofs themselves were brown and white. As usual in the
+evening, single cries and single bells became audible rising from
+beneath.
+
+St. John stopped suddenly.
+
+“Well, you must take the responsibility,” he said. “I’ve made up my
+mind; I shall go to the Bar.”
+
+His words were very serious, almost emotional; they recalled Helen
+after a second’s hesitation.
+
+“I’m sure you’re right,” she said warmly, and shook the hand he held
+out. “You’ll be a great man, I’m certain.”
+
+Then, as if to make him look at the scene, she swept her hand round the
+immense circumference of the view. From the sea, over the roofs of the
+town, across the crests of the mountains, over the river and the plain,
+and again across the crests of the mountains it swept until it reached
+the villa, the garden, the magnolia-tree, and the figures of Hirst and
+herself standing together, when it dropped to her side.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XVI
+
+
+Hewet and Rachel had long ago reached the particular place on the edge
+of the cliff where, looking down into the sea, you might chance on
+jelly-fish and dolphins. Looking the other way, the vast expanse of
+land gave them a sensation which is given by no view, however extended,
+in England; the villages and the hills there having names, and the
+farthest horizon of hills as often as not dipping and showing a line of
+mist which is the sea; here the view was one of infinite sun-dried
+earth, earth pointed in pinnacles, heaped in vast barriers, earth
+widening and spreading away and away like the immense floor of the sea,
+earth chequered by day and by night, and partitioned into different
+lands, where famous cities were founded, and the races of men changed
+from dark savages to white civilised men, and back to dark savages
+again. Perhaps their English blood made this prospect uncomfortably
+impersonal and hostile to them, for having once turned their faces that
+way they next turned them to the sea, and for the rest of the time sat
+looking at the sea. The sea, though it was a thin and sparkling water
+here, which seemed incapable of surge or anger, eventually narrowed
+itself, clouded its pure tint with grey, and swirled through narrow
+channels and dashed in a shiver of broken waters against massive
+granite rocks. It was this sea that flowed up to the mouth of the
+Thames; and the Thames washed the roots of the city of London.
+
+Hewet’s thoughts had followed some such course as this, for the first
+thing he said as they stood on the edge of the cliff was—
+
+“I’d like to be in England!”
+
+Rachel lay down on her elbow, and parted the tall grasses which grew on
+the edge, so that she might have a clear view. The water was very calm;
+rocking up and down at the base of the cliff, and so clear that one
+could see the red of the stones at the bottom of it. So it had been at
+the birth of the world, and so it had remained ever since. Probably no
+human being had ever broken that water with boat or with body. Obeying
+some impulse, she determined to mar that eternity of peace, and threw
+the largest pebble she could find. It struck the water, and the ripples
+spread out and out. Hewet looked down too.
+
+“It’s wonderful,” he said, as they widened and ceased. The freshness
+and the newness seemed to him wonderful. He threw a pebble next. There
+was scarcely any sound.
+
+“But England,” Rachel murmured in the absorbed tone of one whose eyes
+are concentrated upon some sight. “What d’you want with England?”
+
+“My friends chiefly,” he said, “and all the things one does.”
+
+He could look at Rachel without her noticing it. She was still absorbed
+in the water and the exquisitely pleasant sensations which a little
+depth of the sea washing over rocks suggests. He noticed that she was
+wearing a dress of deep blue colour, made of a soft thin cotton stuff,
+which clung to the shape of her body. It was a body with the angles and
+hollows of a young woman’s body not yet developed, but in no way
+distorted, and thus interesting and even lovable. Raising his eyes
+Hewet observed her head; she had taken her hat off, and the face rested
+on her hand. As she looked down into the sea, her lips were slightly
+parted. The expression was one of childlike intentness, as if she were
+watching for a fish to swim past over the clear red rocks. Nevertheless
+her twenty-four years of life had given her a look of reserve. Her
+hand, which lay on the ground, the fingers curling slightly in, was
+well shaped and competent; the square-tipped and nervous fingers were
+the fingers of a musician. With something like anguish Hewet realised
+that, far from being unattractive, her body was very attractive to him.
+She looked up suddenly. Her eyes were full of eagerness and interest.
+
+“You write novels?” she asked.
+
+For the moment he could not think what he was saying. He was overcome
+with the desire to hold her in his arms.
+
+“Oh yes,” he said. “That is, I want to write them.”
+
+She would not take her large grey eyes off his face.
+
+“Novels,” she repeated. “Why do you write novels? You ought to write
+music. Music, you see”—she shifted her eyes, and became less desirable
+as her brain began to work, inflicting a certain change upon her
+face—“music goes straight for things. It says all there is to say at
+once. With writing it seems to me there’s so much”—she paused for an
+expression, and rubbed her fingers in the earth—“scratching on the
+matchbox. Most of the time when I was reading Gibbon this afternoon I
+was horribly, oh infernally, damnably bored!” She gave a shake of
+laughter, looking at Hewet, who laughed too.
+
+“_I_ shan’t lend you books,” he remarked.
+
+“Why is it,” Rachel continued, “that I can laugh at Mr. Hirst to you,
+but not to his face? At tea I was completely overwhelmed, not by his
+ugliness—by his mind.” She enclosed a circle in the air with her hands.
+She realised with a great sense of comfort how easily she could talk to
+Hewet, those thorns or ragged corners which tear the surface of some
+relationships being smoothed away.
+
+“So I observed,” said Hewet. “That’s a thing that never ceases to amaze
+me.” He had recovered his composure to such an extent that he could
+light and smoke a cigarette, and feeling her ease, became happy and
+easy himself.
+
+“The respect that women, even well-educated, very able women, have for
+men,” he went on. “I believe we must have the sort of power over you
+that we’re said to have over horses. They see us three times as big as
+we are or they’d never obey us. For that very reason, I’m inclined to
+doubt that you’ll ever do anything even when you have the vote.” He
+looked at her reflectively. She appeared very smooth and sensitive and
+young. “It’ll take at least six generations before you’re sufficiently
+thick-skinned to go into law courts and business offices. Consider what
+a bully the ordinary man is,” he continued, “the ordinary hard-working,
+rather ambitious solicitor or man of business with a family to bring up
+and a certain position to maintain. And then, of course, the daughters
+have to give way to the sons; the sons have to be educated; they have
+to bully and shove for their wives and families, and so it all comes
+over again. And meanwhile there are the women in the background. . . .
+Do you really think that the vote will do you any good?”
+
+“The vote?” Rachel repeated. She had to visualise it as a little bit of
+paper which she dropped into a box before she understood his question,
+and looking at each other they smiled at something absurd in the
+question.
+
+“Not to me,” she said. “But I play the piano. . . . Are men really like
+that?” she asked, returning to the question that interested her. “I’m
+not afraid of you.” She looked at him easily.
+
+“Oh, I’m different,” Hewet replied. “I’ve got between six and seven
+hundred a year of my own. And then no one takes a novelist seriously,
+thank heavens. There’s no doubt it helps to make up for the drudgery of
+a profession if a man’s taken very, very seriously by every one—if he
+gets appointments, and has offices and a title, and lots of letters
+after his name, and bits of ribbon and degrees. I don’t grudge it ’em,
+though sometimes it comes over me—what an amazing concoction! What a
+miracle the masculine conception of life is—judges, civil servants,
+army, navy, Houses of Parliament, lord mayors—what a world we’ve made
+of it! Look at Hirst now. I assure you,” he said, “not a day’s passed
+since we came here without a discussion as to whether he’s to stay on
+at Cambridge or to go to the Bar. It’s his career—his sacred career.
+And if I’ve heard it twenty times, I’m sure his mother and sister have
+heard it five hundred times. Can’t you imagine the family conclaves,
+and the sister told to run out and feed the rabbits because St. John
+must have the school-room to himself—‘St. John’s working,’ ‘St. John
+wants his tea brought to him.’ Don’t you know the kind of thing? No
+wonder that St. John thinks it a matter of considerable importance. It
+is too. He has to earn his living. But St. John’s sister—” Hewet puffed
+in silence. “No one takes her seriously, poor dear. She feeds the
+rabbits.”
+
+“Yes,” said Rachel. “I’ve fed rabbits for twenty-four years; it seems
+odd now.” She looked meditative, and Hewet, who had been talking much
+at random and instinctively adopting the feminine point of view, saw
+that she would now talk about herself, which was what he wanted, for so
+they might come to know each other.
+
+She looked back meditatively upon her past life.
+
+“How do you spend your day?” he asked.
+
+She meditated still. When she thought of their day it seemed to her it
+was cut into four pieces by their meals. These divisions were
+absolutely rigid, the contents of the day having to accommodate
+themselves within the four rigid bars. Looking back at her life, that
+was what she saw.
+
+“Breakfast nine; luncheon one; tea five; dinner eight,” she said.
+
+“Well,” said Hewet, “what d’you do in the morning?”
+
+“I need to play the piano for hours and hours.”
+
+“And after luncheon?”
+
+“Then I went shopping with one of my aunts. Or we went to see some one,
+or we took a message; or we did something that had to be done—the taps
+might be leaking. They visit the poor a good deal—old char-women with
+bad legs, women who want tickets for hospitals. Or I used to walk in
+the park by myself. And after tea people sometimes called; or in summer
+we sat in the garden or played croquet; in winter I read aloud, while
+they worked; after dinner I played the piano and they wrote letters. If
+father was at home we had friends of his to dinner, and about once a
+month we went up to the play. Every now and then we dined out;
+sometimes I went to a dance in London, but that was difficult because
+of getting back. The people we saw were old family friends, and
+relations, but we didn’t see many people. There was the clergyman, Mr.
+Pepper, and the Hunts. Father generally wanted to be quiet when he came
+home, because he works very hard at Hull. Also my aunts aren’t very
+strong. A house takes up a lot of time if you do it properly. Our
+servants were always bad, and so Aunt Lucy used to do a good deal in
+the kitchen, and Aunt Clara, I think, spent most of the morning dusting
+the drawing-room and going through the linen and silver. Then there
+were the dogs. They had to be exercised, besides being washed and
+brushed. Now Sandy’s dead, but Aunt Clara has a very old cockatoo that
+came from India. Everything in our house,” she exclaimed, “comes from
+somewhere! It’s full of old furniture, not really old, Victorian,
+things mother’s family had or father’s family had, which they didn’t
+like to get rid of, I suppose, though we’ve really no room for them.
+It’s rather a nice house,” she continued, “except that it’s a little
+dingy—dull I should say.” She called up before her eyes a vision of the
+drawing-room at home; it was a large oblong room, with a square window
+opening on the garden. Green plush chairs stood against the wall; there
+was a heavy carved book-case, with glass doors, and a general
+impression of faded sofa covers, large spaces of pale green, and
+baskets with pieces of wool-work dropping out of them. Photographs from
+old Italian masterpieces hung on the walls, and views of Venetian
+bridges and Swedish waterfalls which members of the family had seen
+years ago. There were also one or two portraits of fathers and
+grandmothers, and an engraving of John Stuart Mill, after the picture
+by Watts. It was a room without definite character, being neither
+typically and openly hideous, nor strenuously artistic, nor really
+comfortable. Rachel roused herself from the contemplation of this
+familiar picture.
+
+“But this isn’t very interesting for you,” she said, looking up.
+
+“Good Lord!” Hewet exclaimed. “I’ve never been so much interested in my
+life.” She then realised that while she had been thinking of Richmond,
+his eyes had never left her face. The knowledge of this excited her.
+
+“Go on, please go on,” he urged. “Let’s imagine it’s a Wednesday.
+You’re all at luncheon. You sit there, and Aunt Lucy there, and Aunt
+Clara here”; he arranged three pebbles on the grass between them.
+
+“Aunt Clara carves the neck of lamb,” Rachel continued. She fixed her
+gaze upon the pebbles. “There’s a very ugly yellow china stand in front
+of me, called a dumb waiter, on which are three dishes, one for
+biscuits, one for butter, and one for cheese. There’s a pot of ferns.
+Then there’s Blanche the maid, who snuffles because of her nose. We
+talk—oh yes, it’s Aunt Lucy’s afternoon at Walworth, so we’re rather
+quick over luncheon. She goes off. She has a purple bag, and a black
+notebook. Aunt Clara has what they call a G.F.S. meeting in the
+drawing-room on Wednesday, so I take the dogs out. I go up Richmond
+Hill, along the terrace, into the park. It’s the 18th of April—the same
+day as it is here. It’s spring in England. The ground is rather damp.
+However, I cross the road and get on to the grass and we walk along,
+and I sing as I always do when I’m alone, until we come to the open
+place where you can see the whole of London beneath you on a clear day.
+Hampstead Church spire there, Westminster Cathedral over there, and
+factory chimneys about here. There’s generally a haze over the low
+parts of London; but it’s often blue over the park when London’s in a
+mist. It’s the open place that the balloons cross going over to
+Hurlingham. They’re pale yellow. Well, then, it smells very good,
+particularly if they happen to be burning wood in the keeper’s lodge
+which is there. I could tell you now how to get from place to place,
+and exactly what trees you’d pass, and where you’d cross the roads. You
+see, I played there when I was small. Spring is good, but it’s best in
+the autumn when the deer are barking; then it gets dusky, and I go back
+through the streets, and you can’t see people properly; they come past
+very quick, you just see their faces and then they’re gone—that’s what
+I like—and no one knows in the least what you’re doing—”
+
+“But you have to be back for tea, I suppose?” Hewet checked her.
+
+“Tea? Oh yes. Five o’clock. Then I say what I’ve done, and my aunts say
+what they’ve done, and perhaps some one comes in: Mrs. Hunt, let’s
+suppose. She’s an old lady with a lame leg. She has or she once had
+eight children; so we ask after them. They’re all over the world; so we
+ask where they are, and sometimes they’re ill, or they’re stationed in
+a cholera district, or in some place where it only rains once in five
+months. Mrs. Hunt,” she said with a smile, “had a son who was hugged to
+death by a bear.”
+
+Here she stopped and looked at Hewet to see whether he was amused by
+the same things that amused her. She was reassured. But she thought it
+necessary to apologise again; she had been talking too much.
+
+“You can’t conceive how it interests me,” he said. Indeed, his
+cigarette had gone out, and he had to light another.
+
+“Why does it interest you?” she asked.
+
+“Partly because you’re a woman,” he replied. When he said this, Rachel,
+who had become oblivious of anything, and had reverted to a childlike
+state of interest and pleasure, lost her freedom and became
+self-conscious. She felt herself at once singular and under
+observation, as she felt with St. John Hirst. She was about to launch
+into an argument which would have made them both feel bitterly against
+each other, and to define sensations which had no such importance as
+words were bound to give them when Hewet led her thoughts in a
+different direction.
+
+“I’ve often walked along the streets where people live all in a row,
+and one house is exactly like another house, and wondered what on earth
+the women were doing inside,” he said. “Just consider: it’s the
+beginning of the twentieth century, and until a few years ago no woman
+had ever come out by herself and said things at all. There it was going
+on in the background, for all those thousands of years, this curious
+silent unrepresented life. Of course we’re always writing about
+women—abusing them, or jeering at them, or worshipping them; but it’s
+never come from women themselves. I believe we still don’t know in the
+least how they live, or what they feel, or what they do precisely. If
+one’s a man, the only confidences one gets are from young women about
+their love affairs. But the lives of women of forty, of unmarried
+women, of working women, of women who keep shops and bring up children,
+of women like your aunts or Mrs. Thornbury or Miss Allan—one knows
+nothing whatever about them. They won’t tell you. Either they’re
+afraid, or they’ve got a way of treating men. It’s the man’s view
+that’s represented, you see. Think of a railway train: fifteen
+carriages for men who want to smoke. Doesn’t it make your blood boil?
+If I were a woman I’d blow some one’s brains out. Don’t you laugh at us
+a great deal? Don’t you think it all a great humbug? You, I mean—how
+does it all strike you?”
+
+His determination to know, while it gave meaning to their talk,
+hampered her; he seemed to press further and further, and made it
+appear so important. She took some time to answer, and during that time
+she went over and over the course of her twenty-four years, lighting
+now on one point, now on another—on her aunts, her mother, her father,
+and at last her mind fixed upon her aunts and her father, and she tried
+to describe them as at this distance they appeared to her.
+
+They were very much afraid of her father. He was a great dim force in
+the house, by means of which they held on to the great world which is
+represented every morning in the _Times_. But the real life of the
+house was something quite different from this. It went on independently
+of Mr. Vinrace, and tended to hide itself from him. He was
+good-humoured towards them, but contemptuous. She had always taken it
+for granted that his point of view was just, and founded upon an ideal
+scale of things where the life of one person was absolutely more
+important than the life of another, and that in that scale they were of
+much less importance than he was. But did she really believe that?
+Hewet’s words made her think. She always submitted to her father, just
+as they did, but it was her aunts who influenced her really; her aunts
+who built up the fine, closely woven substance of their life at home.
+They were less splendid but more natural than her father was. All her
+rages had been against them; it was their world with its four meals,
+its punctuality, and servants on the stairs at half-past ten, that she
+examined so closely and wanted so vehemently to smash to atoms.
+Following these thoughts she looked up and said:
+
+“And there’s a sort of beauty in it—there they are at Richmond at this
+very moment building things up. They’re all wrong, perhaps, but there’s
+a sort of beauty in it,” she repeated. “It’s so unconscious, so modest.
+And yet they feel things. They do mind if people die. Old spinsters are
+always doing things. I don’t quite know what they do. Only that was
+what I felt when I lived with them. It was very real.”
+
+She reviewed their little journeys to and fro, to Walworth, to
+charwomen with bad legs, to meetings for this and that, their minute
+acts of charity and unselfishness which flowered punctually from a
+definite view of what they ought to do, their friendships, their tastes
+and habits; she saw all these things like grains of sand falling,
+falling through innumerable days, making an atmosphere and building up
+a solid mass, a background. Hewet observed her as she considered this.
+
+“Were you happy?” he demanded.
+
+Again she had become absorbed in something else, and he called her back
+to an unusually vivid consciousness of herself.
+
+“I was both,” she replied. “I was happy and I was miserable. You’ve no
+conception what it’s like—to be a young woman.” She looked straight at
+him. “There are terrors and agonies,” she said, keeping her eye on him
+as if to detect the slightest hint of laughter.
+
+“I can believe it,” he said. He returned her look with perfect
+sincerity.
+
+“Women one sees in the streets,” she said.
+
+“Prostitutes?”
+
+“Men kissing one.”
+
+He nodded his head.
+
+“You were never told?”
+
+She shook her head.
+
+“And then,” she began and stopped. Here came in the great space of life
+into which no one had ever penetrated. All that she had been saying
+about her father and her aunts and walks in Richmond Park, and what
+they did from hour to hour, was merely on the surface. Hewet was
+watching her. Did he demand that she should describe that also? Why did
+he sit so near and keep his eye on her? Why did they not have done with
+this searching and agony? Why did they not kiss each other simply? She
+wished to kiss him. But all the time she went on spinning out words.
+
+“A girl is more lonely than a boy. No one cares in the least what she
+does. Nothing’s expected of her. Unless one’s very pretty people don’t
+listen to what you say. . . . And that is what I like,” she added
+energetically, as if the memory were very happy. “I like walking in
+Richmond Park and singing to myself and knowing it doesn’t matter a
+damn to anybody. I like seeing things go on—as we saw you that night
+when you didn’t see us—I love the freedom of it—it’s like being the
+wind or the sea.” She turned with a curious fling of her hands and
+looked at the sea. It was still very blue, dancing away as far as the
+eye could reach, but the light on it was yellower, and the clouds were
+turning flamingo red.
+
+A feeling of intense depression crossed Hewet’s mind as she spoke. It
+seemed plain that she would never care for one person rather than
+another; she was evidently quite indifferent to him; they seemed to
+come very near, and then they were as far apart as ever again; and her
+gesture as she turned away had been oddly beautiful.
+
+“Nonsense,” he said abruptly. “You like people. You like admiration.
+Your real grudge against Hirst is that he doesn’t admire you.”
+
+She made no answer for some time. Then she said:
+
+“That’s probably true. Of course I like people—I like almost every one
+I’ve ever met.”
+
+She turned her back on the sea and regarded Hewet with friendly if
+critical eyes. He was good-looking in the sense that he had always had
+a sufficiency of beef to eat and fresh air to breathe. His head was
+big; the eyes were also large; though generally vague they could be
+forcible; and the lips were sensitive. One might account him a man of
+considerable passion and fitful energy, likely to be at the mercy of
+moods which had little relation to facts; at once tolerant and
+fastidious. The breadth of his forehead showed capacity for thought.
+The interest with which Rachel looked at him was heard in her voice.
+
+“What novels do you write?” she asked.
+
+“I want to write a novel about Silence,” he said; “the things people
+don’t say. But the difficulty is immense.” He sighed. “However, you
+don’t care,” he continued. He looked at her almost severely. “Nobody
+cares. All you read a novel for is to see what sort of person the
+writer is, and, if you know him, which of his friends he’s put in. As
+for the novel itself, the whole conception, the way one’s seen the
+thing, felt about it, make it stand in relation to other things, not
+one in a million cares for that. And yet I sometimes wonder whether
+there’s anything else in the whole world worth doing. These other
+people,” he indicated the hotel, “are always wanting something they
+can’t get. But there’s an extraordinary satisfaction in writing, even
+in the attempt to write. What you said just now is true: one doesn’t
+want to be things; one wants merely to be allowed to see them.”
+
+Some of the satisfaction of which he spoke came into his face as he
+gazed out to sea.
+
+It was Rachel’s turn now to feel depressed. As he talked of writing he
+had become suddenly impersonal. He might never care for any one; all
+that desire to know her and get at her, which she had felt pressing on
+her almost painfully, had completely vanished.
+
+“Are you a good writer?” she asked.
+
+“Yes,” he said. “I’m not first-rate, of course; I’m good second-rate;
+about as good as Thackeray, I should say.”
+
+Rachel was amazed. For one thing it amazed her to hear Thackeray called
+second-rate; and then she could not widen her point of view to believe
+that there could be great writers in existence at the present day, or
+if there were, that any one she knew could be a great writer, and his
+self-confidence astounded her, and he became more and more remote.
+
+“My other novel,” Hewet continued, “is about a young man who is
+obsessed by an idea—the idea of being a gentleman. He manages to exist
+at Cambridge on a hundred pounds a year. He has a coat; it was once a
+very good coat. But the trousers—they’re not so good. Well, he goes up
+to London, gets into good society, owing to an early-morning adventure
+on the banks of the Serpentine. He is led into telling lies—my idea,
+you see, is to show the gradual corruption of the soul—calls himself
+the son of some great landed proprietor in Devonshire. Meanwhile the
+coat becomes older and older, and he hardly dares to wear the trousers.
+Can’t you imagine the wretched man, after some splendid evening of
+debauchery, contemplating these garments—hanging them over the end of
+the bed, arranging them now in full light, now in shade, and wondering
+whether they will survive him, or he will survive them? Thoughts of
+suicide cross his mind. He has a friend, too, a man who somehow
+subsists upon selling small birds, for which he sets traps in the
+fields near Uxbridge. They’re scholars, both of them. I know one or two
+wretched starving creatures like that who quote Aristotle at you over a
+fried herring and a pint of porter. Fashionable life, too, I have to
+represent at some length, in order to show my hero under all
+circumstances. Lady Theo Bingham Bingley, whose bay mare he had the
+good fortune to stop, is the daughter of a very fine old Tory peer. I’m
+going to describe the kind of parties I once went to—the fashionable
+intellectuals, you know, who like to have the latest book on their
+tables. They give parties, river parties, parties where you play games.
+There’s no difficulty in conceiving incidents; the difficulty is to put
+them into shape—not to get run away with, as Lady Theo was. It ended
+disastrously for her, poor woman, for the book, as I planned it, was
+going to end in profound and sordid respectability. Disowned by her
+father, she marries my hero, and they live in a snug little villa
+outside Croydon, in which town he is set up as a house agent. He never
+succeeds in becoming a real gentleman after all. That’s the interesting
+part of it. Does it seem to you the kind of book you’d like to read?”
+he enquired; “or perhaps you’d like my Stuart tragedy better,” he
+continued, without waiting for her to answer him. “My idea is that
+there’s a certain quality of beauty in the past, which the ordinary
+historical novelist completely ruins by his absurd conventions. The
+moon becomes the Regent of the Skies. People clap spurs to their
+horses, and so on. I’m going to treat people as though they were
+exactly the same as we are. The advantage is that, detached from modern
+conditions, one can make them more intense and more abstract than
+people who live as we do.”
+
+Rachel had listened to all this with attention, but with a certain
+amount of bewilderment. They both sat thinking their own thoughts.
+
+“I’m not like Hirst,” said Hewet, after a pause; he spoke meditatively;
+“I don’t see circles of chalk between people’s feet. I sometimes wish I
+did. It seems to me so tremendously complicated and confused. One can’t
+come to any decision at all; one’s less and less capable of making
+judgments. D’you find that? And then one never knows what any one
+feels. We’re all in the dark. We try to find out, but can you imagine
+anything more ludicrous than one person’s opinion of another person?
+One goes along thinking one knows; but one really doesn’t know.”
+
+As he said this he was leaning on his elbow arranging and rearranging
+in the grass the stones which had represented Rachel and her aunts at
+luncheon. He was speaking as much to himself as to Rachel. He was
+reasoning against the desire, which had returned with intensity, to
+take her in his arms; to have done with indirectness; to explain
+exactly what he felt. What he said was against his belief; all the
+things that were important about her he knew; he felt them in the air
+around them; but he said nothing; he went on arranging the stones.
+
+“I like you; d’you like me?” Rachel suddenly observed.
+
+“I like you immensely,” Hewet replied, speaking with the relief of a
+person who is unexpectedly given an opportunity of saying what he wants
+to say. He stopped moving the pebbles.
+
+“Mightn’t we call each other Rachel and Terence?” he asked.
+
+“Terence,” Rachel repeated. “Terence—that’s like the cry of an owl.”
+
+She looked up with a sudden rush of delight, and in looking at Terence
+with eyes widened by pleasure she was struck by the change that had
+come over the sky behind them. The substantial blue day had faded to a
+paler and more ethereal blue; the clouds were pink, far away and
+closely packed together; and the peace of evening had replaced the heat
+of the southern afternoon, in which they had started on their walk.
+
+“It must be late!” she exclaimed.
+
+It was nearly eight o’clock.
+
+“But eight o’clock doesn’t count here, does it?” Terence asked, as they
+got up and turned inland again. They began to walk rather quickly down
+the hill on a little path between the olive trees.
+
+They felt more intimate because they shared the knowledge of what eight
+o’clock in Richmond meant. Terence walked in front, for there was not
+room for them side by side.
+
+“What I want to do in writing novels is very much what you want to do
+when you play the piano, I expect,” he began, turning and speaking over
+his shoulder. “We want to find out what’s behind things, don’t we?—Look
+at the lights down there,” he continued, “scattered about anyhow.
+Things I feel come to me like lights. . . . I want to combine them. . .
+. Have you ever seen fireworks that make figures? . . . I want to make
+figures. . . . Is that what you want to do?”
+
+Now they were out on the road and could walk side by side.
+
+“When I play the piano? Music is different. . . . But I see what you
+mean.” They tried to invent theories and to make their theories agree.
+As Hewet had no knowledge of music, Rachel took his stick and drew
+figures in the thin white dust to explain how Bach wrote his fugues.
+
+“My musical gift was ruined,” he explained, as they walked on after one
+of these demonstrations, “by the village organist at home, who had
+invented a system of notation which he tried to teach me, with the
+result that I never got to the tune-playing at all. My mother thought
+music wasn’t manly for boys; she wanted me to kill rats and
+birds—that’s the worst of living in the country. We live in Devonshire.
+It’s the loveliest place in the world. Only—it’s always difficult at
+home when one’s grown up. I’d like you to know one of my sisters. . . .
+Oh, here’s your gate—” He pushed it open. They paused for a moment. She
+could not ask him to come in. She could not say that she hoped they
+would meet again; there was nothing to be said, and so without a word
+she went through the gate, and was soon invisible. Directly Hewet lost
+sight of her, he felt the old discomfort return, even more strongly
+than before. Their talk had been interrupted in the middle, just as he
+was beginning to say the things he wanted to say. After all, what had
+they been able to say? He ran his mind over the things they had said,
+the random, unnecessary things which had eddied round and round and
+used up all the time, and drawn them so close together and flung them
+so far apart, and left him in the end unsatisfied, ignorant still of
+what she felt and of what she was like. What was the use of talking,
+talking, merely talking?
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XVII
+
+
+It was now the height of the season, and every ship that came from
+England left a few people on the shores of Santa Marina who drove up to
+the hotel. The fact that the Ambroses had a house where one could
+escape momentarily from the slightly inhuman atmosphere of an hotel was
+a source of genuine pleasure not only to Hirst and Hewet, but to the
+Elliots, the Thornburys, the Flushings, Miss Allan, Evelyn M., together
+with other people whose identity was so little developed that the
+Ambroses did not discover that they possessed names. By degrees there
+was established a kind of correspondence between the two houses, the
+big and the small, so that at most hours of the day one house could
+guess what was going on in the other, and the words “the villa” and
+“the hotel” called up the idea of two separate systems of life.
+Acquaintances showed signs of developing into friends, for that one tie
+to Mrs. Parry’s drawing-room had inevitably split into many other ties
+attached to different parts of England, and sometimes these alliances
+seemed cynically fragile, and sometimes painfully acute, lacking as
+they did the supporting background of organised English life. One night
+when the moon was round between the trees, Evelyn M. told Helen the
+story of her life, and claimed her everlasting friendship; on another
+occasion, merely because of a sigh, or a pause, or a word thoughtlessly
+dropped, poor Mrs. Elliot left the villa half in tears, vowing never
+again to meet the cold and scornful woman who had insulted her, and in
+truth, meet again they never did. It did not seem worth while to piece
+together so slight a friendship.
+
+Hewet, indeed, might have found excellent material at this time up at
+the villa for some chapters in the novel which was to be called
+“Silence, or the Things People don’t say.” Helen and Rachel had become
+very silent. Having detected, as she thought, a secret, and judging
+that Rachel meant to keep it from her, Mrs. Ambrose respected it
+carefully, but from that cause, though unintentionally, a curious
+atmosphere of reserve grew up between them. Instead of sharing their
+views upon all subjects, and plunging after an idea wherever it might
+lead, they spoke chiefly in comment upon the people they saw, and the
+secret between them made itself felt in what they said even of
+Thornburys and Elliots. Always calm and unemotional in her judgments,
+Mrs. Ambrose was now inclined to be definitely pessimistic. She was not
+severe upon individuals so much as incredulous of the kindness of
+destiny, fate, what happens in the long run, and apt to insist that
+this was generally adverse to people in proportion as they deserved
+well. Even this theory she was ready to discard in favour of one which
+made chaos triumphant, things happening for no reason at all, and every
+one groping about in illusion and ignorance. With a certain pleasure
+she developed these views to her niece, taking a letter from home as
+her test: which gave good news, but might just as well have given bad.
+How did she know that at this very moment both her children were not
+lying dead, crushed by motor omnibuses? “It’s happening to somebody:
+why shouldn’t it happen to me?” she would argue, her face taking on the
+stoical expression of anticipated sorrow. However sincere these views
+may have been, they were undoubtedly called forth by the irrational
+state of her niece’s mind. It was so fluctuating, and went so quickly
+from joy to despair, that it seemed necessary to confront it with some
+stable opinion which naturally became dark as well as stable. Perhaps
+Mrs. Ambrose had some idea that in leading the talk into these quarters
+she might discover what was in Rachel’s mind, but it was difficult to
+judge, for sometimes she would agree with the gloomiest thing that was
+said, at other times she refused to listen, and rammed Helen’s theories
+down her throat with laughter, chatter, ridicule of the wildest, and
+fierce bursts of anger even at what she called the “croaking of a raven
+in the mud.”
+
+“It’s hard enough without that,” she asserted.
+
+“What’s hard?” Helen demanded.
+
+“Life,” she replied, and then they both became silent.
+
+Helen might draw her own conclusions as to why life was hard, as to why
+an hour later, perhaps, life was something so wonderful and vivid that
+the eyes of Rachel beholding it were positively exhilarating to a
+spectator. True to her creed, she did not attempt to interfere,
+although there were enough of those weak moments of depression to make
+it perfectly easy for a less scrupulous person to press through and
+know all, and perhaps Rachel was sorry that she did not choose. All
+these moods ran themselves into one general effect, which Helen
+compared to the sliding of a river, quick, quicker, quicker still, as
+it races to a waterfall. Her instinct was to cry out Stop! but even had
+there been any use in crying Stop! she would have refrained, thinking
+it best that things should take their way, the water racing because the
+earth was shaped to make it race.
+
+It seemed that Rachel herself had no suspicion that she was watched, or
+that there was anything in her manner likely to draw attention to her.
+What had happened to her she did not know. Her mind was very much in
+the condition of the racing water to which Helen compared it. She
+wanted to see Terence; she was perpetually wishing to see him when he
+was not there; it was an agony to miss seeing him; agonies were strewn
+all about her day on account of him, but she never asked herself what
+this force driving through her life arose from. She thought of no
+result any more than a tree perpetually pressed downwards by the wind
+considers the result of being pressed downwards by the wind.
+
+During the two or three weeks which had passed since their walk, half a
+dozen notes from him had accumulated in her drawer. She would read
+them, and spend the whole morning in a daze of happiness; the sunny
+land outside the window being no less capable of analysing its own
+colour and heat than she was of analysing hers. In these moods she
+found it impossible to read or play the piano, even to move being
+beyond her inclination. The time passed without her noticing it. When
+it was dark she was drawn to the window by the lights of the hotel. A
+light that went in and out was the light in Terence’s window: there he
+sat, reading perhaps, or now he was walking up and down pulling out one
+book after another; and now he was seated in his chair again, and she
+tried to imagine what he was thinking about. The steady lights marked
+the rooms where Terence sat with people moving round him. Every one who
+stayed in the hotel had a peculiar romance and interest about them.
+They were not ordinary people. She would attribute wisdom to Mrs.
+Elliot, beauty to Susan Warrington, a splendid vitality to Evelyn M.,
+because Terence spoke to them. As unreflecting and pervasive were the
+moods of depression. Her mind was as the landscape outside when dark
+beneath clouds and straitly lashed by wind and hail. Again she would
+sit passive in her chair exposed to pain, and Helen’s fantastical or
+gloomy words were like so many darts goading her to cry out against the
+hardness of life. Best of all were the moods when for no reason again
+this stress of feeling slackened, and life went on as usual, only with
+a joy and colour in its events that was unknown before; they had a
+significance like that which she had seen in the tree: the nights were
+black bars separating her from the days; she would have liked to run
+all the days into one long continuity of sensation. Although these
+moods were directly or indirectly caused by the presence of Terence or
+the thought of him, she never said to herself that she was in love with
+him, or considered what was to happen if she continued to feel such
+things, so that Helen’s image of the river sliding on to the waterfall
+had a great likeness to the facts, and the alarm which Helen sometimes
+felt was justified.
+
+In her curious condition of unanalysed sensations she was incapable of
+making a plan which should have any effect upon her state of mind. She
+abandoned herself to the mercy of accidents, missing Terence one day,
+meeting him the next, receiving his letters always with a start of
+surprise. Any woman experienced in the progress of courtship would have
+come by certain opinions from all this which would have given her at
+least a theory to go upon; but no one had ever been in love with
+Rachel, and she had never been in love with any one. Moreover, none of
+the books she read, from _Wuthering Heights_ to _Man and Superman_, and
+the plays of Ibsen, suggested from their analysis of love that what
+their heroines felt was what she was feeling now. It seemed to her that
+her sensations had no name.
+
+She met Terence frequently. When they did not meet, he was apt to send
+a note with a book or about a book, for he had not been able after all
+to neglect that approach to intimacy. But sometimes he did not come or
+did not write for several days at a time. Again when they met their
+meeting might be one of inspiriting joy or of harassing despair. Over
+all their partings hung the sense of interruption, leaving them both
+unsatisfied, though ignorant that the other shared the feeling.
+
+If Rachel was ignorant of her own feelings, she was even more
+completely ignorant of his. At first he moved as a god; as she came to
+know him better he was still the centre of light, but combined with
+this beauty a wonderful power of making her daring and confident of
+herself. She was conscious of emotions and powers which she had never
+suspected in herself, and of a depth in the world hitherto unknown.
+When she thought of their relationship she saw rather than reasoned,
+representing her view of what Terence felt by a picture of him drawn
+across the room to stand by her side. This passage across the room
+amounted to a physical sensation, but what it meant she did not know.
+
+Thus the time went on, wearing a calm, bright look upon its surface.
+Letters came from England, letters came from Willoughby, and the days
+accumulated their small events which shaped the year. Superficially,
+three odes of Pindar were mended, Helen covered about five inches of
+her embroidery, and St. John completed the first two acts of a play. He
+and Rachel being now very good friends, he read them aloud to her, and
+she was so genuinely impressed by the skill of his rhythms and the
+variety of his adjectives, as well as by the fact that he was Terence’s
+friend, that he began to wonder whether he was not intended for
+literature rather than for law. It was a time of profound thought and
+sudden revelations for more than one couple, and several single people.
+
+A Sunday came, which no one in the villa with the exception of Rachel
+and the Spanish maid proposed to recognise. Rachel still went to
+church, because she had never, according to Helen, taken the trouble to
+think about it. Since they had celebrated the service at the hotel she
+went there expecting to get some pleasure from her passage across the
+garden and through the hall of the hotel, although it was very doubtful
+whether she would see Terence, or at any rate have the chance of
+speaking to him.
+
+As the greater number of visitors at the hotel were English, there was
+almost as much difference between Sunday and Wednesday as there is in
+England, and Sunday appeared here as there, the mute black ghost or
+penitent spirit of the busy weekday. The English could not pale the
+sunshine, but they could in some miraculous way slow down the hours,
+dull the incidents, lengthen the meals, and make even the servants and
+page-boys wear a look of boredom and propriety. The best clothes which
+every one put on helped the general effect; it seemed that no lady
+could sit down without bending a clean starched petticoat, and no
+gentleman could breathe without a sudden crackle from a stiff
+shirt-front. As the hands of the clock neared eleven, on this
+particular Sunday, various people tended to draw together in the hall,
+clasping little red-leaved books in their hands. The clock marked a few
+minutes to the hour when a stout black figure passed through the hall
+with a preoccupied expression, as though he would rather not recognise
+salutations, although aware of them, and disappeared down the corridor
+which led from it.
+
+“Mr. Bax,” Mrs. Thornbury whispered.
+
+The little group of people then began to move off in the same direction
+as the stout black figure. Looked at in an odd way by people who made
+no effort to join them, they moved with one exception slowly and
+consciously towards the stairs. Mrs. Flushing was the exception. She
+came running downstairs, strode across the hall, joined the procession
+much out of breath, demanding of Mrs. Thornbury in an agitated whisper,
+“Where, where?”
+
+“We are all going,” said Mrs. Thornbury gently, and soon they were
+descending the stairs two by two. Rachel was among the first to
+descend. She did not see that Terence and Hirst came in at the rear
+possessed of no black volume, but of one thin book bound in light-blue
+cloth, which St. John carried under his arm.
+
+The chapel was the old chapel of the monks. It was a profound cool
+place where they had said Mass for hundreds of years, and done penance
+in the cold moonlight, and worshipped old brown pictures and carved
+saints which stood with upraised hands of blessing in the hollows in
+the walls. The transition from Catholic to Protestant worship had been
+bridged by a time of disuse, when there were no services, and the place
+was used for storing jars of oil, liqueur, and deck-chairs; the hotel
+flourishing, some religious body had taken the place in hand, and it
+was now fitted out with a number of glazed yellow benches,
+claret-coloured footstools; it had a small pulpit, and a brass eagle
+carrying the Bible on its back, while the piety of different women had
+supplied ugly squares of carpet, and long strips of embroidery heavily
+wrought with monograms in gold.
+
+As the congregation entered they were met by mild sweet chords issuing
+from a harmonium, where Miss Willett, concealed from view by a baize
+curtain, struck emphatic chords with uncertain fingers. The sound
+spread through the chapel as the rings of water spread from a fallen
+stone. The twenty or twenty-five people who composed the congregation
+first bowed their heads and then sat up and looked about them. It was
+very quiet, and the light down here seemed paler than the light above.
+The usual bows and smiles were dispensed with, but they recognised each
+other. The Lord’s Prayer was read over them. As the childlike battle of
+voices rose, the congregation, many of whom had only met on the
+staircase, felt themselves pathetically united and well-disposed
+towards each other. As if the prayer were a torch applied to fuel, a
+smoke seemed to rise automatically and fill the place with the ghosts
+of innumerable services on innumerable Sunday mornings at home. Susan
+Warrington in particular was conscious of the sweetest sense of
+sisterhood, as she covered her face with her hands and saw slips of
+bent backs through the chinks between her fingers. Her emotions rose
+calmly and evenly, approving of herself and of life at the same time.
+It was all so quiet and so good. But having created this peaceful
+atmosphere Mr. Bax suddenly turned the page and read a psalm. Though he
+read it with no change of voice the mood was broken.
+
+“Be merciful unto me, O God,” he read, “for man goeth about to devour
+me: he is daily fighting and troubling me. . . . They daily mistake my
+words: all that they imagine is to do me evil. They hold all together
+and keep themselves close. . . . Break their teeth, O God, in their
+mouths; smite the jaw-bones of the lions, O Lord: let them fall away
+like water that runneth apace; and when they shoot their arrows let
+them be rooted out.”
+
+Nothing in Susan’s experience at all corresponded with this, and as she
+had no love of language she had long ceased to attend to such remarks,
+although she followed them with the same kind of mechanical respect
+with which she heard many of Lear’s speeches read aloud. Her mind was
+still serene and really occupied with praise of her own nature and
+praise of God, that is of the solemn and satisfactory order of the
+world.
+
+But it could be seen from a glance at their faces that most of the
+others, the men in particular, felt the inconvenience of the sudden
+intrusion of this old savage. They looked more secular and critical as
+they listened to the ravings of the old black man with a cloth round
+his loins cursing with vehement gesture by a camp-fire in the desert.
+After that there was a general sound of pages being turned as if they
+were in class, and then they read a little bit of the Old Testament
+about making a well, very much as school boys translate an easy passage
+from the _Anabasis_ when they have shut up their French grammar. Then
+they returned to the New Testament and the sad and beautiful figure of
+Christ. While Christ spoke they made another effort to fit his
+interpretation of life upon the lives they lived, but as they were all
+very different, some practical, some ambitious, some stupid, some wild
+and experimental, some in love, and others long past any feeling except
+a feeling of comfort, they did very different things with the words of
+Christ.
+
+From their faces it seemed that for the most part they made no effort
+at all, and, recumbent as it were, accepted the ideas the words gave as
+representing goodness, in the same way, no doubt, as one of those
+industrious needlewomen had accepted the bright ugly pattern on her mat
+as beauty.
+
+Whatever the reason might be, for the first time in her life, instead
+of slipping at once into some curious pleasant cloud of emotion, too
+familiar to be considered, Rachel listened critically to what was being
+said. By the time they had swung in an irregular way from prayer to
+psalm, from psalm to history, from history to poetry, and Mr. Bax was
+giving out his text, she was in a state of acute discomfort. Such was
+the discomfort she felt when forced to sit through an unsatisfactory
+piece of music badly played. Tantalised, enraged by the clumsy
+insensitiveness of the conductor, who put the stress on the wrong
+places, and annoyed by the vast flock of the audience tamely praising
+and acquiescing without knowing or caring, so she was now tantalised
+and enraged, only here, with eyes half-shut and lips pursed together,
+the atmosphere of forced solemnity increased her anger. All round her
+were people pretending to feel what they did not feel, while somewhere
+above her floated the idea which they could none of them grasp, which
+they pretended to grasp, always escaping out of reach, a beautiful
+idea, an idea like a butterfly. One after another, vast and hard and
+cold, appeared to her the churches all over the world where this
+blundering effort and misunderstanding were perpetually going on, great
+buildings, filled with innumerable men and women, not seeing clearly,
+who finally gave up the effort to see, and relapsed tamely into praise
+and acquiescence, half-shutting their eyes and pursing up their lips.
+The thought had the same sort of physical discomfort as is caused by a
+film of mist always coming between the eyes and the printed page. She
+did her best to brush away the film and to conceive something to be
+worshipped as the service went on, but failed, always misled by the
+voice of Mr. Bax saying things which misrepresented the idea, and by
+the patter of baaing inexpressive human voices falling round her like
+damp leaves. The effort was tiring and dispiriting. She ceased to
+listen, and fixed her eyes on the face of a woman near her, a hospital
+nurse, whose expression of devout attention seemed to prove that she
+was at any rate receiving satisfaction. But looking at her carefully
+she came to the conclusion that the hospital nurse was only slavishly
+acquiescent, and that the look of satisfaction was produced by no
+splendid conception of God within her. How, indeed, could she conceive
+anything far outside her own experience, a woman with a commonplace
+face like hers, a little round red face, upon which trivial duties and
+trivial spites had drawn lines, whose weak blue eyes saw without
+intensity or individuality, whose features were blurred, insensitive,
+and callous? She was adoring something shallow and smug, clinging to
+it, so the obstinate mouth witnessed, with the assiduity of a limpet;
+nothing would tear her from her demure belief in her own virtue and the
+virtues of her religion. She was a limpet, with the sensitive side of
+her stuck to a rock, for ever dead to the rush of fresh and beautiful
+things past her. The face of this single worshipper became printed on
+Rachel’s mind with an impression of keen horror, and she had it
+suddenly revealed to her what Helen meant and St. John meant when they
+proclaimed their hatred of Christianity. With the violence that now
+marked her feelings, she rejected all that she had implicitly believed.
+
+Meanwhile Mr. Bax was half-way through the second lesson. She looked at
+him. He was a man of the world with supple lips and an agreeable
+manner, he was indeed a man of much kindliness and simplicity, though
+by no means clever, but she was not in the mood to give any one credit
+for such qualities, and examined him as though he were an epitome of
+all the vices of his service.
+
+Right at the back of the chapel Mrs. Flushing, Hirst, and Hewet sat in
+a row in a very different frame of mind. Hewet was staring at the roof
+with his legs stuck out in front of him, for as he had never tried to
+make the service fit any feeling or idea of his, he was able to enjoy
+the beauty of the language without hindrance. His mind was occupied
+first with accidental things, such as the women’s hair in front of him,
+the light on the faces, then with the words which seemed to him
+magnificent, and then more vaguely with the characters of the other
+worshippers. But when he suddenly perceived Rachel, all these thoughts
+were driven out of his head, and he thought only of her. The psalms,
+the prayers, the Litany, and the sermon were all reduced to one
+chanting sound which paused, and then renewed itself, a little higher
+or a little lower. He stared alternately at Rachel and at the ceiling,
+but his expression was now produced not by what he saw but by something
+in his mind. He was almost as painfully disturbed by his thoughts as
+she was by hers.
+
+Early in the service Mrs. Flushing had discovered that she had taken up
+a Bible instead of a prayer-book, and, as she was sitting next to
+Hirst, she stole a glance over his shoulder. He was reading steadily in
+the thin pale-blue volume. Unable to understand, she peered closer,
+upon which Hirst politely laid the book before her, pointing to the
+first line of a Greek poem and then to the translation opposite.
+
+“What’s that?” she whispered inquisitively.
+
+“Sappho,” he replied. “The one Swinburne did—the best thing that’s ever
+been written.”
+
+Mrs. Flushing could not resist such an opportunity. She gulped down the
+Ode to Aphrodite during the Litany, keeping herself with difficulty
+from asking when Sappho lived, and what else she wrote worth reading,
+and contriving to come in punctually at the end with “the forgiveness
+of sins, the Resurrection of the body, and the life everlastin’. Amen.”
+
+Meanwhile Hirst took out an envelope and began scribbling on the back
+of it. When Mr. Bax mounted the pulpit he shut up Sappho with his
+envelope between the pages, settled his spectacles, and fixed his gaze
+intently upon the clergyman. Standing in the pulpit he looked very
+large and fat; the light coming through the greenish unstained
+window-glass made his face appear smooth and white like a very large
+egg.
+
+He looked round at all the faces looking mildly up at him, although
+some of them were the faces of men and women old enough to be his
+grandparents, and gave out his text with weighty significance. The
+argument of the sermon was that visitors to this beautiful land,
+although they were on a holiday, owed a duty to the natives. It did
+not, in truth, differ very much from a leading article upon topics of
+general interest in the weekly newspapers. It rambled with a kind of
+amiable verbosity from one heading to another, suggesting that all
+human beings are very much the same under their skins, illustrating
+this by the resemblance of the games which little Spanish boys play to
+the games little boys in London streets play, observing that very small
+things do influence people, particularly natives; in fact, a very dear
+friend of Mr. Bax’s had told him that the success of our rule in India,
+that vast country, largely depended upon the strict code of politeness
+which the English adopted towards the natives, which led to the remark
+that small things were not necessarily small, and that somehow to the
+virtue of sympathy, which was a virtue never more needed than to-day,
+when we lived in a time of experiment and upheaval—witness the
+aeroplane and wireless telegraph, and there were other problems which
+hardly presented themselves to our fathers, but which no man who called
+himself a man could leave unsettled. Here Mr. Bax became more
+definitely clerical, if it were possible, he seemed to speak with a
+certain innocent craftiness, as he pointed out that all this laid a
+special duty upon earnest Christians. What men were inclined to say now
+was, “Oh, that fellow—he’s a parson.” What we want them to say is,
+“He’s a good fellow”—in other words, “He is my brother.” He exhorted
+them to keep in touch with men of the modern type; they must sympathise
+with their multifarious interests in order to keep before their eyes
+that whatever discoveries were made there was one discovery which could
+not be superseded, which was indeed as much of a necessity to the most
+successful and most brilliant of them all as it had been to their
+fathers. The humblest could help; the least important things had an
+influence (here his manner became definitely priestly and his remarks
+seemed to be directed to women, for indeed Mr. Bax’s congregations were
+mainly composed of women, and he was used to assigning them their
+duties in his innocent clerical campaigns). Leaving more definite
+instruction, he passed on, and his theme broadened into a peroration
+for which he drew a long breath and stood very upright,—“As a drop of
+water, detached, alone, separate from others, falling from the cloud
+and entering the great ocean, alters, so scientists tell us, not only
+the immediate spot in the ocean where it falls, but all the myriad
+drops which together compose the great universe of waters, and by this
+means alters the configuration of the globe and the lives of millions
+of sea creatures, and finally the lives of the men and women who seek
+their living upon the shores—as all this is within the compass of a
+single drop of water, such as any rain shower sends in millions to lose
+themselves in the earth, to lose themselves we say, but we know very
+well that the fruits of the earth could not flourish without them—so is
+a marvel comparable to this within the reach of each one of us, who
+dropping a little word or a little deed into the great universe alters
+it; yea, it is a solemn thought, _alters_ it, for good or for evil, not
+for one instant, or in one vicinity, but throughout the entire race,
+and for all eternity.” Whipping round as though to avoid applause, he
+continued with the same breath, but in a different tone of voice,—“And
+now to God the Father . . .”
+
+He gave his blessing, and then, while the solemn chords again issued
+from the harmonium behind the curtain, the different people began
+scraping and fumbling and moving very awkwardly and consciously towards
+the door. Half-way upstairs, at a point where the light and sounds of
+the upper world conflicted with the dimness and the dying hymn-tune of
+the under, Rachel felt a hand drop upon her shoulder.
+
+“Miss Vinrace,” Mrs. Flushing whispered peremptorily, “stay to
+luncheon. It’s such a dismal day. They don’t even give one beef for
+luncheon. Please stay.”
+
+Here they came out into the hall, where once more the little band was
+greeted with curious respectful glances by the people who had not gone
+to church, although their clothing made it clear that they approved of
+Sunday to the very verge of going to church. Rachel felt unable to
+stand any more of this particular atmosphere, and was about to say she
+must go back, when Terence passed them, drawn along in talk with Evelyn
+M. Rachel thereupon contented herself with saying that the people
+looked very respectable, which negative remark Mrs. Flushing
+interpreted to mean that she would stay.
+
+“English people abroad!” she returned with a vivid flash of malice.
+“Ain’t they awful! But we won’t stay here,” she continued, plucking at
+Rachel’s arm. “Come up to my room.”
+
+She bore her past Hewet and Evelyn and the Thornburys and the Elliots.
+Hewet stepped forward.
+
+“Luncheon—” he began.
+
+“Miss Vinrace has promised to lunch with me,” said Mrs. Flushing, and
+began to pound energetically up the staircase, as though the middle
+classes of England were in pursuit. She did not stop until she had
+slammed her bedroom door behind them.
+
+“Well, what did you think of it?” she demanded, panting slightly.
+
+All the disgust and horror which Rachel had been accumulating burst
+forth beyond her control.
+
+“I thought it the most loathsome exhibition I’d ever seen!” she broke
+out. “How can they—how dare they—what do you mean by it—Mr. Bax,
+hospital nurses, old men, prostitutes, disgusting—”
+
+She hit off the points she remembered as fast as she could, but she was
+too indignant to stop to analyse her feelings. Mrs. Flushing watched
+her with keen gusto as she stood ejaculating with emphatic movements of
+her head and hands in the middle of the room.
+
+“Go on, go on, do go on,” she laughed, clapping her hands. “It’s
+delightful to hear you!”
+
+“But why do you go?” Rachel demanded.
+
+“I’ve been every Sunday of my life ever since I can remember,” Mrs.
+Flushing chuckled, as though that were a reason by itself.
+
+Rachel turned abruptly to the window. She did not know what it was that
+had put her into such a passion; the sight of Terence in the hall had
+confused her thoughts, leaving her merely indignant. She looked
+straight at their own villa, half-way up the side of the mountain. The
+most familiar view seen framed through glass has a certain unfamiliar
+distinction, and she grew calm as she gazed. Then she remembered that
+she was in the presence of some one she did not know well, and she
+turned and looked at Mrs. Flushing. Mrs. Flushing was still sitting on
+the edge of the bed, looking up, with her lips parted, so that her
+strong white teeth showed in two rows.
+
+“Tell me,” she said, “which d’you like best, Mr. Hewet or Mr. Hirst?”
+
+“Mr. Hewet,” Rachel replied, but her voice did not sound natural.
+
+“Which is the one who reads Greek in church?” Mrs. Flushing demanded.
+
+It might have been either of them and while Mrs. Flushing proceeded to
+describe them both, and to say that both frightened her, but one
+frightened her more than the other, Rachel looked for a chair. The
+room, of course, was one of the largest and most luxurious in the
+hotel. There were a great many arm-chairs and settees covered in brown
+holland, but each of these was occupied by a large square piece of
+yellow cardboard, and all the pieces of cardboard were dotted or lined
+with spots or dashes of bright oil paint.
+
+“But you’re not to look at those,” said Mrs. Flushing as she saw
+Rachel’s eye wander. She jumped up, and turned as many as she could,
+face downwards, upon the floor. Rachel, however, managed to possess
+herself of one of them, and, with the vanity of an artist, Mrs.
+Flushing demanded anxiously, “Well, well?”
+
+“It’s a hill,” Rachel replied. There could be no doubt that Mrs.
+Flushing had represented the vigorous and abrupt fling of the earth up
+into the air; you could almost see the clods flying as it whirled.
+
+Rachel passed from one to another. They were all marked by something of
+the jerk and decision of their maker; they were all perfectly untrained
+onslaughts of the brush upon some half-realised idea suggested by hill
+or tree; and they were all in some way characteristic of Mrs. Flushing.
+
+“I see things movin’,” Mrs. Flushing explained. “So”—she swept her hand
+through a yard of the air. She then took up one of the cardboards which
+Rachel had laid aside, seated herself on a stool, and began to flourish
+a stump of charcoal. While she occupied herself in strokes which seemed
+to serve her as speech serves others, Rachel, who was very restless,
+looked about her.
+
+“Open the wardrobe,” said Mrs. Flushing after a pause, speaking
+indistinctly because of a paint-brush in her mouth, “and look at the
+things.”
+
+As Rachel hesitated, Mrs. Flushing came forward, still with a
+paint-brush in her mouth, flung open the wings of her wardrobe, and
+tossed a quantity of shawls, stuffs, cloaks, embroideries, on to the
+bed. Rachel began to finger them. Mrs. Flushing came up once more, and
+dropped a quantity of beads, brooches, earrings, bracelets, tassels,
+and combs among the draperies. Then she went back to her stool and
+began to paint in silence. The stuffs were coloured and dark and pale;
+they made a curious swarm of lines and colours upon the counterpane,
+with the reddish lumps of stone and peacocks’ feathers and clear pale
+tortoise-shell combs lying among them.
+
+“The women wore them hundreds of years ago, they wear ’em still,” Mrs.
+Flushing remarked. “My husband rides about and finds ’em; they don’t
+know what they’re worth, so we get ’em cheap. And we shall sell ’em to
+smart women in London,” she chuckled, as though the thought of these
+ladies and their absurd appearance amused her. After painting for some
+minutes, she suddenly laid down her brush and fixed her eyes upon
+Rachel.
+
+“I tell you what I want to do,” she said. “I want to go up there and
+see things for myself. It’s silly stayin’ here with a pack of old maids
+as though we were at the seaside in England. I want to go up the river
+and see the natives in their camps. It’s only a matter of ten days
+under canvas. My husband’s done it. One would lie out under the trees
+at night and be towed down the river by day, and if we saw anythin’
+nice we’d shout out and tell ’em to stop.” She rose and began piercing
+the bed again and again with a long golden pin, as she watched to see
+what effect her suggestion had upon Rachel.
+
+“We must make up a party,” she went on. “Ten people could hire a
+launch. Now you’ll come, and Mrs. Ambrose’ll come, and will Mr. Hirst
+and t’other gentleman come? Where’s a pencil?”
+
+She became more and more determined and excited as she evolved her
+plan. She sat on the edge of the bed and wrote down a list of surnames,
+which she invariably spelt wrong. Rachel was enthusiastic, for indeed
+the idea was immeasurably delightful to her. She had always had a great
+desire to see the river, and the name of Terence threw a lustre over
+the prospect, which made it almost too good to come true. She did what
+she could to help Mrs. Flushing by suggesting names, helping her to
+spell them, and counting up the days of the week upon her fingers. As
+Mrs. Flushing wanted to know all she could tell her about the birth and
+pursuits of every person she suggested, and threw in wild stories of
+her own as to the temperaments and habits of artists, and people of the
+same name who used to come to Chillingley in the old days, but were
+doubtless not the same, though they too were very clever men interested
+in Egyptology, the business took some time.
+
+At last Mrs. Flushing sought her diary for help, the method of
+reckoning dates on the fingers proving unsatisfactory. She opened and
+shut every drawer in her writing-table, and then cried furiously,
+“Yarmouth! Yarmouth! Drat the woman! She’s always out of the way when
+she’s wanted!”
+
+At this moment the luncheon gong began to work itself into its midday
+frenzy. Mrs. Flushing rang her bell violently. The door was opened by a
+handsome maid who was almost as upright as her mistress.
+
+“Oh, Yarmouth,” said Mrs. Flushing, “just find my diary and see where
+ten days from now would bring us to, and ask the hall porter how many
+men ’ud be wanted to row eight people up the river for a week, and what
+it ’ud cost, and put it on a slip of paper and leave it on my
+dressing-table. Now—” she pointed at the door with a superb forefinger
+so that Rachel had to lead the way.
+
+“Oh, and Yarmouth,” Mrs. Flushing called back over her shoulder. “Put
+those things away and hang ’em in their right places, there’s a good
+girl, or it fusses Mr. Flushin’.”
+
+To all of which Yarmouth merely replied, “Yes, ma’am.”
+
+As they entered the long dining-room it was obvious that the day was
+still Sunday, although the mood was slightly abating. The Flushings’
+table was set by the side in the window, so that Mrs. Flushing could
+scrutinise each figure as it entered, and her curiosity seemed to be
+intense.
+
+“Old Mrs. Paley,” she whispered as the wheeled chair slowly made its
+way through the door, Arthur pushing behind. “Thornburys” came next.
+“That nice woman,” she nudged Rachel to look at Miss Allan. “What’s her
+name?” The painted lady who always came in late, tripping into the room
+with a prepared smile as though she came out upon a stage, might well
+have quailed before Mrs. Flushing’s stare, which expressed her steely
+hostility to the whole tribe of painted ladies. Next came the two young
+men whom Mrs. Flushing called collectively the Hirsts. They sat down
+opposite, across the gangway.
+
+Mr. Flushing treated his wife with a mixture of admiration and
+indulgence, making up by the suavity and fluency of his speech for the
+abruptness of hers. While she darted and ejaculated he gave Rachel a
+sketch of the history of South American art. He would deal with one of
+his wife’s exclamations, and then return as smoothly as ever to his
+theme. He knew very well how to make a luncheon pass agreeably, without
+being dull or intimate. He had formed the opinion, so he told Rachel,
+that wonderful treasures lay hid in the depths of the land; the things
+Rachel had seen were merely trifles picked up in the course of one
+short journey. He thought there might be giant gods hewn out of stone
+in the mountain-side; and colossal figures standing by themselves in
+the middle of vast green pasture lands, where none but natives had ever
+trod. Before the dawn of European art he believed that the primitive
+huntsmen and priests had built temples of massive stone slabs, had
+formed out of the dark rocks and the great cedar trees majestic figures
+of gods and of beasts, and symbols of the great forces, water, air, and
+forest among which they lived. There might be prehistoric towns, like
+those in Greece and Asia, standing in open places among the trees,
+filled with the works of this early race. Nobody had been there;
+scarcely anything was known. Thus talking and displaying the most
+picturesque of his theories, Rachel’s attention was fixed upon him.
+
+She did not see that Hewet kept looking at her across the gangway,
+between the figures of waiters hurrying past with plates. He was
+inattentive, and Hirst was finding him also very cross and
+disagreeable. They had touched upon all the usual topics—upon politics
+and literature, gossip and Christianity. They had quarrelled over the
+service, which was every bit as fine as Sappho, according to Hewet; so
+that Hirst’s paganism was mere ostentation. Why go to church, he
+demanded, merely in order to read Sappho? Hirst observed that he had
+listened to every word of the sermon, as he could prove if Hewet would
+like a repetition of it; and he went to church in order to realise the
+nature of his Creator, which he had done very vividly that morning,
+thanks to Mr. Bax, who had inspired him to write three of the most
+superb lines in English literature, an invocation to the Deity.
+
+“I wrote ’em on the back of the envelope of my aunt’s last letter,” he
+said, and pulled it from between the pages of Sappho.
+
+“Well, let’s hear them,” said Hewet, slightly mollified by the prospect
+of a literary discussion.
+
+“My dear Hewet, do you wish us both to be flung out of the hotel by an
+enraged mob of Thornburys and Elliots?” Hirst enquired. “The merest
+whisper would be sufficient to incriminate me for ever. God!” he broke
+out, “what’s the use of attempting to write when the world’s peopled by
+such damned fools? Seriously, Hewet, I advise you to give up
+literature. What’s the good of it? There’s your audience.”
+
+He nodded his head at the tables where a very miscellaneous collection
+of Europeans were now engaged in eating, in some cases in gnawing, the
+stringy foreign fowls. Hewet looked, and grew more out of temper than
+ever. Hirst looked too. His eyes fell upon Rachel, and he bowed to her.
+
+“I rather think Rachel’s in love with me,” he remarked, as his eyes
+returned to his plate. “That’s the worst of friendships with young
+women—they tend to fall in love with one.”
+
+To that Hewet made no answer whatever, and sat singularly still. Hirst
+did not seem to mind getting no answer, for he returned to Mr. Bax
+again, quoting the peroration about the drop of water; and when Hewet
+scarcely replied to these remarks either, he merely pursed his lips,
+chose a fig, and relapsed quite contentedly into his own thoughts, of
+which he always had a very large supply. When luncheon was over they
+separated, taking their cups of coffee to different parts of the hall.
+
+From his chair beneath the palm-tree Hewet saw Rachel come out of the
+dining-room with the Flushings; he saw them look round for chairs, and
+choose three in a corner where they could go on talking in private. Mr.
+Flushing was now in the full tide of his discourse. He produced a sheet
+of paper upon which he made drawings as he went on with his talk. He
+saw Rachel lean over and look, pointing to this and that with her
+finger. Hewet unkindly compared Mr. Flushing, who was extremely well
+dressed for a hot climate, and rather elaborate in his manner, to a
+very persuasive shop-keeper. Meanwhile, as he sat looking at them, he
+was entangled in the Thornburys and Miss Allan, who, after hovering
+about for a minute or two, settled in chairs round him, holding their
+cups in their hands. They wanted to know whether he could tell them
+anything about Mr. Bax. Mr. Thornbury as usual sat saying nothing,
+looking vaguely ahead of him, occasionally raising his eye-glasses, as
+if to put them on, but always thinking better of it at the last moment,
+and letting them fall again. After some discussion, the ladies put it
+beyond a doubt that Mr. Bax was not the son of Mr. William Bax. There
+was a pause. Then Mrs. Thornbury remarked that she was still in the
+habit of saying Queen instead of King in the National Anthem. There was
+another pause. Then Miss Allan observed reflectively that going to
+church abroad always made her feel as if she had been to a sailor’s
+funeral.
+
+There was then a very long pause, which threatened to be final, when,
+mercifully, a bird about the size of a magpie, but of a metallic blue
+colour, appeared on the section of the terrace that could be seen from
+where they sat. Mrs. Thornbury was led to enquire whether we should
+like it if all our rooks were blue—“What do _you_ think, William?” she
+asked, touching her husband on the knee.
+
+“If all our rooks were blue,” he said,—he raised his glasses; he
+actually placed them on his nose—“they would not live long in
+Wiltshire,” he concluded; he dropped his glasses to his side again. The
+three elderly people now gazed meditatively at the bird, which was so
+obliging as to stay in the middle of the view for a considerable space
+of time, thus making it unnecessary for them to speak again. Hewet
+began to wonder whether he might not cross over to the Flushings’
+corner, when Hirst appeared from the background, slipped into a chair
+by Rachel’s side, and began to talk to her with every appearance of
+familiarity. Hewet could stand it no longer. He rose, took his hat and
+dashed out of doors.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XVIII
+
+
+Everything he saw was distasteful to him. He hated the blue and white,
+the intensity and definiteness, the hum and heat of the south; the
+landscape seemed to him as hard and as romantic as a cardboard
+background on the stage, and the mountain but a wooden screen against a
+sheet painted blue. He walked fast in spite of the heat of the sun.
+
+Two roads led out of the town on the eastern side; one branched off
+towards the Ambroses’ villa, the other struck into the country,
+eventually reaching a village on the plain, but many footpaths, which
+had been stamped in the earth when it was wet, led off from it, across
+great dry fields, to scattered farm-houses, and the villas of rich
+natives. Hewet stepped off the road on to one of these, in order to
+avoid the hardness and heat of the main road, the dust of which was
+always being raised in small clouds by carts and ramshackle flies which
+carried parties of festive peasants, or turkeys swelling unevenly like
+a bundle of air balls beneath a net, or the brass bedstead and black
+wooden boxes of some newly wedded pair.
+
+The exercise indeed served to clear away the superficial irritations of
+the morning, but he remained miserable. It seemed proved beyond a doubt
+that Rachel was indifferent to him, for she had scarcely looked at him,
+and she had talked to Mr. Flushing with just the same interest with
+which she talked to him. Finally, Hirst’s odious words flicked his mind
+like a whip, and he remembered that he had left her talking to Hirst.
+She was at this moment talking to him, and it might be true, as he
+said, that she was in love with him. He went over all the evidence for
+this supposition—her sudden interest in Hirst’s writing, her way of
+quoting his opinions respectfully, or with only half a laugh; her very
+nickname for him, “the great Man,” might have some serious meaning in
+it. Supposing that there were an understanding between them, what would
+it mean to him?
+
+“Damn it all!” he demanded, “am I in love with her?” To that he could
+only return himself one answer. He certainly was in love with her, if
+he knew what love meant. Ever since he had first seen her he had been
+interested and attracted, more and more interested and attracted, until
+he was scarcely able to think of anything except Rachel. But just as he
+was sliding into one of the long feasts of meditation about them both,
+he checked himself by asking whether he wanted to marry her? That was
+the real problem, for these miseries and agonies could not be endured,
+and it was necessary that he should make up his mind. He instantly
+decided that he did not want to marry any one. Partly because he was
+irritated by Rachel the idea of marriage irritated him. It immediately
+suggested the picture of two people sitting alone over the fire; the
+man was reading, the woman sewing. There was a second picture. He saw a
+man jump up, say good-night, leave the company and hasten away with the
+quiet secret look of one who is stealing to certain happiness. Both
+these pictures were very unpleasant, and even more so was a third
+picture, of husband and wife and friend; and the married people
+glancing at each other as though they were content to let something
+pass unquestioned, being themselves possessed of the deeper truth.
+Other pictures—he was walking very fast in his irritation, and they
+came before him without any conscious effort, like pictures on a
+sheet—succeeded these. Here were the worn husband and wife sitting with
+their children round them, very patient, tolerant, and wise. But that
+too, was an unpleasant picture. He tried all sorts of pictures, taking
+them from the lives of friends of his, for he knew many different
+married couples; but he saw them always, walled up in a warm firelit
+room. When, on the other hand, he began to think of unmarried people,
+he saw them active in an unlimited world; above all, standing on the
+same ground as the rest, without shelter or advantage. All the most
+individual and humane of his friends were bachelors and spinsters;
+indeed he was surprised to find that the women he most admired and knew
+best were unmarried women. Marriage seemed to be worse for them than it
+was for men. Leaving these general pictures he considered the people
+whom he had been observing lately at the hotel. He had often revolved
+these questions in his mind, as he watched Susan and Arthur, or Mr. and
+Mrs. Thornbury, or Mr. and Mrs. Elliot. He had observed how the shy
+happiness and surprise of the engaged couple had gradually been
+replaced by a comfortable, tolerant state of mind, as if they had
+already done with the adventure of intimacy and were taking up their
+parts. Susan used to pursue Arthur about with a sweater, because he had
+one day let slip that a brother of his had died of pneumonia. The sight
+amused him, but was not pleasant if you substituted Terence and Rachel
+for Arthur and Susan; and Arthur was far less eager to get you in a
+corner and talk about flying and the mechanics of aeroplanes. They
+would settle down. He then looked at the couples who had been married
+for several years. It was true that Mrs. Thornbury had a husband, and
+that for the most part she was wonderfully successful in bringing him
+into the conversation, but one could not imagine what they said to each
+other when they were alone. There was the same difficulty with regard
+to the Elliots, except that they probably bickered openly in private.
+They sometimes bickered in public, though these disagreements were
+painfully covered over by little insincerities on the part of the wife,
+who was afraid of public opinion, because she was much stupider than
+her husband, and had to make efforts to keep hold of him. There could
+be no doubt, he decided, that it would have been far better for the
+world if these couples had separated. Even the Ambroses, whom he
+admired and respected profoundly—in spite of all the love between them,
+was not their marriage too a compromise? She gave way to him; she
+spoilt him; she arranged things for him; she who was all truth to
+others was not true to her husband, was not true to her friends if they
+came in conflict with her husband. It was a strange and piteous flaw in
+her nature. Perhaps Rachel had been right, then, when she said that
+night in the garden, “We bring out what’s worst in each other—we should
+live separate.”
+
+No, Rachel had been utterly wrong! Every argument seemed to be against
+undertaking the burden of marriage until he came to Rachel’s argument,
+which was manifestly absurd. From having been the pursued, he turned
+and became the pursuer. Allowing the case against marriage to lapse, he
+began to consider the peculiarities of character which had led to her
+saying that. Had she meant it? Surely one ought to know the character
+of the person with whom one might spend all one’s life; being a
+novelist, let him try to discover what sort of person she was. When he
+was with her he could not analyse her qualities, because he seemed to
+know them instinctively, but when he was away from her it sometimes
+seemed to him that he did not know her at all. She was young, but she
+was also old; she had little self-confidence, and yet she was a good
+judge of people. She was happy; but what made her happy? If they were
+alone and the excitement had worn off, and they had to deal with the
+ordinary facts of the day, what would happen? Casting his eye upon his
+own character, two things appeared to him: that he was very unpunctual,
+and that he disliked answering notes. As far as he knew Rachel was
+inclined to be punctual, but he could not remember that he had ever
+seen her with a pen in her hand. Let him next imagine a dinner-party,
+say at the Crooms, and Wilson, who had taken her down, talking about
+the state of the Liberal party. She would say—of course she was
+absolutely ignorant of politics. Nevertheless she was intelligent
+certainly, and honest too. Her temper was uncertain—that he had
+noticed—and she was not domestic, and she was not easy, and she was not
+quiet, or beautiful, except in some dresses in some lights. But the
+great gift she had was that she understood what was said to her; there
+had never been any one like her for talking to. You could say
+anything—you could say everything, and yet she was never servile. Here
+he pulled himself up, for it seemed to him suddenly that he knew less
+about her than about any one. All these thoughts had occurred to him
+many times already; often had he tried to argue and reason; and again
+he had reached the old state of doubt. He did not know her, and he did
+not know what she felt, or whether they could live together, or whether
+he wanted to marry her, and yet he was in love with her.
+
+Supposing he went to her and said (he slackened his pace and began to
+speak aloud, as if he were speaking to Rachel):
+
+“I worship you, but I loathe marriage, I hate its smugness, its safety,
+its compromise, and the thought of you interfering in my work,
+hindering me; what would you answer?”
+
+He stopped, leant against the trunk of a tree, and gazed without seeing
+them at some stones scattered on the bank of the dry river-bed. He saw
+Rachel’s face distinctly, the grey eyes, the hair, the mouth; the face
+that could look so many things—plain, vacant, almost insignificant, or
+wild, passionate, almost beautiful, yet in his eyes was always the same
+because of the extraordinary freedom with which she looked at him, and
+spoke as she felt. What would she answer? What did she feel? Did she
+love him, or did she feel nothing at all for him or for any other man,
+being, as she had said that afternoon, free, like the wind or the sea?
+
+“Oh, you’re free!” he exclaimed, in exultation at the thought of her,
+“and I’d keep you free. We’d be free together. We’d share everything
+together. No happiness would be like ours. No lives would compare with
+ours.” He opened his arms wide as if to hold her and the world in one
+embrace.
+
+No longer able to consider marriage, or to weigh coolly what her nature
+was, or how it would be if they lived together, he dropped to the
+ground and sat absorbed in the thought of her, and soon tormented by
+the desire to be in her presence again.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIX
+
+
+But Hewet need not have increased his torments by imagining that Hirst
+was still talking to Rachel. The party very soon broke up, the
+Flushings going in one direction, Hirst in another, and Rachel
+remaining in the hall, pulling the illustrated papers about, turning
+from one to another, her movements expressing the unformed restless
+desire in her mind. She did not know whether to go or to stay, though
+Mrs. Flushing had commanded her to appear at tea. The hall was empty,
+save for Miss Willett who was playing scales with her fingers upon a
+sheet of sacred music, and the Carters, an opulent couple who disliked
+the girl, because her shoe laces were untied, and she did not look
+sufficiently cheery, which by some indirect process of thought led them
+to think that she would not like them. Rachel certainly would not have
+liked them, if she had seen them, for the excellent reason that Mr.
+Carter waxed his moustache, and Mrs. Carter wore bracelets, and they
+were evidently the kind of people who would not like her; but she was
+too much absorbed by her own restlessness to think or to look.
+
+She was turning over the slippery pages of an American magazine, when
+the hall door swung, a wedge of light fell upon the floor, and a small
+white figure upon whom the light seemed focussed, made straight across
+the room to her.
+
+“What! You here?” Evelyn exclaimed. “Just caught a glimpse of you at
+lunch; but you wouldn’t condescend to look at _me_.”
+
+It was part of Evelyn’s character that in spite of many snubs which she
+received or imagined, she never gave up the pursuit of people she
+wanted to know, and in the long run generally succeeded in knowing them
+and even in making them like her.
+
+She looked round her. “I hate this place. I hate these people,” she
+said. “I wish you’d come up to my room with me. I do want to talk to
+you.”
+
+As Rachel had no wish to go or to stay, Evelyn took her by the wrist
+and drew her out of the hall and up the stairs. As they went upstairs
+two steps at a time, Evelyn, who still kept hold of Rachel’s hand,
+ejaculated broken sentences about not caring a hang what people said.
+“Why should one, if one knows one’s right? And let ’em all go to
+blazes! Them’s my opinions!”
+
+She was in a state of great excitement, and the muscles of her arms
+were twitching nervously. It was evident that she was only waiting for
+the door to shut to tell Rachel all about it. Indeed, directly they
+were inside her room, she sat on the end of the bed and said, “I
+suppose you think I’m mad?”
+
+Rachel was not in the mood to think clearly about any one’s state of
+mind. She was however in the mood to say straight out whatever occurred
+to her without fear of the consequences.
+
+“Somebody’s proposed to you,” she remarked.
+
+“How on earth did you guess that?” Evelyn exclaimed, some pleasure
+mingling with her surprise. “Do as I look as if I’d just had a
+proposal?”
+
+“You look as if you had them every day,” Rachel replied.
+
+“But I don’t suppose I’ve had more than you’ve had,” Evelyn laughed
+rather insincerely.
+
+“I’ve never had one.”
+
+“But you will—lots—it’s the easiest thing in the world—But that’s not
+what’s happened this afternoon exactly. It’s—Oh, it’s a muddle, a
+detestable, horrible, disgusting muddle!”
+
+She went to the wash-stand and began sponging her cheeks with cold
+water; for they were burning hot. Still sponging them and trembling
+slightly she turned and explained in the high pitched voice of nervous
+excitement: “Alfred Perrott says I’ve promised to marry him, and I say
+I never did. Sinclair says he’ll shoot himself if I don’t marry him,
+and I say, ‘Well, shoot yourself!’ But of course he doesn’t—they never
+do. And Sinclair got hold of me this afternoon and began bothering me
+to give an answer, and accusing me of flirting with Alfred Perrott, and
+told me I’d no heart, and was merely a Siren, oh, and quantities of
+pleasant things like that. So at last I said to him, ‘Well, Sinclair,
+you’ve said enough now. You can just let me go.’ And then he caught me
+and kissed me—the disgusting brute—I can still feel his nasty hairy
+face just there—as if he’d any right to, after what he’d said!”
+
+She sponged a spot on her left cheek energetically.
+
+“I’ve never met a man that was fit to compare with a woman!” she cried;
+“they’ve no dignity, they’ve no courage, they’ve nothing but their
+beastly passions and their brute strength! Would any woman have behaved
+like that—if a man had said he didn’t want her? We’ve too much
+self-respect; we’re infinitely finer than they are.”
+
+She walked about the room, dabbing her wet cheeks with a towel. Tears
+were now running down with the drops of cold water.
+
+“It makes me angry,” she explained, drying her eyes.
+
+Rachel sat watching her. She did not think of Evelyn’s position; she
+only thought that the world was full of people in torment.
+
+“There’s only one man here I really like,” Evelyn continued; “Terence
+Hewet. One feels as if one could trust him.”
+
+At these words Rachel suffered an indescribable chill; her heart seemed
+to be pressed together by cold hands.
+
+“Why?” she asked. “Why can you trust him?”
+
+“I don’t know,” said Evelyn. “Don’t you have feelings about people?
+Feelings you’re absolutely certain are right? I had a long talk with
+Terence the other night. I felt we were really friends after that.
+There’s something of a woman in him—” She paused as though she were
+thinking of very intimate things that Terence had told her, so at least
+Rachel interpreted her gaze.
+
+She tried to force herself to say, “Has he proposed to you?” but the
+question was too tremendous, and in another moment Evelyn was saying
+that the finest men were like women, and women were nobler than men—for
+example, one couldn’t imagine a woman like Lillah Harrison thinking a
+mean thing or having anything base about her.
+
+“How I’d like you to know her!” she exclaimed.
+
+She was becoming much calmer, and her cheeks were now quite dry. Her
+eyes had regained their usual expression of keen vitality, and she
+seemed to have forgotten Alfred and Sinclair and her emotion. “Lillah
+runs a home for inebriate women in the Deptford Road,” she continued.
+“She started it, managed it, did everything off her own bat, and it’s
+now the biggest of its kind in England. You can’t think what those
+women are like—and their homes. But she goes among them at all hours of
+the day and night. I’ve often been with her. . . . That’s what’s the
+matter with us. . . . We don’t _do_ things. What do you _do_?” she
+demanded, looking at Rachel with a slightly ironical smile. Rachel had
+scarcely listened to any of this, and her expression was vacant and
+unhappy. She had conceived an equal dislike for Lillah Harrison and her
+work in the Deptford Road, and for Evelyn M. and her profusion of love
+affairs.
+
+“I play,” she said with an affection of stolid composure.
+
+“That’s about it!” Evelyn laughed. “We none of us do anything but play.
+And that’s why women like Lillah Harrison, who’s worth twenty of you
+and me, have to work themselves to the bone. But I’m tired of playing,”
+she went on, lying flat on the bed, and raising her arms above her
+head. Thus stretched out, she looked more diminutive than ever.
+
+“I’m going to do something. I’ve got a splendid idea. Look here, you
+must join. I’m sure you’ve got any amount of stuff in you, though you
+look—well, as if you’d lived all your life in a garden.” She sat up,
+and began to explain with animation. “I belong to a club in London. It
+meets every Saturday, so it’s called the Saturday Club. We’re supposed
+to talk about art, but I’m sick of talking about art—what’s the good of
+it? With all kinds of real things going on round one? It isn’t as if
+they’d got anything to say about art, either. So what I’m going to tell
+’em is that we’ve talked enough about art, and we’d better talk about
+life for a change. Questions that really matter to people’s lives, the
+White Slave Traffic, Women Suffrage, the Insurance Bill, and so on. And
+when we’ve made up our mind what we want to do we could form ourselves
+into a society for doing it. . . . I’m certain that if people like
+ourselves were to take things in hand instead of leaving it to
+policemen and magistrates, we could put a stop to—prostitution”—she
+lowered her voice at the ugly word—“in six months. My idea is that men
+and women ought to join in these matters. We ought to go into
+Piccadilly and stop one of these poor wretches and say: ‘Now, look
+here, I’m no better than you are, and I don’t pretend to be any better,
+but you’re doing what you know to be beastly, and I won’t have you
+doing beastly things, because we’re all the same under our skins, and
+if you do a beastly thing it does matter to me.’ That’s what Mr. Bax
+was saying this morning, and it’s true, though you clever people—you’re
+clever too, aren’t you?—don’t believe it.”
+
+When Evelyn began talking—it was a fact she often regretted—her
+thoughts came so quickly that she never had any time to listen to other
+people’s thoughts. She continued without more pause than was needed for
+taking breath.
+
+“I don’t see why the Saturday club people shouldn’t do a really great
+work in that way,” she went on. “Of course it would want organisation,
+some one to give their life to it, but I’m ready to do that. My
+notion’s to think of the human beings first and let the abstract ideas
+take care of themselves. What’s wrong with Lillah—if there is anything
+wrong—is that she thinks of Temperance first and the women afterwards.
+Now there’s one thing I’ll say to my credit,” she continued; “I’m not
+intellectual or artistic or anything of that sort, but I’m jolly
+human.” She slipped off the bed and sat on the floor, looking up at
+Rachel. She searched up into her face as if she were trying to read
+what kind of character was concealed behind the face. She put her hand
+on Rachel’s knee.
+
+“It _is_ being human that counts, isn’t it?” she continued. “Being
+real, whatever Mr. Hirst may say. Are you real?”
+
+Rachel felt much as Terence had felt that Evelyn was too close to her,
+and that there was something exciting in this closeness, although it
+was also disagreeable. She was spared the need of finding an answer to
+the question, for Evelyn proceeded, “Do you _believe_ in anything?”
+
+In order to put an end to the scrutiny of these bright blue eyes, and
+to relieve her own physical restlessness, Rachel pushed back her chair
+and exclaimed, “In everything!” and began to finger different objects,
+the books on the table, the photographs, the freshly leaved plant with
+the stiff bristles, which stood in a large earthenware pot in the
+window.
+
+“I believe in the bed, in the photographs, in the pot, in the balcony,
+in the sun, in Mrs. Flushing,” she remarked, still speaking recklessly,
+with something at the back of her mind forcing her to say the things
+that one usually does not say. “But I don’t believe in God, I don’t
+believe in Mr. Bax, I don’t believe in the hospital nurse. I don’t
+believe—” She took up a photograph and, looking at it, did not finish
+her sentence.
+
+“That’s my mother,” said Evelyn, who remained sitting on the floor
+binding her knees together with her arms, and watching Rachel
+curiously.
+
+Rachel considered the portrait. “Well, I don’t much believe in her,”
+she remarked after a time in a low tone of voice.
+
+Mrs. Murgatroyd looked indeed as if the life had been crushed out of
+her; she knelt on a chair, gazing piteously from behind the body of a
+Pomeranian dog which she clasped to her cheek, as if for protection.
+
+“And that’s my dad,” said Evelyn, for there were two photographs in one
+frame. The second photograph represented a handsome soldier with high
+regular features and a heavy black moustache; his hand rested on the
+hilt of his sword; there was a decided likeness between him and Evelyn.
+
+“And it’s because of them,” said Evelyn, “that I’m going to help the
+other women. You’ve heard about me, I suppose? They weren’t married,
+you see; I’m not anybody in particular. I’m not a bit ashamed of it.
+They loved each other anyhow, and that’s more than most people can say
+of their parents.”
+
+Rachel sat down on the bed, with the two pictures in her hands, and
+compared them—the man and the woman who had, so Evelyn said, loved each
+other. That fact interested her more than the campaign on behalf of
+unfortunate women which Evelyn was once more beginning to describe. She
+looked again from one to the other.
+
+“What d’you think it’s like,” she asked, as Evelyn paused for a minute,
+“being in love?”
+
+“Have you never been in love?” Evelyn asked. “Oh no—one’s only got to
+look at you to see that,” she added. She considered. “I really was in
+love once,” she said. She fell into reflection, her eyes losing their
+bright vitality and approaching something like an expression of
+tenderness. “It was heavenly!—while it lasted. The worst of it is it
+don’t last, not with me. That’s the bother.”
+
+She went on to consider the difficulty with Alfred and Sinclair about
+which she had pretended to ask Rachel’s advice. But she did not want
+advice; she wanted intimacy. When she looked at Rachel, who was still
+looking at the photographs on the bed, she could not help seeing that
+Rachel was not thinking about her. What was she thinking about, then?
+Evelyn was tormented by the little spark of life in her which was
+always trying to work through to other people, and was always being
+rebuffed. Falling silent she looked at her visitor, her shoes, her
+stockings, the combs in her hair, all the details of her dress in
+short, as though by seizing every detail she might get closer to the
+life within.
+
+Rachel at last put down the photographs, walked to the window and
+remarked, “It’s odd. People talk as much about love as they do about
+religion.”
+
+“I wish you’d sit down and talk,” said Evelyn impatiently.
+
+Instead Rachel opened the window, which was made in two long panes, and
+looked down into the garden below.
+
+“That’s where we got lost the first night,” she said. “It must have
+been in those bushes.”
+
+“They kill hens down there,” said Evelyn. “They cut their heads off
+with a knife—disgusting! But tell me—what—”
+
+“I’d like to explore the hotel,” Rachel interrupted. She drew her head
+in and looked at Evelyn, who still sat on the floor.
+
+“It’s just like other hotels,” said Evelyn.
+
+That might be, although every room and passage and chair in the place
+had a character of its own in Rachel’s eyes; but she could not bring
+herself to stay in one place any longer. She moved slowly towards the
+door.
+
+“What is it you want?” said Evelyn. “You make me feel as if you were
+always thinking of something you don’t say. . . . Do say it!”
+
+But Rachel made no response to this invitation either. She stopped with
+her fingers on the handle of the door, as if she remembered that some
+sort of pronouncement was due from her.
+
+“I suppose you’ll marry one of them,” she said, and then turned the
+handle and shut the door behind her. She walked slowly down the
+passage, running her hand along the wall beside her. She did not think
+which way she was going, and therefore walked down a passage which only
+led to a window and a balcony. She looked down at the kitchen premises,
+the wrong side of the hotel life, which was cut off from the right side
+by a maze of small bushes. The ground was bare, old tins were scattered
+about, and the bushes wore towels and aprons upon their heads to dry.
+Every now and then a waiter came out in a white apron and threw rubbish
+on to a heap. Two large women in cotton dresses were sitting on a bench
+with blood-smeared tin trays in front of them and yellow bodies across
+their knees. They were plucking the birds, and talking as they plucked.
+Suddenly a chicken came floundering, half flying, half running into the
+space, pursued by a third woman whose age could hardly be under eighty.
+Although wizened and unsteady on her legs she kept up the chase, egged
+on by the laughter of the others; her face was expressive of furious
+rage, and as she ran she swore in Spanish. Frightened by hand-clapping
+here, a napkin there, the bird ran this way and that in sharp angles,
+and finally fluttered straight at the old woman, who opened her scanty
+grey skirts to enclose it, dropped upon it in a bundle, and then
+holding it out cut its head off with an expression of vindictive energy
+and triumph combined. The blood and the ugly wriggling fascinated
+Rachel, so that although she knew that some one had come up behind and
+was standing beside her, she did not turn round until the old woman had
+settled down on the bench beside the others. Then she looked up
+sharply, because of the ugliness of what she had seen. It was Miss
+Allan who stood beside her.
+
+“Not a pretty sight,” said Miss Allan, “although I daresay it’s really
+more humane than our method. . . . I don’t believe you’ve ever been in
+my room,” she added, and turned away as if she meant Rachel to follow
+her. Rachel followed, for it seemed possible that each new person might
+remove the mystery which burdened her.
+
+The bedrooms at the hotel were all on the same pattern, save that some
+were larger and some smaller; they had a floor of dark red tiles; they
+had a high bed, draped in mosquito curtains; they had each a
+writing-table and a dressing-table, and a couple of arm-chairs. But
+directly a box was unpacked the rooms became very different, so that
+Miss Allan’s room was very unlike Evelyn’s room. There were no
+variously coloured hatpins on her dressing-table; no scent-bottles; no
+narrow curved pairs of scissors; no great variety of shoes and boots;
+no silk petticoats lying on the chairs. The room was extremely neat.
+There seemed to be two pairs of everything. The writing-table, however,
+was piled with manuscript, and a table was drawn out to stand by the
+arm-chair on which were two separate heaps of dark library books, in
+which there were many slips of paper sticking out at different degrees
+of thickness. Miss Allan had asked Rachel to come in out of kindness,
+thinking that she was waiting about with nothing to do. Moreover, she
+liked young women, for she had taught many of them, and having received
+so much hospitality from the Ambroses she was glad to be able to repay
+a minute part of it. She looked about accordingly for something to show
+her. The room did not provide much entertainment. She touched her
+manuscript. “Age of Chaucer; Age of Elizabeth; Age of Dryden,” she
+reflected; “I’m glad there aren’t many more ages. I’m still in the
+middle of the eighteenth century. Won’t you sit down, Miss Vinrace? The
+chair, though small, is firm. . . . Euphues. The germ of the English
+novel,” she continued, glancing at another page. “Is that the kind of
+thing that interests you?”
+
+She looked at Rachel with great kindness and simplicity, as though she
+would do her utmost to provide anything she wished to have. This
+expression had a remarkable charm in a face otherwise much lined with
+care and thought.
+
+“Oh no, it’s music with you, isn’t it?” she continued, recollecting,
+“and I generally find that they don’t go together. Sometimes of course
+we have prodigies—” She was looking about her for something and now saw
+a jar on the mantelpiece which she reached down and gave to Rachel. “If
+you put your finger into this jar you may be able to extract a piece of
+preserved ginger. Are you a prodigy?”
+
+But the ginger was deep and could not be reached.
+
+“Don’t bother,” she said, as Miss Allan looked about for some other
+implement. “I daresay I shouldn’t like preserved ginger.”
+
+“You’ve never tried?” enquired Miss Allan. “Then I consider that it is
+your duty to try now. Why, you may add a new pleasure to life, and as
+you are still young—” She wondered whether a button-hook would do. “I
+make it a rule to try everything,” she said. “Don’t you think it would
+be very annoying if you tasted ginger for the first time on your
+death-bed, and found you never liked anything so much? I should be so
+exceedingly annoyed that I think I should get well on that account
+alone.”
+
+She was now successful, and a lump of ginger emerged on the end of the
+button-hook. While she went to wipe the button-hook, Rachel bit the
+ginger and at once cried, “I must spit it out!”
+
+“Are you sure you have really tasted it?” Miss Allan demanded.
+
+For answer Rachel threw it out of the window.
+
+“An experience anyhow,” said Miss Allan calmly. “Let me see—I have
+nothing else to offer you, unless you would like to taste this.” A
+small cupboard hung above her bed, and she took out of it a slim
+elegant jar filled with a bright green fluid.
+
+“Crême de Menthe,” she said. “Liqueur, you know. It looks as if I
+drank, doesn’t it? As a matter of fact it goes to prove what an
+exceptionally abstemious person I am. I’ve had that jar for
+six-and-twenty years,” she added, looking at it with pride, as she
+tipped it over, and from the height of the liquid it could be seen that
+the bottle was still untouched.
+
+“Twenty-six years?” Rachel exclaimed.
+
+Miss Allan was gratified, for she had meant Rachel to be surprised.
+
+“When I went to Dresden six-and-twenty years ago,” she said, “a certain
+friend of mine announced her intention of making me a present. She
+thought that in the event of shipwreck or accident a stimulant might be
+useful. However, as I had no occasion for it, I gave it back on my
+return. On the eve of any foreign journey the same bottle always makes
+its appearance, with the same note; on my return in safety it is always
+handed back. I consider it a kind of charm against accidents. Though I
+was once detained twenty-four hours by an accident to the train in
+front of me, I have never met with any accident myself. Yes,” she
+continued, now addressing the bottle, “we have seen many climes and
+cupboards together, have we not? I intend one of these days to have a
+silver label made with an inscription. It is a gentleman, as you may
+observe, and his name is Oliver. . . . I do not think I could forgive
+you, Miss Vinrace, if you broke my Oliver,” she said, firmly taking the
+bottle out of Rachel’s hands and replacing it in the cupboard.
+
+Rachel was swinging the bottle by the neck. She was interested by Miss
+Allan to the point of forgetting the bottle.
+
+“Well,” she exclaimed, “I do think that odd; to have had a friend for
+twenty-six years, and a bottle, and—to have made all those journeys.”
+
+“Not at all; I call it the reverse of odd,” Miss Allan replied. “I
+always consider myself the most ordinary person I know. It’s rather
+distinguished to be as ordinary as I am. I forget—are you a prodigy, or
+did you say you were not a prodigy?”
+
+She smiled at Rachel very kindly. She seemed to have known and
+experienced so much, as she moved cumbrously about the room, that
+surely there must be balm for all anguish in her words, could one
+induce her to have recourse to them. But Miss Allan, who was now
+locking the cupboard door, showed no signs of breaking the reticence
+which had snowed her under for years. An uncomfortable sensation kept
+Rachel silent; on the one hand, she wished to whirl high and strike a
+spark out of the cool pink flesh; on the other she perceived there was
+nothing to be done but to drift past each other in silence.
+
+“I’m not a prodigy. I find it very difficult to say what I mean—” she
+observed at length.
+
+“It’s a matter of temperament, I believe,” Miss Allan helped her.
+“There are some people who have no difficulty; for myself I find there
+are a great many things I simply cannot say. But then I consider myself
+very slow. One of my colleagues now, knows whether she likes you or
+not—let me see, how does she do it?—by the way you say good-morning at
+breakfast. It is sometimes a matter of years before I can make up my
+mind. But most young people seem to find it easy?”
+
+“Oh no,” said Rachel. “It’s hard!”
+
+Miss Allan looked at Rachel quietly, saying nothing; she suspected that
+there were difficulties of some kind. Then she put her hand to the back
+of her head, and discovered that one of the grey coils of hair had come
+loose.
+
+“I must ask you to be so kind as to excuse me,” she said, rising, “if I
+do my hair. I have never yet found a satisfactory type of hairpin. I
+must change my dress, too, for the matter of that; and I should be
+particularly glad of your assistance, because there is a tiresome set
+of hooks which I _can_ fasten for myself, but it takes from ten to
+fifteen minutes; whereas with your help—”
+
+She slipped off her coat and skirt and blouse, and stood doing her hair
+before the glass, a massive homely figure, her petticoat being so short
+that she stood on a pair of thick slate-grey legs.
+
+“People say youth is pleasant; I myself find middle age far
+pleasanter,” she remarked, removing hair pins and combs, and taking up
+her brush. When it fell loose her hair only came down to her neck.
+
+“When one was young,” she continued, “things could seem so very serious
+if one was made that way. . . . And now my dress.”
+
+In a wonderfully short space of time her hair had been reformed in its
+usual loops. The upper half of her body now became dark green with
+black stripes on it; the skirt, however, needed hooking at various
+angles, and Rachel had to kneel on the floor, fitting the eyes to the
+hooks.
+
+“Our Miss Johnson used to find life very unsatisfactory, I remember,”
+Miss Allan continued. She turned her back to the light. “And then she
+took to breeding guinea-pigs for their spots, and became absorbed in
+that. I have just heard that the yellow guinea-pig has had a black
+baby. We had a bet of sixpence on about it. She will be very
+triumphant.”
+
+The skirt was fastened. She looked at herself in the glass with the
+curious stiffening of her face generally caused by looking in the
+glass.
+
+“Am I in a fit state to encounter my fellow-beings?” she asked. “I
+forget which way it is—but they find black animals very rarely have
+coloured babies—it may be the other way round. I have had it so often
+explained to me that it is very stupid of me to have forgotten again.”
+
+She moved about the room acquiring small objects with quiet force, and
+fixing them about her—a locket, a watch and chain, a heavy gold
+bracelet, and the parti-coloured button of a suffrage society. Finally,
+completely equipped for Sunday tea, she stood before Rachel, and smiled
+at her kindly. She was not an impulsive woman, and her life had
+schooled her to restrain her tongue. At the same time, she was
+possessed of an amount of good-will towards others, and in particular
+towards the young, which often made her regret that speech was so
+difficult.
+
+“Shall we descend?” she said.
+
+She put one hand upon Rachel’s shoulder, and stooping, picked up a pair
+of walking-shoes with the other, and placed them neatly side by side
+outside her door. As they walked down the passage they passed many
+pairs of boots and shoes, some black and some brown, all side by side,
+and all different, even to the way in which they lay together.
+
+“I always think that people are so like their boots,” said Miss Allan.
+“That is Mrs. Paley’s—” but as she spoke the door opened, and Mrs.
+Paley rolled out in her chair, equipped also for tea.
+
+She greeted Miss Allan and Rachel.
+
+“I was just saying that people are so like their boots,” said Miss
+Allan. Mrs. Paley did not hear. She repeated it more loudly still. Mrs.
+Paley did not hear. She repeated it a third time. Mrs. Paley heard, but
+she did not understand. She was apparently about to repeat it for the
+fourth time, when Rachel suddenly said something inarticulate, and
+disappeared down the corridor. This misunderstanding, which involved a
+complete block in the passage, seemed to her unbearable. She walked
+quickly and blindly in the opposite direction, and found herself at the
+end of a _cul de sac_. There was a window, and a table and a chair in
+the window, and upon the table stood a rusty inkstand, an ashtray, an
+old copy of a French newspaper, and a pen with a broken nib. Rachel sat
+down, as if to study the French newspaper, but a tear fell on the
+blurred French print, raising a soft blot. She lifted her head sharply,
+exclaiming aloud, “It’s intolerable!” Looking out of the window with
+eyes that would have seen nothing even had they not been dazed by
+tears, she indulged herself at last in violent abuse of the entire day.
+It had been miserable from start to finish; first, the service in the
+chapel; then luncheon; then Evelyn; then Miss Allan; then old Mrs.
+Paley blocking up the passage. All day long she had been tantalized and
+put off. She had now reached one of those eminences, the result of some
+crisis, from which the world is finally displayed in its true
+proportions. She disliked the look of it immensely—churches,
+politicians, misfits, and huge impostures—men like Mr. Dalloway, men
+like Mr. Bax, Evelyn and her chatter, Mrs. Paley blocking up the
+passage. Meanwhile the steady beat of her own pulse represented the hot
+current of feeling that ran down beneath; beating, struggling,
+fretting. For the time, her own body was the source of all the life in
+the world, which tried to burst forth here—there—and was repressed now
+by Mr. Bax, now by Evelyn, now by the imposition of ponderous
+stupidity, the weight of the entire world. Thus tormented, she would
+twist her hands together, for all things were wrong, all people stupid.
+Vaguely seeing that there were people down in the garden beneath she
+represented them as aimless masses of matter, floating hither and
+thither, without aim except to impede her. What were they doing, those
+other people in the world?
+
+“Nobody knows,” she said. The force of her rage was beginning to spend
+itself, and the vision of the world which had been so vivid became dim.
+
+“It’s a dream,” she murmured. She considered the rusty inkstand, the
+pen, the ash-tray, and the old French newspaper. These small and
+worthless objects seemed to her to represent human lives.
+
+“We’re asleep and dreaming,” she repeated. But the possibility which
+now suggested itself that one of the shapes might be the shape of
+Terence roused her from her melancholy lethargy. She became as restless
+as she had been before she sat down. She was no longer able to see the
+world as a town laid out beneath her. It was covered instead by a haze
+of feverish red mist. She had returned to the state in which she had
+been all day. Thinking was no escape. Physical movement was the only
+refuge, in and out of rooms, in and out of people’s minds, seeking she
+knew not what. Therefore she rose, pushed back the table, and went
+downstairs. She went out of the hall door, and, turning the corner of
+the hotel, found herself among the people whom she had seen from the
+window. But owing to the broad sunshine after shaded passages, and to
+the substance of living people after dreams, the group appeared with
+startling intensity, as though the dusty surface had been peeled off
+everything, leaving only the reality and the instant. It had the look
+of a vision printed on the dark at night. White and grey and purple
+figures were scattered on the green, round wicker tables, in the middle
+the flame of the tea-urn made the air waver like a faulty sheet of
+glass, a massive green tree stood over them as if it were a moving
+force held at rest. As she approached, she could hear Evelyn’s voice
+repeating monotonously, “Here then—here—good doggie, come here”; for a
+moment nothing seemed to happen; it all stood still, and then she
+realised that one of the figures was Helen Ambrose; and the dust again
+began to settle.
+
+The group indeed had come together in a miscellaneous way; one
+tea-table joining to another tea-table, and deck-chairs serving to
+connect two groups. But even at a distance it could be seen that Mrs.
+Flushing, upright and imperious, dominated the party. She was talking
+vehemently to Helen across the table.
+
+“Ten days under canvas,” she was saying. “No comforts. If you want
+comforts, don’t come. But I may tell you, if you don’t come you’ll
+regret it all your life. You say yes?”
+
+At this moment Mrs. Flushing caught sight of Rachel.
+
+“Ah, there’s your niece. She’s promised. You’re coming, aren’t you?”
+Having adopted the plan, she pursued it with the energy of a child.
+
+Rachel took her part with eagerness.
+
+“Of course I’m coming. So are you, Helen. And Mr. Pepper too.” As she
+sat she realised that she was surrounded by people she knew, but that
+Terence was not among them. From various angles people began saying
+what they thought of the proposed expedition. According to some it
+would be hot, but the nights would be cold; according to others, the
+difficulties would lie rather in getting a boat, and in speaking the
+language. Mrs. Flushing disposed of all objections, whether due to man
+or due to nature, by announcing that her husband would settle all that.
+
+Meanwhile Mr. Flushing quietly explained to Helen that the expedition
+was really a simple matter; it took five days at the outside; and the
+place—a native village—was certainly well worth seeing before she
+returned to England. Helen murmured ambiguously, and did not commit
+herself to one answer rather than to another.
+
+The tea-party, however, included too many different kinds of people for
+general conversation to flourish; and from Rachel’s point of view
+possessed the great advantage that it was quite unnecessary for her to
+talk. Over there Susan and Arthur were explaining to Mrs. Paley that an
+expedition had been proposed; and Mrs. Paley having grasped the fact,
+gave the advice of an old traveller that they should take nice canned
+vegetables, fur cloaks, and insect powder. She leant over to Mrs.
+Flushing and whispered something which from the twinkle in her eyes
+probably had reference to bugs. Then Helen was reciting “Toll for the
+Brave” to St. John Hirst, in order apparently to win a sixpence which
+lay upon the table; while Mr. Hughling Elliot imposed silence upon his
+section of the audience by his fascinating anecdote of Lord Curzon and
+the undergraduate’s bicycle. Mrs. Thornbury was trying to remember the
+name of a man who might have been another Garibaldi, and had written a
+book which they ought to read; and Mr. Thornbury recollected that he
+had a pair of binoculars at anybody’s service. Miss Allan meanwhile
+murmured with the curious intimacy which a spinster often achieves with
+dogs, to the fox-terrier which Evelyn had at last induced to come over
+to them. Little particles of dust or blossom fell on the plates now and
+then when the branches sighed above. Rachel seemed to see and hear a
+little of everything, much as a river feels the twigs that fall into it
+and sees the sky above, but her eyes were too vague for Evelyn’s
+liking. She came across, and sat on the ground at Rachel’s feet.
+
+“Well?” she asked suddenly. “What are you thinking about?”
+
+“Miss Warrington,” Rachel replied rashly, because she had to say
+something. She did indeed see Susan murmuring to Mrs. Elliot, while
+Arthur stared at her with complete confidence in his own love. Both
+Rachel and Evelyn then began to listen to what Susan was saying.
+
+“There’s the ordering and the dogs and the garden, and the children
+coming to be taught,” her voice proceeded rhythmically as if checking
+the list, “and my tennis, and the village, and letters to write for
+father, and a thousand little things that don’t sound much; but I never
+have a moment to myself, and when I go to bed, I’m so sleepy I’m off
+before my head touches the pillow. Besides I like to be a great deal
+with my Aunts—I’m a great bore, aren’t I, Aunt Emma?” (she smiled at
+old Mrs. Paley, who with head slightly drooped was regarding the cake
+with speculative affection), “and father has to be very careful about
+chills in winter which means a great deal of running about, because he
+won’t look after himself, any more than you will, Arthur! So it all
+mounts up!”
+
+Her voice mounted too, in a mild ecstasy of satisfaction with her life
+and her own nature. Rachel suddenly took a violent dislike to Susan,
+ignoring all that was kindly, modest, and even pathetic about her. She
+appeared insincere and cruel; she saw her grown stout and prolific, the
+kind blue eyes now shallow and watery, the bloom of the cheeks
+congealed to a network of dry red canals.
+
+Helen turned to her. “Did you go to church?” she asked. She had won her
+sixpence and seemed making ready to go.
+
+“Yes,” said Rachel. “For the last time,” she added.
+
+In preparing to put on her gloves, Helen dropped one.
+
+“You’re not going?” Evelyn asked, taking hold of one glove as if to
+keep them.
+
+“It’s high time we went,” said Helen. “Don’t you see how silent every
+one’s getting—?”
+
+A silence had fallen upon them all, caused partly by one of the
+accidents of talk, and partly because they saw some one approaching.
+Helen could not see who it was, but keeping her eyes fixed upon Rachel
+observed something which made her say to herself, “So it’s Hewet.” She
+drew on her gloves with a curious sense of the significance of the
+moment. Then she rose, for Mrs. Flushing had seen Hewet too, and was
+demanding information about rivers and boats which showed that the
+whole conversation would now come over again.
+
+Rachel followed her, and they walked in silence down the avenue. In
+spite of what Helen had seen and understood, the feeling that was
+uppermost in her mind was now curiously perverse; if she went on this
+expedition, she would not be able to have a bath, the effort appeared
+to her to be great and disagreeable.
+
+“It’s so unpleasant, being cooped up with people one hardly knows,” she
+remarked. “People who mind being seen naked.”
+
+“You don’t mean to go?” Rachel asked.
+
+The intensity with which this was spoken irritated Mrs. Ambrose.
+
+“I don’t mean to go, and I don’t mean not to go,” she replied. She
+became more and more casual and indifferent.
+
+“After all, I daresay we’ve seen all there is to be seen; and there’s
+the bother of getting there, and whatever they may say it’s bound to be
+vilely uncomfortable.”
+
+For some time Rachel made no reply; but every sentence Helen spoke
+increased her bitterness. At last she broke out—
+
+“Thank God, Helen, I’m not like you! I sometimes think you don’t think
+or feel or care to do anything but exist! You’re like Mr. Hirst. You
+see that things are bad, and you pride yourself on saying so. It’s what
+you call being honest; as a matter of fact it’s being lazy, being dull,
+being nothing. You don’t help; you put an end to things.”
+
+Helen smiled as if she rather enjoyed the attack.
+
+“Well?” she enquired.
+
+“It seems to me bad—that’s all,” Rachel replied.
+
+“Quite likely,” said Helen.
+
+At any other time Rachel would probably have been silenced by her
+Aunt’s candour; but this afternoon she was not in the mood to be
+silenced by any one. A quarrel would be welcome.
+
+“You’re only half alive,” she continued.
+
+“Is that because I didn’t accept Mr. Flushing’s invitation?” Helen
+asked, “or do you always think that?”
+
+At the moment it appeared to Rachel that she had always seen the same
+faults in Helen, from the very first night on board the _Euphrosyne_,
+in spite of her beauty, in spite of her magnanimity and their love.
+
+“Oh, it’s only what’s the matter with every one!” she exclaimed. “No
+one feels—no one does anything but hurt. I tell you, Helen, the world’s
+bad. It’s an agony, living, wanting—”
+
+Here she tore a handful of leaves from a bush and crushed them to
+control herself.
+
+“The lives of these people,” she tried to explain, “the aimlessness,
+the way they live. One goes from one to another, and it’s all the same.
+One never gets what one wants out of any of them.”
+
+Her emotional state and her confusion would have made her an easy prey
+if Helen had wished to argue or had wished to draw confidences. But
+instead of talking she fell into a profound silence as they walked on.
+Aimless, trivial, meaningless, oh no—what she had seen at tea made it
+impossible for her to believe that. The little jokes, the chatter, the
+inanities of the afternoon had shrivelled up before her eyes.
+Underneath the likings and spites, the comings together and partings,
+great things were happening—terrible things, because they were so
+great. Her sense of safety was shaken, as if beneath twigs and dead
+leaves she had seen the movement of a snake. It seemed to her that a
+moment’s respite was allowed, a moment’s make-believe, and then again
+the profound and reasonless law asserted itself, moulding them all to
+its liking, making and destroying.
+
+She looked at Rachel walking beside her, still crushing the leaves in
+her fingers and absorbed in her own thoughts. She was in love, and she
+pitied her profoundly. But she roused herself from these thoughts and
+apologised. “I’m very sorry,” she said, “but if I’m dull, it’s my
+nature, and it can’t be helped.” If it was a natural defect, however,
+she found an easy remedy, for she went on to say that she thought Mr.
+Flushing’s scheme a very good one, only needing a little consideration,
+which it appeared she had given it by the time they reached home. By
+that time they had settled that if anything more was said, they would
+accept the invitation.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XX
+
+
+When considered in detail by Mr. Flushing and Mrs. Ambrose the
+expedition proved neither dangerous nor difficult. They found also that
+it was not even unusual. Every year at this season English people made
+parties which steamed a short way up the river, landed, and looked at
+the native village, bought a certain number of things from the natives,
+and returned again without damage done to mind or body. When it was
+discovered that six people really wished the same thing the
+arrangements were soon carried out.
+
+Since the time of Elizabeth very few people had seen the river, and
+nothing has been done to change its appearance from what it was to the
+eyes of the Elizabethan voyagers. The time of Elizabeth was only
+distant from the present time by a moment of space compared with the
+ages which had passed since the water had run between those banks, and
+the green thickets swarmed there, and the small trees had grown to huge
+wrinkled trees in solitude. Changing only with the change of the sun
+and the clouds, the waving green mass had stood there for century after
+century, and the water had run between its banks ceaselessly, sometimes
+washing away earth and sometimes the branches of trees, while in other
+parts of the world one town had risen upon the ruins of another town,
+and the men in the towns had become more and more articulate and unlike
+each other. A few miles of this river were visible from the top of the
+mountain where some weeks before the party from the hotel had
+picnicked. Susan and Arthur had seen it as they kissed each other, and
+Terence and Rachel as they sat talking about Richmond, and Evelyn and
+Perrott as they strolled about, imagining that they were great captains
+sent to colonise the world. They had seen the broad blue mark across
+the sand where it flowed into the sea, and the green cloud of trees
+mass themselves about it farther up, and finally hide its waters
+altogether from sight. At intervals for the first twenty miles or so
+houses were scattered on the bank; by degrees the houses became huts,
+and, later still, there was neither hut nor house, but trees and grass,
+which were seen only by hunters, explorers, or merchants, marching or
+sailing, but making no settlement.
+
+By leaving Santa Marina early in the morning, driving twenty miles and
+riding eight, the party, which was composed finally of six English
+people, reached the river-side as the night fell. They came cantering
+through the trees—Mr. and Mrs. Flushing, Helen Ambrose, Rachel,
+Terence, and St. John. The tired little horses then stopped
+automatically, and the English dismounted. Mrs. Flushing strode to the
+river-bank in high spirits. The day had been long and hot, but she had
+enjoyed the speed and the open air; she had left the hotel which she
+hated, and she found the company to her liking. The river was swirling
+past in the darkness; they could just distinguish the smooth moving
+surface of the water, and the air was full of the sound of it. They
+stood in an empty space in the midst of great tree-trunks, and out
+there a little green light moving slightly up and down showed them
+where the steamer lay in which they were to embark.
+
+When they all stood upon its deck they found that it was a very small
+boat which throbbed gently beneath them for a few minutes, and then
+shoved smoothly through the water. They seemed to be driving into the
+heart of the night, for the trees closed in front of them, and they
+could hear all round them the rustling of leaves. The great darkness
+had the usual effect of taking away all desire for communication by
+making their words sound thin and small; and, after walking round the
+deck three or four times, they clustered together, yawning deeply, and
+looking at the same spot of deep gloom on the banks. Murmuring very low
+in the rhythmical tone of one oppressed by the air, Mrs. Flushing began
+to wonder where they were to sleep, for they could not sleep
+downstairs, they could not sleep in a doghole smelling of oil, they
+could not sleep on deck, they could not sleep—She yawned profoundly. It
+was as Helen had foreseen; the question of nakedness had risen already,
+although they were half asleep, and almost invisible to each other.
+With St. John’s help she stretched an awning, and persuaded Mrs.
+Flushing that she could take off her clothes behind this, and that no
+one would notice if by chance some part of her which had been concealed
+for forty-five years was laid bare to the human eye. Mattresses were
+thrown down, rugs provided, and the three women lay near each other in
+the soft open air.
+
+The gentlemen, having smoked a certain number of cigarettes, dropped
+the glowing ends into the river, and looked for a time at the ripples
+wrinkling the black water beneath them, undressed too, and lay down at
+the other end of the boat. They were very tired, and curtained from
+each other by the darkness. The light from one lantern fell upon a few
+ropes, a few planks of the deck, and the rail of the boat, but beyond
+that there was unbroken darkness, no light reached their faces, or the
+trees which were massed on the sides of the river.
+
+Soon Wilfrid Flushing slept, and Hirst slept. Hewet alone lay awake
+looking straight up into the sky. The gentle motion and the black
+shapes that were drawn ceaselessly across his eyes had the effect of
+making it impossible for him to think. Rachel’s presence so near him
+lulled thought asleep. Being so near him, only a few paces off at the
+other end of the boat, she made it as impossible for him to think about
+her as it would have been impossible to see her if she had stood quite
+close to him, her forehead against his forehead. In some strange way
+the boat became identified with himself, and just as it would have been
+useless for him to get up and steer the boat, so was it useless for him
+to struggle any longer with the irresistible force of his own feelings.
+He was drawn on and on away from all he knew, slipping over barriers
+and past landmarks into unknown waters as the boat glided over the
+smooth surface of the river. In profound peace, enveloped in deeper
+unconsciousness than had been his for many nights, he lay on deck
+watching the tree-tops change their position slightly against the sky,
+and arch themselves, and sink and tower huge, until he passed from
+seeing them into dreams where he lay beneath the shadow of the vast
+trees, looking up into the sky.
+
+When they woke next morning they had gone a considerable way up the
+river; on the right was a high yellow bank of sand tufted with trees,
+on the left a swamp quivering with long reeds and tall bamboos on the
+top of which, swaying slightly, perched vivid green and yellow birds.
+The morning was hot and still. After breakfast they drew chairs
+together and sat in an irregular semicircle in the bow. An awning above
+their heads protected them from the heat of the sun, and the breeze
+which the boat made aired them softly. Mrs. Flushing was already
+dotting and striping her canvas, her head jerking this way and that
+with the action of a bird nervously picking up grain; the others had
+books or pieces of paper or embroidery on their knees, at which they
+looked fitfully and again looked at the river ahead. At one point Hewet
+read part of a poem aloud, but the number of moving things entirely
+vanquished his words. He ceased to read, and no one spoke. They moved
+on under the shelter of the trees. There was now a covey of red birds
+feeding on one of the little islets to the left, or again a blue-green
+parrot flew shrieking from tree to tree. As they moved on the country
+grew wilder and wilder. The trees and the undergrowth seemed to be
+strangling each other near the ground in a multitudinous wrestle; while
+here and there a splendid tree towered high above the swarm, shaking
+its thin green umbrellas lightly in the upper air. Hewet looked at his
+books again. The morning was peaceful as the night had been, only it
+was very strange because he could see it was light, and he could see
+Rachel and hear her voice and be near to her. He felt as if he were
+waiting, as if somehow he were stationary among things that passed over
+him and around him, voices, people’s bodies, birds, only Rachel too was
+waiting with him. He looked at her sometimes as if she must know that
+they were waiting together, and being drawn on together, without being
+able to offer any resistance. Again he read from his book:
+
+Whoever you are holding me now in your hand,
+Without one thing all will be useless.
+
+
+A bird gave a wild laugh, a monkey chuckled a malicious question, and,
+as fire fades in the hot sunshine, his words flickered and went out.
+
+By degrees as the river narrowed, and the high sandbanks fell to level
+ground thickly grown with trees, the sounds of the forest could be
+heard. It echoed like a hall. There were sudden cries; and then long
+spaces of silence, such as there are in a cathedral when a boy’s voice
+has ceased and the echo of it still seems to haunt about the remote
+places of the roof. Once Mr. Flushing rose and spoke to a sailor, and
+even announced that some time after luncheon the steamer would stop,
+and they could walk a little way through the forest.
+
+“There are tracks all through the trees there,” he explained. “We’re no
+distance from civilisation yet.”
+
+He scrutinised his wife’s painting. Too polite to praise it openly, he
+contented himself with cutting off one half of the picture with one
+hand, and giving a flourish in the air with the other.
+
+“God!” Hirst exclaimed, staring straight ahead. “Don’t you think it’s
+amazingly beautiful?”
+
+“Beautiful?” Helen enquired. It seemed a strange little word, and Hirst
+and herself both so small that she forgot to answer him.
+
+Hewet felt that he must speak.
+
+“That’s where the Elizabethans got their style,” he mused, staring into
+the profusion of leaves and blossoms and prodigious fruits.
+
+“Shakespeare? I hate Shakespeare!” Mrs. Flushing exclaimed; and Wilfrid
+returned admiringly, “I believe you’re the only person who dares to say
+that, Alice.” But Mrs. Flushing went on painting. She did not appear to
+attach much value to her husband’s compliment, and painted steadily,
+sometimes muttering a half-audible word or groan.
+
+The morning was now very hot.
+
+“Look at Hirst!” Mr. Flushing whispered. His sheet of paper had slipped
+on to the deck, his head lay back, and he drew a long snoring breath.
+
+Terence picked up the sheet of paper and spread it out before Rachel.
+It was a continuation of the poem on God which he had begun in the
+chapel, and it was so indecent that Rachel did not understand half of
+it although she saw that it was indecent. Hewet began to fill in words
+where Hirst had left spaces, but he soon ceased; his pencil rolled on
+deck. Gradually they approached nearer and nearer to the bank on the
+right-hand side, so that the light which covered them became definitely
+green, falling through a shade of green leaves, and Mrs. Flushing set
+aside her sketch and stared ahead of her in silence. Hirst woke up;
+they were then called to luncheon, and while they ate it, the steamer
+came to a standstill a little way out from the bank. The boat which was
+towed behind them was brought to the side, and the ladies were helped
+into it.
+
+For protection against boredom, Helen put a book of memoirs beneath her
+arm, and Mrs. Flushing her paint-box, and, thus equipped, they allowed
+themselves to be set on shore on the verge of the forest.
+
+They had not strolled more than a few hundred yards along the track
+which ran parallel with the river before Helen professed to find it was
+unbearably hot. The river breeze had ceased, and a hot steamy
+atmosphere, thick with scents, came from the forest.
+
+“I shall sit down here,” she announced, pointing to the trunk of a tree
+which had fallen long ago and was now laced across and across by
+creepers and thong-like brambles. She seated herself, opened her
+parasol, and looked at the river which was barred by the stems of
+trees. She turned her back to the trees which disappeared in black
+shadow behind her.
+
+“I quite agree,” said Mrs. Flushing, and proceeded to undo her
+paint-box. Her husband strolled about to select an interesting point of
+view for her. Hirst cleared a space on the ground by Helen’s side, and
+seated himself with great deliberation, as if he did not mean to move
+until he had talked to her for a long time. Terence and Rachel were
+left standing by themselves without occupation. Terence saw that the
+time had come as it was fated to come, but although he realised this he
+was completely calm and master of himself. He chose to stand for a few
+moments talking to Helen, and persuading her to leave her seat. Rachel
+joined him too in advising her to come with them.
+
+“Of all the people I’ve ever met,” he said, “you’re the least
+adventurous. You might be sitting on green chairs in Hyde Park. Are you
+going to sit there the whole afternoon? Aren’t you going to walk?”
+
+“Oh, no,” said Helen, “one’s only got to use one’s eye. There’s
+everything here—everything,” she repeated in a drowsy tone of voice.
+“What will you gain by walking?”
+
+“You’ll be hot and disagreeable by tea-time, we shall be cool and
+sweet,” put in Hirst. Into his eyes as he looked up at them had come
+yellow and green reflections from the sky and the branches, robbing
+them of their intentness, and he seemed to think what he did not say.
+It was thus taken for granted by them both that Terence and Rachel
+proposed to walk into the woods together; with one look at each other
+they turned away.
+
+“Good-bye!” cried Rachel.
+
+“Good-by. Beware of snakes,” Hirst replied. He settled himself still
+more comfortably under the shade of the fallen tree and Helen’s figure.
+As they went, Mr. Flushing called after them, “We must start in an
+hour. Hewet, please remember that. An hour.”
+
+Whether made by man, or for some reason preserved by nature, there was
+a wide pathway striking through the forest at right angles to the
+river. It resembled a drive in an English forest, save that tropical
+bushes with their sword-like leaves grew at the side, and the ground
+was covered with an unmarked springy moss instead of grass, starred
+with little yellow flowers. As they passed into the depths of the
+forest the light grew dimmer, and the noises of the ordinary world were
+replaced by those creaking and sighing sounds which suggest to the
+traveller in a forest that he is walking at the bottom of the sea. The
+path narrowed and turned; it was hedged in by dense creepers which
+knotted tree to tree, and burst here and there into star-shaped crimson
+blossoms. The sighing and creaking up above were broken every now and
+then by the jarring cry of some startled animal. The atmosphere was
+close and the air came at them in languid puffs of scent. The vast
+green light was broken here and there by a round of pure yellow
+sunlight which fell through some gap in the immense umbrella of green
+above, and in these yellow spaces crimson and black butterflies were
+circling and settling. Terence and Rachel hardly spoke.
+
+Not only did the silence weigh upon them, but they were both unable to
+frame any thoughts. There was something between them which had to be
+spoken of. One of them had to begin, but which of them was it to be?
+Then Hewet picked up a red fruit and threw it as high as he could. When
+it dropped, he would speak. They heard the flapping of great wings;
+they heard the fruit go pattering through the leaves and eventually
+fall with a thud. The silence was again profound.
+
+“Does this frighten you?” Terence asked when the sound of the fruit
+falling had completely died away.
+
+“No,” she answered. “I like it.”
+
+She repeated “I like it.” She was walking fast, and holding herself
+more erect than usual. There was another pause.
+
+“You like being with me?” Terence asked.
+
+“Yes, with you,” she replied.
+
+He was silent for a moment. Silence seemed to have fallen upon the
+world.
+
+“That is what I have felt ever since I knew you,” he replied. “We are
+happy together.” He did not seem to be speaking, or she to be hearing.
+
+“Very happy,” she answered.
+
+They continued to walk for some time in silence. Their steps
+unconsciously quickened.
+
+“We love each other,” Terence said.
+
+“We love each other,” she repeated.
+
+The silence was then broken by their voices which joined in tones of
+strange unfamiliar sound which formed no words. Faster and faster they
+walked; simultaneously they stopped, clasped each other in their arms,
+then releasing themselves, dropped to the earth. They sat side by side.
+Sounds stood out from the background making a bridge across their
+silence; they heard the swish of the trees and some beast croaking in a
+remote world.
+
+“We love each other,” Terence repeated, searching into her face. Their
+faces were both very pale and quiet, and they said nothing. He was
+afraid to kiss her again. By degrees she drew close to him, and rested
+against him. In this position they sat for some time. She said
+“Terence” once; he answered “Rachel.”
+
+“Terrible—terrible,” she murmured after another pause, but in saying
+this she was thinking as much of the persistent churning of the water
+as of her own feeling. On and on it went in the distance, the senseless
+and cruel churning of the water. She observed that the tears were
+running down Terence’s cheeks.
+
+The next movement was on his part. A very long time seemed to have
+passed. He took out his watch.
+
+“Flushing said an hour. We’ve been gone more than half an hour.”
+
+“And it takes that to get back,” said Rachel. She raised herself very
+slowly. When she was standing up she stretched her arms and drew a deep
+breath, half a sigh, half a yawn. She appeared to be very tired. Her
+cheeks were white. “Which way?” she asked.
+
+“There,” said Terence.
+
+They began to walk back down the mossy path again. The sighing and
+creaking continued far overhead, and the jarring cries of animals. The
+butterflies were circling still in the patches of yellow sunlight. At
+first Terence was certain of his way, but as they walked he became
+doubtful. They had to stop to consider, and then to return and start
+once more, for although he was certain of the direction of the river he
+was not certain of striking the point where they had left the others.
+Rachel followed him, stopping where he stopped, turning where he
+turned, ignorant of the way, ignorant why he stopped or why he turned.
+
+“I don’t want to be late,” he said, “because—” He put a flower into her
+hand and her fingers closed upon it quietly. “We’re so late—so late—so
+horribly late,” he repeated as if he were talking in his sleep.
+“Ah—this is right. We turn here.”
+
+They found themselves again in the broad path, like the drive in the
+English forest, where they had started when they left the others. They
+walked on in silence as people walking in their sleep, and were oddly
+conscious now and again of the mass of their bodies. Then Rachel
+exclaimed suddenly, “Helen!”
+
+In the sunny space at the edge of the forest they saw Helen still
+sitting on the tree-trunk, her dress showing very white in the sun,
+with Hirst still propped on his elbow by her side. They stopped
+instinctively. At the sight of other people they could not go on. They
+stood hand in hand for a minute or two in silence. They could not bear
+to face other people.
+
+“But we must go on,” Rachel insisted at last, in the curious dull tone
+of voice in which they had both been speaking, and with a great effort
+they forced themselves to cover the short distance which lay between
+them and the pair sitting on the tree-trunk.
+
+As they approached, Helen turned round and looked at them. She looked
+at them for some time without speaking, and when they were close to her
+she said quietly:
+
+“Did you meet Mr. Flushing? He has gone to find you. He thought you
+must be lost, though I told him you weren’t lost.”
+
+Hirst half turned round and threw his head back so that he looked at
+the branches crossing themselves in the air above him.
+
+“Well, was it worth the effort?” he enquired dreamily.
+
+Hewet sat down on the grass by his side and began to fan himself.
+
+Rachel had balanced herself near Helen on the end of the tree trunk.
+
+“Very hot,” she said.
+
+“You look exhausted anyhow,” said Hirst.
+
+“It’s fearfully close in those trees,” Helen remarked, picking up her
+book and shaking it free from the dried blades of grass which had
+fallen between the leaves. Then they were all silent, looking at the
+river swirling past in front of them between the trunks of the trees
+until Mr. Flushing interrupted them. He broke out of the trees a
+hundred yards to the left, exclaiming sharply:
+
+“Ah, so you found the way after all. But it’s late—much later than we
+arranged, Hewet.”
+
+He was slightly annoyed, and in his capacity as leader of the
+expedition, inclined to be dictatorial. He spoke quickly, using
+curiously sharp, meaningless words.
+
+“Being late wouldn’t matter normally, of course,” he said, “but when
+it’s a question of keeping the men up to time—”
+
+He gathered them together and made them come down to the river-bank,
+where the boat was waiting to row them out to the steamer.
+
+The heat of the day was going down, and over their cups of tea the
+Flushings tended to become communicative. It seemed to Terence as he
+listened to them talking, that existence now went on in two different
+layers. Here were the Flushings talking, talking somewhere high up in
+the air above him, and he and Rachel had dropped to the bottom of the
+world together. But with something of a child’s directness, Mrs.
+Flushing had also the instinct which leads a child to suspect what its
+elders wish to keep hidden. She fixed Terence with her vivid blue eyes
+and addressed herself to him in particular. What would he do, she
+wanted to know, if the boat ran upon a rock and sank.
+
+“Would you care for anythin’ but savin’ yourself? Should I? No, no,”
+she laughed, “not one scrap—don’t tell me. There’s only two creatures
+the ordinary woman cares about,” she continued, “her child and her dog;
+and I don’t believe it’s even two with men. One reads a lot about
+love—that’s why poetry’s so dull. But what happens in real life, eh? It
+ain’t love!” she cried.
+
+Terence murmured something unintelligible. Mr. Flushing, however, had
+recovered his urbanity. He was smoking a cigarette, and he now answered
+his wife.
+
+“You must always remember, Alice,” he said, “that your upbringing was
+very unnatural—unusual, I should say. They had no mother,” he
+explained, dropping something of the formality of his tone; “and a
+father—he was a very delightful man, I’ve no doubt, but he cared only
+for racehorses and Greek statues. Tell them about the bath, Alice.”
+
+“In the stable-yard,” said Mrs. Flushing. “Covered with ice in winter.
+We had to get in; if we didn’t, we were whipped. The strong ones
+lived—the others died. What you call survival of the fittest—a most
+excellent plan, I daresay, if you’ve thirteen children!”
+
+“And all this going on in the heart of England, in the nineteenth
+century!” Mr. Flushing exclaimed, turning to Helen.
+
+“I’d treat my children just the same if I had any,” said Mrs. Flushing.
+
+Every word sounded quite distinctly in Terence’s ears; but what were
+they saying, and who were they talking to, and who were they, these
+fantastic people, detached somewhere high up in the air? Now that they
+had drunk their tea, they rose and leant over the bow of the boat. The
+sun was going down, and the water was dark and crimson. The river had
+widened again, and they were passing a little island set like a dark
+wedge in the middle of the stream. Two great white birds with red
+lights on them stood there on stilt-like legs, and the beach of the
+island was unmarked, save by the skeleton print of birds’ feet. The
+branches of the trees on the bank looked more twisted and angular than
+ever, and the green of the leaves was lurid and splashed with gold.
+Then Hirst began to talk, leaning over the bow.
+
+“It makes one awfully queer, don’t you find?” he complained. “These
+trees get on one’s nerves—it’s all so crazy. God’s undoubtedly mad.
+What sane person could have conceived a wilderness like this, and
+peopled it with apes and alligators? I should go mad if I lived
+here—raving mad.”
+
+Terence attempted to answer him, but Mrs. Ambrose replied instead. She
+bade him look at the way things massed themselves—look at the amazing
+colours, look at the shapes of the trees. She seemed to be protecting
+Terence from the approach of the others.
+
+“Yes,” said Mr. Flushing. “And in my opinion,” he continued, “the
+absence of population to which Hirst objects is precisely the
+significant touch. You must admit, Hirst, that a little Italian town
+even would vulgarise the whole scene, would detract from the
+vastness—the sense of elemental grandeur.” He swept his hands towards
+the forest, and paused for a moment, looking at the great green mass,
+which was now falling silent. “I own it makes us seem pretty small—us,
+not them.” He nodded his head at a sailor who leant over the side
+spitting into the river. “And that, I think, is what my wife feels, the
+essential superiority of the peasant—” Under cover of Mr. Flushing’s
+words, which continued now gently reasoning with St. John and
+persuading him, Terence drew Rachel to the side, pointing ostensibly to
+a great gnarled tree-trunk which had fallen and lay half in the water.
+He wished, at any rate, to be near her, but he found that he could say
+nothing. They could hear Mr. Flushing flowing on, now about his wife,
+now about art, now about the future of the country, little meaningless
+words floating high in air. As it was becoming cold he began to pace
+the deck with Hirst. Fragments of their talk came out distinctly as
+they passed—art, emotion, truth, reality.
+
+“Is it true, or is it a dream?” Rachel murmured, when they had passed.
+
+“It’s true, it’s true,” he replied.
+
+But the breeze freshened, and there was a general desire for movement.
+When the party rearranged themselves under cover of rugs and cloaks,
+Terence and Rachel were at opposite ends of the circle, and could not
+speak to each other. But as the dark descended, the words of the others
+seemed to curl up and vanish as the ashes of burnt paper, and left them
+sitting perfectly silent at the bottom of the world. Occasional starts
+of exquisite joy ran through them, and then they were peaceful again.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXI
+
+
+Thanks to Mr. Flushing’s discipline, the right stages of the river were
+reached at the right hours, and when next morning after breakfast the
+chairs were again drawn out in a semicircle in the bow, the launch was
+within a few miles of the native camp which was the limit of the
+journey. Mr. Flushing, as he sat down, advised them to keep their eyes
+fixed on the left bank, where they would soon pass a clearing, and in
+that clearing, was a hut where Mackenzie, the famous explorer, had died
+of fever some ten years ago, almost within reach of
+civilisation—Mackenzie, he repeated, the man who went farther inland
+than any one’s been yet. Their eyes turned that way obediently. The
+eyes of Rachel saw nothing. Yellow and green shapes did, it is true,
+pass before them, but she only knew that one was large and another
+small; she did not know that they were trees. These directions to look
+here and there irritated her, as interruptions irritate a person
+absorbed in thought, although she was not thinking of anything. She was
+annoyed with all that was said, and with the aimless movements of
+people’s bodies, because they seemed to interfere with her and to
+prevent her from speaking to Terence. Very soon Helen saw her staring
+moodily at a coil of rope, and making no effort to listen. Mr. Flushing
+and St. John were engaged in more or less continuous conversation about
+the future of the country from a political point of view, and the
+degree to which it had been explored; the others, with their legs
+stretched out, or chins poised on the hands, gazed in silence.
+
+Mrs. Ambrose looked and listened obediently enough, but inwardly she
+was prey to an uneasy mood not readily to be ascribed to any one cause.
+Looking on shore as Mr. Flushing bade her, she thought the country very
+beautiful, but also sultry and alarming. She did not like to feel
+herself the victim of unclassified emotions, and certainly as the
+launch slipped on and on, in the hot morning sun, she felt herself
+unreasonably moved. Whether the unfamiliarity of the forest was the
+cause of it, or something less definite, she could not determine. Her
+mind left the scene and occupied itself with anxieties for Ridley, for
+her children, for far-off things, such as old age and poverty and
+death. Hirst, too, was depressed. He had been looking forward to this
+expedition as to a holiday, for, once away from the hotel, surely
+wonderful things would happen, instead of which nothing happened, and
+here they were as uncomfortable, as restrained, as self-conscious as
+ever. That, of course, was what came of looking forward to anything;
+one was always disappointed. He blamed Wilfrid Flushing, who was so
+well dressed and so formal; he blamed Hewet and Rachel. Why didn’t they
+talk? He looked at them sitting silent and self-absorbed, and the sight
+annoyed him. He supposed that they were engaged, or about to become
+engaged, but instead of being in the least romantic or exciting, that
+was as dull as everything else; it annoyed him, too, to think that they
+were in love. He drew close to Helen and began to tell her how
+uncomfortable his night had been, lying on the deck, sometimes too hot,
+sometimes too cold, and the stars so bright that he couldn’t get to
+sleep. He had lain awake all night thinking, and when it was light
+enough to see, he had written twenty lines of his poem on God, and the
+awful thing was that he’d practically proved the fact that God did not
+exist. He did not see that he was teasing her, and he went on to wonder
+what would happen if God did exist—“an old gentleman in a beard and a
+long blue dressing gown, extremely testy and disagreeable as he’s bound
+to be? Can you suggest a rhyme? God, rod, sod—all used; any others?”
+
+Although he spoke much as usual, Helen could have seen, had she looked,
+that he was also impatient and disturbed. But she was not called upon
+to answer, for Mr. Flushing now exclaimed “There!” They looked at the
+hut on the bank, a desolate place with a large rent in the roof, and
+the ground round it yellow, scarred with fires and scattered with rusty
+open tins.
+
+“Did they find his dead body there?” Mrs. Flushing exclaimed, leaning
+forward in her eagerness to see the spot where the explorer had died.
+
+“They found his body and his skins and a notebook,” her husband
+replied. But the boat had soon carried them on and left the place
+behind.
+
+It was so hot that they scarcely moved, except now to change a foot,
+or, again, to strike a match. Their eyes, concentrated upon the bank,
+were full of the same green reflections, and their lips were slightly
+pressed together as though the sights they were passing gave rise to
+thoughts, save that Hirst’s lips moved intermittently as half
+consciously he sought rhymes for God. Whatever the thoughts of the
+others, no one said anything for a considerable space. They had grown
+so accustomed to the wall of trees on either side that they looked up
+with a start when the light suddenly widened out and the trees came to
+an end.
+
+“It almost reminds one of an English park,” said Mr. Flushing.
+
+Indeed no change could have been greater. On both banks of the river
+lay an open lawn-like space, grass covered and planted, for the
+gentleness and order of the place suggested human care, with graceful
+trees on the top of little mounds. As far as they could gaze, this lawn
+rose and sank with the undulating motion of an old English park. The
+change of scene naturally suggested a change of position, grateful to
+most of them. They rose and leant over the rail.
+
+“It might be Arundel or Windsor,” Mr. Flushing continued, “if you cut
+down that bush with the yellow flowers; and, by Jove, look!”
+
+Rows of brown backs paused for a moment and then leapt with a motion as
+if they were springing over waves out of sight. For a moment no one of
+them could believe that they had really seen live animals in the open—a
+herd of wild deer, and the sight aroused a childlike excitement in
+them, dissipating their gloom.
+
+“I’ve never in my life seen anything bigger than a hare!” Hirst
+exclaimed with genuine excitement. “What an ass I was not to bring my
+Kodak!”
+
+Soon afterwards the launch came gradually to a standstill, and the
+captain explained to Mr. Flushing that it would be pleasant for the
+passengers if they now went for a stroll on shore; if they chose to
+return within an hour, he would take them on to the village; if they
+chose to walk—it was only a mile or two farther on—he would meet them
+at the landing-place.
+
+The matter being settled, they were once more put on shore: the
+sailors, producing raisins and tobacco, leant upon the rail and watched
+the six English, whose coats and dresses looked so strange upon the
+green, wander off. A joke that was by no means proper set them all
+laughing, and then they turned round and lay at their ease upon the
+deck.
+
+Directly they landed, Terence and Rachel drew together slightly in
+advance of the others.
+
+“Thank God!” Terence exclaimed, drawing a long breath. “At last we’re
+alone.”
+
+“And if we keep ahead we can talk,” said Rachel.
+
+Nevertheless, although their position some yards in advance of the
+others made it possible for them to say anything they chose, they were
+both silent.
+
+“You love me?” Terence asked at length, breaking the silence painfully.
+To speak or to be silent was equally an effort, for when they were
+silent they were keenly conscious of each other’s presence, and yet
+words were either too trivial or too large.
+
+She murmured inarticulately, ending, “And you?”
+
+“Yes, yes,” he replied; but there were so many things to be said, and
+now that they were alone it seemed necessary to bring themselves still
+more near, and to surmount a barrier which had grown up since they had
+last spoken. It was difficult, frightening even, oddly embarrassing. At
+one moment he was clear-sighted, and, at the next, confused.
+
+“Now I’m going to begin at the beginning,” he said resolutely. “I’m
+going to tell you what I ought to have told you before. In the first
+place, I’ve never been in love with other women, but I’ve had other
+women. Then I’ve great faults. I’m very lazy, I’m moody—” He persisted,
+in spite of her exclamation, “You’ve got to know the worst of me. I’m
+lustful. I’m overcome by a sense of futility—incompetence. I ought
+never to have asked you to marry me, I expect. I’m a bit of a snob; I’m
+ambitious—”
+
+“Oh, our faults!” she cried. “What do they matter?” Then she demanded,
+“Am I in love—is this being in love—are we to marry each other?”
+
+Overcome by the charm of her voice and her presence, he exclaimed, “Oh,
+you’re free, Rachel. To you, time will make no difference, or marriage
+or—”
+
+The voices of the others behind them kept floating, now farther, now
+nearer, and Mrs. Flushing’s laugh rose clearly by itself.
+
+“Marriage?” Rachel repeated.
+
+The shouts were renewed behind, warning them that they were bearing too
+far to the left. Improving their course, he continued, “Yes, marriage.”
+The feeling that they could not be united until she knew all about him
+made him again endeavour to explain.
+
+“All that’s been bad in me, the things I’ve put up with—the second
+best—”
+
+She murmured, considered her own life, but could not describe how it
+looked to her now.
+
+“And the loneliness!” he continued. A vision of walking with her
+through the streets of London came before his eyes. “We will go for
+walks together,” he said. The simplicity of the idea relieved them, and
+for the first time they laughed. They would have liked had they dared
+to take each other by the hand, but the consciousness of eyes fixed on
+them from behind had not yet deserted them.
+
+“Books, people, sights—Mrs. Nutt, Greeley, Hutchinson,” Hewet murmured.
+
+With every word the mist which had enveloped them, making them seem
+unreal to each other, since the previous afternoon melted a little
+further, and their contact became more and more natural. Up through the
+sultry southern landscape they saw the world they knew appear clearer
+and more vividly than it had ever appeared before. As upon that
+occasion at the hotel when she had sat in the window, the world once
+more arranged itself beneath her gaze very vividly and in its true
+proportions. She glanced curiously at Terence from time to time,
+observing his grey coat and his purple tie; observing the man with whom
+she was to spend the rest of her life.
+
+After one of these glances she murmured, “Yes, I’m in love. There’s no
+doubt; I’m in love with you.”
+
+Nevertheless, they remained uncomfortably apart; drawn so close
+together, as she spoke, that there seemed no division between them, and
+the next moment separate and far away again. Feeling this painfully,
+she exclaimed, “It will be a fight.”
+
+But as she looked at him she perceived from the shape of his eyes, the
+lines about his mouth, and other peculiarities that he pleased her, and
+she added:
+
+“Where I want to fight, you have compassion. You’re finer than I am;
+you’re much finer.”
+
+He returned her glance and smiled, perceiving, much as she had done,
+the very small individual things about her which made her delightful to
+him. She was his for ever. This barrier being surmounted, innumerable
+delights lay before them both.
+
+“I’m not finer,” he answered. “I’m only older, lazier; a man, not a
+woman.”
+
+“A man,” she repeated, and a curious sense of possession coming over
+her, it struck her that she might now touch him; she put out her hand
+and lightly touched his cheek. His fingers followed where hers had
+been, and the touch of his hand upon his face brought back the
+overpowering sense of unreality. This body of his was unreal; the whole
+world was unreal.
+
+“What’s happened?” he began. “Why did I ask you to marry me? How did it
+happen?”
+
+“Did you ask me to marry you?” she wondered. They faded far away from
+each other, and neither of them could remember what had been said.
+
+“We sat upon the ground,” he recollected.
+
+“We sat upon the ground,” she confirmed him. The recollection of
+sitting upon the ground, such as it was, seemed to unite them again,
+and they walked on in silence, their minds sometimes working with
+difficulty and sometimes ceasing to work, their eyes alone perceiving
+the things round them. Now he would attempt again to tell her his
+faults, and why he loved her; and she would describe what she had felt
+at this time or at that time, and together they would interpret her
+feeling. So beautiful was the sound of their voices that by degrees
+they scarcely listened to the words they framed. Long silences came
+between their words, which were no longer silences of struggle and
+confusion but refreshing silences, in which trivial thoughts moved
+easily. They began to speak naturally of ordinary things, of the
+flowers and the trees, how they grew there so red, like garden flowers
+at home, and there bent and crooked like the arm of a twisted old man.
+
+Very gently and quietly, almost as if it were the blood singing in her
+veins, or the water of the stream running over stones, Rachel became
+conscious of a new feeling within her. She wondered for a moment what
+it was, and then said to herself, with a little surprise at recognising
+in her own person so famous a thing:
+
+“This is happiness, I suppose.” And aloud to Terence she spoke, “This
+is happiness.”
+
+On the heels of her words he answered, “This is happiness,” upon which
+they guessed that the feeling had sprung in both of them the same time.
+They began therefore to describe how this felt and that felt, how like
+it was and yet how different; for they were very different.
+
+Voices crying behind them never reached through the waters in which
+they were now sunk. The repetition of Hewet’s name in short, dissevered
+syllables was to them the crack of a dry branch or the laughter of a
+bird. The grasses and breezes sounding and murmuring all round them,
+they never noticed that the swishing of the grasses grew louder and
+louder, and did not cease with the lapse of the breeze. A hand dropped
+abrupt as iron on Rachel’s shoulder; it might have been a bolt from
+heaven. She fell beneath it, and the grass whipped across her eyes and
+filled her mouth and ears. Through the waving stems she saw a figure,
+large and shapeless against the sky. Helen was upon her. Rolled this
+way and that, now seeing only forests of green, and now the high blue
+heaven; she was speechless and almost without sense. At last she lay
+still, all the grasses shaken round her and before her by her panting.
+Over her loomed two great heads, the heads of a man and woman, of
+Terence and Helen.
+
+Both were flushed, both laughing, and the lips were moving; they came
+together and kissed in the air above her. Broken fragments of speech
+came down to her on the ground. She thought she heard them speak of
+love and then of marriage. Raising herself and sitting up, she too
+realised Helen’s soft body, the strong and hospitable arms, and
+happiness swelling and breaking in one vast wave. When this fell away,
+and the grasses once more lay low, and the sky became horizontal, and
+the earth rolled out flat on each side, and the trees stood upright,
+she was the first to perceive a little row of human figures standing
+patiently in the distance. For the moment she could not remember who
+they were.
+
+“Who are they?” she asked, and then recollected.
+
+Falling into line behind Mr. Flushing, they were careful to leave at
+least three yards’ distance between the toe of his boot and the rim of
+her skirt.
+
+He led them across a stretch of green by the river-bank and then
+through a grove of trees, and bade them remark the signs of human
+habitation, the blackened grass, the charred tree-stumps, and there,
+through the trees, strange wooden nests, drawn together in an arch
+where the trees drew apart, the village which was the goal of their
+journey.
+
+Stepping cautiously, they observed the women, who were squatting on the
+ground in triangular shapes, moving their hands, either plaiting straw
+or in kneading something in bowls. But when they had looked for a
+moment undiscovered, they were seen, and Mr. Flushing, advancing into
+the centre of the clearing, was engaged in talk with a lean majestic
+man, whose bones and hollows at once made the shapes of the
+Englishman’s body appear ugly and unnatural. The women took no notice
+of the strangers, except that their hands paused for a moment and their
+long narrow eyes slid round and fixed upon them with the motionless
+inexpressive gaze of those removed from each other far far beyond the
+plunge of speech. Their hands moved again, but the stare continued. It
+followed them as they walked, as they peered into the huts where they
+could distinguish guns leaning in the corner, and bowls upon the floor,
+and stacks of rushes; in the dusk the solemn eyes of babies regarded
+them, and old women stared out too. As they sauntered about, the stare
+followed them, passing over their legs, their bodies, their heads,
+curiously not without hostility, like the crawl of a winter fly. As she
+drew apart her shawl and uncovered her breast to the lips of her baby,
+the eyes of a woman never left their faces, although they moved
+uneasily under her stare, and finally turned away, rather than stand
+there looking at her any longer. When sweetmeats were offered them,
+they put out great red hands to take them, and felt themselves treading
+cumbrously like tight-coated soldiers among these soft instinctive
+people. But soon the life of the village took no notice of them; they
+had become absorbed in it. The women’s hands became busy again with the
+straw; their eyes dropped. If they moved, it was to fetch something
+from the hut, or to catch a straying child, or to cross the space with
+a jar balanced on their heads; if they spoke, it was to cry some harsh
+unintelligible cry. Voices rose when a child was beaten, and fell
+again; voices rose in song, which slid up a little way and down a
+little way, and settled again upon the same low and melancholy note.
+Seeking each other, Terence and Rachel drew together under a tree.
+Peaceful, and even beautiful at first, the sight of the women, who had
+given up looking at them, made them now feel very cold and melancholy.
+
+“Well,” Terence sighed at length, “it makes us seem insignificant,
+doesn’t it?”
+
+Rachel agreed. So it would go on for ever and ever, she said, those
+women sitting under the trees, the trees and the river. They turned
+away and began to walk through the trees, leaning, without fear of
+discovery, upon each other’s arms. They had not gone far before they
+began to assure each other once more that they were in love, were
+happy, were content; but why was it so painful being in love, why was
+there so much pain in happiness?
+
+The sight of the village indeed affected them all curiously though all
+differently. St. John had left the others and was walking slowly down
+to the river, absorbed in his own thoughts, which were bitter and
+unhappy, for he felt himself alone; and Helen, standing by herself in
+the sunny space among the native women, was exposed to presentiments of
+disaster. The cries of the senseless beasts rang in her ears high and
+low in the air, as they ran from tree-trunk to tree-top. How small the
+little figures looked wandering through the trees! She became acutely
+conscious of the little limbs, the thin veins, the delicate flesh of
+men and women, which breaks so easily and lets the life escape compared
+with these great trees and deep waters. A falling branch, a foot that
+slips, and the earth has crushed them or the water drowned them. Thus
+thinking, she kept her eyes anxiously fixed upon the lovers, as if by
+doing so she could protect them from their fate. Turning, she found the
+Flushings by her side.
+
+They were talking about the things they had bought and arguing whether
+they were really old, and whether there were not signs here and there
+of European influence. Helen was appealed to. She was made to look at a
+brooch, and then at a pair of ear-rings. But all the time she blamed
+them for having come on this expedition, for having ventured too far
+and exposed themselves. Then she roused herself and tried to talk, but
+in a few moments she caught herself seeing a picture of a boat upset on
+the river in England, at midday. It was morbid, she knew, to imagine
+such things; nevertheless she sought out the figures of the others
+between the trees, and whenever she saw them she kept her eyes fixed on
+them, so that she might be able to protect them from disaster.
+
+But when the sun went down and the steamer turned and began to steam
+back towards civilisation, again her fears were calmed. In the
+semi-darkness the chairs on deck and the people sitting in them were
+angular shapes, the mouth being indicated by a tiny burning spot, and
+the arm by the same spot moving up or down as the cigar or cigarette
+was lifted to and from the lips. Words crossed the darkness, but, not
+knowing where they fell, seemed to lack energy and substance. Deep
+sighs proceeded regularly, although with some attempt at suppression,
+from the large white mound which represented the person of Mrs.
+Flushing. The day had been long and very hot, and now that all the
+colours were blotted out the cool night air seemed to press soft
+fingers upon the eyelids, sealing them down. Some philosophical remark
+directed, apparently, at St. John Hirst missed its aim, and hung so
+long suspended in the air until it was engulfed by a yawn, that it was
+considered dead, and this gave the signal for stirring of legs and
+murmurs about sleep. The white mound moved, finally lengthened itself
+and disappeared, and after a few turns and paces St. John and Mr.
+Flushing withdrew, leaving the three chairs still occupied by three
+silent bodies. The light which came from a lamp high on the mast and a
+sky pale with stars left them with shapes but without features; but
+even in this darkness the withdrawal of the others made them feel each
+other very near, for they were all thinking of the same thing. For some
+time no one spoke, then Helen said with a sigh, “So you’re both very
+happy?”
+
+As if washed by the air her voice sounded more spiritual and softer
+than usual. Voices at a little distance answered her, “Yes.”
+
+Through the darkness she was looking at them both, and trying to
+distinguish him. What was there for her to say? Rachel had passed
+beyond her guardianship. A voice might reach her ears, but never again
+would it carry as far as it had carried twenty-four hours ago.
+Nevertheless, speech seemed to be due from her before she went to bed.
+She wished to speak, but she felt strangely old and depressed.
+
+“D’you realise what you’re doing?” she demanded. “She’s young, you’re
+both young; and marriage—” Here she ceased. They begged her, however,
+to continue, with such earnestness in their voices, as if they only
+craved advice, that she was led to add:
+
+“Marriage! well, it’s not easy.”
+
+“That’s what we want to know,” they answered, and she guessed that now
+they were looking at each other.
+
+“It depends on both of you,” she stated. Her face was turned towards
+Terence, and although he could hardly see her, he believed that her
+words really covered a genuine desire to know more about him. He raised
+himself from his semi-recumbent position and proceeded to tell her what
+she wanted to know. He spoke as lightly as he could in order to take
+away her depression.
+
+“I’m twenty-seven, and I’ve about seven hundred a year,” he began. “My
+temper is good on the whole, and health excellent, though Hirst detects
+a gouty tendency. Well, then, I think I’m very intelligent.” He paused
+as if for confirmation.
+
+Helen agreed.
+
+“Though, unfortunately, rather lazy. I intend to allow Rachel to be a
+fool if she wants to, and—Do you find me on the whole satisfactory in
+other respects?” he asked shyly.
+
+“Yes, I like what I know of you,” Helen replied. “But then—one knows so
+little.”
+
+“We shall live in London,” he continued, “and—” With one voice they
+suddenly enquired whether she did not think them the happiest people
+that she had ever known.
+
+“Hush,” she checked them, “Mrs. Flushing, remember. She’s behind us.”
+
+Then they fell silent, and Terence and Rachel felt instinctively that
+their happiness had made her sad, and, while they were anxious to go on
+talking about themselves, they did not like to.
+
+“We’ve talked too much about ourselves,” Terence said. “Tell us—”
+
+“Yes, tell us—” Rachel echoed. They were both in the mood to believe
+that every one was capable of saying something very profound.
+
+“What can I tell you?” Helen reflected, speaking more to herself in a
+rambling style than as a prophetess delivering a message. She forced
+herself to speak.
+
+“After all, though I scold Rachel, I’m not much wiser myself. I’m
+older, of course, I’m half-way through, and you’re just beginning. It’s
+puzzling—sometimes, I think, disappointing; the great things aren’t as
+great, perhaps, as one expects—but it’s interesting—Oh, yes, you’re
+certain to find it interesting—And so it goes on,” they became
+conscious here of the procession of dark trees into which, as far as
+they could see, Helen was now looking, “and there are pleasures where
+one doesn’t expect them (you must write to your father), and you’ll be
+very happy, I’ve no doubt. But I must go to bed, and if you are
+sensible you will follow in ten minutes, and so,” she rose and stood
+before them, almost featureless and very large, “Good-night.” She
+passed behind the curtain.
+
+After sitting in silence for the greater part of the ten minutes she
+allowed them, they rose and hung over the rail. Beneath them the smooth
+black water slipped away very fast and silently. The spark of a
+cigarette vanished behind them. “A beautiful voice,” Terence murmured.
+
+Rachel assented. Helen had a beautiful voice.
+
+After a silence she asked, looking up into the sky, “Are we on the deck
+of a steamer on a river in South America? Am I Rachel, are you
+Terence?”
+
+The great black world lay round them. As they were drawn smoothly along
+it seemed possessed of immense thickness and endurance. They could
+discern pointed tree-tops and blunt rounded tree-tops. Raising their
+eyes above the trees, they fixed them on the stars and the pale border
+of sky above the trees. The little points of frosty light infinitely
+far away drew their eyes and held them fixed, so that it seemed as if
+they stayed a long time and fell a great distance when once more they
+realised their hands grasping the rail and their separate bodies
+standing side by side.
+
+“You’d forgotten completely about me,” Terence reproached her, taking
+her arm and beginning to pace the deck, “and I never forget you.”
+
+“Oh, no,” she whispered, she had not forgotten, only the stars—the
+night—the dark—
+
+“You’re like a bird half asleep in its nest, Rachel. You’re asleep.
+You’re talking in your sleep.”
+
+Half asleep, and murmuring broken words, they stood in the angle made
+by the bow of the boat. It slipped on down the river. Now a bell struck
+on the bridge, and they heard the lapping of water as it rippled away
+on either side, and once a bird startled in its sleep creaked, flew on
+to the next tree, and was silent again. The darkness poured down
+profusely, and left them with scarcely any feeling of life, except that
+they were standing there together in the darkness.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXII
+
+
+The darkness fell, but rose again, and as each day spread widely over
+the earth and parted them from the strange day in the forest when they
+had been forced to tell each other what they wanted, this wish of
+theirs was revealed to other people, and in the process became slightly
+strange to themselves. Apparently it was not anything unusual that had
+happened; it was that they had become engaged to marry each other. The
+world, which consisted for the most part of the hotel and the villa,
+expressed itself glad on the whole that two people should marry, and
+allowed them to see that they were not expected to take part in the
+work which has to be done in order that the world shall go on, but
+might absent themselves for a time. They were accordingly left alone
+until they felt the silence as if, playing in a vast church, the door
+had been shut on them. They were driven to walk alone, and sit alone,
+to visit secret places where the flowers had never been picked and the
+trees were solitary. In solitude they could express those beautiful but
+too vast desires which were so oddly uncomfortable to the ears of other
+men and women—desires for a world, such as their own world which
+contained two people seemed to them to be, where people knew each other
+intimately and thus judged each other by what was good, and never
+quarrelled, because that was waste of time.
+
+They would talk of such questions among books, or out in the sun, or
+sitting in the shade of a tree undisturbed. They were no longer
+embarrassed, or half-choked with meaning which could not express
+itself; they were not afraid of each other, or, like travellers down a
+twisting river, dazzled with sudden beauties when the corner is turned;
+the unexpected happened, but even the ordinary was lovable, and in many
+ways preferable to the ecstatic and mysterious, for it was refreshingly
+solid, and called out effort, and effort under such circumstances was
+not effort but delight.
+
+While Rachel played the piano, Terence sat near her, engaged, as far as
+the occasional writing of a word in pencil testified, in shaping the
+world as it appeared to him now that he and Rachel were going to be
+married. It was different certainly. The book called _Silence_ would
+not now be the same book that it would have been. He would then put
+down his pencil and stare in front of him, and wonder in what respects
+the world was different—it had, perhaps, more solidity, more coherence,
+more importance, greater depth. Why, even the earth sometimes seemed to
+him very deep; not carved into hills and cities and fields, but heaped
+in great masses. He would look out of the window for ten minutes at a
+time; but no, he did not care for the earth swept of human beings. He
+liked human beings—he liked them, he suspected, better than Rachel did.
+There she was, swaying enthusiastically over her music, quite forgetful
+of him,—but he liked that quality in her. He liked the impersonality
+which it produced in her. At last, having written down a series of
+little sentences, with notes of interrogation attached to them, he
+observed aloud, “‘Women—under the heading Women I’ve written:
+
+“‘Not really vainer than men. Lack of self-confidence at the base of
+most serious faults. Dislike of own sex traditional, or founded on
+fact? Every woman not so much a rake at heart, as an optimist, because
+they don’t think.’ What do you say, Rachel?” He paused with his pencil
+in his hand and a sheet of paper on his knee.
+
+Rachel said nothing. Up and up the steep spiral of a very late
+Beethoven sonata she climbed, like a person ascending a ruined
+staircase, energetically at first, then more laboriously advancing her
+feet with effort until she could go no higher and returned with a run
+to begin at the very bottom again.
+
+“‘Again, it’s the fashion now to say that women are more practical and
+less idealistic than men, also that they have considerable organising
+ability but no sense of honour’—query, what is meant by masculine term,
+honour?—what corresponds to it in your sex? Eh?”
+
+Attacking her staircase once more, Rachel again neglected this
+opportunity of revealing the secrets of her sex. She had, indeed,
+advanced so far in the pursuit of wisdom that she allowed these secrets
+to rest undisturbed; it seemed to be reserved for a later generation to
+discuss them philosophically.
+
+Crashing down a final chord with her left hand, she exclaimed at last,
+swinging round upon him:
+
+“No, Terence, it’s no good; here am I, the best musician in South
+America, not to speak of Europe and Asia, and I can’t play a note
+because of you in the room interrupting me every other second.”
+
+“You don’t seem to realise that that’s what I’ve been aiming at for the
+last half-hour,” he remarked. “I’ve no objection to nice simple
+tunes—indeed, I find them very helpful to my literary composition, but
+that kind of thing is merely like an unfortunate old dog going round on
+its hind legs in the rain.”
+
+He began turning over the little sheets of note-paper which were
+scattered on the table, conveying the congratulations of their friends.
+
+“‘—all possible wishes for all possible happiness,’” he read; “correct,
+but not very vivid, are they?”
+
+“They’re sheer nonsense!” Rachel exclaimed. “Think of words compared
+with sounds!” she continued. “Think of novels and plays and histories—”
+Perched on the edge of the table, she stirred the red and yellow
+volumes contemptuously. She seemed to herself to be in a position where
+she could despise all human learning. Terence looked at them too.
+
+“God, Rachel, you do read trash!” he exclaimed. “And you’re behind the
+times too, my dear. No one dreams of reading this kind of thing
+now—antiquated problem plays, harrowing descriptions of life in the
+east end—oh, no, we’ve exploded all that. Read poetry, Rachel, poetry,
+poetry, poetry!”
+
+Picking up one of the books, he began to read aloud, his intention
+being to satirise the short sharp bark of the writer’s English; but she
+paid no attention, and after an interval of meditation exclaimed:
+
+“Does it ever seem to you, Terence, that the world is composed entirely
+of vast blocks of matter, and that we’re nothing but patches of light—”
+she looked at the soft spots of sun wavering over the carpet and up the
+wall—“like that?”
+
+“No,” said Terence, “I feel solid; immensely solid; the legs of my
+chair might be rooted in the bowels of the earth. But at Cambridge, I
+can remember, there were times when one fell into ridiculous states of
+semi-coma about five o’clock in the morning. Hirst does now, I
+expect—oh, no, Hirst wouldn’t.”
+
+Rachel continued, “The day your note came, asking us to go on the
+picnic, I was sitting where you’re sitting now, thinking that; I wonder
+if I could think that again? I wonder if the world’s changed? and if
+so, when it’ll stop changing, and which is the real world?”
+
+“When I first saw you,” he began, “I thought you were like a creature
+who’d lived all its life among pearls and old bones. Your hands were
+wet, d’you remember, and you never said a word until I gave you a bit
+of bread, and then you said, ‘Human Beings!’”
+
+“And I thought you—a prig,” she recollected. “No; that’s not quite it.
+There were the ants who stole the tongue, and I thought you and St.
+John were like those ants—very big, very ugly, very energetic, with all
+your virtues on your backs. However, when I talked to you I liked you—”
+
+“You fell in love with me,” he corrected her. “You were in love with me
+all the time, only you didn’t know it.”
+
+“No, I never fell in love with you,” she asserted.
+
+“Rachel—what a lie—didn’t you sit here looking at my window—didn’t you
+wander about the hotel like an owl in the sun—?”
+
+“No,” she repeated, “I never fell in love, if falling in love is what
+people say it is, and it’s the world that tells the lies and I tell the
+truth. Oh, what lies—what lies!”
+
+She crumpled together a handful of letters from Evelyn M., from Mr.
+Pepper, from Mrs. Thornbury and Miss Allan, and Susan Warrington. It
+was strange, considering how very different these people were, that
+they used almost the same sentences when they wrote to congratulate her
+upon her engagement.
+
+That any one of these people had ever felt what she felt, or could ever
+feel it, or had even the right to pretend for a single second that they
+were capable of feeling it, appalled her much as the church service had
+done, much as the face of the hospital nurse had done; and if they
+didn’t feel a thing why did they go and pretend to? The simplicity and
+arrogance and hardness of her youth, now concentrated into a single
+spark as it was by her love of him, puzzled Terence; being engaged had
+not that effect on him; the world was different, but not in that way;
+he still wanted the things he had always wanted, and in particular he
+wanted the companionship of other people more than ever perhaps. He
+took the letters out of her hand, and protested:
+
+“Of course they’re absurd, Rachel; of course they say things just
+because other people say them, but even so, what a nice woman Miss
+Allan is; you can’t deny that; and Mrs. Thornbury too; she’s got too
+many children I grant you, but if half-a-dozen of them had gone to the
+bad instead of rising infallibly to the tops of their trees—hasn’t she
+a kind of beauty—of elemental simplicity as Flushing would say? Isn’t
+she rather like a large old tree murmuring in the moonlight, or a river
+going on and on and on? By the way, Ralph’s been made governor of the
+Carroway Islands—the youngest governor in the service; very good, isn’t
+it?”
+
+But Rachel was at present unable to conceive that the vast majority of
+the affairs of the world went on unconnected by a single thread with
+her own destiny.
+
+“I won’t have eleven children,” she asserted; “I won’t have the eyes of
+an old woman. She looks at one up and down, up and down, as if one were
+a horse.”
+
+“We must have a son and we must have a daughter,” said Terence, putting
+down the letters, “because, let alone the inestimable advantage of
+being our children, they’d be so well brought up.” They went on to
+sketch an outline of the ideal education—how their daughter should be
+required from infancy to gaze at a large square of cardboard painted
+blue, to suggest thoughts of infinity, for women were grown too
+practical; and their son—he should be taught to laugh at great men,
+that is, at distinguished successful men, at men who wore ribands and
+rose to the tops of their trees. He should in no way resemble (Rachel
+added) St. John Hirst.
+
+At this Terence professed the greatest admiration for St. John Hirst.
+Dwelling upon his good qualities he became seriously convinced of them;
+he had a mind like a torpedo, he declared, aimed at falsehood. Where
+should we all be without him and his like? Choked in weeds; Christians,
+bigots,—why, Rachel herself, would be a slave with a fan to sing songs
+to men when they felt drowsy.
+
+“But you’ll never see it!” he exclaimed; “because with all your virtues
+you don’t, and you never will, care with every fibre of your being for
+the pursuit of truth! You’ve no respect for facts, Rachel; you’re
+essentially feminine.” She did not trouble to deny it, nor did she
+think good to produce the one unanswerable argument against the merits
+which Terence admired. St. John Hirst said that she was in love with
+him; she would never forgive that; but the argument was not one to
+appeal to a man.
+
+“But I like him,” she said, and she thought to herself that she also
+pitied him, as one pities those unfortunate people who are outside the
+warm mysterious globe full of changes and miracles in which we
+ourselves move about; she thought that it must be very dull to be St.
+John Hirst.
+
+She summed up what she felt about him by saying that she would not kiss
+him supposing he wished it, which was not likely.
+
+As if some apology were due to Hirst for the kiss which she then
+bestowed upon him, Terence protested:
+
+“And compared with Hirst I’m a perfect Zany.”
+
+The clock here struck twelve instead of eleven.
+
+“We’re wasting the morning—I ought to be writing my book, and you ought
+to be answering these.”
+
+“We’ve only got twenty-one whole mornings left,” said Rachel. “And my
+father’ll be here in a day or two.”
+
+However, she drew a pen and paper towards her and began to write
+laboriously,
+
+“My dear Evelyn—”
+
+Terence, meanwhile, read a novel which some one else had written, a
+process which he found essential to the composition of his own. For a
+considerable time nothing was to be heard but the ticking of the clock
+and the fitful scratch of Rachel’s pen, as she produced phrases which
+bore a considerable likeness to those which she had condemned. She was
+struck by it herself, for she stopped writing and looked up; looked at
+Terence deep in the arm-chair, looked at the different pieces of
+furniture, at her bed in the corner, at the window-pane which showed
+the branches of a tree filled in with sky, heard the clock ticking, and
+was amazed at the gulf which lay between all that and her sheet of
+paper. Would there ever be a time when the world was one and
+indivisible? Even with Terence himself—how far apart they could be, how
+little she knew what was passing in his brain now! She then finished
+her sentence, which was awkward and ugly, and stated that they were
+“both very happy, and going to be married in the autumn probably and
+hope to live in London, where we hope you will come and see us when we
+get back.” Choosing “affectionately,” after some further speculation,
+rather than sincerely, she signed the letter and was doggedly beginning
+on another when Terence remarked, quoting from his book:
+
+“Listen to this, Rachel. ‘It is probable that Hugh’ (he’s the hero, a
+literary man), ‘had not realised at the time of his marriage, any more
+than the young man of parts and imagination usually does realise, the
+nature of the gulf which separates the needs and desires of the male
+from the needs and desires of the female. . . . At first they had been
+very happy. The walking tour in Switzerland had been a time of jolly
+companionship and stimulating revelations for both of them. Betty had
+proved herself the ideal comrade. . . . They had shouted _Love in the
+Valley_ to each other across the snowy slopes of the Riffelhorn’ (and
+so on, and so on—I’ll skip the descriptions). . . . ‘But in London,
+after the boy’s birth, all was changed. Betty was an admirable mother;
+but it did not take her long to find out that motherhood, as that
+function is understood by the mother of the upper middle classes, did
+not absorb the whole of her energies. She was young and strong, with
+healthy limbs and a body and brain that called urgently for exercise. .
+. .’ (In short she began to give tea-parties.) . . . ‘Coming in late
+from this singular talk with old Bob Murphy in his smoky, book-lined
+room, where the two men had each unloosened his soul to the other, with
+the sound of the traffic humming in his ears, and the foggy London sky
+slung tragically across his mind . . . he found women’s hats dotted
+about among his papers. Women’s wraps and absurd little feminine shoes
+and umbrellas were in the hall. . . . Then the bills began to come in.
+. . . He tried to speak frankly to her. He found her lying on the great
+polar-bear skin in their bedroom, half-undressed, for they were dining
+with the Greens in Wilton Crescent, the ruddy firelight making the
+diamonds wink and twinkle on her bare arms and in the delicious curve
+of her breast—a vision of adorable femininity. He forgave her all.’
+(Well, this goes from bad to worse, and finally about fifty pages
+later, Hugh takes a week-end ticket to Swanage and ‘has it out with
+himself on the downs above Corfe.’ . . . Here there’s fifteen pages or
+so which we’ll skip. The conclusion is . . .) ‘They were different.
+Perhaps, in the far future, when generations of men had struggled and
+failed as he must now struggle and fail, woman would be, indeed, what
+she now made a pretence of being—the friend and companion—not the enemy
+and parasite of man.’
+
+“The end of it is, you see, Hugh went back to his wife, poor fellow. It
+was his duty, as a married man. Lord, Rachel,” he concluded, “will it
+be like that when we’re married?”
+
+Instead of answering him she asked,
+
+“Why don’t people write about the things they do feel?”
+
+“Ah, that’s the difficulty!” he sighed, tossing the book away.
+
+“Well, then, what will it be like when we’re married? What are the
+things people do feel?”
+
+She seemed doubtful.
+
+“Sit on the floor and let me look at you,” he commanded. Resting her
+chin on his knee, she looked straight at him.
+
+He examined her curiously.
+
+“You’re not beautiful,” he began, “but I like your face. I like the way
+your hair grows down in a point, and your eyes too—they never see
+anything. Your mouth’s too big, and your cheeks would be better if they
+had more colour in them. But what I like about your face is that it
+makes one wonder what the devil you’re thinking about—it makes me want
+to do that—” He clenched his fist and shook it so near her that she
+started back, “because now you look as if you’d blow my brains out.
+There are moments,” he continued, “when, if we stood on a rock
+together, you’d throw me into the sea.”
+
+Hypnotised by the force of his eyes in hers, she repeated, “If we stood
+on a rock together—”
+
+To be flung into the sea, to be washed hither and thither, and driven
+about the roots of the world—the idea was incoherently delightful. She
+sprang up, and began moving about the room, bending and thrusting aside
+the chairs and tables as if she were indeed striking through the
+waters. He watched her with pleasure; she seemed to be cleaving a
+passage for herself, and dealing triumphantly with the obstacles which
+would hinder their passage through life.
+
+“It does seem possible!” he exclaimed, “though I’ve always thought it
+the most unlikely thing in the world—I shall be in love with you all my
+life, and our marriage will be the most exciting thing that’s ever been
+done! We’ll never have a moment’s peace—” He caught her in his arms as
+she passed him, and they fought for mastery, imagining a rock, and the
+sea heaving beneath them. At last she was thrown to the floor, where
+she lay gasping, and crying for mercy.
+
+“I’m a mermaid! I can swim,” she cried, “so the game’s up.” Her dress
+was torn across, and peace being established, she fetched a needle and
+thread and began to mend the tear.
+
+“And now,” she said, “be quiet and tell me about the world; tell me
+about everything that’s ever happened, and I’ll tell you—let me see,
+what can I tell you?—I’ll tell you about Miss Montgomerie and the river
+party. She was left, you see, with one foot in the boat, and the other
+on shore.”
+
+They had spent much time already in thus filling out for the other the
+course of their past lives, and the characters of their friends and
+relations, so that very soon Terence knew not only what Rachel’s aunts
+might be expected to say upon every occasion, but also how their
+bedrooms were furnished, and what kind of bonnets they wore. He could
+sustain a conversation between Mrs. Hunt and Rachel, and carry on a
+tea-party including the Rev. William Johnson and Miss Macquoid, the
+Christian Scientists, with remarkable likeness to the truth. But he had
+known many more people, and was far more highly skilled in the art of
+narrative than Rachel was, whose experiences were, for the most part,
+of a curiously childlike and humorous kind, so that it generally fell
+to her lot to listen and ask questions.
+
+He told her not only what had happened, but what he had thought and
+felt, and sketched for her portraits which fascinated her of what other
+men and women might be supposed to be thinking and feeling, so that she
+became very anxious to go back to England, which was full of people,
+where she could merely stand in the streets and look at them. According
+to him, too, there was an order, a pattern which made life reasonable,
+or if that word was foolish, made it of deep interest anyhow, for
+sometimes it seemed possible to understand why things happened as they
+did. Nor were people so solitary and uncommunicative as she believed.
+She should look for vanity—for vanity was a common quality—first in
+herself, and then in Helen, in Ridley, in St. John, they all had their
+share of it—and she would find it in ten people out of every twelve she
+met; and once linked together by one such tie she would find them not
+separate and formidable, but practically indistinguishable, and she
+would come to love them when she found that they were like herself.
+
+If she denied this, she must defend her belief that human beings were
+as various as the beasts at the Zoo, which had stripes and manes, and
+horns and humps; and so, wrestling over the entire list of their
+acquaintances, and diverging into anecdote and theory and speculation,
+they came to know each other. The hours passed quickly, and seemed to
+them full to leaking-point. After a night’s solitude they were always
+ready to begin again.
+
+The virtues which Mrs. Ambrose had once believed to exist in free talk
+between men and women did in truth exist for both of them, although not
+quite in the measure she prescribed. Far more than upon the nature of
+sex they dwelt upon the nature of poetry, but it was true that talk
+which had no boundaries deepened and enlarged the strangely small
+bright view of a girl. In return for what he could tell her she brought
+him such curiosity and sensitiveness of perception, that he was led to
+doubt whether any gift bestowed by much reading and living was quite
+the equal of that for pleasure and pain. What would experience give her
+after all, except a kind of ridiculous formal balance, like that of a
+drilled dog in the street? He looked at her face and wondered how it
+would look in twenty years’ time, when the eyes had dulled, and the
+forehead wore those little persistent wrinkles which seem to show that
+the middle-aged are facing something hard which the young do not see?
+What would the hard thing be for them, he wondered? Then his thoughts
+turned to their life in England.
+
+The thought of England was delightful, for together they would see the
+old things freshly; it would be England in June, and there would be
+June nights in the country; and the nightingales singing in the lanes,
+into which they could steal when the room grew hot; and there would be
+English meadows gleaming with water and set with stolid cows, and
+clouds dipping low and trailing across the green hills. As he sat in
+the room with her, he wished very often to be back again in the thick
+of life, doing things with Rachel.
+
+He crossed to the window and exclaimed, “Lord, how good it is to think
+of lanes, muddy lanes, with brambles and nettles, you know, and real
+grass fields, and farmyards with pigs and cows, and men walking beside
+carts with pitchforks—there’s nothing to compare with that here—look at
+the stony red earth, and the bright blue sea, and the glaring white
+houses—how tired one gets of it! And the air, without a stain or a
+wrinkle. I’d give anything for a sea mist.”
+
+Rachel, too, had been thinking of the English country: the flat land
+rolling away to the sea, and the woods and the long straight roads,
+where one can walk for miles without seeing any one, and the great
+church towers and the curious houses clustered in the valleys, and the
+birds, and the dusk, and the rain falling against the windows.
+
+“But London, London’s the place,” Terence continued. They looked
+together at the carpet, as though London itself were to be seen there
+lying on the floor, with all its spires and pinnacles pricking through
+the smoke.
+
+“On the whole, what I should like best at this moment,” Terence
+pondered, “would be to find myself walking down Kingsway, by those big
+placards, you know, and turning into the Strand. Perhaps I might go and
+look over Waterloo Bridge for a moment. Then I’d go along the Strand
+past the shops with all the new books in them, and through the little
+archway into the Temple. I always like the quiet after the uproar. You
+hear your own footsteps suddenly quite loud. The Temple’s very
+pleasant. I think I should go and see if I could find dear old
+Hodgkin—the man who writes books about Van Eyck, you know. When I left
+England he was very sad about his tame magpie. He suspected that a man
+had poisoned it. And then Russell lives on the next staircase. I think
+you’d like him. He’s a passion for Handel. Well, Rachel,” he concluded,
+dismissing the vision of London, “we shall be doing that together in
+six weeks’ time, and it’ll be the middle of June then—and June in
+London—my God! how pleasant it all is!”
+
+“And we’re certain to have it too,” she said. “It isn’t as if we were
+expecting a great deal—only to walk about and look at things.”
+
+“Only a thousand a year and perfect freedom,” he replied. “How many
+people in London d’you think have that?”
+
+“And now you’ve spoilt it,” she complained. “Now we’ve got to think of
+the horrors.” She looked grudgingly at the novel which had once caused
+her perhaps an hour’s discomfort, so that she had never opened it
+again, but kept it on her table, and looked at it occasionally, as some
+medieval monk kept a skull, or a crucifix to remind him of the frailty
+of the body.
+
+“Is it true, Terence,” she demanded, “that women die with bugs crawling
+across their faces?”
+
+“I think it’s very probable,” he said. “But you must admit, Rachel,
+that we so seldom think of anything but ourselves that an occasional
+twinge is really rather pleasant.”
+
+Accusing him of an affection of cynicism which was just as bad as
+sentimentality itself, she left her position by his side and knelt upon
+the window sill, twisting the curtain tassels between her fingers. A
+vague sense of dissatisfaction filled her.
+
+“What’s so detestable in this country,” she exclaimed, “is the
+blue—always blue sky and blue sea. It’s like a curtain—all the things
+one wants are on the other side of that. I want to know what’s going on
+behind it. I hate these divisions, don’t you, Terence? One person all
+in the dark about another person. Now I liked the Dalloways,” she
+continued, “and they’re gone. I shall never see them again. Just by
+going on a ship we cut ourselves off entirely from the rest of the
+world. I want to see England there—London there—all sorts of people—why
+shouldn’t one? why should one be shut up all by oneself in a room?”
+
+While she spoke thus half to herself and with increasing vagueness,
+because her eye was caught by a ship that had just come into the bay,
+she did not see that Terence had ceased to stare contentedly in front
+of him, and was looking at her keenly and with dissatisfaction. She
+seemed to be able to cut herself adrift from him, and to pass away to
+unknown places where she had no need of him. The thought roused his
+jealousy.
+
+“I sometimes think you’re not in love with me and never will be,” he
+said energetically. She started and turned round at his words.
+
+“I don’t satisfy you in the way you satisfy me,” he continued. “There’s
+something I can’t get hold of in you. You don’t want me as I want
+you—you’re always wanting something else.”
+
+He began pacing up and down the room.
+
+“Perhaps I ask too much,” he went on. “Perhaps it isn’t really possible
+to have what I want. Men and women are too different. You can’t
+understand—you don’t understand—”
+
+He came up to where she stood looking at him in silence.
+
+It seemed to her now that what he was saying was perfectly true, and
+that she wanted many more things than the love of one human being—the
+sea, the sky. She turned again and looked at the distant blue, which
+was so smooth and serene where the sky met the sea; she could not
+possibly want only one human being.
+
+“Or is it only this damnable engagement?” he continued. “Let’s be
+married here, before we go back—or is it too great a risk? Are we sure
+we want to marry each other?”
+
+They began pacing up and down the room, but although they came very
+near each other in their pacing, they took care not to touch each
+other. The hopelessness of their position overcame them both. They were
+impotent; they could never love each other sufficiently to overcome all
+these barriers, and they could never be satisfied with less. Realising
+this with intolerable keenness she stopped in front of him and
+exclaimed:
+
+“Let’s break it off, then.”
+
+The words did more to unite them than any amount of argument. As if
+they stood on the edge of a precipice they clung together. They knew
+that they could not separate; painful and terrible it might be, but
+they were joined for ever. They lapsed into silence, and after a time
+crept together in silence. Merely to be so close soothed them, and
+sitting side by side the divisions disappeared, and it seemed as if the
+world were once more solid and entire, and as if, in some strange way,
+they had grown larger and stronger.
+
+It was long before they moved, and when they moved it was with great
+reluctance. They stood together in front of the looking-glass, and with
+a brush tried to make themselves look as if they had been feeling
+nothing all the morning, neither pain nor happiness. But it chilled
+them to see themselves in the glass, for instead of being vast and
+indivisible they were really very small and separate, the size of the
+glass leaving a large space for the reflection of other things.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXIII
+
+
+But no brush was able to efface completely the expression of happiness,
+so that Mrs. Ambrose could not treat them when they came downstairs as
+if they had spent the morning in a way that could be discussed
+naturally. This being so, she joined in the world’s conspiracy to
+consider them for the time incapacitated from the business of life,
+struck by their intensity of feeling into enmity against life, and
+almost succeeded in dismissing them from her thoughts.
+
+She reflected that she had done all that it was necessary to do in
+practical matters. She had written a great many letters, and had
+obtained Willoughby’s consent. She had dwelt so often upon Mr. Hewet’s
+prospects, his profession, his birth, appearance, and temperament, that
+she had almost forgotten what he was really like. When she refreshed
+herself by a look at him, she used to wonder again what he was like,
+and then, concluding that they were happy at any rate, thought no more
+about it.
+
+She might more profitably consider what would happen in three years’
+time, or what might have happened if Rachel had been left to explore
+the world under her father’s guidance. The result, she was honest
+enough to own, might have been better—who knows? She did not disguise
+from herself that Terence had faults. She was inclined to think him too
+easy and tolerant, just as he was inclined to think her perhaps a
+trifle hard—no, it was rather that she was uncompromising. In some ways
+she found St. John preferable; but then, of course, he would never have
+suited Rachel. Her friendship with St. John was established, for
+although she fluctuated between irritation and interest in a way that
+did credit to the candour of her disposition, she liked his company on
+the whole. He took her outside this little world of love and emotion.
+He had a grasp of facts. Supposing, for instance, that England made a
+sudden move towards some unknown port on the coast of Morocco, St. John
+knew what was at the back of it, and to hear him engaged with her
+husband in argument about finance and the balance of power, gave her an
+odd sense of stability. She respected their arguments without always
+listening to them, much as she respected a solid brick wall, or one of
+those immense municipal buildings which, although they compose the
+greater part of our cities, have been built day after day and year
+after year by unknown hands. She liked to sit and listen, and even felt
+a little elated when the engaged couple, after showing their profound
+lack of interest, slipped from the room, and were seen pulling flowers
+to pieces in the garden. It was not that she was jealous of them, but
+she did undoubtedly envy them their great unknown future that lay
+before them. Slipping from one such thought to another, she was at the
+dining-room with fruit in her hands. Sometimes she stopped to
+straighten a candle stooping with the heat, or disturbed some too rigid
+arrangement of the chairs. She had reason to suspect that Chailey had
+been balancing herself on the top of a ladder with a wet duster during
+their absence, and the room had never been quite like itself since.
+Returning from the dining-room for the third time, she perceived that
+one of the arm-chairs was now occupied by St. John. He lay back in it,
+with his eyes half shut, looking, as he always did, curiously buttoned
+up in a neat grey suit and fenced against the exuberance of a foreign
+climate which might at any moment proceed to take liberties with him.
+Her eyes rested on him gently and then passed on over his head. Finally
+she took the chair opposite.
+
+“I didn’t want to come here,” he said at last, “but I was positively
+driven to it. . . . Evelyn M.,” he groaned.
+
+He sat up, and began to explain with mock solemnity how the detestable
+woman was set upon marrying him.
+
+“She pursues me about the place. This morning she appeared in the
+smoking-room. All I could do was to seize my hat and fly. I didn’t want
+to come, but I couldn’t stay and face another meal with her.”
+
+“Well, we must make the best of it,” Helen replied philosophically. It
+was very hot, and they were indifferent to any amount of silence, so
+that they lay back in their chairs waiting for something to happen. The
+bell rang for luncheon, but there was no sound of movement in the
+house. Was there any news? Helen asked; anything in the papers? St.
+John shook his head. O yes, he had a letter from home, a letter from
+his mother, describing the suicide of the parlour-maid. She was called
+Susan Jane, and she came into the kitchen one afternoon, and said that
+she wanted cook to keep her money for her; she had twenty pounds in
+gold. Then she went out to buy herself a hat. She came in at half-past
+five and said that she had taken poison. They had only just time to get
+her into bed and call a doctor before she died.
+
+“Well?” Helen enquired.
+
+“There’ll have to be an inquest,” said St. John.
+
+Why had she done it? He shrugged his shoulders. Why do people kill
+themselves? Why do the lower orders do any of the things they do do?
+Nobody knows. They sat in silence.
+
+“The bell’s run fifteen minutes and they’re not down,” said Helen at
+length.
+
+When they appeared, St. John explained why it had been necessary for
+him to come to luncheon. He imitated Evelyn’s enthusiastic tone as she
+confronted him in the smoking-room. “She thinks there can be nothing
+_quite_ so thrilling as mathematics, so I’ve lent her a large work in
+two volumes. It’ll be interesting to see what she makes of it.”
+
+Rachel could now afford to laugh at him. She reminded him of Gibbon;
+she had the first volume somewhere still; if he were undertaking the
+education of Evelyn, that surely was the test; or she had heard that
+Burke, upon the American Rebellion—Evelyn ought to read them both
+simultaneously. When St. John had disposed of her argument and had
+satisfied his hunger, he proceeded to tell them that the hotel was
+seething with scandals, some of the most appalling kind, which had
+happened in their absence; he was indeed much given to the study of his
+kind.
+
+“Evelyn M., for example—but that was told me in confidence.”
+
+“Nonsense!” Terence interposed.
+
+“You’ve heard about poor Sinclair, too?”
+
+“Oh, yes, I’ve heard about Sinclair. He’s retired to his mine with a
+revolver. He writes to Evelyn daily that he’s thinking of committing
+suicide. I’ve assured her that he’s never been so happy in his life,
+and, on the whole, she’s inclined to agree with me.”
+
+“But then she’s entangled herself with Perrott,” St. John continued;
+“and I have reason to think, from something I saw in the passage, that
+everything isn’t as it should be between Arthur and Susan. There’s a
+young female lately arrived from Manchester. A very good thing if it
+were broken off, in my opinion. Their married life is something too
+horrible to contemplate. Oh, and I distinctly heard old Mrs. Paley
+rapping out the most fearful oaths as I passed her bedroom door. It’s
+supposed that she tortures her maid in private—it’s practically certain
+she does. One can tell it from the look in her eyes.”
+
+“When you’re eighty and the gout tweezes you, you’ll be swearing like a
+trooper,” Terence remarked. “You’ll be very fat, very testy, very
+disagreeable. Can’t you imagine him—bald as a coot, with a pair of
+sponge-bag trousers, a little spotted tie, and a corporation?”
+
+After a pause Hirst remarked that the worst infamy had still to be
+told. He addressed himself to Helen.
+
+“They’ve hoofed out the prostitute. One night while we were away that
+old numskull Thornbury was doddering about the passages very late.
+(Nobody seems to have asked him what _he_ was up to.) He saw the
+Signora Lola Mendoza, as she calls herself, cross the passage in her
+nightgown. He communicated his suspicions next morning to Elliot, with
+the result that Rodriguez went to the woman and gave her twenty-four
+hours in which to clear out of the place. No one seems to have enquired
+into the truth of the story, or to have asked Thornbury and Elliot what
+business it was of theirs; they had it entirely their own way. I
+propose that we should all sign a Round Robin, go to Rodriguez in a
+body, and insist upon a full enquiry. Something’s got to be done, don’t
+you agree?”
+
+Hewet remarked that there could be no doubt as to the lady’s
+profession.
+
+“Still,” he added, “it’s a great shame, poor woman; only I don’t see
+what’s to be done—”
+
+“I quite agree with you, St. John,” Helen burst out. “It’s monstrous.
+The hypocritical smugness of the English makes my blood boil. A man
+who’s made a fortune in trade as Mr. Thornbury has is bound to be twice
+as bad as any prostitute.”
+
+She respected St. John’s morality, which she took far more seriously
+than any one else did, and now entered into a discussion with him as to
+the steps that were to be taken to enforce their peculiar view of what
+was right. The argument led to some profoundly gloomy statements of a
+general nature. Who were they, after all—what authority had they—what
+power against the mass of superstition and ignorance? It was the
+English, of course; there must be something wrong in the English blood.
+Directly you met an English person, of the middle classes, you were
+conscious of an indefinable sensation of loathing; directly you saw the
+brown crescent of houses above Dover, the same thing came over you. But
+unfortunately St. John added, you couldn’t trust these foreigners—
+
+They were interrupted by sounds of strife at the further end of the
+table. Rachel appealed to her aunt.
+
+“Terence says we must go to tea with Mrs. Thornbury because she’s been
+so kind, but I don’t see it; in fact, I’d rather have my right hand
+sawn in pieces—just imagine! the eyes of all those women!”
+
+“Fiddlesticks, Rachel,” Terence replied. “Who wants to look at you?
+You’re consumed with vanity! You’re a monster of conceit! Surely,
+Helen, you ought to have taught her by this time that she’s a person of
+no conceivable importance whatever—not beautiful, or well dressed, or
+conspicuous for elegance or intellect, or deportment. A more ordinary
+sight than you are,” he concluded, “except for the tear across your
+dress has never been seen. However, stay at home if you want to. I’m
+going.”
+
+She appealed again to her aunt. It wasn’t the being looked at, she
+explained, but the things people were sure to say. The women in
+particular. She liked women, but where emotion was concerned they were
+as flies on a lump of sugar. They would be certain to ask her
+questions. Evelyn M. would say: “Are you in love? Is it nice being in
+love?” And Mrs. Thornbury—her eyes would go up and down, up and
+down—she shuddered at the thought of it. Indeed, the retirement of
+their life since their engagement had made her so sensitive, that she
+was not exaggerating her case.
+
+She found an ally in Helen, who proceeded to expound her views of the
+human race, as she regarded with complacency the pyramid of variegated
+fruits in the centre of the table. It wasn’t that they were cruel, or
+meant to hurt, or even stupid exactly; but she had always found that
+the ordinary person had so little emotion in his own life that the
+scent of it in the lives of others was like the scent of blood in the
+nostrils of a bloodhound. Warming to the theme, she continued:
+
+“Directly anything happens—it may be a marriage, or a birth, or a
+death—on the whole they prefer it to be a death—every one wants to see
+you. They insist upon seeing you. They’ve got nothing to say; they
+don’t care a rap for you; but you’ve got to go to lunch or to tea or to
+dinner, and if you don’t you’re damned. It’s the smell of blood,” she
+continued; “I don’t blame ’em; only they shan’t have mine if I know
+it!”
+
+She looked about her as if she had called up a legion of human beings,
+all hostile and all disagreeable, who encircled the table, with mouths
+gaping for blood, and made it appear a little island of neutral country
+in the midst of the enemy’s country.
+
+Her words roused her husband, who had been muttering rhythmically to
+himself, surveying his guests and his food and his wife with eyes that
+were now melancholy and now fierce, according to the fortunes of the
+lady in his ballad. He cut Helen short with a protest. He hated even
+the semblance of cynicism in women. “Nonsense, nonsense,” he remarked
+abruptly.
+
+Terence and Rachel glanced at each other across the table, which meant
+that when they were married they would not behave like that. The
+entrance of Ridley into the conversation had a strange effect. It
+became at once more formal and more polite. It would have been
+impossible to talk quite easily of anything that came into their heads,
+and to say the word prostitute as simply as any other word. The talk
+now turned upon literature and politics, and Ridley told stories of the
+distinguished people he had known in his youth. Such talk was of the
+nature of an art, and the personalities and informalities of the young
+were silenced. As they rose to go, Helen stopped for a moment, leaning
+her elbows on the table.
+
+“You’ve all been sitting here,” she said, “for almost an hour, and you
+haven’t noticed my figs, or my flowers, or the way the light comes
+through, or anything. I haven’t been listening, because I’ve been
+looking at you. You looked very beautiful; I wish you’d go on sitting
+for ever.”
+
+She led the way to the drawing-room, where she took up her embroidery,
+and began again to dissuade Terence from walking down to the hotel in
+this heat. But the more she dissuaded, the more he was determined to
+go. He became irritated and obstinate. There were moments when they
+almost disliked each other. He wanted other people; he wanted Rachel,
+to see them with him. He suspected that Mrs. Ambrose would now try to
+dissuade her from going. He was annoyed by all this space and shade and
+beauty, and Hirst, recumbent, drooping a magazine from his wrist.
+
+“I’m going,” he repeated. “Rachel needn’t come unless she wants to.”
+
+“If you go, Hewet, I wish you’d make enquiries about the prostitute,”
+said Hirst. “Look here,” he added, “I’ll walk half the way with you.”
+
+Greatly to their surprise he raised himself, looked at his watch, and
+remarked that, as it was now half an hour since luncheon, the gastric
+juices had had sufficient time to secrete; he was trying a system, he
+explained, which involved short spells of exercise interspaced by
+longer intervals of rest.
+
+“I shall be back at four,” he remarked to Helen, “when I shall lie down
+on the sofa and relax all my muscles completely.”
+
+“So you’re going, Rachel?” Helen asked. “You won’t stay with me?”
+
+She smiled, but she might have been sad.
+
+Was she sad, or was she really laughing? Rachel could not tell, and she
+felt for the moment very uncomfortable between Helen and Terence. Then
+she turned away, saying merely that she would go with Terence, on
+condition that he did all the talking.
+
+A narrow border of shadow ran along the road, which was broad enough
+for two, but not broad enough for three. St. John therefore dropped a
+little behind the pair, and the distance between them increased by
+degrees. Walking with a view to digestion, and with one eye upon his
+watch, he looked from time to time at the pair in front of him. They
+seemed to be so happy, so intimate, although they were walking side by
+side much as other people walk. They turned slightly toward each other
+now and then, and said something which he thought must be something
+very private. They were really disputing about Helen’s character, and
+Terence was trying to explain why it was that she annoyed him so much
+sometimes. But St. John thought that they were saying things which they
+did not want him to hear, and was led to think of his own isolation.
+These people were happy, and in some ways he despised them for being
+made happy so simply, and in other ways he envied them. He was much
+more remarkable than they were, but he was not happy. People never
+liked him; he doubted sometimes whether even Helen liked him. To be
+simple, to be able to say simply what one felt, without the terrific
+self-consciousness which possessed him, and showed him his own face and
+words perpetually in a mirror, that would be worth almost any other
+gift, for it made one happy. Happiness, happiness, what was happiness?
+He was never happy. He saw too clearly the little vices and deceits and
+flaws of life, and, seeing them, it seemed to him honest to take notice
+of them. That was the reason, no doubt, why people generally disliked
+him, and complained that he was heartless and bitter. Certainly they
+never told him the things he wanted to be told, that he was nice and
+kind, and that they liked him. But it was true that half the sharp
+things that he said about them were said because he was unhappy or hurt
+himself. But he admitted that he had very seldom told any one that he
+cared for them, and when he had been demonstrative, he had generally
+regretted it afterwards. His feelings about Terence and Rachel were so
+complicated that he had never yet been able to bring himself to say
+that he was glad that they were going to be married. He saw their
+faults so clearly, and the inferior nature of a great deal of their
+feeling for each other, and he expected that their love would not last.
+He looked at them again, and, very strangely, for he was so used to
+thinking that he seldom saw anything, the look of them filled him with
+a simple emotion of affection in which there were some traces of pity
+also. What, after all, did people’s faults matter in comparison with
+what was good in them? He resolved that he would now tell them what he
+felt. He quickened his pace and came up with them just as they reached
+the corner where the lane joined the main road. They stood still and
+began to laugh at him, and to ask him whether the gastric juices—but he
+stopped them and began to speak very quickly and stiffly.
+
+“D’you remember the morning after the dance?” he demanded. “It was here
+we sat, and you talked nonsense, and Rachel made little heaps of
+stones. I, on the other hand, had the whole meaning of life revealed to
+me in a flash.” He paused for a second, and drew his lips together in a
+tight little purse. “Love,” he said. “It seems to me to explain
+everything. So, on the whole, I’m very glad that you two are going to
+be married.” He then turned round abruptly, without looking at them,
+and walked back to the villa. He felt both exalted and ashamed of
+himself for having thus said what he felt. Probably they were laughing
+at him, probably they thought him a fool, and, after all, had he really
+said what he felt?
+
+It was true that they laughed when he was gone; but the dispute about
+Helen which had become rather sharp, ceased, and they became peaceful
+and friendly.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXIV
+
+
+They reached the hotel rather early in the afternoon, so that most
+people were still lying down, or sitting speechless in their bedrooms,
+and Mrs. Thornbury, although she had asked them to tea, was nowhere to
+be seen. They sat down, therefore, in the shady hall, which was almost
+empty, and full of the light swishing sounds of air going to and fro in
+a large empty space. Yes, this arm-chair was the same arm-chair in
+which Rachel had sat that afternoon when Evelyn came up, and this was
+the magazine she had been looking at, and this the very picture, a
+picture of New York by lamplight. How odd it seemed—nothing had
+changed.
+
+By degrees a certain number of people began to come down the stairs and
+to pass through the hall, and in this dim light their figures possessed
+a sort of grace and beauty, although they were all unknown people.
+Sometimes they went straight through and out into the garden by the
+swing door, sometimes they stopped for a few minutes and bent over the
+tables and began turning over the newspapers. Terence and Rachel sat
+watching them through their half-closed eyelids—the Johnsons, the
+Parkers, the Baileys, the Simmons’, the Lees, the Morleys, the
+Campbells, the Gardiners. Some were dressed in white flannels and were
+carrying racquets under their arms, some were short, some tall, some
+were only children, and some perhaps were servants, but they all had
+their standing, their reason for following each other through the hall,
+their money, their position, whatever it might be. Terence soon gave up
+looking at them, for he was tired; and, closing his eyes, he fell half
+asleep in his chair. Rachel watched the people for some time longer;
+she was fascinated by the certainty and the grace of their movements,
+and by the inevitable way in which they seemed to follow each other,
+and loiter and pass on and disappear. But after a time her thoughts
+wandered, and she began to think of the dance, which had been held in
+this room, only then the room itself looked quite different. Glancing
+round, she could hardly believe that it was the same room. It had
+looked so bare and so bright and formal on that night when they came
+into it out of the darkness; it had been filled, too, with little red,
+excited faces, always moving, and people so brightly dressed and so
+animated that they did not seem in the least like real people, nor did
+you feel that you could talk to them. And now the room was dim and
+quiet, and beautiful silent people passed through it, to whom you could
+go and say anything you liked. She felt herself amazingly secure as she
+sat in her arm-chair, and able to review not only the night of the
+dance, but the entire past, tenderly and humorously, as if she had been
+turning in a fog for a long time, and could now see exactly where she
+had turned. For the methods by which she had reached her present
+position, seemed to her very strange, and the strangest thing about
+them was that she had not known where they were leading her. That was
+the strange thing, that one did not know where one was going, or what
+one wanted, and followed blindly, suffering so much in secret, always
+unprepared and amazed and knowing nothing; but one thing led to another
+and by degrees something had formed itself out of nothing, and so one
+reached at last this calm, this quiet, this certainty, and it was this
+process that people called living. Perhaps, then, every one really knew
+as she knew now where they were going; and things formed themselves
+into a pattern not only for her, but for them, and in that pattern lay
+satisfaction and meaning. When she looked back she could see that a
+meaning of some kind was apparent in the lives of her aunts, and in the
+brief visit of the Dalloways whom she would never see again, and in the
+life of her father.
+
+The sound of Terence, breathing deep in his slumber, confirmed her in
+her calm. She was not sleepy although she did not see anything very
+distinctly, but although the figures passing through the hall became
+vaguer and vaguer, she believed that they all knew exactly where they
+were going, and the sense of their certainty filled her with comfort.
+For the moment she was as detached and disinterested as if she had no
+longer any lot in life, and she thought that she could now accept
+anything that came to her without being perplexed by the form in which
+it appeared. What was there to frighten or to perplex in the prospect
+of life? Why should this insight ever again desert her? The world was
+in truth so large, so hospitable, and after all it was so simple.
+“Love,” St. John had said, “that seems to explain it all.” Yes, but it
+was not the love of man for woman, of Terence for Rachel. Although they
+sat so close together, they had ceased to be little separate bodies;
+they had ceased to struggle and desire one another. There seemed to be
+peace between them. It might be love, but it was not the love of man
+for woman.
+
+Through her half-closed eyelids she watched Terence lying back in his
+chair, and she smiled as she saw how big his mouth was, and his chin so
+small, and his nose curved like a switchback with a knob at the end.
+Naturally, looking like that he was lazy, and ambitious, and full of
+moods and faults. She remembered their quarrels, and in particular how
+they had been quarreling about Helen that very afternoon, and she
+thought how often they would quarrel in the thirty, or forty, or fifty
+years in which they would be living in the same house together,
+catching trains together, and getting annoyed because they were so
+different. But all this was superficial, and had nothing to do with the
+life that went on beneath the eyes and the mouth and the chin, for that
+life was independent of her, and independent of everything else. So
+too, although she was going to marry him and to live with him for
+thirty, or forty, or fifty years, and to quarrel, and to be so close to
+him, she was independent of him; she was independent of everything
+else. Nevertheless, as St. John said, it was love that made her
+understand this, for she had never felt this independence, this calm,
+and this certainty until she fell in love with him, and perhaps this
+too was love. She wanted nothing else.
+
+For perhaps two minutes Miss Allan had been standing at a little
+distance looking at the couple lying back so peacefully in their
+arm-chairs. She could not make up her mind whether to disturb them or
+not, and then, seeming to recollect something, she came across the
+hall. The sound of her approach woke Terence, who sat up and rubbed his
+eyes. He heard Miss Allan talking to Rachel.
+
+“Well,” she was saying, “this is very nice. It is very nice indeed.
+Getting engaged seems to be quite the fashion. It cannot often happen
+that two couples who have never seen each other before meet in the same
+hotel and decide to get married.” Then she paused and smiled, and
+seemed to have nothing more to say, so that Terence rose and asked her
+whether it was true that she had finished her book. Some one had said
+that she had really finished it. Her face lit up; she turned to him
+with a livelier expression than usual.
+
+“Yes, I think I can fairly say I have finished it,” she said. “That is,
+omitting Swinburne—Beowulf to Browning—I rather like the two B’s
+myself. Beowulf to Browning,” she repeated, “I think that is the kind
+of title which might catch one’s eye on a railway book-stall.”
+
+She was indeed very proud that she had finished her book, for no one
+knew what an amount of determination had gone to the making of it. Also
+she thought that it was a good piece of work, and, considering what
+anxiety she had been in about her brother while she wrote it, she could
+not resist telling them a little more about it.
+
+“I must confess,” she continued, “that if I had known how many classics
+there are in English literature, and how verbose the best of them
+contrive to be, I should never have undertaken the work. They only
+allow one seventy thousand words, you see.”
+
+“Only seventy thousand words!” Terence exclaimed.
+
+“Yes, and one has to say something about everybody,” Miss Allan added.
+“That is what I find so difficult, saying something different about
+everybody.” Then she thought that she had said enough about herself,
+and she asked whether they had come down to join the tennis tournament.
+“The young people are very keen about it. It begins again in half an
+hour.”
+
+Her gaze rested benevolently upon them both, and, after a momentary
+pause, she remarked, looking at Rachel as if she had remembered
+something that would serve to keep her distinct from other people.
+
+“You’re the remarkable person who doesn’t like ginger.” But the
+kindness of the smile in her rather worn and courageous face made them
+feel that although she would scarcely remember them as individuals, she
+had laid upon them the burden of the new generation.
+
+“And in that I quite agree with her,” said a voice behind; Mrs.
+Thornbury had overheard the last few words about not liking ginger.
+“It’s associated in my mind with a horrid old aunt of ours (poor thing,
+she suffered dreadfully, so it isn’t fair to call her horrid) who used
+to give it to us when we were small, and we never had the courage to
+tell her we didn’t like it. We just had to put it out in the
+shrubbery—she had a big house near Bath.”
+
+They began moving slowly across the hall, when they were stopped by the
+impact of Evelyn, who dashed into them, as though in running downstairs
+to catch them her legs had got beyond her control.
+
+“Well,” she exclaimed, with her usual enthusiasm, seizing Rachel by the
+arm, “I call this splendid! I guessed it was going to happen from the
+very beginning! I saw you two were made for each other. Now you’ve just
+got to tell me all about it—when’s it to be, where are you going to
+live—are you both tremendously happy?”
+
+But the attention of the group was diverted to Mrs. Elliot, who was
+passing them with her eager but uncertain movement, carrying in her
+hands a plate and an empty hot-water bottle. She would have passed
+them, but Mrs. Thornbury went up and stopped her.
+
+“Thank you, Hughling’s better,” she replied, in answer to Mrs.
+Thornbury’s enquiry, “but he’s not an easy patient. He wants to know
+what his temperature is, and if I tell him he gets anxious, and if I
+don’t tell him he suspects. You know what men are when they’re ill! And
+of course there are none of the proper appliances, and, though he seems
+very willing and anxious to help” (here she lowered her voice
+mysteriously), “one can’t feel that Dr. Rodriguez is the same as a
+proper doctor. If you would come and see him, Mr. Hewet,” she added, “I
+know it would cheer him up—lying there in bed all day—and the flies—But
+I must go and find Angelo—the food here—of course, with an invalid, one
+wants things particularly nice.” And she hurried past them in search of
+the head waiter. The worry of nursing her husband had fixed a plaintive
+frown upon her forehead; she was pale and looked unhappy and more than
+usually inefficient, and her eyes wandered more vaguely than ever from
+point to point.
+
+“Poor thing!” Mrs. Thornbury exclaimed. She told them that for some
+days Hughling Elliot had been ill, and the only doctor available was
+the brother of the proprietor, or so the proprietor said, whose right
+to the title of doctor was not above suspicion.
+
+“I know how wretched it is to be ill in a hotel,” Mrs. Thornbury
+remarked, once more leading the way with Rachel to the garden. “I spent
+six weeks on my honeymoon in having typhoid at Venice,” she continued.
+“But even so, I look back upon them as some of the happiest weeks in my
+life. Ah, yes,” she said, taking Rachel’s arm, “you think yourself
+happy now, but it’s nothing to the happiness that comes afterwards. And
+I assure you I could find it in my heart to envy you young people!
+You’ve a much better time than we had, I may tell you. When I look back
+upon it, I can hardly believe how things have changed. When we were
+engaged I wasn’t allowed to go for walks with William alone—some one
+had always to be in the room with us—I really believe I had to show my
+parents all his letters!—though they were very fond of him too. Indeed,
+I may say they looked upon him as their own son. It amuses me,” she
+continued, “to think how strict they were to us, when I see how they
+spoil their grand-children!”
+
+The table was laid under the tree again, and taking her place before
+the teacups, Mrs. Thornbury beckoned and nodded until she had collected
+quite a number of people, Susan and Arthur and Mr. Pepper, who were
+strolling about, waiting for the tournament to begin. A murmuring tree,
+a river brimming in the moonlight, Terence’s words came back to Rachel
+as she sat drinking the tea and listening to the words which flowed on
+so lightly, so kindly, and with such silvery smoothness. This long life
+and all these children had left her very smooth; they seemed to have
+rubbed away the marks of individuality, and to have left only what was
+old and maternal.
+
+“And the things you young people are going to see!” Mrs. Thornbury
+continued. She included them all in her forecast, she included them all
+in her maternity, although the party comprised William Pepper and Miss
+Allan, both of whom might have been supposed to have seen a fair share
+of the panorama. “When I see how the world has changed in my lifetime,”
+she went on, “I can set no limit to what may happen in the next fifty
+years. Ah, no, Mr. Pepper, I don’t agree with you in the least,” she
+laughed, interrupting his gloomy remark about things going steadily
+from bad to worse. “I know I ought to feel that, but I don’t, I’m
+afraid. They’re going to be much better people than we were. Surely
+everything goes to prove that. All round me I see women, young women,
+women with household cares of every sort, going out and doing things
+that we should not have thought it possible to do.”
+
+Mr. Pepper thought her sentimental and irrational like all old women,
+but her manner of treating him as if he were a cross old baby baffled
+him and charmed him, and he could only reply to her with a curious
+grimace which was more a smile than a frown.
+
+“And they remain women,” Mrs. Thornbury added. “They give a great deal
+to their children.”
+
+As she said this she smiled slightly in the direction of Susan and
+Rachel. They did not like to be included in the same lot, but they both
+smiled a little self-consciously, and Arthur and Terence glanced at
+each other too. She made them feel that they were all in the same boat
+together, and they looked at the women they were going to marry and
+compared them. It was inexplicable how any one could wish to marry
+Rachel, incredible that any one should be ready to spend his life with
+Susan; but singular though the other’s taste must be, they bore each
+other no ill-will on account of it; indeed, they liked each other
+rather the better for the eccentricity of their choice.
+
+“I really must congratulate you,” Susan remarked, as she leant across
+the table for the jam.
+
+There seemed to be no foundation for St. John’s gossip about Arthur and
+Susan. Sunburnt and vigorous they sat side by side, with their racquets
+across their knees, not saying much but smiling slightly all the time.
+Through the thin white clothes which they wore, it was possible to see
+the lines of their bodies and legs, the beautiful curves of their
+muscles, his leanness and her flesh, and it was natural to think of the
+firm-fleshed sturdy children that would be theirs. Their faces had too
+little shape in them to be beautiful, but they had clear eyes and an
+appearance of great health and power of endurance, for it seemed as if
+the blood would never cease to run in his veins, or to lie deeply and
+calmly in her cheeks. Their eyes at the present moment were brighter
+than usual, and wore the peculiar expression of pleasure and
+self-confidence which is seen in the eyes of athletes, for they had
+been playing tennis, and they were both first-rate at the game.
+
+Evelyn had not spoken, but she had been looking from Susan to Rachel.
+Well—they had both made up their minds very easily, they had done in a
+very few weeks what it sometimes seemed to her that she would never be
+able to do. Although they were so different, she thought that she could
+see in each the same look of satisfaction and completion, the same
+calmness of manner, and the same slowness of movement. It was that
+slowness, that confidence, that content which she hated, she thought to
+herself. They moved so slowly because they were not single but double,
+and Susan was attached to Arthur, and Rachel to Terence, and for the
+sake of this one man they had renounced all other men, and movement,
+and the real things of life. Love was all very well, and those snug
+domestic houses, with the kitchen below and the nursery above, which
+were so secluded and self-contained, like little islands in the
+torrents of the world; but the real things were surely the things that
+happened, the causes, the wars, the ideals, which happened in the great
+world outside, and went so independently of these women, turning so
+quietly and beautifully towards the men. She looked at them sharply. Of
+course they were happy and content, but there must be better things
+than that. Surely one could get nearer to life, one could get more out
+of life, one could enjoy more and feel more than they would ever do.
+Rachel in particular looked so young—what could she know of life? She
+became restless, and getting up, crossed over to sit beside Rachel. She
+reminded her that she had promised to join her club.
+
+“The bother is,” she went on, “that I mayn’t be able to start work
+seriously till October. I’ve just had a letter from a friend of mine
+whose brother is in business in Moscow. They want me to stay with them,
+and as they’re in the thick of all the conspiracies and anarchists,
+I’ve a good mind to stop on my way home. It sounds too thrilling.” She
+wanted to make Rachel see how thrilling it was. “My friend knows a girl
+of fifteen who’s been sent to Siberia for life merely because they
+caught her addressing a letter to an anarchist. And the letter wasn’t
+from her, either. I’d give all I have in the world to help on a
+revolution against the Russian government, and it’s bound to come.”
+
+She looked from Rachel to Terence. They were both a little touched by
+the sight of her remembering how lately they had been listening to evil
+words about her, and Terence asked her what her scheme was, and she
+explained that she was going to found a club—a club for doing things,
+really doing them. She became very animated, as she talked on and on,
+for she professed herself certain that if once twenty people—no, ten
+would be enough if they were keen—set about doing things instead of
+talking about doing them, they could abolish almost every evil that
+exists. It was brains that were needed. If only people with brains—of
+course they would want a room, a nice room, in Bloomsbury preferably,
+where they could meet once a week. . . .
+
+As she talked Terence could see the traces of fading youth in her face,
+the lines that were being drawn by talk and excitement round her mouth
+and eyes, but he did not pity her; looking into those bright, rather
+hard, and very courageous eyes, he saw that she did not pity herself,
+or feel any desire to exchange her own life for the more refined and
+orderly lives of people like himself and St. John, although, as the
+years went by, the fight would become harder and harder. Perhaps,
+though, she would settle down; perhaps, after all, she would marry
+Perrott. While his mind was half occupied with what she was saying, he
+thought of her probable destiny, the light clouds of tobacco smoke
+serving to obscure his face from her eyes.
+
+Terence smoked and Arthur smoked and Evelyn smoked, so that the air was
+full of the mist and fragrance of good tobacco. In the intervals when
+no one spoke, they heard far off the low murmur of the sea, as the
+waves quietly broke and spread the beach with a film of water, and
+withdrew to break again. The cool green light fell through the leaves
+of the tree, and there were soft crescents and diamonds of sunshine
+upon the plates and the tablecloth. Mrs. Thornbury, after watching them
+all for a time in silence, began to ask Rachel kindly questions—When
+did they all go back? Oh, they expected her father. She must want to
+see her father—there would be a great deal to tell him, and (she looked
+sympathetically at Terence) he would be so happy, she felt sure. Years
+ago, she continued, it might have been ten or twenty years ago, she
+remembered meeting Mr. Vinrace at a party, and, being so much struck by
+his face, which was so unlike the ordinary face one sees at a party,
+that she had asked who he was, and she was told that it was Mr.
+Vinrace, and she had always remembered the name,—an uncommon name,—and
+he had a lady with him, a very sweet-looking woman, but it was one of
+those dreadful London crushes, where you don’t talk,—you only look at
+each other,—and although she had shaken hands with Mr. Vinrace, she
+didn’t think they had said anything. She sighed very slightly,
+remembering the past.
+
+Then she turned to Mr. Pepper, who had become very dependent on her, so
+that he always chose a seat near her, and attended to what she was
+saying, although he did not often make any remark of his own.
+
+“You who know everything, Mr. Pepper,” she said, “tell us how did those
+wonderful French ladies manage their salons? Did we ever do anything of
+the same kind in England, or do you think that there is some reason why
+we cannot do it in England?”
+
+Mr. Pepper was pleased to explain very accurately why there has never
+been an English salon. There were three reasons, and they were very
+good ones, he said. As for himself, when he went to a party, as one was
+sometimes obliged to, from a wish not to give offence—his niece, for
+example, had been married the other day—he walked into the middle of
+the room, said “Ha! ha!” as loud as ever he could, considered that he
+had done his duty, and walked away again. Mrs. Thornbury protested. She
+was going to give a party directly she got back, and they were all to
+be invited, and she should set people to watch Mr. Pepper, and if she
+heard that he had been caught saying “Ha! ha!” she would—she would do
+something very dreadful indeed to him. Arthur Venning suggested that
+what she must do was to rig up something in the nature of a surprise—a
+portrait, for example, of a nice old lady in a lace cap, concealing a
+bath of cold water, which at a signal could be sprung on Pepper’s head;
+or they’d have a chair which shot him twenty feet high directly he sat
+on it.
+
+Susan laughed. She had done her tea; she was feeling very well
+contented, partly because she had been playing tennis brilliantly, and
+then every one was so nice; she was beginning to find it so much easier
+to talk, and to hold her own even with quite clever people, for somehow
+clever people did not frighten her any more. Even Mr. Hirst, whom she
+had disliked when she first met him, really wasn’t disagreeable; and,
+poor man, he always looked so ill; perhaps he was in love; perhaps he
+had been in love with Rachel—she really shouldn’t wonder; or perhaps it
+was Evelyn—she was of course very attractive to men. Leaning forward,
+she went on with the conversation. She said that she thought that the
+reason why parties were so dull was mainly because gentlemen will not
+dress: even in London, she stated, it struck her very much how people
+don’t think it necessary to dress in the evening, and of course if they
+don’t dress in London they won’t dress in the country. It was really
+quite a treat at Christmas-time when there were the Hunt balls, and the
+gentlemen wore nice red coats, but Arthur didn’t care for dancing, so
+she supposed that they wouldn’t go even to the ball in their little
+country town. She didn’t think that people who were fond of one sport
+often care for another, although her father was an exception. But then
+he was an exception in every way—such a gardener, and he knew all about
+birds and animals, and of course he was simply adored by all the old
+women in the village, and at the same time what he really liked best
+was a book. You always knew where to find him if he were wanted; he
+would be in his study with a book. Very likely it would be an old, old
+book, some fusty old thing that no one else would dream of reading. She
+used to tell him that he would have made a first-rate old bookworm if
+only he hadn’t had a family of six to support, and six children, she
+added, charmingly confident of universal sympathy, didn’t leave one
+much time for being a bookworm.
+
+Still talking about her father, of whom she was very proud, she rose,
+for Arthur upon looking at his watch found that it was time they went
+back again to the tennis court. The others did not move.
+
+“They’re very happy!” said Mrs. Thornbury, looking benignantly after
+them. Rachel agreed; they seemed to be so certain of themselves; they
+seemed to know exactly what they wanted.
+
+“D’you think they _are_ happy?” Evelyn murmured to Terence in an
+undertone, and she hoped that he would say that he did not think them
+happy; but, instead, he said that they must go too—go home, for they
+were always being late for meals, and Mrs. Ambrose, who was very stern
+and particular, didn’t like that. Evelyn laid hold of Rachel’s skirt
+and protested. Why should they go? It was still early, and she had so
+many things to say to them. “No,” said Terence, “we must go, because we
+walk so slowly. We stop and look at things, and we talk.”
+
+“What d’you talk about?” Evelyn enquired, upon which he laughed and
+said that they talked about everything.
+
+Mrs. Thornbury went with them to the gate, trailing very slowly and
+gracefully across the grass and the gravel, and talking all the time
+about flowers and birds. She told them that she had taken up the study
+of botany since her daughter married, and it was wonderful what a
+number of flowers there were which she had never seen, although she had
+lived in the country all her life and she was now seventy-two. It was a
+good thing to have some occupation which was quite independent of other
+people, she said, when one got old. But the odd thing was that one
+never felt old. She always felt that she was twenty-five, not a day
+more or a day less, but, of course, one couldn’t expect other people to
+agree to that.
+
+“It must be very wonderful to be twenty-five, and not merely to imagine
+that you’re twenty-five,” she said, looking from one to the other with
+her smooth, bright glance. “It must be very wonderful, very wonderful
+indeed.” She stood talking to them at the gate for a long time; she
+seemed reluctant that they should go.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXV
+
+
+The afternoon was very hot, so hot that the breaking of the waves on
+the shore sounded like the repeated sigh of some exhausted creature,
+and even on the terrace under an awning the bricks were hot, and the
+air danced perpetually over the short dry grass. The red flowers in the
+stone basins were drooping with the heat, and the white blossoms which
+had been so smooth and thick only a few weeks ago were now dry, and
+their edges were curled and yellow. Only the stiff and hostile plants
+of the south, whose fleshy leaves seemed to be grown upon spines, still
+remained standing upright and defied the sun to beat them down. It was
+too hot to talk, and it was not easy to find any book that would
+withstand the power of the sun. Many books had been tried and then let
+fall, and now Terence was reading Milton aloud, because he said the
+words of Milton had substance and shape, so that it was not necessary
+to understand what he was saying; one could merely listen to his words;
+one could almost handle them.
+
+There is a gentle nymph not far from hence,
+
+
+he read,
+
+That with moist curb sways the smooth Severn stream.
+Sabrina is her name, a virgin pure;
+Whilom she was the daughter of Locrine,
+That had the sceptre from his father Brute.
+
+
+The words, in spite of what Terence had said, seemed to be laden with
+meaning, and perhaps it was for this reason that it was painful to
+listen to them; they sounded strange; they meant different things from
+what they usually meant. Rachel at any rate could not keep her
+attention fixed upon them, but went off upon curious trains of thought
+suggested by words such as “curb” and “Locrine” and “Brute,” which
+brought unpleasant sights before her eyes, independently of their
+meaning. Owing to the heat and the dancing air the garden too looked
+strange—the trees were either too near or too far, and her head almost
+certainly ached. She was not quite certain, and therefore she did not
+know, whether to tell Terence now, or to let him go on reading. She
+decided that she would wait until he came to the end of a stanza, and
+if by that time she had turned her head this way and that, and it ached
+in every position undoubtedly, she would say very calmly that her head
+ached.
+
+Sabrina fair,
+    Listen where thou art sitting
+Under the glassy, cool, translucent wave,
+    In twisted braids of lilies knitting
+The loose train of thy amber dropping hair,
+Listen for dear honour’s sake,
+    Goddess of the silver lake,
+    Listen and save!
+
+
+But her head ached; it ached whichever way she turned it.
+
+She sat up and said as she had determined, “My head aches so that I
+shall go indoors.” He was half-way through the next verse, but he
+dropped the book instantly.
+
+“Your head aches?” he repeated.
+
+For a few moments they sat looking at one another in silence, holding
+each other’s hands. During this time his sense of dismay and
+catastrophe were almost physically painful; all round him he seemed to
+hear the shiver of broken glass which, as it fell to earth, left him
+sitting in the open air. But at the end of two minutes, noticing that
+she was not sharing his dismay, but was only rather more languid and
+heavy-eyed than usual, he recovered, fetched Helen, and asked her to
+tell him what they had better do, for Rachel had a headache.
+
+Mrs. Ambrose was not discomposed, but advised that she should go to
+bed, and added that she must expect her head to ache if she sat up to
+all hours and went out in the heat, but a few hours in bed would cure
+it completely. Terence was unreasonably reassured by her words, as he
+had been unreasonably depressed the moment before. Helen’s sense seemed
+to have much in common with the ruthless good sense of nature, which
+avenged rashness by a headache, and, like nature’s good sense, might be
+depended upon.
+
+Rachel went to bed; she lay in the dark, it seemed to her, for a very
+long time, but at length, waking from a transparent kind of sleep, she
+saw the windows white in front of her, and recollected that some time
+before she had gone to bed with a headache, and that Helen had said it
+would be gone when she woke. She supposed, therefore, that she was now
+quite well again. At the same time the wall of her room was painfully
+white, and curved slightly, instead of being straight and flat. Turning
+her eyes to the window, she was not reassured by what she saw there.
+The movement of the blind as it filled with air and blew slowly out,
+drawing the cord with a little trailing sound along the floor, seemed
+to her terrifying, as if it were the movement of an animal in the room.
+She shut her eyes, and the pulse in her head beat so strongly that each
+thump seemed to tread upon a nerve, piercing her forehead with a little
+stab of pain. It might not be the same headache, but she certainly had
+a headache. She turned from side to side, in the hope that the coolness
+of the sheets would cure her, and that when she next opened her eyes to
+look the room would be as usual. After a considerable number of vain
+experiments, she resolved to put the matter beyond a doubt. She got out
+of bed and stood upright, holding on to the brass ball at the end of
+the bedstead. Ice-cold at first, it soon became as hot as the palm of
+her hand, and as the pains in her head and body and the instability of
+the floor proved that it would be far more intolerable to stand and
+walk than to lie in bed, she got into bed again; but though the change
+was refreshing at first, the discomfort of bed was soon as great as the
+discomfort of standing up. She accepted the idea that she would have to
+stay in bed all day long, and as she laid her head on the pillow,
+relinquished the happiness of the day.
+
+When Helen came in an hour or two later, suddenly stopped her cheerful
+words, looked startled for a second and then unnaturally calm, the fact
+that she was ill was put beyond a doubt. It was confirmed when the
+whole household knew of it, when the song that some one was singing in
+the garden stopped suddenly, and when Maria, as she brought water,
+slipped past the bed with averted eyes. There was all the morning to
+get through, and then all the afternoon, and at intervals she made an
+effort to cross over into the ordinary world, but she found that her
+heat and discomfort had put a gulf between her world and the ordinary
+world which she could not bridge. At one point the door opened, and
+Helen came in with a little dark man who had—it was the chief thing she
+noticed about him—very hairy hands. She was drowsy and intolerably hot,
+and as he seemed shy and obsequious she scarcely troubled to answer
+him, although she understood that he was a doctor. At another point the
+door opened and Terence came in very gently, smiling too steadily, as
+she realised, for it to be natural. He sat down and talked to her,
+stroking her hands until it became irksome to her to lie any more in
+the same position and she turned round, and when she looked up again
+Helen was beside her and Terence had gone. It did not matter; she would
+see him to-morrow when things would be ordinary again. Her chief
+occupation during the day was to try to remember how the lines went:
+
+Under the glassy, cool, translucent wave,
+In twisted braids of lilies knitting
+The loose train of thy amber dropping hair;
+
+
+and the effort worried her because the adjectives persisted in getting
+into the wrong places.
+
+The second day did not differ very much from the first day, except that
+her bed had become very important, and the world outside, when she
+tried to think of it, appeared distinctly further off. The glassy,
+cool, translucent wave was almost visible before her, curling up at the
+end of the bed, and as it was refreshingly cool she tried to keep her
+mind fixed upon it. Helen was here, and Helen was there all day long;
+sometimes she said that it was lunchtime, and sometimes that it was
+teatime; but by the next day all landmarks were obliterated, and the
+outer world was so far away that the different sounds, such as the
+sounds of people moving overhead, could only be ascribed to their cause
+by a great effort of memory. The recollection of what she had felt, or
+of what she had been doing and thinking three days before, had faded
+entirely. On the other hand, every object in the room, and the bed
+itself, and her own body with its various limbs and their different
+sensations were more and more important each day. She was completely
+cut off, and unable to communicate with the rest of the world, isolated
+alone with her body.
+
+Hours and hours would pass thus, without getting any further through
+the morning, or again a few minutes would lead from broad daylight to
+the depths of the night. One evening when the room appeared very dim,
+either because it was evening or because the blinds were drawn, Helen
+said to her, “Some one is going to sit here to-night. You won’t mind?”
+
+Opening her eyes, Rachel saw not only Helen but a nurse in spectacles,
+whose face vaguely recalled something that she had once seen. She had
+seen her in the chapel. “Nurse McInnis,” said Helen, and the nurse
+smiled steadily as they all did, and said that she did not find many
+people who were frightened of her. After waiting for a moment they both
+disappeared, and having turned on her pillow Rachel woke to find
+herself in the midst of one of those interminable nights which do not
+end at twelve, but go on into the double figures—thirteen, fourteen,
+and so on until they reach the twenties, and then the thirties, and
+then the forties. She realised that there is nothing to prevent nights
+from doing this if they choose. At a great distance an elderly woman
+sat with her head bent down; Rachel raised herself slightly and saw
+with dismay that she was playing cards by the light of a candle which
+stood in the hollow of a newspaper. The sight had something
+inexplicably sinister about it, and she was terrified and cried out,
+upon which the woman laid down her cards and came across the room,
+shading the candle with her hands. Coming nearer and nearer across the
+great space of the room, she stood at last above Rachel’s head and
+said, “Not asleep? Let me make you comfortable.”
+
+She put down the candle and began to arrange the bedclothes. It struck
+Rachel that a woman who sat playing cards in a cavern all night long
+would have very cold hands, and she shrunk from the touch of them.
+
+“Why, there’s a toe all the way down there!” the woman said, proceeding
+to tuck in the bedclothes. Rachel did not realise that the toe was
+hers.
+
+“You must try and lie still,” she proceeded, “because if you lie still
+you will be less hot, and if you toss about you will make yourself more
+hot, and we don’t want you to be any hotter than you are.” She stood
+looking down upon Rachel for an enormous length of time.
+
+“And the quieter you lie the sooner you will be well,” she repeated.
+
+Rachel kept her eyes fixed upon the peaked shadow on the ceiling, and
+all her energy was concentrated upon the desire that this shadow should
+move. But the shadow and the woman seemed to be eternally fixed above
+her. She shut her eyes. When she opened them again several more hours
+had passed, but the night still lasted interminably. The woman was
+still playing cards, only she sat now in a tunnel under a river, and
+the light stood in a little archway in the wall above her. She cried
+“Terence!” and the peaked shadow again moved across the ceiling, as the
+woman with an enormous slow movement rose, and they both stood still
+above her.
+
+“It’s just as difficult to keep you in bed as it was to keep Mr.
+Forrest in bed,” the woman said, “and he was such a tall gentleman.”
+
+In order to get rid of this terrible stationary sight Rachel again shut
+her eyes, and found herself walking through a tunnel under the Thames,
+where there were little deformed women sitting in archways playing
+cards, while the bricks of which the wall was made oozed with damp,
+which collected into drops and slid down the wall. But the little old
+women became Helen and Nurse McInnis after a time, standing in the
+window together whispering, whispering incessantly.
+
+Meanwhile outside her room the sounds, the movements, and the lives of
+the other people in the house went on in the ordinary light of the sun,
+throughout the usual succession of hours. When, on the first day of her
+illness, it became clear that she would not be absolutely well, for her
+temperature was very high, until Friday, that day being Tuesday,
+Terence was filled with resentment, not against her, but against the
+force outside them which was separating them. He counted up the number
+of days that would almost certainly be spoilt for them. He realised,
+with an odd mixture of pleasure and annoyance, that, for the first time
+in his life, he was so dependent upon another person that his happiness
+was in her keeping. The days were completely wasted upon trifling,
+immaterial things, for after three weeks of such intimacy and intensity
+all the usual occupations were unbearably flat and beside the point.
+The least intolerable occupation was to talk to St. John about Rachel’s
+illness, and to discuss every symptom and its meaning, and, when this
+subject was exhausted, to discuss illness of all kinds, and what caused
+them, and what cured them.
+
+Twice every day he went in to sit with Rachel, and twice every day the
+same thing happened. On going into her room, which was not very dark,
+where the music was lying about as usual, and her books and letters,
+his spirits rose instantly. When he saw her he felt completely
+reassured. She did not look very ill. Sitting by her side he would tell
+her what he had been doing, using his natural voice to speak to her,
+only a few tones lower down than usual; but by the time he had sat
+there for five minutes he was plunged into the deepest gloom. She was
+not the same; he could not bring them back to their old relationship;
+but although he knew that it was foolish he could not prevent himself
+from endeavouring to bring her back, to make her remember, and when
+this failed he was in despair. He always concluded as he left her room
+that it was worse to see her than not to see her, but by degrees, as
+the day wore on, the desire to see her returned and became almost too
+great to be borne.
+
+On Thursday morning when Terence went into her room he felt the usual
+increase of confidence. She turned round and made an effort to remember
+certain facts from the world that was so many millions of miles away.
+
+“You have come up from the hotel?” she asked.
+
+“No; I’m staying here for the present,” he said. “We’ve just had
+luncheon,” he continued, “and the mail has come in. There’s a bundle of
+letters for you—letters from England.”
+
+Instead of saying, as he meant her to say, that she wished to see them,
+she said nothing for some time.
+
+“You see, there they go, rolling off the edge of the hill,” she said
+suddenly.
+
+“Rolling, Rachel? What do you see rolling? There’s nothing rolling.”
+
+“The old woman with the knife,” she replied, not speaking to Terence in
+particular, and looking past him. As she appeared to be looking at a
+vase on the shelf opposite, he rose and took it down.
+
+“Now they can’t roll any more,” he said cheerfully. Nevertheless she
+lay gazing at the same spot, and paid him no further attention although
+he spoke to her. He became so profoundly wretched that he could not
+endure to sit with her, but wandered about until he found St. John, who
+was reading _The Times_ in the verandah. He laid it aside patiently,
+and heard all that Terence had to say about delirium. He was very
+patient with Terence. He treated him like a child.
+
+By Friday it could not be denied that the illness was no longer an
+attack that would pass off in a day or two; it was a real illness that
+required a good deal of organisation, and engrossed the attention of at
+least five people, but there was no reason to be anxious. Instead of
+lasting five days it was going to last ten days. Rodriguez was
+understood to say that there were well-known varieties of this illness.
+Rodriguez appeared to think that they were treating the illness with
+undue anxiety. His visits were always marked by the same show of
+confidence, and in his interviews with Terence he always waved aside
+his anxious and minute questions with a kind of flourish which seemed
+to indicate that they were all taking it much too seriously. He seemed
+curiously unwilling to sit down.
+
+“A high temperature,” he said, looking furtively about the room, and
+appearing to be more interested in the furniture and in Helen’s
+embroidery than in anything else. “In this climate you must expect a
+high temperature. You need not be alarmed by that. It is the pulse we
+go by” (he tapped his own hairy wrist), “and the pulse continues
+excellent.”
+
+Thereupon he bowed and slipped out. The interview was conducted
+laboriously upon both sides in French, and this, together with the fact
+that he was optimistic, and that Terence respected the medical
+profession from hearsay, made him less critical than he would have been
+had he encountered the doctor in any other capacity. Unconsciously he
+took Rodriguez’ side against Helen, who seemed to have taken an
+unreasonable prejudice against him.
+
+When Saturday came it was evident that the hours of the day must be
+more strictly organised than they had been. St. John offered his
+services; he said that he had nothing to do, and that he might as well
+spend the day at the villa if he could be of use. As if they were
+starting on a difficult expedition together, they parcelled out their
+duties between them, writing out an elaborate scheme of hours upon a
+large sheet of paper which was pinned to the drawing-room door. Their
+distance from the town, and the difficulty of procuring rare things
+with unknown names from the most unexpected places, made it necessary
+to think very carefully, and they found it unexpectedly difficult to do
+the simple but practical things that were required of them, as if they,
+being very tall, were asked to stoop down and arrange minute grains of
+sand in a pattern on the ground.
+
+It was St. John’s duty to fetch what was needed from the town, so that
+Terence would sit all through the long hot hours alone in the
+drawing-room, near the open door, listening for any movement upstairs,
+or call from Helen. He always forgot to pull down the blinds, so that
+he sat in bright sunshine, which worried him without his knowing what
+was the cause of it. The room was terribly stiff and uncomfortable.
+There were hats in the chairs, and medicine bottles among the books. He
+tried to read, but good books were too good, and bad books were too
+bad, and the only thing he could tolerate was the newspaper, which with
+its news of London, and the movements of real people who were giving
+dinner-parties and making speeches, seemed to give a little background
+of reality to what was otherwise mere nightmare. Then, just as his
+attention was fixed on the print, a soft call would come from Helen, or
+Mrs. Chailey would bring in something which was wanted upstairs, and he
+would run up very quietly in his socks, and put the jug on the little
+table which stood crowded with jugs and cups outside the bedroom door;
+or if he could catch Helen for a moment he would ask, “How is she?”
+
+“Rather restless. . . . On the whole, quieter, I think.”
+
+The answer would be one or the other.
+
+As usual she seemed to reserve something which she did not say, and
+Terence was conscious that they disagreed, and, without saying it
+aloud, were arguing against each other. But she was too hurried and
+pre-occupied to talk.
+
+The strain of listening and the effort of making practical arrangements
+and seeing that things worked smoothly, absorbed all Terence’s power.
+Involved in this long dreary nightmare, he did not attempt to think
+what it amounted to. Rachel was ill; that was all; he must see that
+there was medicine and milk, and that things were ready when they were
+wanted. Thought had ceased; life itself had come to a standstill.
+Sunday was rather worse than Saturday had been, simply because the
+strain was a little greater every day, although nothing else had
+changed. The separate feelings of pleasure, interest, and pain, which
+combine to make up the ordinary day, were merged in one long-drawn
+sensation of sordid misery and profound boredom. He had never been so
+bored since he was shut up in the nursery alone as a child. The vision
+of Rachel as she was now, confused and heedless, had almost obliterated
+the vision of her as she had been once long ago; he could hardly
+believe that they had ever been happy, or engaged to be married, for
+what were feelings, what was there to be felt? Confusion covered every
+sight and person, and he seemed to see St. John, Ridley, and the stray
+people who came up now and then from the hotel to enquire, through a
+mist; the only people who were not hidden in this mist were Helen and
+Rodriguez, because they could tell him something definite about Rachel.
+
+Nevertheless the day followed the usual forms. At certain hours they
+went into the dining-room, and when they sat round the table they
+talked about indifferent things. St. John usually made it his business
+to start the talk and to keep it from dying out.
+
+“I’ve discovered the way to get Sancho past the white house,” said St.
+John on Sunday at luncheon. “You crackle a piece of paper in his ear,
+then he bolts for about a hundred yards, but he goes on quite well
+after that.”
+
+“Yes, but he wants corn. You should see that he has corn.”
+
+“I don’t think much of the stuff they give him; and Angelo seems a
+dirty little rascal.”
+
+There was then a long silence. Ridley murmured a few lines of poetry
+under his breath, and remarked, as if to conceal the fact that he had
+done so, “Very hot to-day.”
+
+“Two degrees higher than it was yesterday,” said St. John. “I wonder
+where these nuts come from,” he observed, taking a nut out of the
+plate, turning it over in his fingers, and looking at it curiously.
+
+“London, I should think,” said Terence, looking at the nut too.
+
+“A competent man of business could make a fortune here in no time,” St.
+John continued. “I suppose the heat does something funny to people’s
+brains. Even the English go a little queer. Anyhow they’re hopeless
+people to deal with. They kept me three-quarters of an hour waiting at
+the chemist’s this morning, for no reason whatever.”
+
+There was another long pause. Then Ridley enquired, “Rodriguez seems
+satisfied?”
+
+“Quite,” said Terence with decision. “It’s just got to run its course.”
+Whereupon Ridley heaved a deep sigh. He was genuinely sorry for every
+one, but at the same time he missed Helen considerably, and was a
+little aggrieved by the constant presence of the two young men.
+
+They moved back into the drawing-room.
+
+“Look here, Hirst,” said Terence, “there’s nothing to be done for two
+hours.” He consulted the sheet pinned to the door. “You go and lie
+down. I’ll wait here. Chailey sits with Rachel while Helen has her
+luncheon.”
+
+It was asking a good deal of Hirst to tell him to go without waiting
+for a sight of Helen. These little glimpses of Helen were the only
+respites from strain and boredom, and very often they seemed to make up
+for the discomfort of the day, although she might not have anything to
+tell them. However, as they were on an expedition together, he had made
+up his mind to obey.
+
+Helen was very late in coming down. She looked like a person who has
+been sitting for a long time in the dark. She was pale and thinner, and
+the expression of her eyes was harassed but determined. She ate her
+luncheon quickly, and seemed indifferent to what she was doing. She
+brushed aside Terence’s enquiries, and at last, as if he had not
+spoken, she looked at him with a slight frown and said:
+
+“We can’t go on like this, Terence. Either you’ve got to find another
+doctor, or you must tell Rodriguez to stop coming, and I’ll manage for
+myself. It’s no use for him to say that Rachel’s better; she’s not
+better; she’s worse.”
+
+Terence suffered a terrific shock, like that which he had suffered when
+Rachel said, “My head aches.” He stilled it by reflecting that Helen
+was overwrought, and he was upheld in this opinion by his obstinate
+sense that she was opposed to him in the argument.
+
+“Do you think she’s in danger?” he asked.
+
+“No one can go on being as ill as that day after day—” Helen replied.
+She looked at him, and spoke as if she felt some indignation with
+somebody.
+
+“Very well, I’ll talk to Rodriguez this afternoon,” he replied.
+
+Helen went upstairs at once.
+
+Nothing now could assuage Terence’s anxiety. He could not read, nor
+could he sit still, and his sense of security was shaken, in spite of
+the fact that he was determined that Helen was exaggerating, and that
+Rachel was not very ill. But he wanted a third person to confirm him in
+his belief.
+
+Directly Rodriguez came down he demanded, “Well, how is she? Do you
+think her worse?”
+
+“There is no reason for anxiety, I tell you—none,” Rodriguez replied in
+his execrable French, smiling uneasily, and making little movements all
+the time as if to get away.
+
+Hewet stood firmly between him and the door. He was determined to see
+for himself what kind of man he was. His confidence in the man vanished
+as he looked at him and saw his insignificance, his dirty appearance,
+his shiftiness, and his unintelligent, hairy face. It was strange that
+he had never seen this before.
+
+“You won’t object, of course, if we ask you to consult another doctor?”
+he continued.
+
+At this the little man became openly incensed.
+
+“Ah!” he cried. “You have not confidence in me? You object to my
+treatment? You wish me to give up the case?”
+
+“Not at all,” Terence replied, “but in serious illness of this kind—”
+
+Rodriguez shrugged his shoulders.
+
+“It is not serious, I assure you. You are overanxious. The young lady
+is not seriously ill, and I am a doctor. The lady of course is
+frightened,” he sneered. “I understand that perfectly.”
+
+“The name and address of the doctor is—?” Terence continued.
+
+“There is no other doctor,” Rodriguez replied sullenly. “Every one has
+confidence in me. Look! I will show you.”
+
+He took out a packet of old letters and began turning them over as if
+in search of one that would confute Terence’s suspicions. As he
+searched, he began to tell a story about an English lord who had
+trusted him—a great English lord, whose name he had, unfortunately,
+forgotten.
+
+“There is no other doctor in the place,” he concluded, still turning
+over the letters.
+
+“Never mind,” said Terence shortly. “I will make enquiries for myself.”
+Rodriguez put the letters back in his pocket.
+
+“Very well,” he remarked. “I have no objection.”
+
+He lifted his eyebrows, shrugged his shoulders, as if to repeat that
+they took the illness much too seriously and that there was no other
+doctor, and slipped out, leaving behind him an impression that he was
+conscious that he was distrusted, and that his malice was aroused.
+
+After this Terence could no longer stay downstairs. He went up, knocked
+at Rachel’s door, and asked Helen whether he might see her for a few
+minutes. He had not seen her yesterday. She made no objection, and went
+and sat at a table in the window.
+
+Terence sat down by the bedside. Rachel’s face was changed. She looked
+as though she were entirely concentrated upon the effort of keeping
+alive. Her lips were drawn, and her cheeks were sunken and flushed,
+though without colour. Her eyes were not entirely shut, the lower half
+of the white part showing, not as if she saw, but as if they remained
+open because she was too much exhausted to close them. She opened them
+completely when he kissed her. But she only saw an old woman slicing a
+man’s head off with a knife.
+
+“There it falls!” she murmured. She then turned to Terence and asked
+him anxiously some question about a man with mules, which he could not
+understand. “Why doesn’t he come? Why doesn’t he come?” she repeated.
+He was appalled to think of the dirty little man downstairs in
+connection with illness like this, and turned instinctively to Helen,
+but she was doing something at a table in the window, and did not seem
+to realise how great the shock to him must be. He rose to go, for he
+could not endure to listen any longer; his heart beat quickly and
+painfully with anger and misery. As he passed Helen she asked him in
+the same weary, unnatural, but determined voice to fetch her more ice,
+and to have the jug outside filled with fresh milk.
+
+When he had done these errands he went to find Hirst. Exhausted and
+very hot, St. John had fallen asleep on a bed, but Terence woke him
+without scruple.
+
+“Helen thinks she’s worse,” he said. “There’s no doubt she’s
+frightfully ill. Rodriguez is useless. We must get another doctor.”
+
+“But there is no other doctor,” said Hirst drowsily, sitting up and
+rubbing his eyes.
+
+“Don’t be a damned fool!” Terence exclaimed. “Of course there’s another
+doctor, and, if there isn’t, you’ve got to find one. It ought to have
+been done days ago. I’m going down to saddle the horse.” He could not
+stay still in one place.
+
+In less than ten minutes St. John was riding to the town in the
+scorching heat in search of a doctor, his orders being to find one and
+bring him back if he had to be fetched in a special train.
+
+“We ought to have done it days ago,” Hewet repeated angrily.
+
+When he went back into the drawing-room he found that Mrs. Flushing was
+there, standing very erect in the middle of the room, having arrived,
+as people did in these days, by the kitchen or through the garden
+unannounced.
+
+“She’s better?” Mrs. Flushing enquired abruptly; they did not attempt
+to shake hands.
+
+“No,” said Terence. “If anything, they think she’s worse.”
+
+Mrs. Flushing seemed to consider for a moment or two, looking straight
+at Terence all the time.
+
+“Let me tell you,” she said, speaking in nervous jerks, “it’s always
+about the seventh day one begins to get anxious. I daresay you’ve been
+sittin’ here worryin’ by yourself. You think she’s bad, but any one
+comin’ with a fresh eye would see she was better. Mr. Elliot’s had
+fever; he’s all right now,” she threw out. “It wasn’t anythin’ she
+caught on the expedition. What’s it matter—a few days’ fever? My
+brother had fever for twenty-six days once. And in a week or two he was
+up and about. We gave him nothin’ but milk and arrowroot—”
+
+Here Mrs. Chailey came in with a message.
+
+“I’m wanted upstairs,” said Terence.
+
+“You see—she’ll be better,” Mrs. Flushing jerked out as he left the
+room. Her anxiety to persuade Terence was very great, and when he left
+her without saying anything she felt dissatisfied and restless; she did
+not like to stay, but she could not bear to go. She wandered from room
+to room looking for some one to talk to, but all the rooms were empty.
+
+Terence went upstairs, stood inside the door to take Helen’s
+directions, looked over at Rachel, but did not attempt to speak to her.
+She appeared vaguely conscious of his presence, but it seemed to
+disturb her, and she turned, so that she lay with her back to him.
+
+For six days indeed she had been oblivious of the world outside,
+because it needed all her attention to follow the hot, red, quick
+sights which passed incessantly before her eyes. She knew that it was
+of enormous importance that she should attend to these sights and grasp
+their meaning, but she was always being just too late to hear or see
+something which would explain it all. For this reason, the
+faces,—Helen’s face, the nurse’s, Terence’s, the doctor’s,—which
+occasionally forced themselves very close to her, were worrying because
+they distracted her attention and she might miss the clue. However, on
+the fourth afternoon she was suddenly unable to keep Helen’s face
+distinct from the sights themselves; her lips widened as she bent down
+over the bed, and she began to gabble unintelligibly like the rest. The
+sights were all concerned in some plot, some adventure, some escape.
+The nature of what they were doing changed incessantly, although there
+was always a reason behind it, which she must endeavour to grasp. Now
+they were among trees and savages, now they were on the sea, now they
+were on the tops of high towers; now they jumped; now they flew. But
+just as the crisis was about to happen, something invariably slipped in
+her brain, so that the whole effort had to begin over again. The heat
+was suffocating. At last the faces went further away; she fell into a
+deep pool of sticky water, which eventually closed over her head. She
+saw nothing and heard nothing but a faint booming sound, which was the
+sound of the sea rolling over her head. While all her tormentors
+thought that she was dead, she was not dead, but curled up at the
+bottom of the sea. There she lay, sometimes seeing darkness, sometimes
+light, while every now and then some one turned her over at the bottom
+of the sea.
+
+After St. John had spent some hours in the heat of the sun wrangling
+with evasive and very garrulous natives, he extracted the information
+that there was a doctor, a French doctor, who was at present away on a
+holiday in the hills. It was quite impossible, so they said, to find
+him. With his experience of the country, St. John thought it unlikely
+that a telegram would either be sent or received; but having reduced
+the distance of the hill town, in which he was staying, from a hundred
+miles to thirty miles, and having hired a carriage and horses, he
+started at once to fetch the doctor himself. He succeeded in finding
+him, and eventually forced the unwilling man to leave his young wife
+and return forthwith. They reached the villa at midday on Tuesday.
+
+Terence came out to receive them, and St. John was struck by the fact
+that he had grown perceptibly thinner in the interval; he was white
+too; his eyes looked strange. But the curt speech and the sulky
+masterful manner of Dr. Lesage impressed them both favourably, although
+at the same time it was obvious that he was very much annoyed at the
+whole affair. Coming downstairs he gave his directions emphatically,
+but it never occurred to him to give an opinion either because of the
+presence of Rodriguez who was now obsequious as well as malicious, or
+because he took it for granted that they knew already what was to be
+known.
+
+“Of course,” he said with a shrug of his shoulders, when Terence asked
+him, “Is she very ill?”
+
+They were both conscious of a certain sense of relief when Dr. Lesage
+was gone, leaving explicit directions, and promising another visit in a
+few hours’ time; but, unfortunately, the rise of their spirits led them
+to talk more than usual, and in talking they quarrelled. They
+quarrelled about a road, the Portsmouth Road. St. John said that it is
+macadamised where it passes Hindhead, and Terence knew as well as he
+knew his own name that it is not macadamised at that point. In the
+course of the argument they said some very sharp things to each other,
+and the rest of the dinner was eaten in silence, save for an occasional
+half-stifled reflection from Ridley.
+
+When it grew dark and the lamps were brought in, Terence felt unable to
+control his irritation any longer. St. John went to bed in a state of
+complete exhaustion, bidding Terence good-night with rather more
+affection than usual because of their quarrel, and Ridley retired to
+his books. Left alone, Terence walked up and down the room; he stood at
+the open window.
+
+The lights were coming out one after another in the town beneath, and
+it was very peaceful and cool in the garden, so that he stepped out on
+to the terrace. As he stood there in the darkness, able only to see the
+shapes of trees through the fine grey light, he was overcome by a
+desire to escape, to have done with this suffering, to forget that
+Rachel was ill. He allowed himself to lapse into forgetfulness of
+everything. As if a wind that had been raging incessantly suddenly fell
+asleep, the fret and strain and anxiety which had been pressing on him
+passed away. He seemed to stand in an unvexed space of air, on a little
+island by himself; he was free and immune from pain. It did not matter
+whether Rachel was well or ill; it did not matter whether they were
+apart or together; nothing mattered—nothing mattered. The waves beat on
+the shore far away, and the soft wind passed through the branches of
+the trees, seeming to encircle him with peace and security, with dark
+and nothingness. Surely the world of strife and fret and anxiety was
+not the real world, but this was the real world, the world that lay
+beneath the superficial world, so that, whatever happened, one was
+secure. The quiet and peace seemed to lap his body in a fine cool
+sheet, soothing every nerve; his mind seemed once more to expand, and
+become natural.
+
+But when he had stood thus for a time a noise in the house roused him;
+he turned instinctively and went into the drawing-room. The sight of
+the lamp-lit room brought back so abruptly all that he had forgotten
+that he stood for a moment unable to move. He remembered everything,
+the hour, the minute even, what point they had reached, and what was to
+come. He cursed himself for making believe for a minute that things
+were different from what they are. The night was now harder to face
+than ever.
+
+Unable to stay in the empty drawing-room, he wandered out and sat on
+the stairs half-way up to Rachel’s room. He longed for some one to talk
+to, but Hirst was asleep, and Ridley was asleep; there was no sound in
+Rachel’s room. The only sound in the house was the sound of Chailey
+moving in the kitchen. At last there was a rustling on the stairs
+overhead, and Nurse McInnis came down fastening the links in her cuffs,
+in preparation for the night’s watch. Terence rose and stopped her. He
+had scarcely spoken to her, but it was possible that she might confirm
+him in the belief which still persisted in his own mind that Rachel was
+not seriously ill. He told her in a whisper that Dr. Lesage had been
+and what he had said.
+
+“Now, Nurse,” he whispered, “please tell me your opinion. Do you
+consider that she is very seriously ill? Is she in any danger?”
+
+“The doctor has said—” she began.
+
+“Yes, but I want your opinion. You have had experience of many cases
+like this?”
+
+“I could not tell you more than Dr. Lesage, Mr. Hewet,” she replied
+cautiously, as though her words might be used against her. “The case is
+serious, but you may feel quite certain that we are doing all we can
+for Miss Vinrace.” She spoke with some professional self-approbation.
+But she realised perhaps that she did not satisfy the young man, who
+still blocked her way, for she shifted her feet slightly upon the stair
+and looked out of the window where they could see the moon over the
+sea.
+
+“If you ask me,” she began in a curiously stealthy tone, “I never like
+May for my patients.”
+
+“May?” Terence repeated.
+
+“It may be a fancy, but I don’t like to see anybody fall ill in May,”
+she continued. “Things seem to go wrong in May. Perhaps it’s the moon.
+They say the moon affects the brain, don’t they, Sir?”
+
+He looked at her but he could not answer her; like all the others, when
+one looked at her she seemed to shrivel beneath one’s eyes and become
+worthless, malicious, and untrustworthy.
+
+She slipped past him and disappeared.
+
+Though he went to his room he was unable even to take his clothes off.
+For a long time he paced up and down, and then leaning out of the
+window gazed at the earth which lay so dark against the paler blue of
+the sky. With a mixture of fear and loathing he looked at the slim
+black cypress trees which were still visible in the garden, and heard
+the unfamiliar creaking and grating sounds which show that the earth is
+still hot. All these sights and sounds appeared sinister and full of
+hostility and foreboding; together with the natives and the nurse and
+the doctor and the terrible force of the illness itself they seemed to
+be in conspiracy against him. They seemed to join together in their
+effort to extract the greatest possible amount of suffering from him.
+He could not get used to his pain, it was a revelation to him. He had
+never realised before that underneath every action, underneath the life
+of every day, pain lies, quiescent, but ready to devour; he seemed to
+be able to see suffering, as if it were a fire, curling up over the
+edges of all action, eating away the lives of men and women. He thought
+for the first time with understanding of words which had before seemed
+to him empty: the struggle of life; the hardness of life. Now he knew
+for himself that life is hard and full of suffering. He looked at the
+scattered lights in the town beneath, and thought of Arthur and Susan,
+or Evelyn and Perrott venturing out unwittingly, and by their happiness
+laying themselves open to suffering such as this. How did they dare to
+love each other, he wondered; how had he himself dared to live as he
+had lived, rapidly and carelessly, passing from one thing to another,
+loving Rachel as he had loved her? Never again would he feel secure; he
+would never believe in the stability of life, or forget what depths of
+pain lie beneath small happiness and feelings of content and safety. It
+seemed to him as he looked back that their happiness had never been so
+great as his pain was now. There had always been something imperfect in
+their happiness, something they had wanted and had not been able to
+get. It had been fragmentary and incomplete, because they were so young
+and had not known what they were doing.
+
+The light of his candle flickered over the boughs of a tree outside the
+window, and as the branch swayed in the darkness there came before his
+mind a picture of all the world that lay outside his window; he thought
+of the immense river and the immense forest, the vast stretches of dry
+earth and the plains of the sea that encircled the earth; from the sea
+the sky rose steep and enormous, and the air washed profoundly between
+the sky and the sea. How vast and dark it must be tonight, lying
+exposed to the wind; and in all this great space it was curious to
+think how few the towns were, and how small little rings of light, or
+single glow-worms he figured them, scattered here and there, among the
+swelling uncultivated folds of the world. And in those towns were
+little men and women, tiny men and women. Oh, it was absurd, when one
+thought of it, to sit here in a little room suffering and caring. What
+did anything matter? Rachel, a tiny creature, lay ill beneath him, and
+here in his little room he suffered on her account. The nearness of
+their bodies in this vast universe, and the minuteness of their bodies,
+seemed to him absurd and laughable. Nothing mattered, he repeated; they
+had no power, no hope. He leant on the window-sill, thinking, until he
+almost forgot the time and the place. Nevertheless, although he was
+convinced that it was absurd and laughable, and that they were small
+and hopeless, he never lost the sense that these thoughts somehow
+formed part of a life which he and Rachel would live together.
+
+Owing perhaps to the change of doctor, Rachel appeared to be rather
+better next day. Terribly pale and worn though Helen looked, there was
+a slight lifting of the cloud which had hung all these days in her
+eyes.
+
+“She talked to me,” she said voluntarily. “She asked me what day of the
+week it was, like herself.”
+
+Then suddenly, without any warning or any apparent reason, the tears
+formed in her eyes and rolled steadily down her cheeks. She cried with
+scarcely any attempt at movement of her features, and without any
+attempt to stop herself, as if she did not know that she was crying. In
+spite of the relief which her words gave him, Terence was dismayed by
+the sight; had everything given way? Were there no limits to the power
+of this illness? Would everything go down before it? Helen had always
+seemed to him strong and determined, and now she was like a child. He
+took her in his arms, and she clung to him like a child, crying softly
+and quietly upon his shoulder. Then she roused herself and wiped her
+tears away; it was silly to behave like that, she said; very silly, she
+repeated, when there could be no doubt that Rachel was better. She
+asked Terence to forgive her for her folly. She stopped at the door and
+came back and kissed him without saying anything.
+
+On this day indeed Rachel was conscious of what went on round her. She
+had come to the surface of the dark, sticky pool, and a wave seemed to
+bear her up and down with it; she had ceased to have any will of her
+own; she lay on the top of the wave conscious of some pain, but chiefly
+of weakness. The wave was replaced by the side of a mountain. Her body
+became a drift of melting snow, above which her knees rose in huge
+peaked mountains of bare bone. It was true that she saw Helen and saw
+her room, but everything had become very pale and semi-transparent.
+Sometimes she could see through the wall in front of her. Sometimes
+when Helen went away she seemed to go so far that Rachel’s eyes could
+hardly follow her. The room also had an odd power of expanding, and
+though she pushed her voice out as far as possible until sometimes it
+became a bird and flew away, she thought it doubtful whether it ever
+reached the person she was talking to. There were immense intervals or
+chasms, for things still had the power to appear visibly before her,
+between one moment and the next; it sometimes took an hour for Helen to
+raise her arm, pausing long between each jerky movement, and pour out
+medicine. Helen’s form stooping to raise her in bed appeared of
+gigantic size, and came down upon her like the ceiling falling. But for
+long spaces of time she would merely lie conscious of her body floating
+on the top of the bed and her mind driven to some remote corner of her
+body, or escaped and gone flitting round the room. All sights were
+something of an effort, but the sight of Terence was the greatest
+effort, because he forced her to join mind to body in the desire to
+remember something. She did not wish to remember; it troubled her when
+people tried to disturb her loneliness; she wished to be alone. She
+wished for nothing else in the world.
+
+Although she had cried, Terence observed Helen’s greater hopefulness
+with something like triumph; in the argument between them she had made
+the first sign of admitting herself in the wrong. He waited for Dr.
+Lesage to come down that afternoon with considerable anxiety, but with
+the same certainty at the back of his mind that he would in time force
+them all to admit that they were in the wrong.
+
+As usual, Dr. Lesage was sulky in his manner and very short in his
+answers. To Terence’s demand, “She seems to be better?” he replied,
+looking at him in an odd way, “She has a chance of life.”
+
+The door shut and Terence walked across to the window. He leant his
+forehead against the pane.
+
+“Rachel,” he repeated to himself. “She has a chance of life. Rachel.”
+
+How could they say these things of Rachel? Had any one yesterday
+seriously believed that Rachel was dying? They had been engaged for
+four weeks. A fortnight ago she had been perfectly well. What could
+fourteen days have done to bring her from that state to this? To
+realise what they meant by saying that she had a chance of life was
+beyond him, knowing as he did that they were engaged. He turned, still
+enveloped in the same dreary mist, and walked towards the door.
+Suddenly he saw it all. He saw the room and the garden, and the trees
+moving in the air, they could go on without her; she could die. For the
+first time since she fell ill he remembered exactly what she looked
+like and the way in which they cared for each other. The immense
+happiness of feeling her close to him mingled with a more intense
+anxiety than he had felt yet. He could not let her die; he could not
+live without her. But after a momentary struggle, the curtain fell
+again, and he saw nothing and felt nothing clearly. It was all going
+on—going on still, in the same way as before. Save for a physical pain
+when his heart beat, and the fact that his fingers were icy cold, he
+did not realise that he was anxious about anything. Within his mind he
+seemed to feel nothing about Rachel or about any one or anything in the
+world. He went on giving orders, arranging with Mrs. Chailey, writing
+out lists, and every now and then he went upstairs and put something
+quietly on the table outside Rachel’s door. That night Dr. Lesage
+seemed to be less sulky than usual. He stayed voluntarily for a few
+moments, and, addressing St. John and Terence equally, as if he did not
+remember which of them was engaged to the young lady, said, “I consider
+that her condition to-night is very grave.”
+
+Neither of them went to bed or suggested that the other should go to
+bed. They sat in the drawing-room playing picquet with the door open.
+St. John made up a bed upon the sofa, and when it was ready insisted
+that Terence should lie upon it. They began to quarrel as to who should
+lie on the sofa and who should lie upon a couple of chairs covered with
+rugs. St. John forced Terence at last to lie down upon the sofa.
+
+“Don’t be a fool, Terence,” he said. “You’ll only get ill if you don’t
+sleep.”
+
+“Old fellow,” he began, as Terence still refused, and stopped abruptly,
+fearing sentimentality; he found that he was on the verge of tears.
+
+He began to say what he had long been wanting to say, that he was sorry
+for Terence, that he cared for him, that he cared for Rachel. Did she
+know how much he cared for her—had she said anything, asked perhaps? He
+was very anxious to say this, but he refrained, thinking that it was a
+selfish question after all, and what was the use of bothering Terence
+to talk about such things? He was already half asleep. But St. John
+could not sleep at once. If only, he thought to himself, as he lay in
+the darkness, something would happen—if only this strain would come to
+an end. He did not mind what happened, so long as the succession of
+these hard and dreary days was broken; he did not mind if she died. He
+felt himself disloyal in not minding it, but it seemed to him that he
+had no feelings left.
+
+All night long there was no call or movement, except the opening and
+shutting of the bedroom door once. By degrees the light returned into
+the untidy room. At six the servants began to move; at seven they crept
+downstairs into the kitchen; and half an hour later the day began
+again.
+
+Nevertheless it was not the same as the days that had gone before,
+although it would have been hard to say in what the difference
+consisted. Perhaps it was that they seemed to be waiting for something.
+There were certainly fewer things to be done than usual. People drifted
+through the drawing-room—Mr. Flushing, Mr. and Mrs. Thornbury. They
+spoke very apologetically in low tones, refusing to sit down, but
+remaining for a considerable time standing up, although the only thing
+they had to say was, “Is there anything we can do?” and there was
+nothing they could do.
+
+Feeling oddly detached from it all, Terence remembered how Helen had
+said that whenever anything happened to you this was how people
+behaved. Was she right, or was she wrong? He was too little interested
+to frame an opinion of his own. He put things away in his mind, as if
+one of these days he would think about them, but not now. The mist of
+unreality had deepened and deepened until it had produced a feeling of
+numbness all over his body. Was it his body? Were those really his own
+hands?
+
+This morning also for the first time Ridley found it impossible to sit
+alone in his room. He was very uncomfortable downstairs, and, as he did
+not know what was going on, constantly in the way; but he would not
+leave the drawing-room. Too restless to read, and having nothing to do,
+he began to pace up and down reciting poetry in an undertone. Occupied
+in various ways—now in undoing parcels, now in uncorking bottles, now
+in writing directions, the sound of Ridley’s song and the beat of his
+pacing worked into the minds of Terence and St. John all the morning as
+a half comprehended refrain.
+
+They wrestled up, they wrestled down,
+    They wrestled sore and still:
+The fiend who blinds the eyes of men,
+    That night he had his will.
+
+Like stags full spent, among the bent
+    They dropped awhile to rest—
+
+
+“Oh, it’s intolerable!” Hirst exclaimed, and then checked himself, as
+if it were a breach of their agreement. Again and again Terence would
+creep half-way up the stairs in case he might be able to glean news of
+Rachel. But the only news now was of a very fragmentary kind; she had
+drunk something; she had slept a little; she seemed quieter. In the
+same way, Dr. Lesage confined himself to talking about details, save
+once when he volunteered the information that he had just been called
+in to ascertain, by severing a vein in the wrist, that an old lady of
+eighty-five was really dead. She had a horror of being buried alive.
+
+“It is a horror,” he remarked, “that we generally find in the very old,
+and seldom in the young.” They both expressed their interest in what he
+told them; it seemed to them very strange. Another strange thing about
+the day was that the luncheon was forgotten by all of them until it was
+late in the afternoon, and then Mrs. Chailey waited on them, and looked
+strange too, because she wore a stiff print dress, and her sleeves were
+rolled up above her elbows. She seemed as oblivious of her appearance,
+however, as if she had been called out of her bed by a midnight alarm
+of fire, and she had forgotten, too, her reserve and her composure; she
+talked to them quite familiarly as if she had nursed them and held them
+naked on her knee. She assured them over and over again that it was
+their duty to eat.
+
+The afternoon, being thus shortened, passed more quickly than they
+expected. Once Mrs. Flushing opened the door, but on seeing them shut
+it again quickly; once Helen came down to fetch something, but she
+stopped as she left the room to look at a letter addressed to her. She
+stood for a moment turning it over, and the extraordinary and mournful
+beauty of her attitude struck Terence in the way things struck him
+now—as something to be put away in his mind and to be thought about
+afterwards. They scarcely spoke, the argument between them seeming to
+be suspended or forgotten.
+
+Now that the afternoon sun had left the front of the house, Ridley
+paced up and down the terrace repeating stanzas of a long poem, in a
+subdued but suddenly sonorous voice. Fragments of the poem were wafted
+in at the open window as he passed and repassed.
+
+Peor and Baalim
+Forsake their Temples dim,
+    With that twice batter’d God of Palestine
+And mooned Astaroth—
+
+
+The sound of these words were strangely discomforting to both the young
+men, but they had to be borne. As the evening drew on and the red light
+of the sunset glittered far away on the sea, the same sense of
+desperation attacked both Terence and St. John at the thought that the
+day was nearly over, and that another night was at hand. The appearance
+of one light after another in the town beneath them produced in Hirst a
+repetition of his terrible and disgusting desire to break down and sob.
+Then the lamps were brought in by Chailey. She explained that Maria, in
+opening a bottle, had been so foolish as to cut her arm badly, but she
+had bound it up; it was unfortunate when there was so much work to be
+done. Chailey herself limped because of the rheumatism in her feet, but
+it appeared to her mere waste of time to take any notice of the unruly
+flesh of servants. The evening went on. Dr. Lesage arrived
+unexpectedly, and stayed upstairs a very long time. He came down once
+and drank a cup of coffee.
+
+“She is very ill,” he said in answer to Ridley’s question. All the
+annoyance had by this time left his manner, he was grave and formal,
+but at the same time it was full of consideration, which had not marked
+it before. He went upstairs again. The three men sat together in the
+drawing-room. Ridley was quite quiet now, and his attention seemed to
+be thoroughly awakened. Save for little half-voluntary movements and
+exclamations that were stifled at once, they waited in complete
+silence. It seemed as if they were at last brought together face to
+face with something definite.
+
+It was nearly eleven o’clock when Dr. Lesage again appeared in the
+room. He approached them very slowly, and did not speak at once. He
+looked first at St. John and then at Terence, and said to Terence, “Mr.
+Hewet, I think you should go upstairs now.”
+
+Terence rose immediately, leaving the others seated with Dr. Lesage
+standing motionless between them.
+
+Chailey was in the passage outside, repeating over and over again,
+“It’s wicked—it’s wicked.”
+
+Terence paid her no attention; he heard what she was saying, but it
+conveyed no meaning to his mind. All the way upstairs he kept saying to
+himself, “This has not happened to me. It is not possible that this has
+happened to me.”
+
+He looked curiously at his own hand on the banisters. The stairs were
+very steep, and it seemed to take him a long time to surmount them.
+Instead of feeling keenly, as he knew that he ought to feel, he felt
+nothing at all. When he opened the door he saw Helen sitting by the
+bedside. There were shaded lights on the table, and the room, though it
+seemed to be full of a great many things, was very tidy. There was a
+faint and not unpleasant smell of disinfectants. Helen rose and gave up
+her chair to him in silence. As they passed each other their eyes met
+in a peculiar level glance, he wondered at the extraordinary clearness
+of his eyes, and at the deep calm and sadness that dwelt in them. He
+sat down by the bedside, and a moment afterwards heard the door shut
+gently behind her. He was alone with Rachel, and a faint reflection of
+the sense of relief that they used to feel when they were left alone
+possessed him. He looked at her. He expected to find some terrible
+change in her, but there was none. She looked indeed very thin, and, as
+far as he could see, very tired, but she was the same as she had always
+been. Moreover, she saw him and knew him. She smiled at him and said,
+“Hullo, Terence.”
+
+The curtain which had been drawn between them for so long vanished
+immediately.
+
+“Well, Rachel,” he replied in his usual voice, upon which she opened
+her eyes quite widely and smiled with her familiar smile. He kissed her
+and took her hand.
+
+“It’s been wretched without you,” he said.
+
+She still looked at him and smiled, but soon a slight look of fatigue
+or perplexity came into her eyes and she shut them again.
+
+“But when we’re together we’re perfectly happy,” he said. He continued
+to hold her hand.
+
+The light being dim, it was impossible to see any change in her face.
+An immense feeling of peace came over Terence, so that he had no wish
+to move or to speak. The terrible torture and unreality of the last
+days were over, and he had come out now into perfect certainty and
+peace. His mind began to work naturally again and with great ease. The
+longer he sat there the more profoundly was he conscious of the peace
+invading every corner of his soul. Once he held his breath and listened
+acutely; she was still breathing; he went on thinking for some time;
+they seemed to be thinking together; he seemed to be Rachel as well as
+himself; and then he listened again; no, she had ceased to breathe. So
+much the better—this was death. It was nothing; it was to cease to
+breathe. It was happiness, it was perfect happiness. They had now what
+they had always wanted to have, the union which had been impossible
+while they lived. Unconscious whether he thought the words or spoke
+them aloud, he said, “No two people have ever been so happy as we have
+been. No one has ever loved as we have loved.”
+
+It seemed to him that their complete union and happiness filled the
+room with rings eddying more and more widely. He had no wish in the
+world left unfulfilled. They possessed what could never be taken from
+them.
+
+He was not conscious that any one had come into the room, but later,
+moments later, or hours later perhaps, he felt an arm behind him. The
+arms were round him. He did not want to have arms round him, and the
+mysterious whispering voices annoyed him. He laid Rachel’s hand, which
+was now cold, upon the counterpane, and rose from his chair, and walked
+across to the window. The windows were uncurtained, and showed the
+moon, and a long silver pathway upon the surface of the waves.
+
+“Why,” he said, in his ordinary tone of voice, “look at the moon.
+There’s a halo round the moon. We shall have rain to-morrow.”
+
+The arms, whether they were the arms of man or of woman, were round him
+again; they were pushing him gently towards the door. He turned of his
+own accord and walked steadily in advance of the arms, conscious of a
+little amusement at the strange way in which people behaved merely
+because some one was dead. He would go if they wished it, but nothing
+they could do would disturb his happiness.
+
+As he saw the passage outside the room, and the table with the cups and
+the plates, it suddenly came over him that here was a world in which he
+would never see Rachel again.
+
+“Rachel! Rachel!” he shrieked, trying to rush back to her. But they
+prevented him, and pushed him down the passage and into a bedroom far
+from her room. Downstairs they could hear the thud of his feet on the
+floor, as he struggled to break free; and twice they heard him shout,
+“Rachel, Rachel!”
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXVI
+
+
+For two or three hours longer the moon poured its light through the
+empty air. Unbroken by clouds it fell straightly, and lay almost like a
+chill white frost over the sea and the earth. During these hours the
+silence was not broken, and the only movement was caused by the
+movement of trees and branches which stirred slightly, and then the
+shadows that lay across the white spaces of the land moved too. In this
+profound silence one sound only was audible, the sound of a slight but
+continuous breathing which never ceased, although it never rose and
+never fell. It continued after the birds had begun to flutter from
+branch to branch, and could be heard behind the first thin notes of
+their voices. It continued all through the hours when the east
+whitened, and grew red, and a faint blue tinged the sky, but when the
+sun rose it ceased, and gave place to other sounds.
+
+The first sounds that were heard were little inarticulate cries, the
+cries, it seemed, of children or of the very poor, of people who were
+very weak or in pain. But when the sun was above the horizon, the air
+which had been thin and pale grew every moment richer and warmer, and
+the sounds of life became bolder and more full of courage and
+authority. By degrees the smoke began to ascend in wavering breaths
+over the houses, and these slowly thickened, until they were as round
+and straight as columns, and instead of striking upon pale white
+blinds, the sun shone upon dark windows, beyond which there was depth
+and space.
+
+The sun had been up for many hours, and the great dome of air was
+warmed through and glittering with thin gold threads of sunlight,
+before any one moved in the hotel. White and massive it stood in the
+early light, half asleep with its blinds down.
+
+At about half-past nine Miss Allan came very slowly into the hall, and
+walked very slowly to the table where the morning papers were laid, but
+she did not put out her hand to take one; she stood still, thinking,
+with her head a little sunk upon her shoulders. She looked curiously
+old, and from the way in which she stood, a little hunched together and
+very massive, you could see what she would be like when she was really
+old, how she would sit day after day in her chair looking placidly in
+front of her. Other people began to come into the room, and to pass
+her, but she did not speak to any of them or even look at them, and at
+last, as if it were necessary to do something, she sat down in a chair,
+and looked quietly and fixedly in front of her. She felt very old this
+morning, and useless too, as if her life had been a failure, as if it
+had been hard and laborious to no purpose. She did not want to go on
+living, and yet she knew that she would. She was so strong that she
+would live to be a very old woman. She would probably live to be
+eighty, and as she was now fifty, that left thirty years more for her
+to live. She turned her hands over and over in her lap and looked at
+them curiously; her old hands, that had done so much work for her.
+There did not seem to be much point in it all; one went on, of course
+one went on. . . . She looked up to see Mrs. Thornbury standing beside
+her, with lines drawn upon her forehead, and her lips parted as if she
+were about to ask a question.
+
+Miss Allan anticipated her.
+
+“Yes,” she said. “She died this morning, very early, about three
+o’clock.”
+
+Mrs. Thornbury made a little exclamation, drew her lips together, and
+the tears rose in her eyes. Through them she looked at the hall which
+was now laid with great breadths of sunlight, and at the careless,
+casual groups of people who were standing beside the solid arm-chairs
+and tables. They looked to her unreal, or as people look who remain
+unconscious that some great explosion is about to take place beside
+them. But there was no explosion, and they went on standing by the
+chairs and the tables. Mrs. Thornbury no longer saw them, but,
+penetrating through them as though they were without substance, she saw
+the house, the people in the house, the room, the bed in the room, and
+the figure of the dead lying still in the dark beneath the sheets. She
+could almost see the dead. She could almost hear the voices of the
+mourners.
+
+“They expected it?” she asked at length.
+
+Miss Allan could only shake her head.
+
+“I know nothing,” she replied, “except what Mrs. Flushing’s maid told
+me. She died early this morning.”
+
+The two women looked at each other with a quiet significant gaze, and
+then, feeling oddly dazed, and seeking she did not know exactly what,
+Mrs. Thornbury went slowly upstairs and walked quietly along the
+passages, touching the wall with her fingers as if to guide herself.
+Housemaids were passing briskly from room to room, but Mrs. Thornbury
+avoided them; she hardly saw them; they seemed to her to be in another
+world. She did not even look up directly when Evelyn stopped her. It
+was evident that Evelyn had been lately in tears, and when she looked
+at Mrs. Thornbury she began to cry again. Together they drew into the
+hollow of a window, and stood there in silence. Broken words formed
+themselves at last among Evelyn’s sobs. “It was wicked,” she sobbed,
+“it was cruel—they were so happy.”
+
+Mrs. Thornbury patted her on the shoulder.
+
+“It seems hard—very hard,” she said. She paused and looked out over the
+slope of the hill at the Ambroses’ villa; the windows were blazing in
+the sun, and she thought how the soul of the dead had passed from those
+windows. Something had passed from the world. It seemed to her
+strangely empty.
+
+“And yet the older one grows,” she continued, her eyes regaining more
+than their usual brightness, “the more certain one becomes that there
+is a reason. How could one go on if there were no reason?” she asked.
+
+She asked the question of some one, but she did not ask it of Evelyn.
+Evelyn’s sobs were becoming quieter. “There must be a reason,” she
+said. “It can’t only be an accident. For it was an accident—it need
+never have happened.”
+
+Mrs. Thornbury sighed deeply.
+
+“But we must not let ourselves think of that,” she added, “and let us
+hope that they don’t either. Whatever they had done it might have been
+the same. These terrible illnesses—”
+
+“There’s no reason—I don’t believe there’s any reason at all!” Evelyn
+broke out, pulling the blind down and letting it fly back with a little
+snap.
+
+“Why should these things happen? Why should people suffer? I honestly
+believe,” she went on, lowering her voice slightly, “that Rachel’s in
+Heaven, but Terence. . . .”
+
+“What’s the good of it all?” she demanded.
+
+Mrs. Thornbury shook her head slightly but made no reply, and pressing
+Evelyn’s hand she went on down the passage. Impelled by a strong desire
+to hear something, although she did not know exactly what there was to
+hear, she was making her way to the Flushings’ room. As she opened
+their door she felt that she had interrupted some argument between
+husband and wife. Mrs. Flushing was sitting with her back to the light,
+and Mr. Flushing was standing near her, arguing and trying to persuade
+her of something.
+
+“Ah, here is Mrs. Thornbury,” he began with some relief in his voice.
+“You have heard, of course. My wife feels that she was in some way
+responsible. She urged poor Miss Vinrace to come on the expedition. I’m
+sure you will agree with me that it is most unreasonable to feel that.
+We don’t even know—in fact I think it most unlikely—that she caught her
+illness there. These diseases—Besides, she was set on going. She would
+have gone whether you asked her or not, Alice.”
+
+“Don’t, Wilfrid,” said Mrs. Flushing, neither moving nor taking her
+eyes off the spot on the floor upon which they rested. “What’s the use
+of talking? What’s the use—?” She ceased.
+
+“I was coming to ask you,” said Mrs. Thornbury, addressing Wilfrid, for
+it was useless to speak to his wife. “Is there anything you think that
+one could do? Has the father arrived? Could one go and see?”
+
+The strongest wish in her being at this moment was to be able to do
+something for the unhappy people—to see them—to assure them—to help
+them. It was dreadful to be so far away from them. But Mr. Flushing
+shook his head; he did not think that now—later perhaps one might be
+able to help. Here Mrs. Flushing rose stiffly, turned her back to them,
+and walked to the dressing-room opposite. As she walked, they could see
+her breast slowly rise and slowly fall. But her grief was silent. She
+shut the door behind her.
+
+When she was alone by herself she clenched her fists together, and
+began beating the back of a chair with them. She was like a wounded
+animal. She hated death; she was furious, outraged, indignant with
+death, as if it were a living creature. She refused to relinquish her
+friends to death. She would not submit to dark and nothingness. She
+began to pace up and down, clenching her hands, and making no attempt
+to stop the quick tears which raced down her cheeks. She sat still at
+last, but she did not submit. She looked stubborn and strong when she
+had ceased to cry.
+
+In the next room, meanwhile, Wilfrid was talking to Mrs. Thornbury with
+greater freedom now that his wife was not sitting there.
+
+“That’s the worst of these places,” he said. “People will behave as
+though they were in England, and they’re not. I’ve no doubt myself that
+Miss Vinrace caught the infection up at the villa itself. She probably
+ran risks a dozen times a day that might have given her the illness.
+It’s absurd to say she caught it with us.”
+
+If he had not been sincerely sorry for them he would have been annoyed.
+“Pepper tells me,” he continued, “that he left the house because he
+thought them so careless. He says they never washed their vegetables
+properly. Poor people! It’s a fearful price to pay. But it’s only what
+I’ve seen over and over again—people seem to forget that these things
+happen, and then they do happen, and they’re surprised.”
+
+Mrs. Thornbury agreed with him that they had been very careless, and
+that there was no reason whatever to think that she had caught the
+fever on the expedition; and after talking about other things for a
+short time, she left him and went sadly along the passage to her own
+room. There must be some reason why such things happen, she thought to
+herself, as she shut the door. Only at first it was not easy to
+understand what it was. It seemed so strange—so unbelievable. Why, only
+three weeks ago—only a fortnight ago, she had seen Rachel; when she
+shut her eyes she could almost see her now, the quiet, shy girl who was
+going to be married. She thought of all that she would have missed had
+she died at Rachel’s age, the children, the married life, the
+unimaginable depths and miracles that seemed to her, as she looked
+back, to have lain about her, day after day, and year after year. The
+stunned feeling, which had been making it difficult for her to think,
+gradually gave way to a feeling of the opposite nature; she thought
+very quickly and very clearly, and, looking back over all her
+experiences, tried to fit them into a kind of order. There was
+undoubtedly much suffering, much struggling, but, on the whole, surely
+there was a balance of happiness—surely order did prevail. Nor were the
+deaths of young people really the saddest things in life—they were
+saved so much; they kept so much. The dead—she called to mind those who
+had died early, accidentally—were beautiful; she often dreamt of the
+dead. And in time Terence himself would come to feel—She got up and
+began to wander restlessly about the room.
+
+For an old woman of her age she was very restless, and for one of her
+clear, quick mind she was unusually perplexed. She could not settle to
+anything, so that she was relieved when the door opened. She went up to
+her husband, took him in her arms, and kissed him with unusual
+intensity, and then as they sat down together she began to pat him and
+question him as if he were a baby, an old, tired, querulous baby. She
+did not tell him about Miss Vinrace’s death, for that would only
+disturb him, and he was put out already. She tried to discover why he
+was uneasy. Politics again? What were those horrid people doing? She
+spent the whole morning in discussing politics with her husband, and by
+degrees she became deeply interested in what they were saying. But
+every now and then what she was saying seemed to her oddly empty of
+meaning.
+
+At luncheon it was remarked by several people that the visitors at the
+hotel were beginning to leave; there were fewer every day. There were
+only forty people at luncheon, instead of the sixty that there had
+been. So old Mrs. Paley computed, gazing about her with her faded eyes,
+as she took her seat at her own table in the window. Her party
+generally consisted of Mr. Perrott as well as Arthur and Susan, and
+to-day Evelyn was lunching with them also.
+
+She was unusually subdued. Having noticed that her eyes were red, and
+guessing the reason, the others took pains to keep up an elaborate
+conversation between themselves. She suffered it to go on for a few
+minutes, leaning both elbows on the table, and leaving her soup
+untouched, when she exclaimed suddenly, “I don’t know how you feel, but
+I can simply think of nothing else!”
+
+The gentlemen murmured sympathetically, and looked grave.
+
+Susan replied, “Yes—isn’t it perfectly awful? When you think what a
+nice girl she was—only just engaged, and this need never have
+happened—it seems too tragic.” She looked at Arthur as though he might
+be able to help her with something more suitable.
+
+“Hard lines,” said Arthur briefly. “But it was a foolish thing to do—to
+go up that river.” He shook his head. “They should have known better.
+You can’t expect Englishwomen to stand roughing it as the natives do
+who’ve been acclimatised. I’d half a mind to warn them at tea that day
+when it was being discussed. But it’s no good saying these sort of
+things—it only puts people’s backs up—it never makes any difference.”
+
+Old Mrs. Paley, hitherto contented with her soup, here intimated, by
+raising one hand to her ear, that she wished to know what was being
+said.
+
+“You heard, Aunt Emma, that poor Miss Vinrace has died of the fever,”
+Susan informed her gently. She could not speak of death loudly or even
+in her usual voice, so that Mrs. Paley did not catch a word. Arthur
+came to the rescue.
+
+“Miss Vinrace is dead,” he said very distinctly.
+
+Mrs. Paley merely bent a little towards him and asked, “Eh?”
+
+“Miss Vinrace is dead,” he repeated. It was only by stiffening all the
+muscles round his mouth that he could prevent himself from bursting
+into laughter, and forced himself to repeat for the third time, “Miss
+Vinrace. . . . She’s dead.”
+
+Let alone the difficulty of hearing the exact words, facts that were
+outside her daily experience took some time to reach Mrs. Paley’s
+consciousness. A weight seemed to rest upon her brain, impeding, though
+not damaging its action. She sat vague-eyed for at least a minute
+before she realised what Arthur meant.
+
+“Dead?” she said vaguely. “Miss Vinrace dead? Dear me . . . that’s very
+sad. But I don’t at the moment remember which she was. We seem to have
+made so many new acquaintances here.” She looked at Susan for help. “A
+tall dark girl, who just missed being handsome, with a high colour?”
+
+“No,” Susan interposed. “She was—” then she gave it up in despair.
+There was no use in explaining that Mrs. Paley was thinking of the
+wrong person.
+
+“She ought not to have died,” Mrs. Paley continued. “She looked so
+strong. But people will drink the water. I can never make out why. It
+seems such a simple thing to tell them to put a bottle of Seltzer water
+in your bedroom. That’s all the precaution I’ve ever taken, and I’ve
+been in every part of the world, I may say—Italy a dozen times over. .
+. . But young people always think they know better, and then they pay
+the penalty. Poor thing—I am very sorry for her.” But the difficulty of
+peering into a dish of potatoes and helping herself engrossed her
+attention.
+
+Arthur and Susan both secretly hoped that the subject was now disposed
+of, for there seemed to them something unpleasant in this discussion.
+But Evelyn was not ready to let it drop. Why would people never talk
+about the things that mattered?
+
+“I don’t believe you care a bit!” she said, turning savagely upon Mr.
+Perrott, who had sat all this time in silence.
+
+“I? Oh, yes, I do,” he answered awkwardly, but with obvious sincerity.
+Evelyn’s questions made him too feel uncomfortable.
+
+“It seems so inexplicable,” Evelyn continued. “Death, I mean. Why
+should she be dead, and not you or I? It was only a fortnight ago that
+she was here with the rest of us. What d’you believe?” she demanded of
+Mr. Perrott. “D’you believe that things go on, that she’s still
+somewhere—or d’you think it’s simply a game—we crumble up to nothing
+when we die? I’m positive Rachel’s not dead.”
+
+Mr. Perrott would have said almost anything that Evelyn wanted him to
+say, but to assert that he believed in the immortality of the soul was
+not in his power. He sat silent, more deeply wrinkled than usual,
+crumbling his bread.
+
+Lest Evelyn should next ask him what he believed, Arthur, after making
+a pause equivalent to a full stop, started a completely different
+topic.
+
+“Supposing,” he said, “a man were to write and tell you that he wanted
+five pounds because he had known your grandfather, what would you do?
+It was this way. My grandfather—”
+
+“Invented a stove,” said Evelyn. “I know all about that. We had one in
+the conservatory to keep the plants warm.”
+
+“Didn’t know I was so famous,” said Arthur. “Well,” he continued,
+determined at all costs to spin his story out at length, “the old chap,
+being about the second best inventor of his day, and a capable lawyer
+too, died, as they always do, without making a will. Now Fielding, his
+clerk, with how much justice I don’t know, always claimed that he meant
+to do something for him. The poor old boy’s come down in the world
+through trying inventions on his own account, lives in Penge over a
+tobacconist’s shop. I’ve been to see him there. The question is—must I
+stump up or not? What does the abstract spirit of justice require,
+Perrott? Remember, I didn’t benefit under my grandfather’s will, and
+I’ve no way of testing the truth of the story.”
+
+“I don’t know much about the abstract spirit of justice,” said Susan,
+smiling complacently at the others, “but I’m certain of one thing—he’ll
+get his five pounds!”
+
+As Mr. Perrott proceeded to deliver an opinion, and Evelyn insisted
+that he was much too stingy, like all lawyers, thinking of the letter
+and not of the spirit, while Mrs. Paley required to be kept informed
+between the courses as to what they were all saying, the luncheon
+passed with no interval of silence, and Arthur congratulated himself
+upon the tact with which the discussion had been smoothed over.
+
+As they left the room it happened that Mrs. Paley’s wheeled chair ran
+into the Elliots, who were coming through the door, as she was going
+out. Brought thus to a standstill for a moment, Arthur and Susan
+congratulated Hughling Elliot upon his convalescence,—he was down,
+cadaverous enough, for the first time,—and Mr. Perrott took occasion to
+say a few words in private to Evelyn.
+
+“Would there be any chance of seeing you this afternoon, about
+three-thirty say? I shall be in the garden, by the fountain.”
+
+The block dissolved before Evelyn answered. But as she left them in the
+hall, she looked at him brightly and said, “Half-past three, did you
+say? That’ll suit me.”
+
+She ran upstairs with the feeling of spiritual exaltation and quickened
+life which the prospect of an emotional scene always aroused in her.
+That Mr. Perrott was again about to propose to her, she had no doubt,
+and she was aware that on this occasion she ought to be prepared with a
+definite answer, for she was going away in three days’ time. But she
+could not bring her mind to bear upon the question. To come to a
+decision was very difficult to her, because she had a natural dislike
+of anything final and done with; she liked to go on and on—always on
+and on. She was leaving, and, therefore, she occupied herself in laying
+her clothes out side by side upon the bed. She observed that some were
+very shabby. She took the photograph of her father and mother, and,
+before she laid it away in her box, she held it for a minute in her
+hand. Rachel had looked at it. Suddenly the keen feeling of some one’s
+personality, which things that they have owned or handled sometimes
+preserves, overcame her; she felt Rachel in the room with her; it was
+as if she were on a ship at sea, and the life of the day was as unreal
+as the land in the distance. But by degrees the feeling of Rachel’s
+presence passed away, and she could no longer realise her, for she had
+scarcely known her. But this momentary sensation left her depressed and
+fatigued. What had she done with her life? What future was there before
+her? What was make-believe, and what was real? Were these proposals and
+intimacies and adventures real, or was the contentment which she had
+seen on the faces of Susan and Rachel more real than anything she had
+ever felt?
+
+She made herself ready to go downstairs, absentmindedly, but her
+fingers were so well trained that they did the work of preparing her
+almost of their own accord. When she was actually on the way
+downstairs, the blood began to circle through her body of its own
+accord too, for her mind felt very dull.
+
+Mr. Perrott was waiting for her. Indeed, he had gone straight into the
+garden after luncheon, and had been walking up and down the path for
+more than half an hour, in a state of acute suspense.
+
+“I’m late as usual!” she exclaimed, as she caught sight of him. “Well,
+you must forgive me; I had to pack up. . . . My word! It looks stormy!
+And that’s a new steamer in the bay, isn’t it?”
+
+She looked at the bay, in which a steamer was just dropping anchor, the
+smoke still hanging about it, while a swift black shudder ran through
+the waves. “One’s quite forgotten what rain looks like,” she added.
+
+But Mr. Perrott paid no attention to the steamer or to the weather.
+
+“Miss Murgatroyd,” he began with his usual formality, “I asked you to
+come here from a very selfish motive, I fear. I do not think you need
+to be assured once more of my feelings; but, as you are leaving so
+soon, I felt that I could not let you go without asking you to tell
+me—have I any reason to hope that you will ever come to care for me?”
+
+He was very pale, and seemed unable to say any more.
+
+The little gush of vitality which had come into Evelyn as she ran
+downstairs had left her, and she felt herself impotent. There was
+nothing for her to say; she felt nothing. Now that he was actually
+asking her, in his elderly gentle words, to marry him, she felt less
+for him than she had ever felt before.
+
+“Let’s sit down and talk it over,” she said rather unsteadily.
+
+Mr. Perrott followed her to a curved green seat under a tree. They
+looked at the fountain in front of them, which had long ceased to play.
+Evelyn kept looking at the fountain instead of thinking of what she was
+saying; the fountain without any water seemed to be the type of her own
+being.
+
+“Of course I care for you,” she began, rushing her words out in a
+hurry; “I should be a brute if I didn’t. I think you’re quite one of
+the nicest people I’ve ever known, and one of the finest too. But I
+wish . . . I wish you didn’t care for me in that way. Are you sure you
+do?” For the moment she honestly desired that he should say no.
+
+“Quite sure,” said Mr. Perrott.
+
+“You see, I’m not as simple as most women,” Evelyn continued. “I think
+I want more. I don’t know exactly what I feel.”
+
+He sat by her, watching her and refraining from speech.
+
+“I sometimes think I haven’t got it in me to care very much for one
+person only. Some one else would make you a better wife. I can imagine
+you very happy with some one else.”
+
+“If you think that there is any chance that you will come to care for
+me, I am quite content to wait,” said Mr. Perrott.
+
+“Well—there’s no hurry, is there?” said Evelyn. “Suppose I thought it
+over and wrote and told you when I get back? I’m going to Moscow; I’ll
+write from Moscow.”
+
+But Mr. Perrott persisted.
+
+“You cannot give me any kind of idea. I do not ask for a date . . .
+that would be most unreasonable.” He paused, looking down at the gravel
+path.
+
+As she did not immediately answer, he went on.
+
+“I know very well that I am not—that I have not much to offer you
+either in myself or in my circumstances. And I forget; it cannot seem
+the miracle to you that it does to me. Until I met you I had gone on in
+my own quiet way—we are both very quiet people, my sister and I—quite
+content with my lot. My friendship with Arthur was the most important
+thing in my life. Now that I know you, all that has changed. You seem
+to put such a spirit into everything. Life seems to hold so many
+possibilities that I had never dreamt of.”
+
+“That’s splendid!” Evelyn exclaimed, grasping his hand. “Now you’ll go
+back and start all kinds of things and make a great name in the world;
+and we’ll go on being friends, whatever happens . . . we’ll be great
+friends, won’t we?”
+
+“Evelyn!” he moaned suddenly, and took her in his arms, and kissed her.
+She did not resent it, although it made little impression on her.
+
+As she sat upright again, she said, “I never see why one shouldn’t go
+on being friends—though some people do. And friendships do make a
+difference, don’t they? They are the kind of things that matter in
+one’s life?”
+
+He looked at her with a bewildered expression as if he did not really
+understand what she was saying. With a considerable effort he collected
+himself, stood up, and said, “Now I think I have told you what I feel,
+and I will only add that I can wait as long as ever you wish.”
+
+Left alone, Evelyn walked up and down the path. What did matter then?
+What was the meaning of it all?
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXVII
+
+
+All that evening the clouds gathered, until they closed entirely over
+the blue of the sky. They seemed to narrow the space between earth and
+heaven, so that there was no room for the air to move in freely; and
+the waves, too, lay flat, and yet rigid, as if they were restrained.
+The leaves on the bushes and trees in the garden hung closely together,
+and the feeling of pressure and restraint was increased by the short
+chirping sounds which came from birds and insects.
+
+So strange were the lights and the silence that the busy hum of voices
+which usually filled the dining-room at meal times had distinct gaps in
+it, and during these silences the clatter of the knives upon plates
+became audible. The first roll of thunder and the first heavy drop
+striking the pane caused a little stir.
+
+“It’s coming!” was said simultaneously in many different languages.
+
+There was then a profound silence, as if the thunder had withdrawn into
+itself. People had just begun to eat again, when a gust of cold air
+came through the open windows, lifting tablecloths and skirts, a light
+flashed, and was instantly followed by a clap of thunder right over the
+hotel. The rain swished with it, and immediately there were all those
+sounds of windows being shut and doors slamming violently which
+accompany a storm.
+
+The room grew suddenly several degrees darker, for the wind seemed to
+be driving waves of darkness across the earth. No one attempted to eat
+for a time, but sat looking out at the garden, with their forks in the
+air. The flashes now came frequently, lighting up faces as if they were
+going to be photographed, surprising them in tense and unnatural
+expressions. The clap followed close and violently upon them. Several
+women half rose from their chairs and then sat down again, but dinner
+was continued uneasily with eyes upon the garden. The bushes outside
+were ruffled and whitened, and the wind pressed upon them so that they
+seemed to stoop to the ground. The waiters had to press dishes upon the
+diners’ notice; and the diners had to draw the attention of waiters,
+for they were all absorbed in looking at the storm. As the thunder
+showed no signs of withdrawing, but seemed massed right overhead, while
+the lightning aimed straight at the garden every time, an uneasy gloom
+replaced the first excitement.
+
+Finishing the meal very quickly, people congregated in the hall, where
+they felt more secure than in any other place because they could
+retreat far from the windows, and although they heard the thunder, they
+could not see anything. A little boy was carried away sobbing in the
+arms of his mother.
+
+While the storm continued, no one seemed inclined to sit down, but they
+collected in little groups under the central skylight, where they stood
+in a yellow atmosphere, looking upwards. Now and again their faces
+became white, as the lightning flashed, and finally a terrific crash
+came, making the panes of the skylight lift at the joints.
+
+“Ah!” several voices exclaimed at the same moment.
+
+“Something struck,” said a man’s voice.
+
+The rain rushed down. The rain seemed now to extinguish the lightning
+and the thunder, and the hall became almost dark.
+
+After a minute or two, when nothing was heard but the rattle of water
+upon the glass, there was a perceptible slackening of the sound, and
+then the atmosphere became lighter.
+
+“It’s over,” said another voice.
+
+At a touch, all the electric lights were turned on, and revealed a
+crowd of people all standing, all looking with rather strained faces up
+at the skylight, but when they saw each other in the artificial light
+they turned at once and began to move away. For some minutes the rain
+continued to rattle upon the skylight, and the thunder gave another
+shake or two; but it was evident from the clearing of the darkness and
+the light drumming of the rain upon the roof, that the great confused
+ocean of air was travelling away from them, and passing high over head
+with its clouds and its rods of fire, out to sea. The building, which
+had seemed so small in the tumult of the storm, now became as square
+and spacious as usual.
+
+As the storm drew away, the people in the hall of the hotel sat down;
+and with a comfortable sense of relief, began to tell each other
+stories about great storms, and produced in many cases their
+occupations for the evening. The chess-board was brought out, and Mr.
+Elliot, who wore a stock instead of a collar as a sign of
+convalescence, but was otherwise much as usual, challenged Mr. Pepper
+to a final contest. Round them gathered a group of ladies with pieces
+of needlework, or in default of needlework, with novels, to superintend
+the game, much as if they were in charge of two small boys playing
+marbles. Every now and then they looked at the board and made some
+encouraging remark to the gentlemen.
+
+Mrs. Paley just round the corner had her cards arranged in long ladders
+before her, with Susan sitting near to sympathise but not to correct,
+and the merchants and the miscellaneous people who had never been
+discovered to possess names were stretched in their arm-chairs with
+their newspapers on their knees. The conversation in these
+circumstances was very gentle, fragmentary, and intermittent, but the
+room was full of the indescribable stir of life. Every now and then the
+moth, which was now grey of wing and shiny of thorax, whizzed over
+their heads, and hit the lamps with a thud.
+
+A young woman put down her needlework and exclaimed, “Poor creature! it
+would be kinder to kill it.” But nobody seemed disposed to rouse
+himself in order to kill the moth. They watched it dash from lamp to
+lamp, because they were comfortable, and had nothing to do.
+
+On the sofa, beside the chess-players, Mrs. Elliot was imparting a new
+stitch in knitting to Mrs. Thornbury, so that their heads came very
+near together, and were only to be distinguished by the old lace cap
+which Mrs. Thornbury wore in the evening. Mrs. Elliot was an expert at
+knitting, and disclaimed a compliment to that effect with evident
+pride.
+
+“I suppose we’re all proud of something,” she said, “and I’m proud of
+my knitting. I think things like that run in families. We all knit
+well. I had an uncle who knitted his own socks to the day of his
+death—and he did it better than any of his daughters, dear old
+gentleman. Now I wonder that you, Miss Allan, who use your eyes so
+much, don’t take up knitting in the evenings. You’d find it such a
+relief, I should say—such a rest to the eyes—and the bazaars are so
+glad of things.” Her voice dropped into the smooth half-conscious tone
+of the expert knitter; the words came gently one after another. “As
+much as I do I can always dispose of, which is a comfort, for then I
+feel that I am not wasting my time—”
+
+Miss Allan, being thus addressed, shut her novel and observed the
+others placidly for a time. At last she said, “It is surely not natural
+to leave your wife because she happens to be in love with you. But
+that—as far as I can make out—is what the gentleman in my story does.”
+
+“Tut, tut, that doesn’t sound good—no, that doesn’t sound at all
+natural,” murmured the knitters in their absorbed voices.
+
+“Still, it’s the kind of book people call very clever,” Miss Allan
+added.
+
+“_Maternity_—by Michael Jessop—I presume,” Mr. Elliot put in, for he
+could never resist the temptation of talking while he played chess.
+
+“D’you know,” said Mrs. Elliot, after a moment, “I don’t think people
+_do_ write good novels now—not as good as they used to, anyhow.”
+
+No one took the trouble to agree with her or to disagree with her.
+Arthur Venning who was strolling about, sometimes looking at the game,
+sometimes reading a page of a magazine, looked at Miss Allan, who was
+half asleep, and said humorously, “A penny for your thoughts, Miss
+Allan.”
+
+The others looked up. They were glad that he had not spoken to them.
+But Miss Allan replied without any hesitation, “I was thinking of my
+imaginary uncle. Hasn’t every one got an imaginary uncle?” she
+continued. “I have one—a most delightful old gentleman. He’s always
+giving me things. Sometimes it’s a gold watch; sometimes it’s a
+carriage and pair; sometimes it’s a beautiful little cottage in the New
+Forest; sometimes it’s a ticket to the place I most want to see.”
+
+She set them all thinking vaguely of the things they wanted. Mrs.
+Elliot knew exactly what she wanted; she wanted a child; and the usual
+little pucker deepened on her brow.
+
+“We’re such lucky people,” she said, looking at her husband. “We really
+have no wants.” She was apt to say this, partly in order to convince
+herself, and partly in order to convince other people. But she was
+prevented from wondering how far she carried conviction by the entrance
+of Mr. and Mrs. Flushing, who came through the hall and stopped by the
+chess-board. Mrs. Flushing looked wilder than ever. A great strand of
+black hair looped down across her brow, her cheeks were whipped a dark
+blood red, and drops of rain made wet marks upon them.
+
+Mr. Flushing explained that they had been on the roof watching the
+storm.
+
+“It was a wonderful sight,” he said. “The lightning went right out over
+the sea, and lit up the waves and the ships far away. You can’t think
+how wonderful the mountains looked too, with the lights on them, and
+the great masses of shadow. It’s all over now.”
+
+He slid down into a chair, becoming interested in the final struggle of
+the game.
+
+“And you go back to-morrow?” said Mrs. Thornbury, looking at Mrs.
+Flushing.
+
+“Yes,” she replied.
+
+“And indeed one is not sorry to go back,” said Mrs. Elliot, assuming an
+air of mournful anxiety, “after all this illness.”
+
+“Are you afraid of dyin’?” Mrs. Flushing demanded scornfully.
+
+“I think we are all afraid of that,” said Mrs. Elliot with dignity.
+
+“I suppose we’re all cowards when it comes to the point,” said Mrs.
+Flushing, rubbing her cheek against the back of the chair. “I’m sure I
+am.”
+
+“Not a bit of it!” said Mr. Flushing, turning round, for Mr. Pepper
+took a very long time to consider his move. “It’s not cowardly to wish
+to live, Alice. It’s the very reverse of cowardly. Personally, I’d like
+to go on for a hundred years—granted, of course, that I had the full
+use of my faculties. Think of all the things that are bound to happen!”
+
+“That is what I feel,” Mrs. Thornbury rejoined. “The changes, the
+improvements, the inventions—and beauty. D’you know I feel sometimes
+that I couldn’t bear to die and cease to see beautiful things about
+me?”
+
+“It would certainly be very dull to die before they have discovered
+whether there is life in Mars,” Miss Allan added.
+
+“Do you really believe there’s life in Mars?” asked Mrs. Flushing,
+turning to her for the first time with keen interest. “Who tells you
+that? Some one who knows? D’you know a man called—?”
+
+Here Mrs. Thornbury laid down her knitting, and a look of extreme
+solicitude came into her eyes.
+
+“There is Mr. Hirst,” she said quietly.
+
+St. John had just come through the swing door. He was rather blown
+about by the wind, and his cheeks looked terribly pale, unshorn, and
+cavernous. After taking off his coat he was going to pass straight
+through the hall and up to his room, but he could not ignore the
+presence of so many people he knew, especially as Mrs. Thornbury rose
+and went up to him, holding out her hand. But the shock of the warm
+lamp-lit room, together with the sight of so many cheerful human beings
+sitting together at their ease, after the dark walk in the rain, and
+the long days of strain and horror, overcame him completely. He looked
+at Mrs. Thornbury and could not speak.
+
+Every one was silent. Mr. Pepper’s hand stayed upon his Knight. Mrs.
+Thornbury somehow moved him to a chair, sat herself beside him, and
+with tears in her own eyes said gently, “You have done everything for
+your friend.”
+
+Her action set them all talking again as if they had never stopped, and
+Mr. Pepper finished the move with his Knight.
+
+“There was nothing to be done,” said St. John. He spoke very slowly.
+“It seems impossible—”
+
+He drew his hand across his eyes as if some dream came between him and
+the others and prevented him from seeing where he was.
+
+“And that poor fellow,” said Mrs. Thornbury, the tears falling again
+down her cheeks.
+
+“Impossible,” St. John repeated.
+
+“Did he have the consolation of knowing—?” Mrs. Thornbury began very
+tentatively.
+
+But St. John made no reply. He lay back in his chair, half-seeing the
+others, half-hearing what they said. He was terribly tired, and the
+light and warmth, the movements of the hands, and the soft
+communicative voices soothed him; they gave him a strange sense of
+quiet and relief. As he sat there, motionless, this feeling of relief
+became a feeling of profound happiness. Without any sense of disloyalty
+to Terence and Rachel he ceased to think about either of them. The
+movements and the voices seemed to draw together from different parts
+of the room, and to combine themselves into a pattern before his eyes;
+he was content to sit silently watching the pattern build itself up,
+looking at what he hardly saw.
+
+The game was really a good one, and Mr. Pepper and Mr. Elliot were
+becoming more and more set upon the struggle. Mrs. Thornbury, seeing
+that St. John did not wish to talk, resumed her knitting.
+
+“Lightning again!” Mrs. Flushing suddenly exclaimed. A yellow light
+flashed across the blue window, and for a second they saw the green
+trees outside. She strode to the door, pushed it open, and stood half
+out in the open air.
+
+But the light was only the reflection of the storm which was over. The
+rain had ceased, the heavy clouds were blown away, and the air was thin
+and clear, although vapourish mists were being driven swiftly across
+the moon. The sky was once more a deep and solemn blue, and the shape
+of the earth was visible at the bottom of the air, enormous, dark, and
+solid, rising into the tapering mass of the mountain, and pricked here
+and there on the slopes by the tiny lights of villas. The driving air,
+the drone of the trees, and the flashing light which now and again
+spread a broad illumination over the earth filled Mrs. Flushing with
+exultation. Her breasts rose and fell.
+
+“Splendid! Splendid!” she muttered to herself. Then she turned back
+into the hall and exclaimed in a peremptory voice, “Come outside and
+see, Wilfrid; it’s wonderful.”
+
+Some half-stirred; some rose; some dropped their balls of wool and
+began to stoop to look for them.
+
+“To bed—to bed,” said Miss Allan.
+
+“It was the move with your Queen that gave it away, Pepper,” exclaimed
+Mr. Elliot triumphantly, sweeping the pieces together and standing up.
+He had won the game.
+
+“What? Pepper beaten at last? I congratulate you!” said Arthur Venning,
+who was wheeling old Mrs. Paley to bed.
+
+All these voices sounded gratefully in St. John’s ears as he lay
+half-asleep, and yet vividly conscious of everything around him. Across
+his eyes passed a procession of objects, black and indistinct, the
+figures of people picking up their books, their cards, their balls of
+wool, their work-baskets, and passing him one after another on their
+way to bed.
+
+
+
+
+*** END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE VOYAGE OUT ***
+
+Updated editions will replace the previous one--the old editions will
+be renamed.
+
+Creating the works from print editions not protected by U.S. copyright
+law means that no one owns a United States copyright in these works,
+so the Foundation (and you!) can copy and distribute it in the
+United States without permission and without paying copyright
+royalties. Special rules, set forth in the General Terms of Use part
+of this license, apply to copying and distributing Project
+Gutenberg-tm electronic works to protect the PROJECT GUTENBERG-tm
+concept and trademark. Project Gutenberg is a registered trademark,
+and may not be used if you charge for an eBook, except by following
+the terms of the trademark license, including paying royalties for use
+of the Project Gutenberg trademark. If you do not charge anything for
+copies of this eBook, complying with the trademark license is very
+easy. You may use this eBook for nearly any purpose such as creation
+of derivative works, reports, performances and research. Project
+Gutenberg eBooks may be modified and printed and given away--you may
+do practically ANYTHING in the United States with eBooks not protected
+by U.S. copyright law. Redistribution is subject to the trademark
+license, especially commercial redistribution.
+
+START: FULL LICENSE
+
+THE FULL PROJECT GUTENBERG LICENSE
+PLEASE READ THIS BEFORE YOU DISTRIBUTE OR USE THIS WORK
+
+To protect the Project Gutenberg-tm mission of promoting the free
+distribution of electronic works, by using or distributing this work
+(or any other work associated in any way with the phrase "Project
+Gutenberg"), you agree to comply with all the terms of the Full
+Project Gutenberg-tm License available with this file or online at
+www.gutenberg.org/license.
+
+Section 1. General Terms of Use and Redistributing Project
+Gutenberg-tm electronic works
+
+1.A. By reading or using any part of this Project Gutenberg-tm
+electronic work, you indicate that you have read, understand, agree to
+and accept all the terms of this license and intellectual property
+(trademark/copyright) agreement. If you do not agree to abide by all
+the terms of this agreement, you must cease using and return or
+destroy all copies of Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works in your
+possession. If you paid a fee for obtaining a copy of or access to a
+Project Gutenberg-tm electronic work and you do not agree to be bound
+by the terms of this agreement, you may obtain a refund from the
+person or entity to whom you paid the fee as set forth in paragraph
+1.E.8.
+
+1.B. "Project Gutenberg" is a registered trademark. It may only be
+used on or associated in any way with an electronic work by people who
+agree to be bound by the terms of this agreement. There are a few
+things that you can do with most Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works
+even without complying with the full terms of this agreement. See
+paragraph 1.C below. There are a lot of things you can do with Project
+Gutenberg-tm electronic works if you follow the terms of this
+agreement and help preserve free future access to Project Gutenberg-tm
+electronic works. See paragraph 1.E below.
+
+1.C. The Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation ("the
+Foundation" or PGLAF), owns a compilation copyright in the collection
+of Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works. Nearly all the individual
+works in the collection are in the public domain in the United
+States. If an individual work is unprotected by copyright law in the
+United States and you are located in the United States, we do not
+claim a right to prevent you from copying, distributing, performing,
+displaying or creating derivative works based on the work as long as
+all references to Project Gutenberg are removed. Of course, we hope
+that you will support the Project Gutenberg-tm mission of promoting
+free access to electronic works by freely sharing Project Gutenberg-tm
+works in compliance with the terms of this agreement for keeping the
+Project Gutenberg-tm name associated with the work. You can easily
+comply with the terms of this agreement by keeping this work in the
+same format with its attached full Project Gutenberg-tm License when
+you share it without charge with others.
+
+1.D. The copyright laws of the place where you are located also govern
+what you can do with this work. Copyright laws in most countries are
+in a constant state of change. If you are outside the United States,
+check the laws of your country in addition to the terms of this
+agreement before downloading, copying, displaying, performing,
+distributing or creating derivative works based on this work or any
+other Project Gutenberg-tm work. The Foundation makes no
+representations concerning the copyright status of any work in any
+country other than the United States.
+
+1.E. Unless you have removed all references to Project Gutenberg:
+
+1.E.1. The following sentence, with active links to, or other
+immediate access to, the full Project Gutenberg-tm License must appear
+prominently whenever any copy of a Project Gutenberg-tm work (any work
+on which the phrase "Project Gutenberg" appears, or with which the
+phrase "Project Gutenberg" is associated) is accessed, displayed,
+performed, viewed, copied or distributed:
+
+  This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere in the United States and
+  most other parts of the world at no cost and with almost no
+  restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it
+  under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included with this
+  eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org. If you are not located in the
+  United States, you will have to check the laws of the country where
+  you are located before using this eBook.
+
+1.E.2. If an individual Project Gutenberg-tm electronic work is
+derived from texts not protected by U.S. copyright law (does not
+contain a notice indicating that it is posted with permission of the
+copyright holder), the work can be copied and distributed to anyone in
+the United States without paying any fees or charges. If you are
+redistributing or providing access to a work with the phrase "Project
+Gutenberg" associated with or appearing on the work, you must comply
+either with the requirements of paragraphs 1.E.1 through 1.E.7 or
+obtain permission for the use of the work and the Project Gutenberg-tm
+trademark as set forth in paragraphs 1.E.8 or 1.E.9.
+
+1.E.3. If an individual Project Gutenberg-tm electronic work is posted
+with the permission of the copyright holder, your use and distribution
+must comply with both paragraphs 1.E.1 through 1.E.7 and any
+additional terms imposed by the copyright holder. Additional terms
+will be linked to the Project Gutenberg-tm License for all works
+posted with the permission of the copyright holder found at the
+beginning of this work.
+
+1.E.4. Do not unlink or detach or remove the full Project Gutenberg-tm
+License terms from this work, or any files containing a part of this
+work or any other work associated with Project Gutenberg-tm.
+
+1.E.5. Do not copy, display, perform, distribute or redistribute this
+electronic work, or any part of this electronic work, without
+prominently displaying the sentence set forth in paragraph 1.E.1 with
+active links or immediate access to the full terms of the Project
+Gutenberg-tm License.
+
+1.E.6. You may convert to and distribute this work in any binary,
+compressed, marked up, nonproprietary or proprietary form, including
+any word processing or hypertext form. However, if you provide access
+to or distribute copies of a Project Gutenberg-tm work in a format
+other than "Plain Vanilla ASCII" or other format used in the official
+version posted on the official Project Gutenberg-tm website
+(www.gutenberg.org), you must, at no additional cost, fee or expense
+to the user, provide a copy, a means of exporting a copy, or a means
+of obtaining a copy upon request, of the work in its original "Plain
+Vanilla ASCII" or other form. Any alternate format must include the
+full Project Gutenberg-tm License as specified in paragraph 1.E.1.
+
+1.E.7. Do not charge a fee for access to, viewing, displaying,
+performing, copying or distributing any Project Gutenberg-tm works
+unless you comply with paragraph 1.E.8 or 1.E.9.
+
+1.E.8. You may charge a reasonable fee for copies of or providing
+access to or distributing Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works
+provided that:
+
+* You pay a royalty fee of 20% of the gross profits you derive from
+  the use of Project Gutenberg-tm works calculated using the method
+  you already use to calculate your applicable taxes. The fee is owed
+  to the owner of the Project Gutenberg-tm trademark, but he has
+  agreed to donate royalties under this paragraph to the Project
+  Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation. Royalty payments must be paid
+  within 60 days following each date on which you prepare (or are
+  legally required to prepare) your periodic tax returns. Royalty
+  payments should be clearly marked as such and sent to the Project
+  Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation at the address specified in
+  Section 4, "Information about donations to the Project Gutenberg
+  Literary Archive Foundation."
+
+* You provide a full refund of any money paid by a user who notifies
+  you in writing (or by e-mail) within 30 days of receipt that s/he
+  does not agree to the terms of the full Project Gutenberg-tm
+  License. You must require such a user to return or destroy all
+  copies of the works possessed in a physical medium and discontinue
+  all use of and all access to other copies of Project Gutenberg-tm
+  works.
+
+* You provide, in accordance with paragraph 1.F.3, a full refund of
+  any money paid for a work or a replacement copy, if a defect in the
+  electronic work is discovered and reported to you within 90 days of
+  receipt of the work.
+
+* You comply with all other terms of this agreement for free
+  distribution of Project Gutenberg-tm works.
+
+1.E.9. If you wish to charge a fee or distribute a Project
+Gutenberg-tm electronic work or group of works on different terms than
+are set forth in this agreement, you must obtain permission in writing
+from the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation, the manager of
+the Project Gutenberg-tm trademark. Contact the Foundation as set
+forth in Section 3 below.
+
+1.F.
+
+1.F.1. Project Gutenberg volunteers and employees expend considerable
+effort to identify, do copyright research on, transcribe and proofread
+works not protected by U.S. copyright law in creating the Project
+Gutenberg-tm collection. Despite these efforts, Project Gutenberg-tm
+electronic works, and the medium on which they may be stored, may
+contain "Defects," such as, but not limited to, incomplete, inaccurate
+or corrupt data, transcription errors, a copyright or other
+intellectual property infringement, a defective or damaged disk or
+other medium, a computer virus, or computer codes that damage or
+cannot be read by your equipment.
+
+1.F.2. LIMITED WARRANTY, DISCLAIMER OF DAMAGES - Except for the "Right
+of Replacement or Refund" described in paragraph 1.F.3, the Project
+Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation, the owner of the Project
+Gutenberg-tm trademark, and any other party distributing a Project
+Gutenberg-tm electronic work under this agreement, disclaim all
+liability to you for damages, costs and expenses, including legal
+fees. YOU AGREE THAT YOU HAVE NO REMEDIES FOR NEGLIGENCE, STRICT
+LIABILITY, BREACH OF WARRANTY OR BREACH OF CONTRACT EXCEPT THOSE
+PROVIDED IN PARAGRAPH 1.F.3. YOU AGREE THAT THE FOUNDATION, THE
+TRADEMARK OWNER, AND ANY DISTRIBUTOR UNDER THIS AGREEMENT WILL NOT BE
+LIABLE TO YOU FOR ACTUAL, DIRECT, INDIRECT, CONSEQUENTIAL, PUNITIVE OR
+INCIDENTAL DAMAGES EVEN IF YOU GIVE NOTICE OF THE POSSIBILITY OF SUCH
+DAMAGE.
+
+1.F.3. LIMITED RIGHT OF REPLACEMENT OR REFUND - If you discover a
+defect in this electronic work within 90 days of receiving it, you can
+receive a refund of the money (if any) you paid for it by sending a
+written explanation to the person you received the work from. If you
+received the work on a physical medium, you must return the medium
+with your written explanation. The person or entity that provided you
+with the defective work may elect to provide a replacement copy in
+lieu of a refund. If you received the work electronically, the person
+or entity providing it to you may choose to give you a second
+opportunity to receive the work electronically in lieu of a refund. If
+the second copy is also defective, you may demand a refund in writing
+without further opportunities to fix the problem.
+
+1.F.4. Except for the limited right of replacement or refund set forth
+in paragraph 1.F.3, this work is provided to you 'AS-IS', WITH NO
+OTHER WARRANTIES OF ANY KIND, EXPRESS OR IMPLIED, INCLUDING BUT NOT
+LIMITED TO WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY OR FITNESS FOR ANY PURPOSE.
+
+1.F.5. Some states do not allow disclaimers of certain implied
+warranties or the exclusion or limitation of certain types of
+damages. If any disclaimer or limitation set forth in this agreement
+violates the law of the state applicable to this agreement, the
+agreement shall be interpreted to make the maximum disclaimer or
+limitation permitted by the applicable state law. The invalidity or
+unenforceability of any provision of this agreement shall not void the
+remaining provisions.
+
+1.F.6. INDEMNITY - You agree to indemnify and hold the Foundation, the
+trademark owner, any agent or employee of the Foundation, anyone
+providing copies of Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works in
+accordance with this agreement, and any volunteers associated with the
+production, promotion and distribution of Project Gutenberg-tm
+electronic works, harmless from all liability, costs and expenses,
+including legal fees, that arise directly or indirectly from any of
+the following which you do or cause to occur: (a) distribution of this
+or any Project Gutenberg-tm work, (b) alteration, modification, or
+additions or deletions to any Project Gutenberg-tm work, and (c) any
+Defect you cause.
+
+Section 2. Information about the Mission of Project Gutenberg-tm
+
+Project Gutenberg-tm is synonymous with the free distribution of
+electronic works in formats readable by the widest variety of
+computers including obsolete, old, middle-aged and new computers. It
+exists because of the efforts of hundreds of volunteers and donations
+from people in all walks of life.
+
+Volunteers and financial support to provide volunteers with the
+assistance they need are critical to reaching Project Gutenberg-tm's
+goals and ensuring that the Project Gutenberg-tm collection will
+remain freely available for generations to come. In 2001, the Project
+Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation was created to provide a secure
+and permanent future for Project Gutenberg-tm and future
+generations. To learn more about the Project Gutenberg Literary
+Archive Foundation and how your efforts and donations can help, see
+Sections 3 and 4 and the Foundation information page at
+www.gutenberg.org
+
+Section 3. Information about the Project Gutenberg Literary
+Archive Foundation
+
+The Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation is a non-profit
+501(c)(3) educational corporation organized under the laws of the
+state of Mississippi and granted tax exempt status by the Internal
+Revenue Service. The Foundation's EIN or federal tax identification
+number is 64-6221541. Contributions to the Project Gutenberg Literary
+Archive Foundation are tax deductible to the full extent permitted by
+U.S. federal laws and your state's laws.
+
+The Foundation's business office is located at 809 North 1500 West,
+Salt Lake City, UT 84116, (801) 596-1887. Email contact links and up
+to date contact information can be found at the Foundation's website
+and official page at www.gutenberg.org/contact
+
+Section 4. Information about Donations to the Project Gutenberg
+Literary Archive Foundation
+
+Project Gutenberg-tm depends upon and cannot survive without
+widespread public support and donations to carry out its mission of
+increasing the number of public domain and licensed works that can be
+freely distributed in machine-readable form accessible by the widest
+array of equipment including outdated equipment. Many small donations
+($1 to $5,000) are particularly important to maintaining tax exempt
+status with the IRS.
+
+The Foundation is committed to complying with the laws regulating
+charities and charitable donations in all 50 states of the United
+States. Compliance requirements are not uniform and it takes a
+considerable effort, much paperwork and many fees to meet and keep up
+with these requirements. We do not solicit donations in locations
+where we have not received written confirmation of compliance. To SEND
+DONATIONS or determine the status of compliance for any particular
+state visit www.gutenberg.org/donate
+
+While we cannot and do not solicit contributions from states where we
+have not met the solicitation requirements, we know of no prohibition
+against accepting unsolicited donations from donors in such states who
+approach us with offers to donate.
+
+International donations are gratefully accepted, but we cannot make
+any statements concerning tax treatment of donations received from
+outside the United States. U.S. laws alone swamp our small staff.
+
+Please check the Project Gutenberg web pages for current donation
+methods and addresses. Donations are accepted in a number of other
+ways including checks, online payments and credit card donations. To
+donate, please visit: www.gutenberg.org/donate
+
+Section 5. General Information About Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works
+
+Professor Michael S. Hart was the originator of the Project
+Gutenberg-tm concept of a library of electronic works that could be
+freely shared with anyone. For forty years, he produced and
+distributed Project Gutenberg-tm eBooks with only a loose network of
+volunteer support.
+
+Project Gutenberg-tm eBooks are often created from several printed
+editions, all of which are confirmed as not protected by copyright in
+the U.S. unless a copyright notice is included. Thus, we do not
+necessarily keep eBooks in compliance with any particular paper
+edition.
+
+Most people start at our website which has the main PG search
+facility: www.gutenberg.org
+
+This website includes information about Project Gutenberg-tm,
+including how to make donations to the Project Gutenberg Literary
+Archive Foundation, how to help produce our new eBooks, and how to
+subscribe to our email newsletter to hear about new eBooks.
+
+