 Chapter 16 of the voyage out by Virginia Wolf. This LibriVox recording is in the public domain. Hewitt 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 jellyfish 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 checkered 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 civilized 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 gray 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. Hewitt'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. Great she'll 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 through the largest pebble she could find. It struck the water and the ripples spread out and out. Hewitt 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 do 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 color, 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 Hewitt 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 Hewitt realized 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 a desire to hold her in his arms. Oh yes, he said. That is, I want to write them. She would not take her large gray 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 four 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 Hewitt, who laughed too. I shan't lend you books, he remarked. Why is it, Rachel continued, that I can laugh at Mr. Hurst 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 realized with a great sense of comfort how easily she could talk to Hewitt. Those thorns or ragged corners which tear the surface of some relationships being smoothed away. So I observed, said Hewitt. That's a thing that never ceases to amaze me. He had recovered his composure to such an extent that he could lighten, 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 visualize 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, Hewitt 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 everyone. 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 at him, 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 Marys. What a world we've made of it. Look at Hearst now. I assure you, he said, not a day has 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 Syngin must have the schoolroom to himself? Syngin's working. Syngin wants his tea brought to him. Don't you know the kind of thing? No wonder that Syngin thinks it a matter of considerable importance. It is, too. He has to earn his living. But Syngin's sister. Hewitt puffed in silence. No one takes her seriously, poor dear. She feeds the rabbits. Yes, said Rachel. I fed rabbits for twenty-four years. It seems odd now. She looked meditative, and Hewitt, 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 Hewitt, what do 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 someone. 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 charwomen 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 home. 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 really know 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 bookcase 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 Hewitt exclaimed, I've never been so much interested in my life. She then realized 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 Wallworth. 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 GFS 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 eighteenth 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. There 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. Hewitt 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 someone comes in. Mrs. Hunt, let's suppose. She's an old lady with a lame leg. She has, or she wants, 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 Hewitt to see whether he was amused by the same things that amused her. She was reassured. But she thought it necessary to apologize 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 singin' Hearst. 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 Hewitt 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 20th 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 juring 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 Allen—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 someone'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. Vin Race, and tended to hide itself from him. He was good-humored 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? Hewitt'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 enthrow, to Walworth, to char women 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. He would observe 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 season 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. Hewitt 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 Hewitt'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 Hearst 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 everyone I've ever met. She turned her back on the sea and regarded Hewitt with friendly and 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. But 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 were 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 see. It was Rachel's turn now to feel depressed. As he talked of writing, he had become suddenly impersonal. He might never care for anyone. All that desired 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 anyone she knew could be a great writer. And his self-confidence astounded her. And he became more and more remote. My other novel, Hewitt 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 Baymare 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 inquired? 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 Hurst said Hewitt 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. Do you find that? And then one never knows what anyone 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. Do you like me? Rachel suddenly observed. I like you immensely, Hewitt 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 Terrence? He asked. Terrence, Rachel repeated. Terrence, that's like the cry of an owl. She looked up with a sudden rush of delight, and in looking at Terrence 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? Terrence 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 enrichment meant. Terrence 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 made 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 Hewitt 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 Hewitt 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. End of Chapter 16 Chapter 17 Part 1 of The Voyage Out by Virginia Woolf. This LibriVox recording is in the public domain. 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 Hearst and Hewitt, but to the Aliots, the Thornburys, the Flushings, Miss Allen, 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 organized 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, fouling 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 worthwhile to piece together so slight a friendship. Hewitt, indeed, might have found excellent material at this time up at the villa, or 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 Elliott's. 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 favor of one which made chaos triumphant, things happening for no reason at all, and everyone groping about inillusion 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 at 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. Considered 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 days of happiness. The sunny land outside the window being no less capable of analyzing its own color and heat than she was of analyzing 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 around him. Everyone who stayed in the hotel had a peculiar romance and interest about them. They were not ordinary people. She would attribute wisdom to Mrs. Elliott, 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 straightly 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 color 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 unanalyzed 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 anyone. 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. Overall 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 center 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 oads of Pindar were mended. Helen covered about five inches of her embroidery, and Syngin 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 recognize. 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 everyone 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 hooks 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 recognize salutations, although aware of them, and disappeared down the corridor which led from it. Mr. Bax, Mrs. Thornburry whispered. A 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. Thornburry in an agitated whisper. Where? Where? We are all going, said Mrs. Thornburry gently, and soon they were descending the stairs two by two. Rachel was among the first to descend. She did not see that Terrence and Hearst came in at the rear, possessed of no black volume, but of one thin book bound in light blue cloth, which Syngin carried under his arm. The chapel was the old chapel of the monks. It was a profound, cool place where they had set 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-colored foot-stools. 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 Willet, concealed from view by a bays 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 bowels and smiles were dispensed with, but they recognized each other. The Lord's Prayer was read over them. As the child-like babble 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 jawbones of the lions, O Lord. Let them fall away like water that run at a pace. 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 campfire 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 schoolboys 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, excepted 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, tantalized, enraged by the clumsy insensitiveness of the conductor, who put the stress on the wrong places, and annoyed by the vast flock the audience tamely praising and acquiescing without knowing or caring. So she was not tantalized 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 pattern of buying in expressive 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 her 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 aciduity of a limpid. Nothing would tear her from her demure belief in her own virtue, and the virtues of her religion. She was a limpid, with the sensitive side of her stuck to a rock, forever 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 singin' 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 halfway 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, Hurst and Hewitt sat in a row in a very different frame of mind. Hewitt 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 Hearst 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 Hearst 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. Saffo, he replied. The one Swinburne did. The best thing that's ever been written. End of Chapter 17 Part 1 Chapter 17 Part 2 of The Voyage Out by Virginia Wolfe 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 Saffo 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 everlasting. Amen. Meanwhile Hearst took out an envelope and began scribbling on the back of it. When Mr. Bax mounted the pulpit, he shut up Saffo 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 up here 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 some 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 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, witnessed 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 sympathize 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 parloration, 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, altars, 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. Halfway 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 Bin Race, 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 Terrence 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 Hewitt and Evelyn and the Thornburys and the Alliots. Hewitt stepped forward. Luncheon he began. Miss Vinray's 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 they 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 analyze 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 Terrence in the hall had confused her thoughts, leaving her merely indignant. She looked straight at their own villa, halfway 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 someone 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 do you like best, Mr. Hewitt or Mr. Hearst? Mr. Hewitt, 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 armchairs and setees 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 on slots of the brush upon some half-realized idea suggested by hill or tree, and they were all, in some way, characteristic of Mrs. Flushing. I see things moving, 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 paintbrush in her mouth, and look at the things. As Rachel hesitated Mrs. Flushing came forward, still with a paintbrush 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 colored and dark and pale. They made a curious swarm of lines and colors upon the counterpane, with reddish lumps of stone and peacock's feathers and clear pale tortoise-shell combs lying among them. The women wore them hundreds of years ago. They wear them still, Mrs. Flushing remarked. My husband rides about and finds them. They don't know what they're worth, so we get them cheap. And we shall sell them 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 staying 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 any thin nice, we'd shout out and tell them 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 will come, and Mrs. Ambrose will come. And will Mr. Hurst and other gentlemen 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 Terrence threw a luster 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 chillingly 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 that woman! She's always out of the way when she's wanted. At this moment the lunch in 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 it be wanted to row eight people up the river for a week, and what it had 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 them in the right places. There's a good girl. Or it fusses Mr. Flushing. 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 Flushing's table was set by the side in the window, so that Mrs. Flushing could scrutinize 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 Allen. 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 Hursts. 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 mountainside, 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, 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 Hewitt kept looking at her across the gangway, between the figures of waiters hurrying past with plates. He was inattentive, and Hearst 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 quarreled over the service, which was every bit as fine as Sappho, according to Hewitt, so that Hearst's paganism was mere ostentation. Why go to church, he demanded, merely in order to read Sappho. Hearst observed that he had listened to every word of the sermon, as he could prove if Hewitt would like a repetition of it, and he went to church in order to realize 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 him 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 Hewitt, slightly mollified by the prospect of a literary discussion. My dear Hewitt, do you wish us both to be flung out of the hotel by an enraged mob of Thornburys and Aliots? Hearst inquired. The nearest whisper would be sufficient to incriminate me forever. God, he broke out, what's the use of attempting to write when the world's people by such damned fools? Seriously, Hewitt, 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, Hewitt looked and grew more out of temper than ever. Hearst looked too. His eyes fell upon Rachel, and he bowed to her. I'd 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 Hewitt made no answer whatever, and set singularly still. Hearst 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 Hewitt scarcely replied to these remarks either, he merely pursed his lips, chose a fig, and relapsed quite contentedly into his own plots, 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 Hewitt 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. Hewitt unkindly compared Mr. flushing, who was extremely well dressed for a hot climate, and rather elaborate in his manner, to a very persuasive shopkeeper. Meanwhile, as he sat looking at them, he was entangled in the thornberries, and Miss Allen, 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. Thornberry, as usual, sat saying nothing, looking vaguely ahead of him, occasionally raising his eyeglasses, 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. Thornberry remarked that she was still in the habit of saying Queen instead of King in the national anthem. There was another pause. Then Miss Allen 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 color, appeared on the section of the terrace that could be seen from where they sat. Mrs. Thornberry was led to inquire 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. Hewitt began to wonder whether he might not cross over to the Flushings' corner when Hearst appeared from the background, slipped into a chair by Rachel's side, and began to talk to her with every appearance of familiarity. Hewitt could stand it no longer. He rose, took his hat, and dashed out of doors.