 Chapter 22 The darkness fell, but rose again, and as each day spread widely over the earth, and parted them from the strange day in the forest, when they had been forced to tell each other what they wanted, this wish of theirs was revealed to other people, and in the process became slightly strange to themselves. Apparently it was not anything unusual that had happened, it was that they had become engaged to marry each other. The world, which consisted for the most part of the hotel and the villa, expressed itself glad on the whole that two people should marry, and allowed them to see that they were not expected to take part in the work, which has to be done in order that the world shall go on, but might absent themselves for a time. They were accordingly left alone until they felt the silence as if playing in a vast church the door had been shut on them. They were driven to walk alone, and sit alone, to visit secret places where the flowers had never been picked, and the trees were solitary. In solitude they could express those beautiful but too vast desires, which were so oddly uncomfortable to the ears of other men and women. Desires for a world such as their own world, which contained two people, seemed to them to be where people knew each other intimately, and thus judged each other by what was good, and never quarrelled, because that was a waste of time. They would talk of such questions among books, or out in the sun, or sitting in the shade of a tree undisturbed. They were no longer embarrassed, or half choked with meaning, which could not express itself. They were not afraid of each other, or, like travellers down a twisting river, dazzled with sudden beauties when the corner is turned, the unexpected happened. But even the ordinary was lovable, and in many ways preferable to the ecstatic and mysterious, for it was refreshingly solid, and called out effort, and effort under such circumstances would not effort but delight. While Rachel played the piano, Terence sat near her, engaged as far as the occasional writing of a word in pencil testified, in shaping the world as it appeared to him now, now that he and Rachel were going to be married. It was different, certainly. The book called Silence would not now be the same book that it would have been. He would then put down his pencil and stare in front of him, and wonder in what respects the world was different. It had perhaps more solidity, more coherence, more importance, greater depth, why even the earth sometimes seemed to him very deep, not carved into hills and cities and fields, but heaped in great masses. He would look out of the window for ten minutes at a time. But no, he did not care for the earth swept of human beings. He liked human beings. He liked them, he suspected, better than Rachel did. There she was, swaying enthusiastically over her music, quite forgetful of him. But he liked that quality in her. He liked the impersonality which it produced in her. At last, having written down a series of little sentences with notes of interrogation attached to them, he observed aloud, under the heading, women, I've written, not really vainer than men, lack of self-confidence, at the base of most serious faults, dislike of own-sex traditional or founded on fact. Every woman not so much a rake at heart as an optimist, because they don't think. What do you say, Rachel? He paused with his pencil in his hand and a sheet of paper on his knee. Rachel said nothing. Up and up the steep spiral of a very late Beethoven sonata she climbed, like a person ascending a ruined staircase. Energetically at first, they're more laboriously advancing her feet with effort, until she could go no higher, and returned with a run to begin at the very bottom again. Again it's the fashion now to say that women are more practical, and less idealistic than men, also that they have considerable organising ability but no sense of honour. Query, what is meant by masculine term, honour? What corresponds to it in your sex, eh? Attacking her staircase once more, Rachel again neglected this opportunity of revealing the secrets of her sex. She had indeed advanced so far in the pursuit of wisdom that she allowed these secrets to rest undisturbed. It seemed to be reserved for a later generation to discuss them philosophically. Crashing down a final chord with her left hand she exclaimed at last, swinging round upon him. No, Terence, it's no good. Here I am, the best musician in South America, not to speak of Europe and Asia, and I can't play a note because of you in the room interrupting me every other second. You don't seem to realise that that's what I've been aiming at for the last half hour, he remarked. I've no objection to nice, simple tunes. Indeed, I find them very helpful to my literary composition, but that kind of thing is merely like an unfortunate old dog going round on its hind legs in the rain. He began turning over the little sheets of note paper which was scattered on the table, conveying the congratulations of their friends. Or possible wishes for all possible happiness, he read. Correct, but not very vivid, are they? They're sheer nonsense, Rachel exclaimed. Think of words compared with sounds, she continued. Think of novels and plays and histories. Perched on the edge of the table, she stirred the red and yellow volumes contemptuously. She seemed to herself to be in a position where she could despise all human learning. Terrence looked at them, too. God, Rachel, you do read trash, he exclaimed. And you're behind the times, too, my dear. No one dreams of reading this kind of thing now. Antiquated problem plays, harrowing descriptions of life in the East End. Oh, no, we've exploded all that. Read poetry, Rachel. Poetry, poetry, poetry. Coming up one of the books he began to read aloud, his intention being to satirise the short, sharp bark of the writer's English. But she paid no attention, and after an interval of meditation exclaimed, Does it ever seem to you, Terrence, that the world is composed entirely of vast blocks of matter, and that we're nothing but patches of light? She looked at the soft spots of sun wavering over the carpet and up the wall. Like that? No, said Terrence, I feel solid, immensely solid. The legs of my chair might be rooted in the bowels of the earth, but at Cambridge I can remember there were times when one fell into ridiculous states of semi-coma about five o'clock in the morning. Hurst does now, I expect. Oh, no, Hurst wouldn't. Rachel continued. The day your note came, asking us to go to the picnic. I was sitting where you're sitting now, thinking that. I wonder if I could think that again. I wonder if the world's changed, and if so, when it'll stop changing. And which is the real world? When I first saw you, he began, I thought you were like a creature who'd lived all its life among pearls and old bones. Your hands were wet, do you remember, and you never said a word until I gave you a bit of bread, and then you said, human beings. And I thought you a prick, she recollected. No, that's not quite it. There were the ants who stole the tongue, and I thought you and Syngen were like those ants, very big, very ugly, very energetic, with all your virtues on your backs. However, when I talked to you, I liked you. You fell in love with me, he corrected her. You were in love with me all the time, only you did not know it. No, I never fell in love with you, she asserted. Rachel, what a lie! Didn't you sit here looking at my window? Didn't you wonder about the hotel like an owl in the sun? No, she repeated, I never fell in love. If falling in love is what people say it is, and it's the world that tells the lies, and I tell the truth. Oh, what lies? What lies? She crumpled together a handful of letters from Evelyn M., from Mr Pepper, from Mrs Thornbury, and Mrs Allen, and Susan Warrington. It was strange, considering how very different these people were, that they used almost the same sentences when they wrote to congratulate her upon her engagement. But any one of these people had ever felt what she felt or could ever feel it, or had even the right to pretend for a single second that they were capable of feeling it, appalled her much as the church service had done, much as the face of the hospital nurse had done, and if they didn't feel a thing, why did they go and pretend to? The simplicity and arrogance and hardness of her youth now concentrated into a single spark, as it was by her love of him, puzzled Terence. Being engaged had not that effect on him. The world was different, but not in that way. He still wanted the things he had always wanted, and in particular he wanted the companionship of other people more than ever perhaps. He took the letters out of her hand and protested. Of course they're absurd, Rachel. Of course they say things just because other people say them. But even so, what a nice woman Miss Allen is, you can't deny that, and Mrs. Saumbry too. She's got too many children, I grant you, but if half a dozen of them had gone to the bad instead of rising infallibly to the tops of their trees, hasn't she a kind of beauty, of elemental simplicity, as flushing would say? Isn't she rather like a large old tree murmuring in the moonlight, or a river going on and on and on? By the way, Ralph's been made governor of the Parraway Islands, the youngest governor in the service. Very good, isn't it? But Rachel was at the present unable to conceive that the vast majority of the affairs of the world went on unconnected by a single threat with her own destiny. I won't have eleven children, she asserted. I won't have the eyes of an old woman. She looks at one up and down, up and down, as if one were a horse. We must have a son, and we must have a daughter, said Terence, putting down the letters, because let alone the inestimable advantage of being our children, they'd be so well brought up. They went on to sketch an outline of the ideal education, how their daughter should be required from infancy to gaze at a large square of cardboard painted blue, to suggest thoughts of infinity, for women were grown too practical, and their son, he should be taught to laugh at great men, that is, at distinguished and successful men, at men who wore ribbons and rose to the tops of their trees. He should in no way resemble, Rachel added, singe and Hearst. At this Terence professed the greatest admiration for singe and Hearst. Dwelling upon his good qualities, he became seriously convinced of them. He had a mind like a torpedo, he declared, aimed at falsehood. Where should we all be without him, and his like, choked in weeds, Christian bigots, why Rachel herself would be a slave with a fan to sing songs to men when they felt drowsy. But you'll never see it, he exclaimed, because with all your virtues you don't, and you never will, care with every fibre of your being for the pursuit of truth. You've no respect for fats, Rachel. You're essentially feminine. She did not trouble to deny it, nor did she think good to produce the one unanswerable argument against the merits which Terence admired. Singe and Hearst said that she was in love with him. She would never forgive that, but the argument was not one to appeal to a man. But I like him, she said, and she thought to herself that she also pitied him, as one pities those unfortunate people who are outside the warm mysterious globe, full of changes and miracles in which we ourselves move about. She thought that it must be very dull to be singe and Hearst. She summed up what she felt about him by saying that she would not kiss him, supposing he wished it, which was not likely. As if some apology were due to Hearst for the kiss which she then bestowed upon him, Terence protested. And compared with Hearst, I'm a perfect zany. The clock here struck twelve instead of eleven. We're wasting the morning. I ought to be writing my book, and you ought to be answering these. We've only got twenty-one whole mornings left, said Rachel, and my father will be here in a day or two. However, she drew a pen and paper towards her, and began to write laboriously. My dear Evelyn, Terence, meanwhile, read a novel which someone else had written, a process which she found essential to the composition of his own. For a considerable time nothing was to be heard but the ticking of the clock and the fitful scratch of Rachel's pen, as she produced phrases which bore a considerable likeness to those which she had condemned. She was struck by it herself, for she stopped writing and looked up, looked at Terence deep in the armchair, looked at the different pieces of furniture at her bed in the corner, at the window pane which showed the branches of a tree filled in with sky, heard the clock ticking, and was amazed at the gulf which laid between all that and her sheet of paper. Would there ever be a time when the world was one and indivisible, even with Terence himself, how far apart they could be, how little she knew what was parting in his brain now. She then finished her sentence which was awkward and ugly, and stated that they were both very happy, and going to be married in the autumn probably, and hope to live in London, where we hope you will come and see us when we get back. Choosing affectionately, after some further speculation, rather than sincerely, she signed the letter and was doggedly beginning on another, when Terence remarked, quoting from his book, Listen to this, Rachel. It is probable that Hugh, he's the hero, a literary man, had not realised at the time of his marriage any more than the young man of parts and imagination usually does realise the nature of the gulf which separates the needs and desires of the male from the needs and desires of the female. At first they had been very happy. The walking tour of Switzerland had been a time of jolly companionship and stimulating revelations for both of them. Betty had proved herself an ideal comrade. They had shouted, Love in the valley to each other across the snowy slopes of the rifflehorn, and so on, and so on. I'll skip the descriptions. But in London, after the boy's birth, all was changed. Betty was an admirable mother, but it did not take her long to find out that motherhood, as that function is understood by the mother of the upper middle classes, did not absorb the whole of her energies. She was young and strong, with healthy limbs and a body and brain that called urgently for exercise. In short, she began to give tea parties. Coming in late from this singular talk with old Bob Murphy in his smoky book-lined room, where the two men had each unloosed his soul to the other, with the sound of the traffic coming in his ears, and the foggy London sky slung tragically across his mind. He found women's hats dotted about among his papers. Women's raps and absurd little feminine shoes and umbrellas were in the hall. Then the bills began to come in. He tried to speak frankly to her. He found her lying on the great polar bear-skin in the bedroom, half undressed, for they were dining with the greens at Wilton Crescent. The ruddy firelight, making the diamonds wink and twinkle on her bare arms, and in the delicious curve of her breast, a vision of adorable femininity, he forgave her all. Well, this goes from bad to worse. And finally, about fifty pages later, Hugh takes a weekend ticket to Swanwich, and has it out with himself on the downs above Corf. And there's fifteen pages or so which will skip. The conclusion is, they were different. Perhaps in the far future, when generations of men had struggled and failed, as he must now struggle and fail, women would be, indeed, what she now made a pretence of being. The friend and companion, not the enemy and parasite of man. The end of it is, you see. Hugh went back to his wife, poor fellow. It was his duty as a married man. Lord Rachel, he concluded, will it be like that when we're married? Instead of answering him, she asked, why don't people write about things they do feel? That's the difficulty, he sighed, tossing the book away. Well, then, what will it be like when we're married? What are the things people do feel? She seemed doubtful. Sit on the floor and let me look at you, he commanded. Resting her chin on his knee, she looked straight at him. He examined her curiously. You're not beautiful, he began, but I like your face. I like the way your hair grows down in a point, and your eyes too. They never see anything. Your mouth's too big, and your cheeks will be better if they have more colour in them. But what I like about your face is that it makes one wonder what the devil you're thinking about. It makes me want to do that. He clenched his fist and shook it so near her that she started back, because now you look as if you'd blow my brains out. There are moments, he continued, when, if we stood on a rock together, you'd throw me into the sea. Hypnotised by the force of his eyes in her, she repeated, if we stood on a rock together. To be flung into the sea, to be washed hither in nither, and driven about the roots of the world, the idea was incoherently delightful. She sprang up and began moving about the room, bending and thrusting aside the chairs and tables, as if she were indeed striking through the waters. He watched her with pleasure. She seemed to be cleaving a passage for herself, and dealing triumphantly with the obstacles which would hinder their passage through life. It does seem possible, he exclaimed, though I've always thought it the most unlikely thing in the world. I shall be in love with you all my life, and our marriage will be the most exciting thing that's ever been done. We'll never have a moment's peace. He caught her in his arms as she passed him, and they fought for mastery, imagining a rock and the sea heaving beneath them. At last she was thrown to the floor where she lay gasping and crying for mercy. I'm a mermaid, I can swim, she cried, so the game's up. Her dress was torn across, and peace being established, she fetched a needle and thread, and began to mend the tear. And now, she said, be quiet and tell me all about the world. Tell me about everything that's ever happened, and I'll tell you— Let me see, what can I tell you? I'll tell you about Miss Montgomery, and the River Party. She was left, you see, with one foot in the boat, and the other on shore. They had spent much time already in Nuss filling out for the other the course of their past lives, and the characters of their friends and relations, so that very soon Terrence knew not only what Rachel's aunts might be expected to say on every occasion, but also how their bedrooms were furnished, and what kind of bonnets they wore. He could sustain a conversation between Mrs. Hunt and Rachel, and carry on a tea-party including the Reverend William Johnson, and Miss Mackoid, the Christian scientists, with remarkable likeness to the truth. But he had known many more people, and was far more likely skilled in the art of narrative than Rachel was, whose experiences were for the most part of a curiously childlike and humorous kind, so that it generally fell to her lot to listen and ask questions. He told her not only what had happened, but what he had thought and felt, and sketched for her portraits which fascinated her of what other men and women might be supposed to be thinking and feeling, so that she became very anxious to get back to England, which was full of people, where she could merely stand in the streets and look at them. According to him, too, there was an order, a pattern, which made life reasonable, or if that word was foolish, made it of deep interest anyhow, for sometimes it seemed possible to understand why things happened as they did, nor were people so solitary and uncommunicative as she believed. She should look for vanity, for vanity was a common quality, first in herself, and then in Helen, in Ridley, in St. John. They all had their share of it, and she would find it in ten people out of every twelve she met. And once linked together by one such tie, she would find them not separate and formidable, but practically indistinguishable, and she would come to love them when she found that they were like herself. If she denied this, she must defend her belief that human beings were as various as the beasts at the zoo, which had stripes and manes and horns and humps, and so wrestling over the entire list of their acquaintances and diverging into anecdotes and theory and speculation, they came to know each other, that the hours passed quickly and seemed to them full to leaking point. After a night's solitude, they were always ready to begin again. The virtues which Mrs. Ambrose had once believed to exist in free talk between men and women, did, in truth, exist for both of them, although not quite in the measure she prescribed. Far more than upon the nature of sex they dwelt upon the nature of poetry, but it was true that talk which had no boundaries deepened and enlarged the strangely small, bright view of a girl. In return for what he could tell her, she brought him such curiosity and sensitiveness of perception, that he was led to doubt whether any gift bestowed by much reading and living was quite the equal of that for pleasure and pain. What would experience give her, after all, except a kind of ridiculous formal balance, like that of a drilled dog in the street? He looked at her face and wondered how it would look in twenty years time, when the eyes had dulled, and the forehead wore those little persistent wrinkles which seemed to show that the middle aged are facing something hard, which the young do not see. What would the hard thing be for them? he wondered. Then his thoughts turned to their life in England. The thought of England was delightful, for together they would see the old things freshly. It would be England in June, and there would be June nights in the country, and the nightingales singing in the lanes, into which they could steal when the room grew hot, and there would be English meadows gleaming with water, and set with stolid cows, and clouds dipping low and trailing across the green hills. As he sat in the room with her, he wished very often to be back again in the thick of life, doing things with Rachel. He crossed to the window in exclaimed, Lord, how good it is to think of lanes, muddy lanes, with brambles and nettles, you know, and real grass fields, and farmyards with pigs and cows, and men walking beside carts with pitchforks. There's nothing to compare with that here. Look at the stony red earth, and the bright blue sea, and the glaring white houses. How tired one gets of it, and the air without a stain or a wrinkle, and give anything for a sea mist. Rachel, too, had been thinking of the English country, the flat land rolling away to the sea, and the woods and the long straight roads where one can walk for miles without seeing any one, and the great church towers, and the curious houses clustered in the valleys, and the birds, and the dusk, and the rain falling against the windows. But London, London's the place, Terrence continued. They looked together at the carpet as though London itself were to be seen there lying on the floor, with all its spires and pinnacles pricking through the smoke. On the whole, what I should like best at this moment, Terrence pondered, would be to find myself walking down Kingsway, by those big placards, you know, and turning into the strand. Perhaps I might go and look over Waterloo Bridge for a moment. Then I go along the strand, past the shops with all the new books in them, and through the little archway into the temple. I always like the quiet after the uproar. You hear your own footsteps, suddenly quite loud. The temple's very pleasant. I think I should go and see if I could find dear old Hodgkin, the man who writes books about Van Ike, you know. When I left England, he was very sad about his tame magpie. He suspected that a man had poisoned it. And then Russell lives on the next staircase. I think you'd like him. He's a passion for handle. Well, Rachel, he concluded, dismissing the vision of London. We shall be doing that together in six weeks' time, and it'll be the middle of June then, and June in London. My God, how pleasant it all is. And we're certain to have it too, she said. It isn't as if we're expecting a great deal, only to walk about and look at things. Only a thousand a year and perfect freedom, he replied. How many people in London do you think have that? And now you've spoiled it, she complained. Now we've got to think of the horrors. She looked grudgingly at the novel, which had once caused her perhaps an hour's discomfort, so that she had never opened it again, but kept it on her table and looked at it occasionally, as some medieval monk kept a skull or a crucifix to remind him of the frailty of the body. Is it true, Terence? she demanded, that women die with bugs crawling across their faces. I think it's very probable, he said, but you must admit, Rachel, that we so seldom think of anything but ourselves, that an occasional twinge is really rather pleasant. Accusing him of an affection of cynicism, which was just as bad as sentimentality itself, she left her position by his side and knelt upon the windowsill, twisting the curtain tassels between her fingers. A vague sense of dissatisfaction filled her. What's so detestable in this country, she exclaimed, is the blue, always blue sky and blue sea. It's like a curtain, all the things one wants are on the other side of that. I want to know what's going on behind it. I hate these divisions, don't you, Terence? One person in all the dark about another person. Now I like the Dalloways, she continued, and they're gone, and she'll never see them again, just by going on a ship we cut ourselves off entirely from the rest of the world. I want to see England there, London there, all sorts of people. Why shouldn't one? Why should one be shut up all by oneself in a room? While she spoke thus half to herself, and with increasing vagueness, because her eye was caught by a ship that had just come into the bay, she did not see that Terence had ceased to stare contentedly in front of him, and was looking at her keenly and with dissatisfaction. She seemed to be able to cut herself adrift from him, and to pass away to unknown places where she had no need of him. The thought roused his jealousy. I sometimes think you're not in love with me, and never will be, he said energetically. She started and turned round at his words. I don't satisfy you in the way you satisfy me, he continued. There's something I can't get hold of in you. You don't want me as I want you, you're always wanting something else. He began pacing up and down the room. Perhaps I asked too much, he went on. Perhaps it isn't really possible to have what I want. Men and women are too different. You can't understand, you don't understand. He came up to where she stood, looking at him in silence. It seemed to her now that what he was saying was perfectly true, and that she wanted many more things than the love of one human being. The sea, the sky, she turned again, and looked at the distant blue, which was so smooth and serene where the sky met the sea, she could not possibly want only one human being. Or is it only this damnable engagement, he continued. Let's be married here before we go back. Or is it too great a risk? Are you sure we want to marry each other? They began pacing up and down the room, but although they came very near each other in their pacing, they took care not to touch each other. The hopelessness of their position overcame them both. They were impotent. They could never love each other sufficiently to overcome all these barriers, and they could never be satisfied with less. Realising this with intolerable keenness, she stopped in front of him and exclaimed, Let's break it off then. The words did more to unite them than any amount of argument. As if they stood on the edge of a precipice they clung together. They knew that they could not separate. Painful and terrible it might be, but they were joined for ever. They lapsed into silence, and after a time crept together in silence. Merely to be so close soothed them, and sitting side by side, the divisions disappeared, and it seemed as if the world were once more solid and entire. And as if, in some strange way, they had grown larger and stronger. It was long before they moved, and when they moved it was with great reluctance. They stood together in front of the looking glass, and with a brush tried to make themselves look as if they had been feeling nothing all the morning, neither pain nor happiness. But it chilled them to see themselves in the glass, for instead of being vast and indivisible, they were really very small and separate. The size of the glass leaving a large space for the reflection of other things. End of Chapter 22 Chapter 23 Of the voyage out by Virginia Woolf This LibriVox recording is in the public domain. Chapter 23 But no brush was able to efface completely the expression of happiness, so that Mrs. Ambrose could not treat them when they came downstairs, as if they had spent the morning in a way that could be discussed naturally. This being so, she joined in the world's conspiracy to consider them for the time incapacitated from the business of life, struck by their intensity of feeling into enmity against life, and almost succeeded in dismissing them from her thoughts. She reflected that she had done all that it was necessary to do in practical matters. She had written a great many letters, and had obtained Willoughby's consent. She had dwelt so often upon Mr. Hewitt's prospects, his profession, his birth, appearance, and temperament, that she had almost forgotten what he was really like. When she refreshed herself by a look at him, she used to wonder again what he was like, and then concluding that they were happy at any rate, thought no more about it. She might more profitably consider what would happen in three years' time, or what might have happened if Rachel had been left to explore the world under her father's guidance. The result, she was honest enough to own, might have been better. Who knows? She did not disguise from herself that Terence had faults. She was inclined to think him too easy and tolerant, just as he was inclined to think her perhaps a trifle hard, no, it was rather that she was uncompromising. In some ways she found Syngin preferable, but then, of course, he would never have suited Rachel. Her friendship with Syngin was established, for although she fluctuated between irritation and interest, in a way that did credit to the candor of her disposition, she liked his company on the whole. He took her outside this little world of love and emotion. He had a grasp of facts, supposing, for instance, that England made a sudden move towards some unknown port on the coast of Morocco. Syngin knew what was at the back of it, and to hear him engaged with her husband in argument about finance and the balance of power gave her an odd sense of stability. She respected their arguments without always listening to them, much as she respected a solid brick wall, or one of those immense municipal buildings which, although they composed the greater part of our cities, have been built day after day and year after year by unknown hands. She liked to sit and listen, and even felt a little elated when the engaged couple, after showing their profound lack of interest, slipped from the room, and were seen pulling flowers to pieces in the garden. It was not that she was jealous of them, but she did undoubtedly envy them, their great unknown future that lay before them. Slipping from one such thought to another, she was at the dining room with fruit in her hands. Sometimes she stopped to straighten a candle, stooping with the heat, or disturbed some too rigid arrangement of the chairs. She had reason to suspect that Chaley had been balancing herself on top of a ladder with a wet duster during their absence, and the room had never been quite like itself since. Returning from the dining room for the third time, she perceived that one of the armchairs was now occupied by singe. He lay back in it with his eyes half shut, looking, as he always did, curiously buttoned up in a neat grey suit, and fenced against the exuberance of a foreign climate, which might at any moment proceed to take liberties with him. Her eyes rested on him gently, and then passed on over his head. Finally she took the chair opposite. I didn't want to come here, he said at last, but I was positively driven to it. Evelyn M. he groaned. He sat up and began to explain with mock solemnity how the detestable woman was set upon marrying him. She pursues me about the place. This morning she appeared in the smoking room. All I could do was to seize my hat and fly. I didn't want to come, but I couldn't stay in face another meal with her. Well, we must make the best of it, Helen replied philosophically. It was very hot, and they were indifferent to any amount of silence, so that they lay back in their chairs, waiting for something to happen. The bell rang for luncheon, but there was no sound of movement in the house. Was there any news, Helen asked, anything in the papers? St. John shook his head. Oh, yes, he had a letter from home, a letter from his mother, describing the suicide of the parlor maid. She was called Susan Jane, and she came into the kitchen one afternoon, and said that she wanted to cook to keep her money for her. She had twenty pounds in gold. Then she went out to buy herself a hat. She came in at half-past five, and said that she had taken poison. They had only just time to get her into bed and call a doctor before she died. Well, Helen inquired, there will have to be an inquest, said St. John. Why had she done it? He shrugged his shoulders. Why do people kill themselves? Why did the lower orders do anything of the things they do-do? Nobody knows. They sat in silence. The bells rang fifteen minutes, and they're not down, said Helen, at length. When they appeared St. John explained why it had been necessary for him to come to luncheon. He imitated Evelyn's enthusiastic tone as she confronted him in the smoking room. She thinks there can be nothing quite so thrilling as mathematics, so I've lent her a large work in two volumes. It'll be interesting to see what she makes of it. Rachel could now afford to laugh at him. She reminded him of Gibbon. She had the first volume somewhere still. If he were undertaking the education of Evelyn, that surely was the test. Or she had heard the twerk upon the American rebellion. Evelyn ought to read them both, simultaneously. When St. John had disposed of her argument and had satisfied his hunger, he proceeded to tell them that the hotel was seething with scandals, some of the most appalling kind, which had happened in their absence. He was indeed much given to the study of his kind. Evelyn M., for example. But that was told me in confidence. Nonsense, Terence interposed. You've heard about poor Sinclair too? Oh yes, I've heard about Sinclair. He's retired to his mind with a revolver. He writes to Evelyn daily, and he's thinking of committing suicide. I've assured her that he's never been so happy in his life, and on the whole she's inclined to agree with me. But then she's entangled herself with parrot, St. John continued, and I have reason to think from something I saw in the passage that everything isn't as it should be between Arthur and Susan. There's a young female lately arrived from Manchester, a very good thing if it were broken off in my opinion. Their married life is something too horrible to contemplate. Oh, and I distinctly heard old Mrs. Paley wrapping up the most fearful oaths as I passed her bedroom door. It's supposed that she tortures her maid in private, and it's practically certain she does. One can tell it from the look in her eyes. When you're aty and the gout tweezes you, you'll be swearing like a trooper, Terence remarked. You'll be very fat, very testy, very disagreeable. Can't you imagine him, bold as a coot with a pair of sponge-bag trousers, a little spotted tie, and a corporation? After a pause, Hearst remarked that the worst infamy has still to be told. He addressed himself to Helen. They've hoofed out the prostitute. One night while we were away that old numbskull Thornbury was dodgering about the passages very late. Nobody seems to have asked him what he was up to. He saw the Signora Lola Mendoza, as she calls herself, cross the passage in her nightgown. He communicated his suspicions next morning to Elliot, with the result that Rob Dregas went to the woman and gave her twenty-four hours in which to clear out of the place. No one seems to have inquired into the truth of the story, or to have asked Thornbury and Elliot what business it was of theirs. They had it entirely their own way. I propose that we should all sign around Robin, go to Rodríguez in a body, and insist upon a full inquiry. Something's got to be done, don't you agree? Hearst remarked that there could be no doubt as to the lady's profession. Still, he added, it's a great shame, poor woman. Only I don't see what's to be done. I quite agree with you, Syngin. Helen burst out. It's monstrous. The hypocritical smugness of the English makes my blood boil. A man who's made a fortune in trade, as Mr Thornbury has, is bound to be twice as bad as any prostitute. She respected Syngin's morality, which she took far more seriously than anyone else did, and now entered into a discussion with him as to the steps that were to be taken, to enforce their peculiar view of what was right. The argument led to some profoundly gloomy statements of a general nature. Who were they, after all? What authority had they? What power against the mass of superstition and ignorance? It was the English, of course. There must be something wrong in the English blood. Directly you met an English person of the middle classes. You were conscious of an indefinable sensation of loathing. Directly you saw the brown crescent of houses above Dover. The same thing came over you. But unfortunately, Syngin added, you couldn't trust these foreigners. They were interrupted by sounds of strife at the further end of the table. Rachel appealed to her aunt. Terence says we must go to tea with Mrs Thornbury, because she's been so kind. But I don't see it. In fact, I'd rather have my right hand sawn in pieces. Just imagine the eyes of all those women. Fiddlesticks, Rachel, Terence replied. Who wants to look at you? You're consumed with vanity. You're a monster of conceit. Surely Helen knew what to have taught her by this time, that she's a person of no conceivable importance whatever. Not beautiful or well-dressed or conspicuous for elegance or intellect or deportment. A more ordinary sight than you are, he concluded, except for the tear across your dress, has never been seen. However, say it home if you want to. I'm going. She appealed again to her aunt. It wasn't the being looked at, she explained, but the things people were sure to say, the women in particular. She liked women, but where emotion was concerned, they were as flies on a lump of sugar. They would be certain to ask her questions. Evelyn M. would say, are you in love? Is it nice being in love? And Mrs. Thornbury, her eyes would go up and down, up and down. She shuddered at the thought of it. Indeed the retirement of their life since their engagement had made her so sensitive, that she was not exaggerating her case. She found an ally in Helen who proceeded to expound her views of the human race, as she regarded with complacency the pyramid of variegated fruits in the centre of the table. It wasn't that they were cruel or meant to hurt, or even stupid exactly, but she had always found that the ordinary person had so little emotion in his own life that the scent of it in the lives of others was like the scent of blood in the nostrils of a bloodhound. Warming to the theme, she continued, directly anything happens. It may be a marriage or a birth or a death. On the whole they prefer it to be a death. Everyone wants to see you. They insist upon seeing you. They've got nothing to say. They don't care a rat for you. But you've got to go to lunch or to tea or to dinner. And if you don't, you're damned. It's the smell of blood, she continued. I don't blame them, only they shan't have mine if I know it. She looked about her as if she had called up a legion of human beings, all hostile and all disagreeable, who encircled the table with mouths gaping for blood, and made it appear a little island of neutral country in the midst of the ennemy's country. Her words roused her husband who had been muttering rhythmically to himself, surveying his guests and his food and his wife, with eyes that were now melancholy and now fierce, according to the fortunes of the lady in his ballad. He cut Helen short with a protest. He hated even the semblance of cynicism in women. Nonsense, nonsense, he remarked abruptly. Terence and Rachel glanced at each other across the table, which meant that when they were married they would not behave like that. The entrance of Ridley into the conversation had a strange effect. It became at once more formal and more polite. It would have been impossible to talk quite easily of anything that came into their heads, and to say the word prostitute as simply as any other word. The talk now turned upon literature and politics, and Ridley told stories of the distinguished people he had known in his youth. Such talk was of the nature of an art, and the personalities and informalities of the young were silenced. As they rose to go Helen stopped for a moment, leaning her elbows on the table. You've all been sitting here, she said, for almost an hour, and you haven't noticed my figs or my flowers or the way the light comes through or anything. I haven't been listening because I've been looking at you. You're all very beautiful and we should go on sitting for ever. She led the way to the drawing-room, where she took up her embroidery and began again to dissuade Terence from walking down to the hotel in this heat. But the more she dissuaded, the more he was determined to go. He became irritated and obstinate. There were moments when they almost disliked each other. He wanted other people. He wanted Rachel to see them with him. He suspected that Mrs Ambrose would now try to dissuade her from going. He was annoyed by all this space and shade and beauty and hurst, recumbent, drooping a magazine from his wrist. I'm going, he repeated. Rachel needn't come unless she wants to. If you go, Hewitt, I wish you'd make inquiries about the prostitute, said Hurst. Look here, he added. I'll walk half the way with you. Greatly to their surprise he raised himself, looked at his watch, and remarked that, as it was now half an hour since luncheon, the gastric juices had had sufficient time to secret. He was trying a system, he explained, which involved short spells of exercise, interspaced by longer intervals of rest. I shall be back at four, he remarked to Helen, when I shall lie down on the sofa and relax all my muscles completely. So you're going, Rachel, Helen asked. You won't stay with me? She smiled, but she might have been sad. Would she sad, or was she really laughing? Rachel could not tell, and she felt for the moment very uncomfortable between Helen and Terence. Then she turned away, saying merely that she would go with Terence, on condition that he did all the talking. A narrow border of shadow ran along the road, which was broad enough for two, but not broad enough for three. Sinjan, therefore, dropped a little behind the pair, and the distance between them increased by degrees. Walking with a view to digestion, and with one eye upon his watch, he looked from time to time at the pair in front of him. They seemed to be so happy, so intimate, although they were walking side by side, as much as other people walk. They turned slightly toward each other now and then, and said something which he thought must be something very private. They were really disputing about Helen's character, and Terence was trying to explain why it was that she annoyed him so much sometimes. But Sinjan thought that they were saying things which they did not want him to hear, and was led to think of his own isolation. These people were happy, and in some ways he despised them for being made happy so simply, and in other ways he envied them. He was much more remarkable than they were, but he was not happy. People never liked him. He doubted sometimes whether even Helen liked him. To be simple, to be able to say simply what one felt, without the terrific self-consciousness which possessed him, and showed him his own face and words perpetually in a mirror, that would be worth almost any other gift for it made one happy. Happiness, happiness, what was happiness? He was never happy. He saw too clearly the little vices and deceits and flaws of life, and seeing them it seemed to him honest to take notice of them. That was the reason, no doubt, why people generally disliked him, and complained that he was heartless and bitter. Certainly they never told him the things he wanted to be told, that he was nice and kind and that they liked him. But it was true that half the sharp things that he said about them were said because he was unhappy or hurt himself, but he admitted that he had very seldom told anyone that he cared for them. And when he had been demonstrative he had generally regretted it afterwards. His feelings about Terence and Rachel were so complicated that he had never yet been able to bring himself to say that he was glad that they were going to be married. He saw their faults so clearly and the inferior nature of a great deal of their feeling for each other, and he expected that their love would not last. He looked at them again and very strangely, for he was so used to thinking that he seldom saw anything. The look of them filled him with a simple emotion of affection in which there were some traces of pity also. What, after all, did people's faults matter in comparison with what was good in them? He resolved that he would now tell them what he felt. He quickened his pace and came up with them just as they reached the corner where the lane joined the main road. They stood still and began to laugh at him, and to ask whether the gastric juices. But he stopped them and began to speak very quickly and stiffly. Do you remember the morning after the dance he demanded? It was here we sat and you talked nonsense and Rachel made little heaps of stones. I, on the other hand, had the whole meaning of life revealed to me in a flash. He paused for a second and drew his lips together in a tight little purse. Love, he said, it seems to me to explain everything. So, on the whole, I'm very glad that you two are going to be married. He then turned round abruptly, without looking at them, and walked back to the villa. He felt both exalted and ashamed of himself for having thus said what he felt. Probably they were laughing at him. Probably they thought him a fool. And after all, had he really said what he felt? It was true that they laughed when he was gone, but the dispute about Helen, which had become rather sharp, ceased, and they became peaceful and friendly. End of Chapter 23 Chapter 24 of The Voyage Out by Virginia Woolf This LibriVox recording is in the public domain. Chapter 24 They reached the hotel rather early in the afternoon, so that most people were still lying down or sitting speechless in their bedrooms, and Mrs. Thornbury, although she had asked them to tea, was nowhere to be seen. They sat down, therefore, in the shady hall, which was almost empty, and full of the light switching sounds of air, going to and fro in a large, empty space. Yes, this armchair was the same armchair in which Rachel had sat that afternoon, when Evelyn came up, and this was the magazine she had been looking at, and this the very picture, a picture of New York by lamplight. How odd it seemed, nothing had changed. By degrees a certain number of people began to come down the stairs and to pass through the hall, and in this dim light their figures possessed a sort of grace and beauty, although they were all unknown people. Sometimes they went straight through and out into the garden by the swing door, sometimes they stopped for a few minutes and bent over the tables and began turning over the newspapers. Terrence and Rachel sat watching them through their half-closed eyelids, the Johnson's, the Parker's, the Bailey's, the Simmons's, the Lee's, the Moorley's, the Campbell's, the Gardner's. Some were dressed in white flannels and were carrying rackets under their arms, some were short, some tall, some were only children, and some perhaps were servants, but they all had their standing, their reason for following each other through the hall, their money, their position, whatever it might be. Terrence soon gave up looking at them, but he was tired, and closing his eyes he fell half asleep in his chair. Rachel watched the people for some time longer, she was fascinated by the certainty and the grace of their movements, and by the inevitable way in which they seemed to follow each other and loiter and pass on and disappear. But after a time her thoughts wandered and she began to think of the dance, which had been held in this room. Only then the room itself looked quite different. Glancing round she could hardly believe that it was the same room. It had looked so bare and so bright and formal on that night when they came into it out of the darkness. It had been filled too with little red excited faces always moving and people so brightly dressed and so animated that they did not seem in the least like real people, nor did you feel that you could talk to them. And now the room was dim and quiet, the beautiful silent people passed through it to whom you could go and say anything you liked. She felt herself amazingly secure as she sat in her armchair, and able to review not only the night of the dance, but the entire past, tenderly and humorously, as if she had been turning in a fog for a long time, and could now see exactly where she had turned. For the methods by which she had reached her present position seemed to her very strange, and the strangest thing about them was that she had not known where they were leading her. That was the strange thing, that one did not know where one was going, or what one wanted, and followed blindly, suffering so much in secret, always unprepared and amazed and knowing nothing. But one thing led to another, and by degrees something had formed itself out of nothing. And so one reached at last this calm, this quiet, this certainty, and it was this process that people called living. Perhaps then everyone really knew, as she knew now, where they were going, and things formed themselves into a pattern not only for her, but for them, and in that pattern lay satisfaction and meaning. When she looked back she could see that a meaning of some kind was apparent in the lives of her aunts, and in the brief visit of the Dalloways, whom she would never see again, and in the life of her father. The sound of Terence breathing deeply in his slumber confirmed her in her calm. She was not sleepy, although she did not see anything very distinctly, and although the figures passing through the hall became vaguer and vaguer, she believed that they all knew exactly where they were going, and the sense of their certainty filled her with comfort. For the moment she was detached and disinterested, as if she had no longer any lot in life. And she thought that she could now accept anything that came to her without being perplexed by the form in which it appeared. What was there to frighten her, or to perplex in the prospect of life? Why should this insight ever again desert her? The world was in truth so large, so hospitable, and after all it was so simple. Love, St. John had said, that seems to explain it all. Yes, but was it not the love of man for woman, of Terence for Rachel? Although they sat so close together, they had ceased to be little separate bodies. They had ceased to struggle and desire one another. There seemed to be peace between them. It might be love, but it was not the love of man for woman. Through her half-closed eyelids she watched Terence lying back in his chair, and she smiled as she saw how big his mouth was, and his chin so small, and his nose curved like a switchback, with a knob at the end. Naturally looking like that he was lazy, and ambitious and full of moods and faults. She remembered their quarrels, and in particular how they had been quarrelling about Helen that very afternoon, and she thought how often they were quarrel in their thirty or forty or fifty years, in which they would be living in the same house together, catching trains together, and getting a noise because they were so different. But all this was superficial, and had nothing to do with the life that went on beneath the eyes, and the mouth, and the chin. For that life was independent of her, and independent of everything else. So too, although she was going to marry him, and to live with him for thirty or forty or fifty years, and to quarrel, and to be close to him, she was independent of him. She was independent of everything else. Nevertheless, as St. John said, it was love that made her understand this, for she had never felt his independence, this calm, and this certainty until she fell in love with him, and perhaps this too was love. She wanted nothing else. For perhaps two minutes Miss Allen had been standing at a little distance, looking at the couple lying back so peacefully in their armchairs. She could not make up her mind whether to disturb them or not, and then, seeming to recollect something, she came across the hall. The sound of her approach woked herance, who sat up and rubbed his eyes. He heard Miss Allen talking to Rachel. Well, she was saying, this is very nice. It is very nice indeed. Getting engaged seems to be quite the fashion. It cannot often happen that two couples who had never seen each other before, meet in the same hotel and decide to get married. Then she paused and smiled, and seemed to have nothing more to say, so that Terence rose and asked her whether it was true that she had finished her book. Someone had said that she had really finished it. Her face lit up. She turned to him with a livelier expression than usual. Yes, I think I can fairly say I have finished it, she said. That is, omitting Swinburne. Barewolf to Browning. I rather like the bees myself. Barewolf to Browning, she repeated. I think that is the kind of title which might catch one's eye, on a railway bookstore. She was indeed very proud that she had finished her book, for no one knew what an amount of determination had gone to the making of it. Also she thought that it was a good piece of work, and considering what anxiety she had been in about her brother while she wrote it, she could not resist telling them a little more about it. I must confess, she continued, that if I had known how many classics there are in English literature, and how verbose the best of them conscribed to be, I should never have undertaken the work. They only allow one seventy thousand words, you see. Only seventy thousand words, Terence exclaimed. Yes, and one has to say something about everybody, Miss Allen added. That is what I find so difficult, saying something different about everybody. Then she thought that she had said enough about herself, and she asked whether they had come down to join the tennis tournament. The young people are very keen about it. It begins again in half an hour. Her gaze rested benevolently upon them both, and after a momentary pause she remarked, looking at Rachel as if she had remembered something that would serve to keep her distinct from other people. The other remarkable person who doesn't like ginger, but the kindness of the smile in her rather worn and courageous face made them feel that although she would scarcely remember them as individuals, she had laid upon them the burden of the new generation. And in that I quite agree with her, said a voice behind. Mrs. Thornbury had overheard the last few words about not liking ginger. It's associated in my mind with a horrid old aunt of ours, poor thing. She suffered dreadfully, so it isn't fair to call her horrid. Who used to give it to us when we were small, and we never had the courage to tell her we didn't like it. We had just to put it in the shrubbery. She had a big house near Bath. They began moving slowly across the hall, when they were stopped by the impact of Evelyn, who dashed into them, as though in running downstairs to catch them her legs had got beyond her control. Well, she exclaimed with her usual enthusiasm, seizing Rachel by the arm. I call this splendid. I guessed it was going to happen from the very beginning. I saw you two were made for each other. Now you've just got to tell me all about it. When's it to be? Where are you going to live? Are you both tremendously happy? But the attention of the group was diverted to Mrs Elliot, who was passing them with her eager but uncertain movement, carrying in her hands a plate and an empty hot water bottle. She would have passed them, but Mrs Thornbury went up and stopped her. Thank you. He'll expect her, she replied in answer to Mrs Thornbury's inquiry. But he's not an easy patient. He wants to know what his temperature is, and if I tell him he gets anxious, and if I don't tell him, he suspects. You know what men are when they're ill. And of course, there are none of the proper appliances, and though he seems very willing and anxious to help, here she lowered her voice mysteriously. One can't feel that Dr Rodriguez is the same as a proper doctor. If you would come and see him, Mr Hewitt, she added, I know it would cheer him up, lying there in bed all day in the flies. But I must go and find Angelo. The food here, of course, with an invalid, one wants things particularly nice, and she hurried past them in search of the head-waiter. The worry of nursing her husband to fix the plaintive frown upon her forehead. She was pale and looked unhappy, and more than unusually inefficient, and her eyes wandered more vaguely than ever from point to point. Put off thing, Mrs Thornbury exclaimed. She told them that for some days Hewitt and Elliot had been ill, and the only doctor available was the brother of the proprietor, or so the proprietor said, whose right to the title of doctor was not above suspicion. I know how wretched it is to be ill in a hotel, Mrs Thornbury remarked, once more leading the way with Rachel to the garden. I spent six weeks on my honeymoon in having typhoid in Venice, she continued. I looked back upon them as some of the happiest weeks in my life. Ah yes, she said, taking Rachel's arm. You think yourself happy now, but it's nothing to the happiness that comes afterwards, and I assure you I could find it in my heart to envy you young people. You've a much better time than we had, I may tell you. When I look back upon it, I can hardly believe how things have changed. When we were engaged, I wasn't allowed to go for walks with William alone. Someone had to always be in the room with us. I really believe I had to show my parents all his letters, though they were very fond of him, too. Indeed, I may say they looked upon him as their own son. It amuses me, she continued, to think how strict they were to us when I see how they spoil their grandchildren. The table was laid under the tree again, and taking her place before the tea cups, Mrs Thornbury beckoned and nodded until she had collected quite a number of people, Susan and Arthur and Mr Pepper, who were strolling about, waiting for the tournament to begin. A murmuring tree, a river brimming in the moonlight, Terence's words came back to Rachel, as she sat drinking the tea and listening to the words, which flowed on so lightly, so kindly, and with such silvery smoothness. This long life, and all these children, had left her very smooth. They seemed to have rubbed away the marks of individuality, and to have left only what was old and maternal. And the things you young people are going to see, Mrs Thornbury continued, she included them all in her forecast, she included them all in her maternity, although the party comprised William Pepper and Miss Allen, both of whom might have been supposed to have seen a fair share of the panorama. When I see how the world has changed in my lifetime, she went on, I can see no limit to what may happen in the next fifty years. Ah, no, Mr Pepper, I don't agree with you in the least, she laughed, interrupting his gloomy remark, about things going steadily from bad to worse. I know I ought to feel that, but I don't. I'm afraid. They're going to be much better people than we were. Surely everything goes to prove that. All round me I see women, young women, women with household cares of every sort, going out and doing things that we should not have thought it possible to do. Mr Pepper thought her sentimental and irrational, like all old women, but her manner of treating him as if he were a cross-old baby baffled him and charmed him, and he could only reply to her with a curious grimace, which was more a smile than a frown. And they remain women, Mrs Thornbury added, they give a great deal to their children. As she said this, she smiled slightly in the direction of Susan and Rachel. They did not like to be included in the same lot, but they both smiled a little self-consciously, and Arthur and Terrence glanced at each other too. She made them feel that they were all in the same boat together, and they looked at the women they were going to marry and compared them. It was inexplicable how anyone could wish to marry Rachel, incredible that anyone should be ready to spend his life with Susan. But singular though the others' taste must be, they bore each other no ill will on account of it. Indeed, they liked each other rather the better for the eccentricity of their choice. I really must congratulate you, Susan remarked, as she leant across the table for the jam. There seemed to be no foundation for Syngen's gossip about Arthur and Susan. Sunburnt and vigorous they sat side by side with their rackets across their knees, not saying much, but smiling slightly all the time. Through the thin white clothes which they wore, it was possible to see the lines of their bodies and legs, the beautiful curves of their muscles, his leanness and her flesh, and it was natural to think of the firm fleshed sturdy children that would be theirs. Their faces had too little shape in them to be beautiful, but they had clear eyes and an appearance of great health and power of endurance, for it seemed as if the blood would never cease to run in his veins, or to lie deeply and calmly in her cheeks. Their eyes, at the present moment, were brighter than usual, and while the peculiar expression of pleasure and self-confidence, which is seen in the eyes of athletes, for they had been playing tennis, and they were both first-rate at the game. Evelyn had not spoken, but she had been looking from Susan to Rachel. Well, they had both made up their minds very easily. They had done in a few weeks what it sometimes seemed to her that she would never be able to do, although they were so different, she thought that she could see in each the same look of satisfaction and completion the same calmness of manner and the same slowness of movement. It was that slowness, that confidence, that content which she hated. She thought to herself, they moved so slowly because they were not single but double, and Susan was attached to Arthur and Rachel to Terence, and for the sake of this one man, they had renounced all other men, and movement, and the real things of life. Love was all very well, and those snug domestic houses with the kitchen below and the nursery above, which were so secluded and self-contained, like little islands in the torrents of the world. But the real things were surely the things that happened, the causes, the wars, the ideals which happened in the great world outside, and went so independently of these women, turning so quietly and beautifully towards the men. She looked at them sharply. Of course they were happy and content, but there must be better things than that. Surely one could get nearer to life, one could get more out of life, one could enjoy more than they would ever do. Rachel in particular looked so young, what could she know of life? She became restless and getting up crossed over to sit beside Rachel. She reminded her that she had promised to join her club. The bother is, she went on, that I may to be able to start work seriously till October. I've just had a letter from a friend of mine, whose brother is in business in Moscow. They want me to stay with them. And as they're in the thick of all the conspiracies and anarchists, I have a good mind to stop on my way home. It sounds too thrilling. She wanted to make Rachel see how thrilling it was. My friend knows a girl of fifteen who's been sent to Siberia for life, merely because they caught her addressing a letter to an anarchist. And the letter wasn't from her either. I'd give all I have in the world to help on a revolution against the Russian government. And it's bound to come. She looked from Rachel to Terence. They were both a little touched by the sight of her remembering how lately they had been listening to evil words about her. And Terence asked what her scheme was, and she explained that she was going to found a club, a club for doing things, really doing them. She became very animated as she talked on and on, for she professed herself certain that if once twenty people, no, ten would be enough if they were keen, set about doing things instead of talking about them, she could abolish almost every evil that exists. It was brains that was needed. If only people with brains. Of course they would want a room, a nice room, in Bloomsbury, preferably, where they could meet once a week. As she talked Terence could see the traces of fading youth in her face, the lines that were being drawn by talk and excitement round her mouth and eyes. But he did not pity her, looking into those bright, rather hard and very courageous eyes. He saw that she did not pity herself, or feel any desire to exchange her own life for the more refined and orderly lives of people like himself and St. John. Although, as the years went by, the fight would become harder and harder. Perhaps, though, she would settle down. Perhaps, after all, she would marry Perot. While his mind was half occupied with what she was saying, he thought of her probable destiny, the light clouds of tobacco smoke serving to obscure his face from her eyes. Terence smote, and Arthur smote, and Evelyn smote, so that the air was full of the mist and fragrance of good tobacco. In the intervals when no one spoke, they heard far off the low murmur of the sea, as the waves quietly broke and spread the beach, with a film of water, and withdrew to break again. The cool green light fell through the leaves of the tree, and there was soft crescents and diamonds of sunshine upon the plates and the tablecloth. Mrs. Thornbury, after watching them all for some time, in silence, began to ask Rachel kindly questions. When did they all go back? Oh, they expected her father. She must want to see her father. There will be a great deal to tell him. And she looked sympathetically at Terence. He would be so happy, she felt sure. Years ago, she continued, it might have been ten or twenty years ago, she remembered meeting Mr. Vinhreys at a party, and being so much struck by his face, which was so unlike the ordinary face one sees at a party, that she had asked who he was, and she was told that it was Mr. Vinhreys, and she had always remembered the name, an uncommon name. And he had a lady with him, a very sweet-looking woman, but it was one of those dreadful London crushes where you don't talk, you only look at each other. And although she had shaken hands with Mr. Vinhreys, she didn't think they had said anything. She sighed very slightly, remembering the past. Then she turned to Mr. Pepper, who had become very dependent on her, so that he always chose a seat near her, and attended to what she was saying, although he did not often make any remark of his own. You who know everything, Mr. Pepper, she said, tell us how did those wonderful French ladies manage their salons? Did we ever do anything of the same kind in England, or do you think that there is some reason why we cannot do it in England? Mr. Pepper was pleased to explain very accurately why there has never been an English salon. There were three reasons, and they were very good ones, he said, as for himself, when he went to a party, as one was sometimes obliged to do, from a wish not to give offence, his niece, for example, had been married the other day. He walked into the middle of the room, said, ha-ha, as loud as ever he could, considered for the night, as loud as ever he could, considered that he had done his duty, and walked away again. Mrs. Thornberry protested. She was going to give a party directly, she got back, and they were all to be invited, and she should send people to watch Mr. Pepper, and if she heard that he had been caught saying, ha-ha, she would do something very dreadful indeed to him. Arthur Venning suggested that what she must do was to rig up something in the nature of a surprise, for example, of a nice old lady in a lace cap, concealing a bath of cold water, which, at a signal, could be sprung on Pepper's head, or they'd have a chair which shot him twenty feet high directly he sat on it. Susan laughed. She had done her tea, she was feeling very well contented, partly because she had been playing tennis brilliantly, and then every one was so nice, she was beginning to find it so much easier to talk, and to hold her own, even with quite clever people. For somehow clever people did not frighten her any more. Even Mr. Hurst, whom she had disliked when she first met him, really wasn't disagreeable. And poor man, he always looked so ill. Perhaps he was in love. Perhaps he had been in love with Rachel. She really shouldn't wonder. Or perhaps it was Evelyn. She was, of course, very attractive to men. Leaning forward, she went on with the conversation. She said that she thought that the reason why parties were so dull was mainly because gentlemen will not dress. Even in London, she stated, it struck her very much how people didn't think it necessary to dress in the evening. And, of course, if they didn't dress in London, they won't dress in the country. It was really quite a treat at Christmas time when there were the hunt balls and the gentlemen wore nice red coats. But Arthur didn't care for dancing, as opposed that they wouldn't go even to the ball in their little country town. She didn't think that people who were fond of one sport often care for another. Although her father was an exception. But then he was an exception in every way, such a gardener, and he knew all about birds and animals. And, of course, he was simply adored by all the old women in the village. And at the same time what he really liked best was a book. He always knew where to find him if he were wanted. He would be in his study with a book. And very likely it would be an old, old book, some fustial thing that no one else would dream of reading. She used to tell him that he would have made a first-rate old bookworm if only he hadn't had a family of six to support. And six children, she added, charmingly confident of universal sympathy, didn't leave one much time for being a bookworm. Still talking about her father, of whom she was very proud, she rose. For Arthur, upon looking at his watch, found that it was time they went back again to the tennis court. The others did not move. They're very happy, said Mrs. Thornbury, looking benignantly after them. Rachel agreed. They seemed to be so certain of themselves. They seemed to know exactly what they wanted. Do you think they are happy? Evelyn murmured to Terence in an undertone. And she hoped that he would say that he did not think them happy. But instead he said that they must go too. Go home, for they were always being late for meals, and Mrs. Ambrose, who was very stern and particular, didn't like that. Evelyn laid hold of Rachel's skirt and protested, Why should they go? It was still early, and she had so many things to say to them. No, said Terence, we must go, because we walk so slowly. We stop and look at things, and we talk. What do you talk about? Evelyn inquired, upon which he laughed and said that they talked about everything. Mrs. Thornbury went with them to the gate, trailing very slowly and gracefully across the grass and the gravel, and talking all the time about flowers and birds. She told them that she had taken up the study of botany since her daughter married, and it was wonderful what a number of flowers there were, which she had never seen, although she had lived in the country all her life, and she was now seventy-two. It was a good thing to have some occupation, which was quite independent of other people, she said, when one got old. But the odd thing was that one never felt old. She always felt that she was twenty-five, not a day more, or a day less. But of course, one couldn't expect other people to agree to that. It must be very wonderful to be twenty-five and not merely to imagine that you're twenty-five, she said, looking from one to the other with her smooth, bright glance. It must be very wonderful, very wonderful indeed. She started talking to them at the gate for a long time. She seemed reluctant that they should go.