 Chapter 9. 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 of partition between the rooms as one might wish. So, Miss Allen, the elderly lady who had been playing bridge determined, giving the wall a smart wrap with her knuckles. It was only much more 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, Bear Wolf to Swinburne, which would have a paragraph on Wordsworth. She was steep 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, the 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 Allen 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 lots 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 bedclothes 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 man's, also the Selby Caroways. 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. Perot, 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 to bear at first. Cards after dinner. Aunt E. cheerful, though twingey, she says. M.M. asked 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 size 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 someone 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 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 macking-tosh. The passage was left in silence. Downstairs, always empty and dark. But on the upper floor, a light still burnt in the room where the boots had dropped so heavily above Miss Allen's head. Here was a gentleman who, a few hours previously, in the shade of the curtain, had seemed to consist entirely of legs. Deep in an armchair he was reading the third volume of Gibbons' History of the Decline and Fall of Rome by Candlelight. 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, Hearst, what I forgot to say was. Two minutes, said Hearst, raising his finger. He safely stowed away the last words of the paragraph. What was it you forgot to say? he asked. Do you think you do make enough allowance for feelings? asked Mr. Hewitt. He had again forgotten what he had meant to say. After intense contemplation of the immaculate Gibbon, Mr. Hearst 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 Hewitt vaguely, merely to talk, I suppose. Meanwhile, I shall undress, said Hearst. When naked of all but his shirt and bent over the basin, Mr. Hearst 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 Hewitt. Who, sitting on the bed with his chin resting on his knees, paid no attention to the undressing of Mr. Hearst? They're so stupid, said Hearst. You're sitting on my pyjamas. I suppose they are stupid, Hewitt wondered. There can't be two opinions about that, I imagine, said Hearst, hopping briskly across the room, unless you're in love. That fat woman, Warrington, he inquired. Not one fat woman, all fat women, Hewitt sighed. The women I saw tonight were not fat, said Hearst, who was taking advantage of Hewitt's company to cut his toenails. Describe them, said Hewitt. You know I can't describe things, said Hearst. They were much like other women I should think they always are. No, that's where we differ, said Hewitt. 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 Hearst, 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, Hewitt murmured. Mr. Hewling Elliot, Mrs. Hewling Elliot, Ms. Allen, Mr. and Mrs. Thornbury, one circle, Hearst continued. Ms. Warrington, Mr. Arthur Venning, Mr. Parrot, Evelyn M, another circle. Then there are a whole lot of natives, finally, ourselves. Are we all alone in our circle, asked Hewitt? Quite alone, said Hearst. 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 Hewitt. I'm a dove on a treetop. I wonder if this is what they call an ingrowing toenail, said Hearst, examining the big toe on his left foot. I flipped from branch to branch, continued Hewitt. 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 Hearst, 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. Hewitt contemplated the angular young man who was neatly brushing the rims of his toenails into the fireplace, in silence for a moment. I respect you, Hearst, you were laughed. I envy you, some things, said Hearst. 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 Hewitt. Lying now flat on the bed, he waved his hand in vague circles above him. Of course it is, said Hearst, 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 Hewitt. Not the ghost of one, said Hearst. Although they had known each other for three years, Hearst had never yet heard the true story of Hewitt'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 friend's lives were much of a piece. I don't see your circles. I don't see them, Hewitt continued. I see a thing like a tea totem 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 tea totems 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 Hearst, after a moment's pause. Hewitt proceeded to think, the truth of it is that one never is alone, and one never is in company, he concluded. Meaning, said Hearst. Meaning, well, something about bubbles, auras, what do you call them? 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 Hearst, and supposing my bubble could run into someone else's bubble. And they both burst, put in Hearst. Then, then, then, ponder to it, as if to himself, it would be an enormous 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 Hearst he always felt unusually sanguine and vague. I don't think you altogether as foolish as I used to, Hewitt, said Hearst. You don't know what you mean, but you try to say it. But aren't you enjoying yourself here? asked Hewitt. On the whole, yes, said Hearst. 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 tonight? Really, we must take our lunch and spend the day out. You're getting disgustingly fat. He pointed to the calf of Hewitt's bare leg. We'll get up an expedition, said Hewitt energetically. We'll ask the entire hotel. We'll hire donkeys and— Oh, Lord! said Hearst. Do shut up. I can see Miss Warrington and Miss Allen and Mrs Elliot and the rest squatting on the stones and quacking. How jolly! We'll ask Venning and Perot and Miss Murgatroyd. Everyone we can lay hands on, went on Hewitt. What's the name of the little old grasshopper with the eyeglasses? Peppa? Peppa shall lead us. And God, you'll never get the donkeys, said Hewitt. I must make a note of that, said Hewitt, slowly dropping his feet to the floor. Hearst escorts Miss Warrington. Peppa advances alone on a white ass. Provisions equally distributed. Why shall we hire a mule? The Mations, there's Mrs Paley by Jove, share a carriage. That's where you'll go wrong, said Hearst, putting virgins among Mations. How long should you think that an expedition like that would take Hearst? asked Hewitt. From twelve to sixteen hours, I would say, said Hearst, the time usually occupied by a first confinement. We will need considerable organisation, said Hewitt. 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. Do you happen to have modern love or John Dunn? 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 Hearst. Mrs Paley will enjoy it certainly, said Hewitt. It's one of the saddest things I know, the way elderly ladies cease to read poetry, and yet how appropriate it is. I speak as one who plums life's dim profound, one who at length can sound clear views and certain, but after love what comes a scene that lows, a few sad vacant hours, and then the curtain. My dear say, Mrs Paley is the only one of us who can really understand that. We'll ask her, said Hearst. Please, Hewitt, if you must go to bed, draw my curtain. Few things distress me more than the moonlight. Hewitt 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 Hewitt'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 it to stand still, 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 wake 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 colored and divided by roads and fields. For six hours its 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 in 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 today? asked Mrs Elliot, drifting up against Miss Warrington. Mrs Elliot, the wife of Huling the Oxford Darn, 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 irreverently. 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 Allen, who was searching for the thick pages of the Times among a litter of thin foreign sheets? I always envy anyone 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 Allen, said Susan. On the contrary, said Miss Allen, I'm 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 streets inspired 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 Allen had the times. The couple therefore sat themselves down in armchairs and waited. Ah, there's Mr Hewitt, said Missy Thornbury. Mr Hewitt, she continued, do come and sit by us. I was telling my husband how much he reminded me of a dear old friend of mine, Mary Umpelby. She was the 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 Hewitt, I always think it a compliment to remind people of someone else. But Miss Umpelby, 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 sorrow was very much against her, my 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 Allen, coming up to them. We were so anxious to read about the debate, said Missy 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! Hurst would know him, I expect, said Hewitt. Mr Hurst has such an interesting face, said Missy Thornbury, but I feel one ought to be very clever to talk to him. Well, William, she inquired, 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 Allen. No, I am ashamed to say I have only read about the discoveries in Crete, said Miss Allen. 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 Hewitt? My soldier's 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 Allen. When I think of the Greeks, I think of them as naked black men, said Miss Allen, which is quite incorrect, I'm sure. And you, Mr Hurst, said Mrs Thornbury, perceiving that the gorge young man was near. I'm sure you read everything. I confine myself to cricket and crime, said Hurst. 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 all of them. It's not gone well, asked his wife solicitously. Hewitt 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 should be out of it anyway, Mr Thornbury interrupted peevishly. Cats are often forgotten, Miss Allen remarked. Remember, William, the Prime Minister has reserved his answer, said Mrs Thornbury. At the age of eighty, Mr Joshua Harris of Eales Park, Bronzebury, has had a son, said Hurst. 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 Allen. You're all neglecting the chief advantage of being abroad, said Mr Hewling 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-hew, his wife pleaded, giving him an angular parcel in closing half a chicken in some raisins. Hew it 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 tines which lay upon the floor. Miss Allen looked at her father's watch. Ten minutes to eleven, she observed. Work, asked Mrs Thornbury. Work, replied Miss Allen. 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, and married 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 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 thought 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 learned so much from my own daughters. I believe that Huling 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 it 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'm sure of that. I have seen it with my own children. My eldest boy Ralph, for instance. But Mrs Elliot was inattentive to the elderlady'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, which 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 male. The paper lay directly beneath the clock, the two together seeming to represent stability in a changing world. Mr Perot 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 chatting 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, 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 butting in 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 neighbours 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 aunts 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 of a fire or a death that suddenly demanded some 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 licked 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. Elliott surveyed her found flushed face anxiously in the looking glass. Half an hour later, having removed the traces of sleep, they met each other in the hall, and Mrs. Paley observed that she was going to have her tea. You like your tea too, don't you? she said, and invited Mrs. Elliott, 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 dwarves, said Mrs. Elliott, 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 slap-dash and confident in his manner, although at this moment obviously a little excited. His friend Mr. Peret was a barrister, and as Mr. Peret refused to go anywhere without Mr. Venning, it was necessary when Mr. Peret came to Santa Marina about a company, for Mr. Venning to come too. He was a barrister also, but he loathed the 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 airplanes. The talk rumbled on. It dealt of course with the beauties and singularities of the place, the streets, the people, and the quantities of unknown yellow dogs. Don't you think it dreadfully cruel the way they treat dogs in this country? asked Mrs. Paley. I'd have a more 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, Ms. Warrington, said Mr. Venning. It was hot, she answered. The 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 said, 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 persons. You'll come. I should like to come, she murmured. At this moment Mrs. Elliot looked up and exclaimed. Oh, Hugh, he's bringing someone, she added. He would like some tea, said Mrs. Paley. Susan, run and get some cups. There are the two young men. This 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. Hewitt and Mr. Hurst 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, had 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. How chicken got into the salt, Hewitt said dolefully to Susan. Nor is it true that bananas include moisture as well as sustenance. Hurst was already drinking. We've been cursing you, said Ridley, in answer to Mrs. Elliot's kind inquiries about his wife. You tourists eat up all the eggs, Helen tells me. That's an eyesore, 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? 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 anyone 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. Elliott rather vaguely. Hurst, 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 animal should be allowed to go at large. And what did the cow think of him? Benning mumbled to Susan, who immediately decided in her own mind that Mr. Hurst 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 wild to discover the fact that nature makes no allowance for hip bones, inquired Huling Elliott? He knew by this time exactly what scholarships and distinction Hurst enjoyed, and had formed a very high opinion of his capacities. But Hurst 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. Elliott for his tea, and to add with a wave of his hand, you must come up and see us. The wave included both Hurst and Hewitt, and Hewitt 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. End of Chapter 9 Chapter 10 of The Voyage Out by Virginia Woolf This LibriVox recording is in the public domain. Chapter 10 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 armchair, reading a brightly covered red volume, lettered on the back, works of Henryp 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, a 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 will 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 that 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 have 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 two entire dependents upon Bach and Beethoven and Wagner. But when Mrs Ambrose would have suggested the faux, mo-passant, 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 of her aunts 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 a 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 remodeled according to the adventures of the day, and were indeed recasters liberally, as anyone 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 armchair. The morning was hot and the exercise of reading left her mind contracting and expanding, like the mainspring 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 armchair 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 all 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 clocks 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 small 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 Terrence Huett 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 Monty Rosa. It will take some time, but the view should be magnificent. It will give me great pleasure if you and Miss Vinrace would consent to be of the party. You're sincerely Terrence Huett. Rachel read the words allowed 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. Monty Rosa, that's the mountain over there, isn't it? said Helen. But Huett, 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. Hurst's room had taken shape and was the source of great satisfaction to Mr. Huett, who had seldom used his practical abilities, and was pleased to find them equal to the strain. His invitations have been universally accepted, which was the more encouraging as they had been issued against Hurst'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, Hurst? 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 Hurst was writing a letter opposite. Hurst 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, you it interrupted. I ask them solely for your benefit. What you want, Hurst, you know, is a 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. Hurst groaned that he was quite aware of that. But hew its complacency was a little chilled as he walked with Hurst 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 inclined to. He jumped over the stream, Hurst 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 plain trees, in the salmon-pink farmhouse, standing by the stream, which had been chosen as a meeting place. It was a shady spot, lying conveniently just where the hills sprung out from the flat. Between the thin stems of the plain 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 hand, 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 Elliott's, the Thornbury's, Mr Venning and Susan, Miss Allen, Evelyn Murgatroyd, and Mr Perot—Mr Hurst acted the part of horse-energetic sheepdog. 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 Hewitt failed 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 I, leading royalist troops into action. Right with me, she commanded, and as soon as Hurst 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. Watch yours. Singen, he said. I like that, said Evelyn. And what's your friend's name? His initials being RST. We call him Monk, said Hurst. 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 Singen. 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 gentleman. At one point, where the mound rose sharply, Evelyn M. jumped off, threw her reins to the native boy, and addued Singen Hurst 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 Allen, to Mrs. Elliot just behind her, considering the difficulty I had getting on. These little donkeys stand anything, Nerspa. 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 Allen's knee. Haven't we met before? asked Miss Allen, 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 may happen before nightfall, she continued, mocking the poor ladies' timidity, who depended implicitly upon one thing following another, that the mere glimpse of a world where dinner would 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 foamy 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. Do you think Carrie Boldie was ever up here, she asked Mr Hurst. 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. Perot, and when they mounted again it was Mr. Perot who lifted her to her seat. When one has laid the eggs, one eats the omelette, said Huling Elliot, exquisitely in French, a hint to the rest of them that it was time to ride on again. The midday sun, which Hearst 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 he 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 Hewitt overheard one or two slightly grumbling remarks. Expeditions in such heat are perhaps a little unwise, Mrs. Elliot murmured to Miss Allen. But Miss Allen returned, I always liked 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 with 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, Hewitt 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. Perot 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 watchtower. 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 anyone 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, gray 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 far as the land and appearing quite a 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. The neverland exclaimed, Splendid! She took hold of the hand that was next to her, a chance to be Miss Allen's hand. North, south, east, west, said Miss Allen, jerking her head slightly towards the points of the compass. Hewitt 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 winds 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 the laying out of food. Hurst came to his help and they handed packets of chicken and bread from one to another. A singeing 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, Hewitt 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 Hurst couldn't describe you, said Hewitt. It was certainly odd to have seen Helen and to find nothing to say about her. Hewling Elliot put up his eyeglasses 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 handsome, for instance. Now the other ceased to look at the view and drawing together sat down in a circle around the baskets. And yet those little looking glasses in handsoms have a fascination of their own, said Mrs. Stormbury. One's features look so different when one can only see a bit of them. There were soon be very few handsome 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. Real pie, said Arthur. It's high time that horses should become extinct anyhow, said Hearst, that is stressingly 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 Hearst 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. Stormbury, putting on his spectacles to look at him. I hope to some day, said Arthur. Here flying was discussed at length, and Mrs. Stormbury 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 Allen, 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 were not sting, but they may infest the vitals, said Miss Allen, and measures were taken at once to divert the ants from their course. At Huwitt's suggestion it was decided to adopt the methods of modern warfare against an invading army. The tablecloth represented the invaded country, and round it they built barricades of baskets, set up the wine-buckles in a rampart, made fortifications of bread, and dug fosses of salt. When an ant got through it was exposed to a fire of breadcrumbs 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 Parrot, 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 onto the tablecloth by a back entrance, and if success could be gauged by noise, who it 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 tablecloth. 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 pee in a pod, and Susan, she had no self, encountered 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 someone more vital, who cared for life or for beauty, and what an agony what a waste would be inflict on him if he tried to share with them and not to scourge. There's Hurst, 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 Hurst 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 up Miss Allen. 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 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 Hewitt himself. Her eyes were fixed rather sadly, but not intently upon the row of people opposite her. Hewitt 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. End of Chapter 10 Chapter 11 of The Voyage Out by Virginia Wolfe This LibriVox recording is in the public domain. Chapter 11 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 Huling Elliott 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 eyes fixed upon the oracles. How it makes one long to be a man, she exclaimed. Mr. Perot 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. Perot 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 Gary Boldy now? she demanded. Look here, said Mr. Perot. 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. Hewitt saw the scars and hollows in Mr. Perot's sagacious face relaxed 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. Perot 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, and 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 ways 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 the 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, the departure certainly sent some thrill of emotion through the rest. An odd lot, aren't they? said Arthur. I thought we should never get them 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. Hurst, 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. Hurst, while 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 him 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. Do 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. Hard 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 today, 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 was sticking to the roots, as if it had a kind of meaning. You made the difference to me, he jerked out. I don't see why I shouldn't tell you. I 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. And 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. Perot 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 parents' 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 anyone else. Except you, Arthur. Arthur, she continued, what was it that you first liked me for? It was a buckled war one night at sea, said Arthur, after due consideration. Remember noticing, it's an absurd thing to notice, that you don't take peace. 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. His shade began hew it when Rachel suddenly stopped dead. They saw a man and woman lying on the ground beneath them, rolling slightly this way and that, as they embraced 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 but so you, Hew it and Rachel retreated without a word. Hew it felt uncomfortably shy. I don't like that, said Rachel after a moment. I can remember not liking it either, said Hew it. 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. Do 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 Hew it, she persisted. Love's another thing, isn't it? Making one's heart beat. It's so enormously important, you see, Hew it replied. Their lives are now changed forever. 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 Hew it. Yes, he added after a moment's consideration. There's something horribly pathetic about it, I agree. And now as they walked some way from the grove of trees, and to come to a rounded hollow, very tempting to the back, they proceeded to sit down, and the impression of the lover's lost some of its force, though a certain intensity of vision, which was probably the result of the sight, remained with them. As the 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 Hew it, looking in front of him at the mountains. Isn't it like a watercolour too? You know the way watercolours drive 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 Hew it 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, Hew it inquired. They're 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're 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. Hurst, said Hewitt, pointing at the scissor-like shadow. He then rolled round to look up at them. There's room for us all here, he said. When Hurst had seated himself comfortably, he said, Did you congratulate the young couple? It appeared that, coming to the same spot a few minutes after Hewitt and Rachel, Helen and Hurst had seen precisely the same thing. No, we didn't congratulate them, said Hewitt. They seemed very happy. Well, said Hurst, pursing up his lips, as long as I needn't marry either of them. We were very much moved, said Hewitt. I thought you would be, said Hurst. Which was it, monk, the thought of the immortal passions or the thought of newborn 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 vanter, which she felt to be directed equally against them both, but she could think of no repartee. Nothing moves, Hurst, Hewitt laughed. He did not seem to be stung at all, unless it were a trans-finite number falling in love with a finite one. I suppose such things do happen, even in mathematics. On the contrary, said Hurst, 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, Hurst, said Hewitt, 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 putting my pocket here, he's lost, Hurst finished for him. I consider that there is still a chance, Hewitt urged, slapping himself to right and left, that I never did take it after all. No, said Hurst, it is here. He pointed it to his breast. Thank God, Hewitt 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 Hewitt. I mislay them. That was the reason why Hurst refused to share a cabin with me on the voyage out. You came out together, Helen inquired. I propose that each member of this party now gives a short biographical sketch of himself, or herself, said Hurst, sitting upright. Miss Vinrays, you come first. Begin. Rachel stated that she was twenty-four years of age, the daughter of a ship owner, and 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 Hurst, having taken in these facts, he pointed at Hewitt. I am the son of an English gentleman. I am twenty-seven. Hewitt 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, I'm noticing that there was jam for tea, and wondering whether I should be allowed. Yes, but keep to the facts, Hurst 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 Hurst. You've left out a great deal, he reproved her. My name is Syngen Alaric Hurst. He began in a jaunty tone of voice. I'm twenty-four years old. I'm the son of the Reverend Sidney Hurst, vicar of great whopping in Norfolk. Oh, I got scholarships everywhere, Westminster, Kings. I'm now a fellow of Kings. And 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, Hewitt remarked. Quite correct, said Hurst. 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'm not. I'm not. Both the young men replied. I am, Rachel stated. You believe in a personal God? Hurst 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 were. 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, Hewitt 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 inquired. Is that the kind of question you mean? Again Helen laughed at her, benignantly stewing her with handfuls of the long tasseled 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 time it is? Mrs Elliot and Mr and Mrs Thornberry now confronted them. Mrs Elliot was holding out her watch and playfully tapping it upon the face. Hewitt was recalled to the fact that this was a party for which he was responsible, and he immediately led them back to the watchtower, where they were to have tea before starting home again. A bright crimson scarf fluttered from the top of the wall, which Mr Perot 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 Thornberry, 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 Thornberry, 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, won'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 Parrot. It would be awful to be dead, ejaculated Evelyn M. To be dead, said Hewitt. I don't think it would be awful, it's quite easy to imagine. When you go to bed tonight, 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 Hewitt, quite missy Thornbury. More cake for us, said Arthur. I assure you there's nothing horrible about it, said Hewitt, 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'm quite with you, in refusing to accept the common interpretation which declares it to be the remains of an Elizabethan watchtower, 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'm 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 will 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 mattered a few concluding words under his breath, looking curiously old and forlorn. Huling 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 earrings. Fine, isn't it? It wouldn't suit everyone, of course, but it's just the thing, isn't it, Hilda? For Mrs. Raymond Parry. Mrs. Raymond Parry, quite 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 torque came floating back from one 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, Hurst? Mr Elliot called back incongruously, and Mr Hurst 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 someone 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 draw. Some saints-day, I suppose, said a voice. The rush and embrace of the rockets as they soared up into the air seemed like a 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 mounting being a great shadow behind them, and bushes and trees little shadows which threw darkness across the road. Among the plain 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 Hearst wandered into Hewitt's room with a collar in his hand. Well, Hewitt, he remarked, on the quest of a gigantic yawn, that was a great success, I consider, but take care you're not landed with that young woman. I don't really like young women. Hewitt 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 everyone. I'm happy. End of Chapter 11