 Chapter 4 Next morning Clarissa was up before anyone else. She dressed and was out on deck, breathing the fresh air of a calm morning, and, making the circuit of the ship for the second time, she ran straight into the lean person of Mr. Grice, the steward. She apologised and at the same time asked him to enlighten her, what were those shiny brass stands for, half glass on the top? She had been wondering and could not guess. When he had done explaining, she cried enthusiastically, I do think that to be a sailor must be the finest thing in the world. And what do you know about it? said Mr. Grice, kindling in a strange manner. Pardon me, what does any man or woman brought up in England know about the sea? They profess to know, but they don't. The bitterness with which he spoke was ominous of what was to come. He let her off to his own quarters, and sitting on the edge of a brass-bound table, looking uncommonly like a seagull, with her white tapering body and thin alert face, Mrs. Dalloway had to listen to the tirade of a fanatical man. Did she realise, to begin with, what a very small part of the world the land was? How peaceful, how beautiful, how benignant, in comparison the sea, the deep waters could sustain Europe unedited, every earthly animal died of the plague to-morrow. Mr. Grice recalled dreadful sights which he had seen in the richest city of the world, men and women standing in line, hour after hour, to receive a mug of greasy soup. And I thought of the good flesh down here, waiting and asking to be caught. I'm not exactly a Protestant, and I'm not a Catholic, but I could almost pray for the days of potpourri to come again, because of the fasts. As he talked he kept opening drawers and moving little jars. Here were the treasures which the great ocean had bestowed upon him, pale fish in greenish liquids, blobs of jelly with streaming tresses, fish with lights in their heads, they lived so deep. They have swum about among bones, Clarissa sighed. You're thinking of Shakespeare, said Mr. Grice, and taking down a copy from the shelf, co-lined with books, recited in an emphatic nasal voice, Fall fathom five thy father lies, a grandfellow Shakespeare, he said, replacing the volume. Clarissa was so glad to hear him say so. Which is your favourite play, I wonder if it's the same as mine? Henry V, said Mr. Grice, joy, cried Clarissa, it is! It was what you might call too introspective for Mr. Grice, the sonnet's too passionate. Henry V was to him the model of an English gentleman. But his favourite reading was Huxley, Herbert Spencer, and Henry George, while Emerson and Thomas Hardy he read from relaxation. He was giving Mrs. Dalloway his views upon the present state of England when the breakfast fell rung so imperiously that she had to tear herself away, promising to come back and be shown his sea-weeds. The party which had seemed so odd to her the night before, was already gathered round the table, still under the influence of sleep, and therefore uncommunicative, but her entrance sent a little flutter like a breath of air through them all. I've had the most interesting talk of my life, she exclaimed, taking her seat beside Willoughby. Do you realise that one of your men is a philosopher and a poet? Very interesting fellow, that's what I always say, said Willoughby, distinguishing Mr. Grice, though Rachel finds him a bore. He's a bore when he talks about currents, said Rachel. Her eyes were full of sleep, but Mrs. Dalloway still seemed to her wonderful. I've never met a bore yet, said Clarissa. And I should say the world was full of them, exclaimed Helen, but her beauty, which was radiant in the morning light, took the contrariness from her words. I agree that it's the worst one can possibly say of any one, said Clarissa. How much rather one would be a murderer than a bore, she added, with her usual air of saying something profound. One can fancy liking a murderer. It's the same with dogs. Some dogs are awful boars, poor dears. It happened that Richard was sitting next to Rachel. She was curiously conscious of his presence and appearance, his well-cut clothes, his crackling shirt front, his cuffs with blue rings round them, and the square tipped very clean fingers, with the red stone on the little finger of the left hand. We had a dog who was a bore and knew it, he said, addressing her in cool, easy tones. He was a Sky Terrier, one of those long chaps with little feet poking out from their hair, like… like caterpillars, no, like sofas, I should say. Well, we had another dog at the same time, a black brisk animal. A ship-a-key, I think you call them. You can't imagine a greater contrast. The sky so slow and deliberate, looking up at you like some old gentleman in the club, as much as to say, you don't really mean it, do you, and a ship-a-key as quick as a knife. You know, like the sky best, I must confess, there was something pathetic about him. The story seemed to have no climax. What happened to him? Rachel asked. It's a very sad story, said Richard, lowering his voice and peeling an apple. He followed my wife in the car one day, and got run over by a brute of a cyclist. Was he killed? asked Rachel. But Clarissa at her end of the table had overheard. Don't talk of it! She cried. It's a thing I can't bear to think of to this day. Surely the tears stood in her eyes. That's the painful thing about pets, said Mr. Dalloway. They die. The first sorrow I can remember was for the death of a door mouse. I regret to say that I sat upon it. Still, that didn't make one any the less sorry. Here lies the duck, that Samuel Johnson sat on, eh? I was big for my age. Then we had canaries. He continued, a pair of ringed doves, a lemur, and at one time a martin. Did you live in the country? Rachel asked him. We lived in the country for six months of the year. When I say we, I mean four sisters, a brother and myself, there's nothing like coming of a large family. Sisters particularly are delightful. Dick, you were horribly spoiled, cried Clarissa across the table. No, no. Appreciated, said Richard. Samuel had other questions on the tip of her tongue, or rather one enormous question which she did not, in the least, know how to put into words. The talk appeared too airy to admit of it. Please tell me everything. That was what she wanted to say. He had drawn apart one little chink and showed astonishing treasures. It seemed to her incredible that a man like that should be willing to talk to her. He had sisters and pets and once lived in the country. She stirred her tea round and round. The bubbles which swam and clustered in the cup seemed to her like the union of their minds. The talk, meanwhile, raced past her and when Richard suddenly stated in a jocular tone of voice, I'm sure Miss Vinray's now has secret leanings towards Catholicism. She had no idea what to answer and Helen could not help laughing at the start she gave. However, breakfast was over and Missy Salloway was rising. I always think religion like collecting beetles, she said, summing up the discussion as she went up the stairs with Helen. One person has a passion for black beetles, another hasn't. There's no good arguing about it. What's your black beetle now? I suppose it's my children, said Helen. Ah, that's different, Clarissa breathed. Do tell me. You have a boy, haven't you? Isn't it detestable leaving them? It was as though a blue shadow had fallen across a pool. Their eyes became deeper and their voices more cordial. Instead of joining them as they began to pace the deck, Rachel was indignant with the prosperous matrons, who made her feel outside their world and motherless, and turning back she left them abruptly. She slammed the door of her room and pulled out her music. It was all old music, Bach and Beethoven, Mozart and Purcell. The page is yellow, the engraving rough to the finger. In three minutes she was deep in a very difficult, very classical fugue, fugue in A, and over her face came a queer, remote, impersonal expression of complete absorption and anxious satisfaction. Now she stumbled, now she faltered and had to play the same bar twice over, but an invisible line seemed to string the notes together from which Rosa's shape a building. She was so far absorbed in this work, for it was really difficult to find how all these sounds should stand together, and drew upon the whole of her faculties, that she never heard a knock at the door. It was burst impulsively open and Mrs. Dalloway stood in the room, leaving the door open, so that a strip of the white deck and of the blue sea appeared through the opening. The shape of the Bach fugue crashed to the ground. Don't let me interrupt, Clarissa implored. I heard you playing and I couldn't resist. I adore Bach. Rachel flushed and fumbled her fingers in her lap. She stood up awkwardly. It's too difficult, she said, but you were playing quite splendidly. I ought to have stayed outside. No, said Rachel. She slid Cooper's letters and Wuthering Heights out of the armchair, so that Clarissa was invited to sit there. What a dear little room, she said, looking round. Oh, Cooper's letters. I've never read them. Are they nice? Rather dull, said Rachel. He wrote awfully well, didn't he, said Clarissa, if one likes that kind of thing. Finished his sentences and all that. Wuthering Heights. Ah, that's more in my line. I really couldn't exist without the Brontes. Don't you love them? Still, on the whole, I'd rather live without them than without Jane Austen. Likely and at random, though she spoke, her manor conveyed an extraordinary degree of sympathy and desire to befriend. Jane Austen. I don't like Jane Austen, said Rachel. You monster, Clarissa exclaimed. I can only just forgive you. Tell me why. She's so… so… Well, so like a tight plat, Rachel floundered. Ah, I see what you mean, but I don't agree, and you won't when you're older. At your age I only like Shelly, I can remember sobbing over him in the garden. He has outsoared the shadow of our night, envy and columny, and hate and pain, you remember, can touch him not and torture not again, from the contagion of the world slow stain. How divine, and yet what nonsense. She looked likely round the room. I always think it's living, not dying, that counts. I really respect some snuffy old stockbroker who's gone on adding up column after column all his days, and trotting back to his villa at Brickston with some old pug doggy worships, and a dreary little wife sitting at the end of the table, and going off to Margate for a fortnight. I assure you I know heaps like that. Well they seem to me really nobler than poets whom everyone worships just because they're geniuses and die young, but I don't expect you agree with me. She pressed Rachel's shoulder. Um, she went on quoting, unrest which men miscall delight. When you're my age you'll see that the world is crammed with delightful things. I think young people make such a mistake about that, not letting themselves be happy. I sometimes think that happiness is the only thing that counts. I don't know you well enough to say, but I should guess you might be a little inclined to. When one's young and attractive, I'm going to say it, everything's at one's feet. She glanced round as much as to say, not only a few stuffy books and bar. I long to ask questions, she continued, you interest me so much. If I'm impertinent, you must just box my ears. And I, I want to ask questions, said Rachel, with such earnestness that Mrs. Dalloway had to check her smile. Do you mind if we walk? She said, the air's so delicious. She snuffed it like a racehorse as they shut the door and stood on deck. Isn't it good to be alive? She exclaimed, and drew Rachel's arm within hers. Look, look, how exquisite! The shores of Portugal were beginning to lose their substance, but the land was still the land, though at a great distance. They could distinguish the little towns that were sprinkled in the folds of the hills and the smoke rising faintly. The towns appeared to be very small in comparison with the great purple mountains behind them. Honestly, though, Sir Clarissa, having looked, I don't like views, they're too inhuman. They walked on. How odd it is, she continued impulsively, this time yesterday we'd never met. I was packing in a stuffy little room in the hotel. We know absolutely nothing about each other, and yet I feel as if I did know you. You have children, your husband was in Parliament, you've never been to school and you live with my aunts at Richmond. Richmond, you see my aunts like the park, they like the quiet, and you don't. I understand, Clarissa laughed. I like walking in the park alone, but not with the dogs, she finished. No, and some people are dogs, aren't they? Sir Clarissa, as if she had guessed a secret, but not everyone, oh no, not everyone. Not everyone, said Rachel, and stopped. I can quite imagine you walking alone, Sir Clarissa, and thinking in a little world of your own. But how you will enjoy it some day? I shall enjoy walking with a man, is that what you mean, said Rachel, regarding Mrs Dalloway with her large inquiring eyes. I wasn't thinking of a man particularly, said Clarissa, but you will. No, I shall never marry, Rachel determined. I shouldn't be so sure of that, said Clarissa. A side-long glance told Rachel that she found her attractive, although she was inexplicably amused. Why do people marry, Rachel asked. That's what you're going to find out, Clarissa laughed. Rachel followed her eyes and found that they rested for a second on the robust figure of Richard Dalloway, who was engaged in striking a match on the sole of his boot, while Willoughby expounded something which seemed to be of great interest to them both. There's nothing like it, she concluded. Do tell me about the Ambroses, or am I asking too many questions? I find you easy to talk to, said Rachel. A short sketch of the Ambroses was, however, somewhat perfunctory, and contained little but the fact that Mr Ambrose was her uncle. Your mother's brother? When a name has dropped out of use, the lightest touch upon it tells. Mrs Dalloway went on, Are you like your mother? No, she was different, said Rachel. She was overcome by an intense desire to tell Mrs Dalloway things she had never told anyone, things she had not realised herself until this moment. I am lonely, she began. I want." She did not know what she wanted, so that she could not finish the sentence, but her lip quivered. But it seemed that Mrs Dalloway was able to understand without words. I know, she said, actually putting one arm round Rachel's shoulder. When I was your age, I wanted too. No one understood until I met Richard. He gave me all I wanted, his man and woman as well. Her eyes rested upon Mr Dalloway, leaning upon the rail, still talking. Don't think I say that, because I am his wife. I see his faults more clearly than I see anyone else's. What one wants in the person one lives with, is that they should keep one at one's best. I often wonder what I've done to be so happy," she exclaimed, and her tears slid down her cheek. She wiped it away, squeezed Rachel's hand, and exclaimed, How good life is! At that moment standing out in the fresh breeze, with the sun upon the waves and Mrs Dalloway's hand upon her arm, it seemed indeed as if life which had been unnamed before was infinitely wonderful, and too good to be true. Here Helen passed them, and seeing Rachel arm in arm with a comparative stranger, looking excited, was amused, but at the same time slightly irritated. But they were immediately joined by Richard, who had enjoyed a very interesting talk with Willoughby, and was in a sociable mood. "'Observe my Panama,' he said, touching the brim of his hat. "'Are you aware, Miss Vinray, how much can be done to induce fine weather by appropriate headdress? I have determined that it is a hot summer day. I warn you that nothing you can say will shake me. Therefore I am going to sit down. I advise you to follow my example.'" Three chairs in a row invited them to be seated. Leaning back, Richard surveyed the waves. "'That's a very pretty blue,' he said, but there's a little too much of it. Variety is essential to a view. As if you have hills, you ought to have a river. If a river, hills. The best view in the world, in my opinion, is that from the Boar's hill, on a fine day. It must be a fine day, mark you. A rug? Oh, thank you, my dear. In that case, you have also the advantage of associations. The paths." "'Do you want to talk, Dick, or shall I read aloud?' Clarissa had fetched a book with the rugs. "'Persuasion,' announced Richard, examining the volume. "'That's for Miss Vinray,' said Clarissa. "'She can't bear our beloved Jane.'" "'That, if I may say so, is because you have not read her,' said Richard. "'She is, incomparably, the greatest female writer we possess. She is the greatest,' he continued, and for this reason she does not attempt to write like a man. Every other woman does, on that account, I don't read him. "'Produce your instances, Miss Vinray,' he went on, joining his fingertips. "'I'm ready to be converted.'" He waited, while Rachel vainly tried to vindicate her sex from the slight he put upon it. "'I'm afraid he's right,' said Clarissa. "'He generally is the wretch.'" "'I brought persuasion,' she went on, because I thought it was a little less threadbare than the others. "'Though, Dick, it's no good you're pretending to know Jane by heart, considering that she always sends you to sleep.' "'After the labours of legislation, I deserve sleep,' said Richard. "'You're not to think about those guns,' said Clarissa, seeing that his eye, passing over the waves, still sought the land meditatively, or about navies or empires or anything.' So saying, she opened the book and began to read. Sir Walter Elliott, of Kellynch Hall in Somersetshire, was a man who, for his own amusement, never took up any book but the baronetage. "'Don't you know, Sir Walter?' There he found occupation for an idle hour, and consolation in a distressed one. She does write well, doesn't she?' "'There,' she read on in a slightly humorous voice, she was determined that Sir Walter should take her husband's mind off the guns of Britain, and divert him in an exquisite, quaint, sprightly and slightly ridiculous world. After a time it appeared that the sun was sinking in that world, and the point's becoming softer. Rachel looked up to see what caused the change. Richard's eyelids were closing and opening, opening and closing. God-nasal breath announced that he no longer considered appearances. That he was sound asleep. "'Trayamph,' Clarissa whispered at the end of a sentence. Suddenly she raised her hand in protest. A sailor hesitated. She gave the book to Rachel and stepped lightly to take the message. Mr. Grice wished to know if it was convenient, etc. She followed him. Ridley, who had prowled unheeded, started forward, stopped, and, with a gesture of disgust, strode off to his study. The sleeping politician was left in Rachel's charge. She read a sentence and took a look at him. In sleep he looked like a coat hanging at the end of a bed. There were all the wrinkles, and the sleeves and trousers kept their shape, though no longer filled out by legs and arms. You can then best judge the age and state of the coat. She looked him all over until it seemed to her that he must protest. He was a man of forty, perhaps, and here there were lines round his eyes, and there curious clefts in his cheeks. Slightly battered he appeared, but dogged and in the prime of life. Sisters and a door-mouse and some canaries, Rachel murmured, never taking her eyes off him. I wonder, I wonder! She ceased, her chin upon her hand still looking at him. A bell chimed behind them, and Richard raised his head. Then he opened his eyes, which wore for a second the queer look of a short-sighted persons whose spectacles are lost. It took him a moment to recover from the impropriety of having snored, and possibly grunted, before a young lady. To wake up and find oneself left alone with one was also slightly disconcerting. I suppose I've been dozing, he said. What's happened to everyone? Clarissa. Mrs. Dalloway has gone to look at Mr. Grice's fish. Rachel replied. I might have guessed, said Richard. There's a common occurrence. And how have you improved the shining hour? Have you become a convert? I don't think I've read a line, said Rachel. And that's what I always find. There are too many things to look at, and I find nature very stimulating myself. The best ideas have come to me out of doors. When you were walking, walking, riding, yachting, I suppose the most momentous conversations of my life took place while perambulating the great court at Trinity. I was at both universities. It was a fad of my father's. He thought it broadening to the mind. I think I agree with him. I can remember what an age ago it seems, settling the bases of a future state with the present secretary for India. We thought ourselves very wise. I'm not sure we weren't. We were happy, Miss Vinray's, and we were young, gifts which make for wisdom. Have you done what you said you'd do? She asked. The searching question. I answer yes and no. If on the one hand I have not accomplished what I set out to accomplish, which of us does, on the other hand I can fairly say this, I have not lowered my ideal. He looked resolutely at a seagull, as though his ideal flew on the wings of the bird. But, said Rachel, what is your ideal? There you asked too much, Miss Vinray, said Richard playfully. She could only say that she wanted to know, and Richard was sufficiently amused to answer. Well, how shall I reply? In one word, unity. Unity of aim, of dominion, of progress. The dispersion of the best ideas over the greatest area. The English? I grant that the English seem on the whole whiter than most men, their records cleaner. But good Lord, don't run away with the idea that I don't see the drawbacks, horrors, unmentionable things done in our very midst. I'm under no illusions. Few people, I suppose, have fewer illusions than I have. Have you ever been in a factory, Miss Vinray's? No, I suppose not. I may say, I hope not. As for Rachel, she had scarcely walked through a poor street, and always under the escort of father, maid or aunts. I was going to say that if you'd ever seen the kind of thing that's going on round you, you'd understand what it is that makes me and men like me politicians. You asked me a moment ago whether I'd done what I'd set out to do. Well, when I consider my life, there is one fact I admit the time proud of, owing to me some thousands of girls in Lancashire, and many thousands to come after them, can spend an hour every day in the open air, which their mothers had to spend over their looms. I'm prouder of that, I own, than I should be, of writing Keats and Shelley into the bargain. It became painful to Rachel to be one of those who write Keats and Shelley. She liked Richard Dalloway, and warmed as he warmed. He seemed to mean what he said. I know nothing, she exclaimed. It's far better that you should know nothing, he said paternally. And you wrong yourself, I'm sure. You play very nicely, I'm told, and I've no doubt you've read heaps of learning books. Elderly Banta would no longer check her. You talk of unity, she said. You ought to make me understand. I never allow my wife to talk politics, he said seriously. For this reason it is impossible for human beings constituted as they are, both to fight and to have ideals. If I have preserved mine, as I am thankful to say that in great measure I have, it is due to the fact that I have been able to come home to my wife in the evening and to find that she has spent her day in calling, music, play with the children, domestic duties, what she will. Her illusions have not been destroyed. She gives me courage to go on. The strain of public life is very great, he added. This made him appear a battered martyr, parting every day with some of the finest gold in the service of mankind. I can't think, Rachel exclaimed, how anyone does it. Explain, Miss Vinray said Richard, this is a matter I want to clear up. His kindness was genuine and she determined to take the chance he gave her, although to talk to a man of such worth and authority made her heart beat. It seems to me like this she began doing her best first to recollect and then to expose her shivering private visions. There's an old widow in her room somewhere, let us suppose in the suburbs of Leeds. Richard bent his head to show that he accepted the widow. In London you're spending your life talking, writing things, getting bills through, missing what seems natural. The result of it all is that she goes to her cupboard and finds a little more tea, a few lumps of sugar, or a little less tea and a newspaper. Widows all over the country, I admit, do this. Still there's the mind of the widow, the affections, those you leave untouched, but you waste your own. If the widow goes to the cupboard and finds it bare, Richard answered, A spiritual outlook we may admit will be affected. If I may pick holes in your philosophy, Ms. Vinres, which has its merits, I would point out that a human being is not a set of compartments, but an organism. Imagination, Ms. Vinres, use your imagination. That's where you young liberals fail. Conceive the world as a whole. Now, for your second point, when you assert that in trying to set the house in order for the benefit of the young generation, I'm wasting my higher capabilities, I totally disagree with you, I can conceive no more exalted aim, to be the citizen of the empire. Look at it in this way, Ms. Vinres. Conceive the state as a complicated machine. We citizens are part of that machine. Some fulfill more important duties. Others, perhaps I am one of them, serve only to connect some obscure parts of the mechanism, concealed from the public eye. Yet if the meanest screw fails in its task, the proper working of the whole is imperiled. It was impossible to combine the image of the lean black widow, gazing out of her window and longing for someone to talk to, with the image of a vast machine, such as one sees in South Kensington, thumping, thumping, thumping. The attempt to communication have been a failure. We don't seem to understand each other, she said. Shall I say something that will make you very angry? He replied. It won't, said Rachel. Well then, no woman has what I may call the political instinct. You have very great virtues, I am the first, I hope, to admit that, but I have never met a woman who even saw what is meant by statesmanship. I am going to make you still more angry. I hope that I shall never meet such a woman. Now, Miss Vin-Race, are we enemies for life? Vanity, irritation and a thrusting desire to be understood urged her to make another attempt. Under the streets, in the sewers, in the wires, in the telephones, there is something alive, is that what you mean? In things like dust carts and men mending roads, you feel that all the time when you walk about London, and when you turn on a tap, and the water comes. Certainly, said Richard, I understand you to mean that the whole of modern society is based upon cooperative effort. If only more people would realise that, Miss Vin-Race, there would be fewer of your old widows in solitary lodgings. Rachel considered. Are you a liberal or are you a conservative, she asked. I call myself a conservative for convenient sake, said Richard, smiling, but there is more in common between the two parties and people generally allow. There was a pause which did not come on Rachel's side from any lack of things to say. As usual she could not say them and was further confused by the fact that the time for talking probably ran short. She was haunted by absurd jumbled ideas. How if one went back far enough everything perhaps was intelligible? Everything was in common, for the mammoths who pastured in the fields of Richmond High Street had turned into paving stones and boxes full of ribbon and her aunts. Did you say you lived in the country when you were a child, she asked. Crude as her manners seemed to him, Richard was flattered. There could be no doubt that her interest was genuine. I did, he smiled. And what happened, she asked, or do I ask too many questions? I'm flattered, I assure you, but let me see. What happened? Well, riding, lessons, sisters. There was an enchanted rubbish heap, I remember, where all kinds of queer things happened, aren't what things impress children. I can remember the look of the place to this day. It's a fallacy to think that children are happy, they're not, they're unhappy. I've never suffered so much as I did when I was a child. Why? She asked. I didn't get on well with my father, said Richard shortly. He was a very able man, but hard. Well, it makes one determined not to sin in that way oneself. Children never forget injustice. They forgive heaps of things grown up people mind, but that sin is the unpardonable sin. Mind you, I dare say I was a difficult child to manage, but when I think what I was ready to give, no, I was more sinned against than sinning, and then I went to school where I did fairly well, and then, as I say, my father sent me to both universities. You know, Miss Vin-Race, you've made me think, how little, after all, one can tell anybody about one's life. Here I sit, there you sit, both, I doubt not, chock full of the most interesting experiences, ideas, emotions. Yet how communicate? I've told you what every second person you meet might tell you. I don't think so, she said, it's the way of saying things, isn't it? Not the things. True, said Richard, perfectly true. He paused. When I look back over my life, I'm forty-two, what are the great facts that stand out? What were the revelations, if I may call them so? The misery of the poor, and, and pitched over, love. Upon that word he lowered his voice. It was a word that seemed to unveil the skies for Rachel. It's an odd thing to say to a young lady, he continued. But have you any idea what I mean by that? No, of course not. I don't use the word in a conventional sense. I use it as young men use it. Girls are kept very ignorant, aren't they? Perhaps it's wise, perhaps. You don't know. She spoke as if he had lost consciousness of what he was saying. No, I don't, she said, scarcely speaking above her breath. Worship stick over there, look! Clarissa released from Mr. Grythe, appreciative of all his seaweeds, skimmed towards them, gesticulating. She had sighted two sinister grey vessels, low in the water, and bold as bone, one closely following the other with the look of the eyeless beast seeking their prey. Consciousness returned to Richard instantly. By George, he exclaimed, and stood shielding his eyes. Our stick, said Clarissa, the Mediterranean fleet, he answered. The euphorism was slowly dipping her flag. Richard raised his hat. Convulsively, Clarissa squeezed Rachel's hand. Aren't you glad to be English, she said? The warships drew past, casting a curious effect of discipline and sadness upon the waters, and it was not until they were again invisible that people spoke to each other naturally. At lunch the talk was all of valor and death, and the magnificent qualities of British admirals. Clarissa quoted one poet, Willoughby quoted another. Life on board a man of war was splendid, so they agreed, and sailors, whenever one met them, were quite especially nice and simple. This being so, no one liked it when Helen remarked that it seemed to her as wrong to keep sailors as to keep a zoo, and that as for dying on a battlefield, surely it was time we ceased to praise courage, or to write bad poetry about it, snarled pepper. But Helen was really wondering why Rachel, sitting silent, looked so queer and flushed. End of Chapter 4. She was not able to follow up her observations, however, or to come to any conclusion, for by one of those accidents which are liable to happen at sea, the whole course of their lives was now put out of order. Then at tea the floor rose beneath their feet and pitched too low again, and at dinner the ship seemed to groan and strain as though a lash were descending. She who had been a broad-backed stray horse upon whose hindquarters pierrows might waltz, became a colt in a field. The plates slanted away from the knives, and Mrs. Dalloway's face blanched for a second, and she helped herself, and saw the potatoes roll this way and that. Willoughby, of course, extolled the virtues of his ship, and quoted what had been said of her by experts and distinguished passengers, for he loved his own possessions. Still, dinner was uneasy, and directly the ladies were alone, Clarissa owned, that she would be better off in bed, and went, smiling bravely. This morning the storm was on them, and no politeness could ignore it. Mrs. Dalloway stayed in her room. Richard faced three meals, eating valiantly at each, but at the third, certain glazed asparagus swimming in oil, finally conquered him. That beats me, he said, and withdrew. Now we are all alone once more, remarked William Pepper, looking round the table, but no one was ready to engage him in talk, and the meal ended in silence. On the following day they met, but as flying leaves met in the air. Sick they were not, but the wind propelled them hastily into rooms violently downstairs. They passed each other gasping on deck, they shouted across tables, they wore fur coats, and Helen was never seen without a bandana on her head. The comfort they retreated to their cabins, where with tightly wedged feet they let the ship bounce and tumble. Their sensations were the sensations of potatoes in a sack on a galloping horse. The world outside was merely a violent grey tumult. For two days they had a perfect rest from their old emotions. Rachel had just enough consciousness to suppose herself a donkey on the summit of a moor in a hailstorm, with its coat blown into furrows. Then she became a wizened tree, perpetually driven back by the salt Atlantic gale. Helen on the other hand staggered to Mrs. Dalloway's door. Not could not be heard for the slamming of doors and the battering of wind, and entered. There were basins, of course, Mrs. Dalloway lay half-raised on a pillow and did not open her eyes. Then she murmured, Oh, Dick, is that you? Helen shouted, for she was thrown against the washstand. How are you? Clarissa opened one eye. It gave her an incredibly dissipated appearance. Awful, she gasped, her lips were white inside. Planting her feet wide, Helen contrived to pour champagne into a tumbler with a toothbrush in it. Champagne, she said. There's a toothbrush in it. murmured Clarissa, and smiled. It might have been the contortion of one weeping. She drank. Disgusting, she whispered, indicating the basins. Relics of humour still played over her face like moonshine. Want more, Helen shouted. Speech was again beyond Clarissa's reach. The wind laid the ship shivering on her side. Pale agonies crossed Mrs. Dalloway in waves. When the curtains flapped, grey lights puffed across her. Between the spasms of the storm, Helen made the curtain fast, shook the pillows, stretched the bed-clothes, and smoothed the hot nostrils and forehead with cold scent. You are good, Clarissa gasped, horrid mess. She was trying to apologise for white underclothes fallen and scattered on the floor. For one second she opened a single eye and saw that the room was tidy. That's nice, she gasped. Helen left her. Far, far away she knew that she felt a kind of liking for Mrs. Dalloway. She could not help respecting her spirit and her desire, even in the throes of sickness for a tidy bedroom. Her petticoats, however, rose above her knees. Quite suddenly the storm relaxed its grasp. It happened at tea. The expected paroxysm of the blast gave out just as it reached its climax and dwindled away, and the ship, instead of taking the usual plunge, went steadily. The monotonous order of plunging and rising, roaring and relaxing, was interfered with, and everyone at table looked up and felt something loosen within them. The strain was slackened and human feelings began to peep again, as they do when daylight shows at the end of a tunnel. Try a turn with me, riddly called across to Rachel. Foolish! cried Helen, but they went stumbling up the ladder. Choked by the wind, their spirits rose with a rush, for on the skirts of all the great tumult was a misty spot of gold. Instantly the world dropped into shape. They were no longer atoms flying in the void, but people riding a triumphant ship on the back of the sea. Wind and space were banished, the world floated like an apple in a tub, and the mind of man, which had been unmoored also, once more attached itself to the old beliefs. Everything scrambled twice round the ship, and received many sound cuffs from the wind. They saw a sailor's face positively shine golden. They looked and beheld a complete yellow circle of sun. Next minute it was traversed by sailing's stands of cloud, and then completely hidden. By breakfast the next morning, however, the sky was swept clean. The waves, although steep, were blue, and after their view of the strange underworld inhabited by phantoms, people began to live among teapots and loaves of bread, with greater zest than ever. Richard and Clarissa, however, still remained on the borderland. She did not attempt to sit up. Her husband stood on his feet, contemplated his waistcoat and trousers, shook his head, and then lay down again. The inside of his brain was still rising and falling like the sea on the stage. At four o'clock he woke from sleep and saw the sunlight make a vivid angle across the red-plush curtains, and the grey-tweed trousers. The ordinary world outside slid into his mind, and by the time he was dressed he was an English gentleman again. He stood beside his wife. She pulled him down to her by the lapel of his coat, kissed him, and held him fast for a minute. Go and get a breath of air, Dick, she said. You look quite washed out. How nice you smell! And be polite to that woman. She was so kind to me. Thereupon Mrs. Dalloway turned to the cool side of her pillow, terribly flattened, but still invincible. Richard found Helen talking to her brother-in-law over two dishes of yellow cake and smooth bread and butter. You look very ill, she exclaimed, on seeing him. Come and have some tea. He remarked that the hands that moved about the cups were beautiful. I hear you've been very good to my wife, he said. She's had an awful time of it. You came in and fed her with champagne. Were you among the saved yourself? I? Oh, I haven't been sick for twenty years, seasick, I mean. There are three stages of convalescence, I always say. In the hearty voice of Willoughby. The milk stage, the bread and butter stage, and the roast beef stage. I should say you were at the bread and butter stage. He handed him the plate. Now I should advise a hearty tea. Then a brisk walk on deck, and by dinnertime you'll be clamouring for beef, eh? He went off laughing, excusing himself on the score of business. What a splendid fellow he is, said Richard, always keen on something. Yes, Sir Helen, he's always been like that. This is a great undertaking of his, Richard continued. It's a business that won't stop with ships, I should say. We shall see him in Parliament, or I'm much mistaken. He's the kind of man we want in Parliament, the man who has done things. But Helen was not much interested in her brother-in-law. I expect your heads aching, isn't it? she asked, pouring a fresh cup. Well, it is, said Richard. It's humiliating to find what a slave one is to one's body in this world. Do you know I can never work without a kettle on the hob? As often as not, I don't drink tea, but I must feel that I can if I want to. That's very bad for you, said Helen. It shortens one's life, but I'm afraid, Mrs. Ambrose, we politicians must make up our minds to that at the outset. We've got to burn the candle at both ends, or— You've cooked your goose, said Helen brightly. We can't make you take us seriously, Mrs. Ambrose, he protested. May I ask how you've spent your time reading philosophy? He saw the black book. Metaphysics and fishing, he exclaimed, if I had to live again I believe I should devote myself to one or the other. He began turning the pages. Good, then, is indefinable, he read out, how jolly to think that's going on still. So far as I know there is only one ethical writer, Professor Henry Citwick, who has clearly recognised and stated this fact. That's just the kind of thing we used to talk about when we were boys. I can remember arguing until five in the morning with Duffy, now Secretary for India, pacing round and round those cloisters until we decided it was too late to go to bed, and we went for a ride instead. Whether we ever came to any conclusion, that's another matter. Still it's the arguing that counts. It's things like that that stand out in life, nothing's been quite so vivid since. It's the philosophers, it's the scholars. He continued, they're the people who pass the torch, who keep the light burning by which we live. Being a politician doesn't necessarily blind one to that, Mrs Ambrose. No, why should it, said Helen, but can you remember if your wife takes sugar? She lifted the tray and went off with it to Mrs Allaway. Richard twisted a muffler twice round his throat and struggled up on deck. His body, which had grown white and tender in a dark room, tingled all over in the fresh air. He felt himself a man undoubtedly in the prime of life. Pride glowed in his eye, as he let the wind buffet him and stood firm. With his head slightly lowered, his sheared round corners strode uphill and met the blast. There was a collision, for a second he could not see what the body was he had run into. Sorry, sorry, it was Rachel who apologised. They both laughed, too much blown about to speak. She drove open the door of her room and stepped into its calm. In order to speak to her it was necessary that Richard should follow. They stood in a whirlpool of wind, papers began flying round in circles. The door crashed too, and they tumbled, laughing into chairs. Richard sat upon Bach. My word, what a tempest, he exclaimed. Fine, isn't it? said Rachel. Certainly the struggle and wind had given her a decision she lacked. Red was in her cheeks, and her hair was down. Oh, what fun, he cried. What am I sitting on? Is this your room? How jolly! There, sit there, she commanded. Cooper slid once more. How jolly to meet again, said Richard. It seems an age. Cooper's letters, Bach, Wuthering Heights, is this where you meditate on the world and then come out and pose poor politicians with questions? In the intervals of seasickness, I've thought a lot of our talk. I assure you, you made me think. I made you think, but why? What solitary icebergs we are, Miss Vin-Race, how little we can communicate. There are lots of things I should like to tell you about to hear your opinion of. Have you ever read Burke? Burke, she repeated, who was Burke? No? Well, then we shall make a point of sending you a copy. The speech on the French Revolution, the American Rebellion, which shall it be, I wonder. He noted something in his pocketbook. And then you must write and tell me what you think of it. This reticence, this isolation, that's what's the matter with modern life. Now, tell me about yourself. What are your interests and occupations? I should imagine that you are a person with very strong interests. Of course you are. Good God, when I think of the age we live in, with its opportunities and possibilities, the mass of things to be done and enjoyed, why haven't we ten lives instead of one? But about yourself. You see, I'm a woman, said Rachel. I know, I know, said Richard, throwing his head back, and drawing his fingers across his eyes. How strange to be a woman, a young and beautiful woman. He continued sententiously, has the whole world at her feet. That's true, Ms. Vinres. You have an inestimable power, for good or for evil. What couldn't you do? He broke off. What? asked Rachel. You have beauty, he said. The ship lurched. Rachel fell slightly forward. Richard took her in his arms and kissed her. Holding her tight he kissed her passionately, so that she felt the hardness of his body, and the roughness of his cheek printed upon hers. She fell back in her chair with tremendous beats of the heart, each of which sent black waves across her eyes. He clasped his forehead in his hands. You tempt me, he said. The tone of his voice was terrifying. He seemed choked in fright. They were both trembling. Rachel stood up and went. Her head was cold, her knees shaking, and the physical pain of the emotion was so great that she could only keep herself moving above the great leaps of her heart. She lent upon the rail of the ship and gradually ceased to feel, for a chill of body and mind crept over her. Far out between the waves, little black and white sea-birds were riding, rising and falling, with smooth and graceful movements. In the hollows of the waves they seemed singularly detached and unconcerned. You're peaceful, she said. She became peaceful, too, at the same time possessed with a strange exultation. Life seemed to hold infinite possibilities she had never guessed at. She lent upon the rail and looked over the troubled grey waters where the sunlight was fitfully scattered upon the crests of the waves, until she was cold and absolutely calm again. Nevertheless something wonderful had happened. At dinner, however, she did not feel exalted, but merely uncomfortable, as if she and Richard had seen something together which is hidden in ordinary life, so that they did not like to look at each other. Richard slid his eyes over her uneasily once, and never looked at her again. Formal platitudes were manufactured with effort, but Willoughby was kindled. Beef for Mr. Dalloway, he shouted, come now, after that walk here at the beef-stage Dalloway. Wonderful masculine stories followed about brightened Israeli, and coalition governments, wonderful stories which made the people at the dinner-tables seem featureless and small. After dinner, sitting alone with Rachel under the great swinging lamp, Helen was struck by her pallor. It once more occurred to her that there was something strange in the girl's behaviour. �You look tired, are you tired?� she asked. �Not tired,� said Rachel. �Oh, yes, I suppose I am tired.� Helen advised bed, and she went, not seeing Richard again. She must have been very tired, for she fell asleep at once. But after an hour or two of dreamless sleep, she dreamt. She dreamt that she was walking down a long tunnel, which grew so narrow by degrees that she could touch the damp bricks on either side. At length the tunnel opened and became a vault. She found herself trapped in it, bricks meeting her wherever she turned, alone with a little deformed man who squatted on the floor gibbering with long nails. His face was pitted and like the face of an animal. The wall behind him oozed with damp, which collected into drops and slid down. Still and cold as death she lay, not daring to move, until she broke the agony by tossing herself across the bed, and woke crying, �Oh!� light showed her the familiar things, her clothes fallen off the chair, the water jug gleaming white, but the horror did not go at once. She felt herself pursued, so that she got up and actually locked the door. A voice moaned for her, eyes desired her. All night long barbarian men harassed the ship, they came scuffling down the passages and stopped to snuffle at her door. She could not sleep again. CHAPTER 6 That's the tragedy of life, as I always say, said Mrs. Dalloway, beginning things and having to end them. Still I'm not going to let this end, if you're willing. It was the morning, the sea was calm, and the ship once again was anchored not far from another shore. She was dressed in her long fur cloak, with the veils wound around her head, and once more the rich boxes stood on top of each other, so that the scene of a few days back seemed to be repeated. �Do you suppose we shall ever meet in London?� said Ridley, ironically. �You'll have forgotten all about me by the time you step out there.� He pointed to the shore of the little bay, where they could now see the separate trees with moving branches. �How horrid you are!� she laughed. �Rachel's coming to see me anyhow. The instant you get back!� she said, pressing Rachel's arm. �Now you've no excuse.� With a silver pencil she wrote her name and address on the fly-leaf of persuasion, and gave the book to Rachel. Sailors were shouldering the luggage and people were beginning to congregate. �You're Captain Cobbled, Mr. Grice, Willoughby, Helen, and an obscure, grateful man in a blue jersey.� �Oh, it's time!� said Clarissa. �Well, good-bye, I do like you.� she murmured as she kissed Rachel. People in the way made it unnecessary for Richard to shake Rachel by the hand. He managed to look at her very stiffly for a second, before he followed his wife down the ship's side. The boat separating from the vessel made off towards the land, and for some minutes Helen, Ridley, and Rachel lent over the rail, watching. Once Mrs. Dalloway turned and waved, but the boat steadily grew smaller and smaller until it ceased to rise and fall, and nothing could be seen save two resolute backs. �Well, that's over� said Ridley after a long silence. �We shall never see them again� he added, turning to go to his books. A feeling of emptiness and melancholy came over them. They knew in their hearts that it was over, and that they had parted forever, and the knowledge filled them with far greater depression than the length of their acquaintance seemed to justify. Even as the boat pulled away they could feel other sights and sounds beginning to take the place of the Dalloways, and the feeling was so unpleasant that they tried to resist it, for so, too, would they be forgotten. In much the same way as Mrs. Chaley downstairs was sweeping the withered rose-leaves off the dressing-table, so Helen was anxious to make things straight again after the visitors had gone. Rachel's obvious languor and listlessness made her an easy prey, and indeed Helen had devised a kind of trap. As something had happened she now felt pretty certain. Moreover she had come to think that they had been strangers long enough. She wished to know what the goal was like, partly, of course, because Rachel showed no disposition to be known. So as they turned from the rail she said, �Come and talk to me� instead of practising�, and led the way to the sheltered side where the deck-chairs were stretched in the sun. Rachel followed her indifferently, her mind was absorbed by Richard, by the extreme strangeness of what had happened, and by a thousand feelings of which she had not been conscious before. She made scarcely any attempt to listen to what Helen was saying, as Helen indulged in common places to begin with. While Mrs. Ambrose arranged her embroidery, sucked her silk, and threaded her needle, she lay back gazing at the horizon. �Did you like those people?� Helen asked her casually. �Yes� she replied blankly. �You talked to him, didn�t you?� She said nothing for a minute. �He kissed me� she said without any change of tone. Helen started, looked at her, but could not make out what she felt. �Mmm, yes� she said after a pause. �I thought he was that kind of man.� �What kind of man?� said Rachel, pompous and sentimental. �I like him� said Rachel. �So you really didn�t mind?� For the first time since Helen had known her, Rachel�s eyes lit up brightly. �I did mind� she said vehemently. �I dreamt, I couldn�t sleep.� �Tell me what happened� said Helen. She had to keep her lips from twitching as she listened to Rachel�s story. It was poured out abruptly with great seriousness and no sense of humour. We talked about politics. He told me what he had done for the poor somewhere. I asked him all sorts of questions. He told me about his own life, the day before yesterday, after the storm. He came in to see me. It happened then, quite suddenly. He kissed me. �I don�t know why� as she spoke she grew flushed. �I was a good deal excited� she continued, but I didn�t mind till afterwards when� she paused and saw the figure of the bloated little man again. I became terrified. From the look in her eyes it was evident she was again terrified. Helen was really at a loss what to say. From the little she knew of Rachel�s upbringing she supposed that she had been kept entirely ignorant as to the relations of men with women. With a shyness which she felt with women and not with men she did not like to explain simply what these are. Therefore she took the other course and belittled the whole affair. �Well� she said, �he was a silly creature and if I were you I think no more about it.� �No� said Rachel, sitting bolt upright. �I shan�t do that. I shall think about it all day and all night until I find out exactly what it does mean.� �Don�t you ever read?� Helen asked tentatively. �Coopers letters, that kind of thing, father gets them for me for all my aunts� Helen could hardly restrain herself from saying out loud what she thought of a man who brought up his daughter so that at the age of twenty-four she scarcely knew that men desired women and was terrified by a kiss. She had good reason to fear that Rachel had made herself incredibly ridiculous. �You don�t know many men� she asked. �Mr. Pepper� said Rachel, ironically. �So no one�s ever wanted to marry you.� �No� she answered ingenuously. Helen reflected that as from what she had said Rachel certainly would think these things out, it might be as well to help her. �You oughtn�t to be frightened� she said. �It�s the most natural thing in the world. Men will want to kiss you just as they�ll want to marry you. The pity is to get things out of proportion. It�s like noticing the noises people make when they eat or men spitting, or in short any smoothing that gets on one�s nerves. Rachel seemed to be inattentive to these remarks. �Tell me� she said suddenly. �What are those women in Piccadilly? In Piccadilly they are prostituted� said Helen. �It is terrifying. It is disgusting� Rachel asserted, as if she included Helen in the hatred. �It is� said Helen. �But� I did like him� Rachel mused, as if speaking to herself. I wanted to talk to him. I wanted to know what he�d done. The women in Lancashire. It seemed to her, as she recalled their talk, that there was something lovable about Richard, good in their attempted friendship, and strangely piteous in the way they had parted. The softening of her mood was apparent to Helen. �You see� she said, �you must take things as they are, and if you want friendship with men, you must run risks� Personally� she continued, breaking into a smile. �I think it�s worth it. I don�t mind being kissed. I�m rather jealous, I believe, that Mr. Dalloway kissed you and didn�t kiss me. Though� she added, he bore me considerably. But Rachel did not return the smile or dismiss the whole affair, as Helen meant her to. Her mind was working very quickly, inconsistently and painfully. Helen�s words, huge down-great blocks, which had stood there, always, and the light which came in was cold. After sitting for a time with fixed eyes, she burst out, �So that�s why I can�t walk alone�. By this new light she saw her life for the first time a creeping, hedged-in thing, even cautiously between high walls, here turned aside, their plunging darkness, made dull and crippled for ever, her life that was the only chance she had. A thousand words and actions became plain to her. �Because men are brutes, I hate men�� she exclaimed. �I thought you said you liked him� said Helen. �I liked him, and I liked being kissed� she answered, as if that only added more difficulties to her problem. Helen was surprised to see how genuine both shock and problem were, but she could think of no way of easing the difficulty except by going on talking. She wanted to make her niece talk, and so to understand why this rather dull, kindly, plausible politician had made so deep an impression on her, for surely at the age of twenty-four this was not natural. �And did you like Mrs. Dalloway, too?� she asked. As she spoke she saw Rachel Redden, for she remembered silly things she had said, and also it occurred to her that she treated this exquisite woman rather badly, for Mrs. Dalloway had said that she loved her husband. She was quite nice, but a thimble-pated creature, Helen continued, �I never heard such nonsense� chitter-chatter, chitter-chatter, fish in the Greek alchvibet, never listened to a word anyone�s chock full of idiotic theories about the way to bring up children. I�d far rather talk to him any day. He was pompous, but he did at least understand what was said to him. The glamour insensibly faded a little, both from Richard and Clarissa. They had not been so wonderful after all, then, in the eyes of a mature person. It�s very difficult to know what people are like, Rachel remarked, and Helen saw with pleasure that she spoke more naturally. I suppose I was taken in. There was little doubt about that, according to Helen, but she restrained herself and said aloud, �One has to make experiments�. And they were nice, said Rachel, they were extraordinarily interesting. She tried to record the image of the world as a live thing that Richard had given her, with dreams like nerves and bad houses like patches of diseased skin. She recalled his watch-words, unity, imagination, and saw again the bubbles meeting in her teacup as he spoke of sisters and canaries, boyhood and his father, her small world becoming wonderfully enlarged. �But all people don�t seem to you equally interesting, do they?� asked Mrs Ambrose. Rachel explained that most people had hitherto been symbols, but that when they talked to one they ceased to be symbols and became. �I could listen to them for ever,� she exclaimed. She then jumped up, disappeared downstairs for a minute, and came back with a fat red book. �Who�s who?� she said, laying it upon Helen�s knee and turning the pages. It gives short lives of people. For instance, Sir Roland Beale, born 1852, parents from Moffitt, educated at Rugby, passed first into RE, married 1878, the daughter of T. Fishwick, served in the Betuana Land Expedition 1884-85, honourably mentioned, clubs, united service, naval and military, recreations, and enthusiastic curler. Sitting on the deck at Helen�s Feet she went on turning the pages and reading biographies of bankers, writers, clergymen, sailors, surgeons, judges, professors, statesmen, editors, philanthropists, merchants, and actresses, what clubs they belonged to, where they lived, what games they played, and how many acres they owned. She became absorbed in the book. Helen, meanwhile, stitched at her embroidery and thought over the things they had said. Her conclusion was that she would very much like to show her niece, if it were possible, how to live, or, as she put it, how to be a reasonable person. She thought that there must be something wrong in this confusion between politics and kissing politicians, and that an elder person ought to be able to help. �I quite agree,� she said, �that people are very interesting only�. Rachel, putting her finger between the pages, looked up inquiringly. �Only I think you ought to discriminate,� she ended. �It�s a pity to be intimate with people who are, well, rather second-rate, like the dalloways, and to find it out later. �But how does one know,� Rachel asked. �I really can�t tell you� replied Helen candidly, after a moment�s thought. �You�ll have to find out for yourself, but try an� �Why don�t you call me Helen� she added. �Aunt�s a horrid name. �I never liked my aunts.� �I should like to call you Helen� Rachel answered. �Do you think me very unsympathetic? Rachel reviewed the points which Helen had certainly failed to understand. There rose chiefly from the difference of nearly twenty years in age between them, which made Mrs. Ambrose appeared too humorous and cool in a matter of such moment. �No� she said, �some things you don�t understand, of course.� �Of course,� Helen agreed. �So now you can go ahead and be a person on your own account� she added. The vision of her own personality, of herself as a real everlasting thing, different from anything else, unmergable, like the sea or the wind, flashed into Rachel�s mind, and she became profoundly excited at the thought of living. �I can, by myself� she stammered, �in spite of you, in spite of the Dalloways, and Mr. Pepper, and Father, and my aunts, in spite of these� she swept her hand across a whole page of statesmen and soldiers. �In spite of them all� said Helen gravely. She then put down her needle and explained a plan which had come into her head as they talked. Instead of wandering on down the Amazons until she reached some sulfurous tropical port, where one had to lie within doors all day beating off insects with a fan, the sensible thing to do surely was to spend the season with them in their villa by the seaside, where, among other advantages, Mrs. Ambrose herself would be at hand to � �After all, Rachel� she broke off, �it�s silly to pretend that because there�s twenty years difference between us, we therefore can�t talk to each other like human beings. �No, because we like each other� said Rachel. �Yes� Mrs. Ambrose agreed. That fact, together with other facts, had been made clear by their twenty minutes talk, although how they had come to these conclusions they could not have said. However they were come by, they were sufficiently serious to send Mrs. Ambrose a day or two later in search of her brother-in-law. She found him sitting in his room working, applying a stout blue pencil authoritatively to bundles of filmy paper. Papers lay to left and to right of him. There were great envelopes so gorged with papers that they spilt papers onto the table. Above him hung a photograph of a woman�s head. The need of sitting absolutely still before a cockney photographer had given her lips a queer little pucker, and her eyes for the same reason looked as though she thought the whole situation ridiculous. Nevertheless it was the head of an individual and interesting woman who would no doubt have turned and laughed at Willoughby if she could have caught his eye. But when he looked up at her, he sighed profoundly. In his mind this work of his, the great Factors at Hull, which showed like mountains at night, the ships that crossed the ocean punctually, the schemes for combining this and that and building up a solid mass of industry, was all an offering to her. He laid his success at her feet, and was always thinking how to educate his daughter so that Theresa might be glad. He was a very ambitious man, and although he had not been particularly kind to her while she lived, as Helen thought, he now believed that she watched him from heaven and inspired what was good in him. Mrs. Ambrose apologised for the interruption and asked whether she might speak to him about a plan of hers. Would he consent to leave his daughter with them when they landed, instead of taking her on up the Amazons? We would take great care of her, she added, and we should really like it. Willoughby looked very grave and carefully laid aside his papers. She's a good girl, he said at length. There is a likeness. He nodded his head at the photograph of Theresa and sighed. Helen looked at Theresa, pursing up her lips before the cockney photographer. It suggested her in an absurd human way, and she felt an intense desire to share some joke. She's the only thing that's left to me, sighed Willoughby. We go on year after year without talking about these things. He broke off. But it's better so, only life's very hard. Helen was sorry for him and patted him on the shoulder, but she felt uncomfortable when her brother-in-law expressed his feelings and took refuge in praising Rachel, and explaining why she thought her plan might be a good one. True, said Willoughby, when she had done, the social conditions are bound to be primitive. I should be out a good deal. I agreed because she wished it, and of course I have complete confidence in you. You see, Helen, he continued, becoming confidential. I want to bring her up as her mother would have wished. I don't hold with these modern views any more than you do, eh? She's a nice, quiet girl devoted to her music. A little less of that would do no harm. Still, it's kept her happy, and we lead a very quiet life at Richmond. I should like her to begin to see more people. I want to take her about with me when I get home. I've half a mind to rent a house in London, leaving my sisters at Richmond, and take her to see one or two people who'd be kind to her for my sake. I'm beginning to realise, he continued, stretching himself out, that all this is tending to Parliament, Helen. It's the only way to get things done as one wants them done, and I talked to Dalloway about it. In that case, of course, I should want Rachel to be able to take more part in things. A certain amount of entertaining would be necessary—dinners, an occasional evening party. One's constituents like to be fed, I believe. In all these ways, Rachel could be of great help to me. So, he wound up, I should be very glad if we arrange this visit, which must be upon a business-footy mind. If you could see your way to helping my girl, bringing her out. She's a little shy now, making a woman of her, the kind of woman her mother would have liked her to be, he ended, jerking his head at the photograph. Lleby's selfishness, though consistent as Helen saw, with real affection for his daughter, made her determined to have the girl to stay with her, even if she had to promise a complete course of instruction in the feminine graces. She could not help laughing at the notion of it—Rachel, a Tory hostess, and marvelling, as she left him at the astonishing ignorance of her father. Rachel, when consulted, showed less enthusiasm than Helen could have wished. One moment she was eager, the next doubtful. Visions of a great river, now blue, now yellow in the tropical sun, and crossed by bright birds, now white in the moon, now deep in shade, with moving trees and canoes sliding out from the tangled banks, beset her. Helen promised a river. Then she did not want to leave her father. That feeling seemed genuine too. But in the end Helen prevailed, although when she had won her case she was beset by doubts, and more than once regretted the impulse which had entangled her with the fortunes of another human being. CHAPTER VII From a distance the euphorazine looked very small. Glasses were turned upon her from the decks of great liners, and she was pronounced a tramp, a cargo boat, or one of those wretched little passenger steamers, where people rolled about, among the cattle on deck. The insect-like figures of dalloway, zambroses and vin races were also derided, both from the extreme smallness of their persons, and the doubt which only strong glasses could dispel as to whether they were really live creatures, or only lumps on the rigging. Mr Pepper, with all his learning, had been mistaken for a cormorant, and then, as unjustly, transformed into a cow. At night indeed, when the waltzes were swinging in the saloon, and gifted passengers reciting, the little ship shrunk to a few beads of light out among the dark waves, and one high in air upon the mast-head, seen something mysterious and impressive to heated partners resting from the dance. She became a ship passing in the night, an emblem of the loneliness of human life, an occasion for queer confidences and sudden appeals for sympathy. On and on she went, by day and by night, following her path, until one morning broke and showed the land. Losing its shadow-like appearance it became first cleft and mountainous, next coloured grey and purple, next scattered with white blocks which gradually separated themselves, and then as the progress of the ship acted upon the view like a field-glass of increasing power, became streets of houses. By nine o'clock the euphrozyme had taken up her position in the middle of a great bay. She dropped her anchor. Immediately, as if she were a recumbent giant requiring examination, small boats came swarming about her. She rang with cries, men jumped onto her, her deck was thumped by feet. The lonely little island was invaded from all quarters at once, and after four weeks of silence it was bewildering to hear human speech. Mrs Ambrose alone he did none of this stir. She was pale with suspense while the boat with mail-bags was making towards them. Old in her letters she did not notice that she had left the euphrozyme, and felt no sadness when the ship lifted up her voice and bellowed thrice like a cow separated from its calf. "'The children are well,' she exclaimed, Mr Pepper, who sat opposite with a great mound of bag and rug upon his knees, said, gratifying. Rachel, to whom the end of the voyage meant a complete change of perspective, was too much bewildered by the approach of the shore to realise what children were well or why it was gratifying. Helen went on reading. Moving very slowly and rearing absurdly high over each wave, the little boat was now approaching a white crescent of sand. Behind this was a deep green valley with distinct hills on either side. On the slope of the right-hand hill white houses with brown roofs were settled, like nesting seabirds, and at interval cypresses striped the hill with black bars. Mountains whose sides were flushed with red, but whose crowns were bold, rose as a pinnacle half concealing another pinnacle behind it. The hour being still early the whole view was exquisitely light and airy, the blues and greens of sky and tree were intense but not sultry. As they drew nearer and could distinguish details the effect of the earth with its minute objects and colours and different forms of life was overwhelming, after four weeks of the sea, and kept them silent. Three hundred years odd sent Mr Pepper meditatively at length. As nobody said, what, he merely extracted a bottle and swallowed a pill. The piece of information that died within him was to the effect that three hundred years ago five Elizabethan bucks had anchored where the euphrozyme now floated. Half drawn up upon the beach lay an equal number of Spanish galleons unmanned, for the country was still a virgin land behind a veil. Standing across the water the English sailors bore away bars of silver, veils of linen, timbers of cedar wood, golden crucifixes nobbed with emeralds. When the Spaniards came down from their drinking a fight ensued, the two parties churning up the sand and driving each other into the surf. The Spaniards bloated with fine living upon the fruits of the miraculous land fell in heaps, but the hardy Englishmen, tawny with sea voyaging, hairy for lack of razors, with muscles like wire, fangs greedy for flesh, and fingers itching for gold, dispatched the wounded, drove the dying into the sea, and soon reduced the natives into a state of superstitious wonderment. Here a settlement was made, women were imported, children grew, all seemed to favour the expansion of the British Empire, and had there been men like Richard Dalloway in the time of Charles I, the map would undoubtedly be red, where it was now an odious green. But it must be supposed that the political mind of that age lacked imagination, and merely for one to a few thousand pounds and a few thousand men, the spark died that should have been a conflagration. From the interior came Indians with subtle poisons, naked bodies, and painted idols. From the sea came vengeful Spaniards and rapacious Portuguese. Exposed to all the enemies, though the climate proved wonderfully kind and the earth abundant, the English dwindled away and all but disappeared. Somewhere about the middle of the seventeenth century a single sloop watched its season and slipped out by night, bearing within it all that was left of the great British colony, a few men, a few women, and perhaps a dozen dusky children. English history then denies all knowledge of the place. Owing to one cause and another, civilisation shifted its centre to a spot some four or five hundred miles to the south, and today Santa Marina is not much larger than it was three hundred years ago. In population it is a happy compromise. For Portuguese fathers wed Indian mothers and their children into marry with the Spanish. Although they get their plows from Manchester, they make their coats from their own sheep, their silk from their own worms, and their furniture from their own cedar trees, so that in arts and industries the place is still much where it was in Elizabethan days. The reasons which had drawn the English across the sea to found a small colony within the last ten years are not so easily described, and will never perhaps be recorded in history books. Granted facility of travel, peace, good trade and so on, there was besides a kind of dissatisfaction among the English with the older countries, and the enormous accumulations of carved stone, stained glass and rich brown painting, which they offered to the tourist. The movement in search of something new was of course infinitely small, affecting only a handful of well-to-do people. It began by a few schoolmasters serving their passage out to South America as the purses of tramp steamers. They returned in time for the summer term, when their stories of the splendours and hardships of life at sea, the humours of sea captains, the wonders of night and dawn, and the marvels of the place, delighted outsiders and sometimes found their way into print. The country itself taxed all the powers of description, for they said it was much bigger than Italy, and really nobler than Greece. They declared that the natives were strangely beautiful, very big in stature, dark, passionate, and quick to seize the knife. The place seemed new and full of new forms of beauty, in proof of which they showed handkerchiefs, which the women had worn round their heads, and primitive carvings coloured bright greens and blues. Somehow or other, as fashions do, the fashions spread. An old monastery was quickly turned into a hostel, while a famous line of steamships altered its route for the convenience of passengers. Oddly enough it happened that the least satisfactory of Helen Ambrose's brothers had been sent out years before to make his fortune, at any rate to keep clear of racehorses, in the very spot which had now become so popular. Helen leaning upon the column in the veranda, he had watched the English ships with English schoolmasters for purses, steaming into the bay. Having at length earned enough to take a holiday and being sick of the place, he proposed to put his villa, on the slope of the mountain, at his sister's disposal. She too had been a little stirred by the talk of a new world, where there was always sun and never a fog, which went on around her, and the chance, when they were planning where to spend the winter out of England, seemed too good to be missed. For these reasons she determined to accept Willoughby's offer of free passages on his ship, to place the children with their grandparents, and to do the thing thoroughly while she was about it. Taking seats in a carriage drawn by long-tailed horses with pheasants' pheasants erect between their ears, the ambroses, Mr. Pepper and Rachel, rattled out of the harbour, the day increased in heat as they drove up the hill. The road passed through the town, where men seemed to be beating brass and crying, water, where the passage was blocked by mules and cleared by whips and curses, where the women walked barefoot, their heads balancing baskets, and cripples hastily displayed mutilated members. It issued among steep green fields, not so green, but that the earth showed through. Great trees now shaded all but the centre of the road, and a mountain stream so shallow and so swift that it plaited itself into strands, as it ran, raced along the edge. Higher they went, until Ridley and Rachel walked behind. Next they turned along a lane scattered with stones, where Mr. Pepper raised his stick and silently indicated a shrub, bearing among sparse leaves of a luminous purple blossom, and at a rickety canter the last stage of the way was accomplished. The villa was a roomy white house, which, as is the case with most continental houses, looked to an English eye frail, ramshackle, and absurdly frivolous, more like a pagoda in a tea-garden than a place where one slept. The garden called urgently for the services of a gardener. Bushes waved their branches across the paths, and the blades of grass with spaces of earth between them could be counted. In the circular piece of ground in front of the veranda were two cracked vases, from which red flowers drooped, with a stone fountain between them now parched in the sun. The circular garden led to a long garden, where the gardener's shears had scarcely been unless now and then when he cut a bower blossom for his beloved. A few tall trees shaded it and round bushes, with wax-like flowers, mobbed their heads together in a row. A garden smoothly laid with turf, divided by thick hedges with raised beds of bright flowers, such as we keep within walls in England, would have been out of place upon the side of this bare hill. There was no ugliness to shut out, and the villa looked straight across the shoulder of a slope, ribbed with olive trees to the sea. The indecency of the whole place struck Mrs. Chaley forcibly. There were no blinds to shut out the sun, nor was there any furniture to speak of for the sun to spoil. Standing in the bare stone hall and surveying a staircase of superb breadth, but crapped and carpetless, she further ventured the opinion that there were rats, as large as terriers at home, and that if one put one's foot down with any force one would come through the floor. As for hot water, at this point her investigations left her speechless. Poor creature, she murmured to the sello-spanish servant-girl who came out with the pigs and hens to receive them. No wonder you hardly look like a human being. Maria accepted the compliment with an exquisite Spanish grace. In Chaley's opinion they would have done better to stay on board an English ship, but none knew better than she that her duty commanded her to stay. When they were settled in and in train to find daily occupation, there were some speculation as to the reasons which induced Mr. Pepper to stay, picking up his lodging in the Ambrose's house. Efforts had been made for some days before landing to impress upon him the advantages of the Amazons. That great stream Helen would begin gazing as if she saw a visionary cascade. I have a good mind to go with you myself, Willoughby. Only I can't think of the sunsets and the moonrises. I believe the colours are unimaginable. They're a wild peacocks, Rachel hazarded. And marvellous creatures in the water Helen asserted. One might discover a new reptile, Rachel continued. They're certain to be a revolution, I'm told, Helen urged. The effect of these subterfuges was a little dashed by Ridley, who after regarding Pepper for some moment sighed aloud, put off fellow, and inwardly speculated upon the unkindness of women. He stayed, however, in apparent contentment for six days, playing with a microscope and a notebook, in one of the many sparsely furnished sitting-rooms. But on the evening of the seventh day, as they sat at dinner, he appeared more restless than usual. The dinner table was set between two long windows which were left uncurtained by Helen's orders. Darkness fell as sharply as a knife in this climate, and the town then sprang out in circles and lines of bright dots between them. Buildings which never showed by day, showed by night, and the sea flowed right over the land, judging by the moving lights of the steamers. The site fulfilled the same purpose as an orchestra in a London restaurant, and silence had its setting. William Pepper observed it for some time. He put on his spectacles to contemplate the scene. I've identified the big block to the left, he observed, and pointed with his fork at a square formed by several rows of lights. One should infer that they can cook vegetables, he added. A hotel, said Helen, once a monastery, said Mr. Pepper. Nothing more was said then, but the day after, Mr. Pepper returned from a midday walk and stood silently before Helen, who was reading in the veranda. I've taken a room over there, he said. You're not going, she exclaimed. On the whole, yes, he remarked. No private cook can cook vegetables. Knowing his dislike of questions, which she, to some extent, shared, Helen asked no more, still an uneasy suspicion lurked in her mind that William was hiding a wound. She flushed to think that her words, or her husbands, or Rachel's, had penetrated and stung. She was half moved to cry, stop, William, explain, and would have returned to the subject at lunch, and if William had not shown himself inscrutable and chill, lifting fragments of salad on the point of his fork, with the gesture of a man pronging sea-weed, detecting gravel, suspecting germs. If you all die of tie for it, I won't be responsible, he snapped. If you die of dullness, neither will I, Helen echoed in her heart. She reflected that she had never yet asked him whether he had been in love. They had got further and further from that subject instead of drawing nearer to it, and she could not help feeling it a relief when William Pepper, with all his knowledge, his microscope, his notebooks, his genuine kindliness and good sense, but a certain dryness of soul, took his departure. Also she could not help feeling it's sad, the friendships should end thus, although in this case, to have the room empty was something of a comfort, and she tried to console herself with the reflection that one never knows how far other people feel the things they might be supposed to feel. CHAPTER VIII The next few months passed away as many years can pass away, without definite events, and yet, if suddenly disturbed, it would be seen that such months or years had a character unlike others. The three months which had passed have brought them to the beginning of March. The climate had kept its promise, and the change of season from winter to spring had made very little difference, so that Helen, who was sitting in the drawing-room with a pen in her hand, could keep the windows open, though a great fire of logs burnt on one side of her. Below the sea was still blue, and the roof still brown and white, though the day was fading rapidly. It was dusk in the room, which, large and empty at all times, now appeared larger and emptier than usual. Her own figure, as she sat writing with a pad on her knee, shared the general effect of size and lack of detail, for the flames which ran along the branches suddenly devouring little green tufts, burnt intermittently, and sent irregular illuminations across her face and the plaster walls. There were no pictures on the walls, but here and there boughs laden with heavy petal flowers spread widely against them. Of the books fallen on the bare floor and teaped upon the large table it was only possible in this light to trace the outline. Mrs. Ambrose was writing a very long letter. Beginning, dear Bernard, it went on to describe what had been happening in the Villa San Jovasio during the past three months, as, for instance, that they had had the British consul to dinner, and had been taken over a Spanish man of war, and had seen a great many processions and religious festivals which were so beautiful that Mrs. Ambrose couldn't conceive why, if people must have a religion, they didn't all become Roman Catholics. They had made several expeditions, though none of any length. It was worth coming, if only for the sake of the flowering trees which grew wild quite near the house, and the amazing colours of sea and earth. The earth instead of being brown was red, purple, green. You won't believe me," she added, there is no colour like it in England. She adopted indeed a condescending tone towards that poor island, which was now advancing chilly crocuses and nipped violence in nooks, in copses, in cosy corners, tended by rosy old gardeners in mufflers who were always touching their hats and bobbing as sequiously. She went on to deride the islanders themselves. Rumours of London, all in affirmant over a general election, had reached them even out here. It seems incredible, she went on, that people should care whether Asquith is in or Austin Chamberlain out. And while you scream yourselves hoarses about politics, you let the only people who are trying for something good starve or simply laugh at them. When have you ever encouraged a living artist, or bought his best work, why are you all so ugly and so servile? Here the servants are human beings. They talk to one as if they were equals. As far as I can tell, there are no aristocrats. Perhaps it was the mention of aristocrats that reminded her of Richard Dalloway and Rachel, for she ran on with the same penful to describe her niece. It's an odd fate that has put me in charge of a girl, she wrote, considering that I have never got on well with women, or have much to do with them. However, I must retract some of the things that I have said against them. If they were properly educated, I don't see why they shouldn't be much the same as men, as satisfactory I mean, though of course very different. The question is, how should one educate them? The present method seems to me abominable. This girl, though twenty-four, had never heard that men desired women, and until I explained it, did not know how children were born. Her ignorance upon other matters, as important, here Mrs. Ambrose's letter may not be quoted, was complete. It seems to me not merely foolish but criminal to bring people up like that, let alone the suffering to them, it explains why women are what they are. The wonder is, they're no worse. I have taken it upon myself to enlighten her, and now, though still a good deal prejudiced and liable to exaggerate, she is more or less a reasonable human being. Keeping them ignorant, of course, defeats its own object, and when they begin to understand, they take it all much too seriously. My brother-in-law really deserved a catastrophe, which he won't get. I now pray for a young man to come to my help, someone I mean, who would talk to her openly and prove how observed most of her ideas about life are. Unluckily such men seem almost as rare as the women. The English colony certainly doesn't provide one, artists, merchants, cultivated people, they are stupid, conventional and flirtatious. She ceased and with her pen in her hands sat looking into the fire, making the logs into caves and mountains, for it had grown too dark to go on writing. Moreover the house began to stir as the hour of dinner approached. She could hear the plates being chinked in the dining-room next door, and Chaeli instructing the Spanish girl where to put things down in vigorous English. The bell rang, she rose, met Ridley and Rachel outside, and they all went in to dinner. Three months had made but little difference in the appearance either of Ridley or Rachel, yet a keen observer might have thought that the girl was more definite and self-confident in her manner than before. Her skin was brown, her eyes certainly brighter, and she attended to what was said as though she might be going to contradict it. The meal began with the comfortable silence of people who were quite at their ease together. Then Ridley, leaning on his elbow and looking out of the window, observed that it was a lovely night. Yes, said Helen, she added, the seasons began, looking at the lights beneath them. She asked Maria in Spanish whether the hotel was not filling up with visitors. Maria informed her with pride that there would come a time when it was positively difficult to buy eggs. The shopkeepers would not mind what prices they asked. They would get them at any rate from the English. That's an English steamer in the bay, said Rachel, looking at a triangle of lights below. She came in early this morning. Then we may hope for some letters and send ours back, said Helen. For some reason the mention of letters always made Ridley grown, and the rest of the meal passed in a brisk argument between husband and wife as to whether he was or was not wholly ignored by the entire civilised world. Considering the last batch, said Helen, you deserve beating. You are asked to lecture. You are offered a degree, and some silly woman prays not only your books but your beauty. She said he was what Shelly would have been if Shelly had lived to fifty-five and grown a beard. Really Ridley, I think you're the vainest man I know. She ended, rising from the table, which I may tell you is saying a good deal. Finding her letter lying before the fire, she added a few lines to it and then announced that she was going to take the letters now. Ridley must bring his, and Rachel. I hope you've written to your aunts, it's high time. The women put on cloaks and hats, and after inviting Ridley to come with them, which he emphatically refused to do, exclaiming that Rachel he expected to be a fool, but Helen surely knew better. They turned to go. He stood over the fire, gazing into the depths of the looking-glass, and compressing his face into the likeness of a commander, surveying a field of battle, or a martyr watching the flames lick his toes, rather than that of a secluded professor. Helen lay told of his beard. Am I a fool? She said. Let me go, Helen. Am I a fool? She repeated. Vile woman! He exclaimed, and kissed her. We'll leave you to your vanities, she called back as they went out of the door. It was a beautiful evening, still light enough to see a long way down the road, though the stars were coming out. The pillow-box was let into a high yellow wall where the lane met the road, and having dropped the letters into it, Helen was for turning back. No, no, said Rachel, taking her by the wrist, we're going to see life. You promised! Seeing life was the phrase they used for their habit of strolling through the town after dark. The social life of Santa Marina was carried on almost entirely by lamp-light, which the warmth of the nights and the scents culled from flowers made pleasant enough. The young women, with their hair magnificently swept in coils, a red flower behind the ear sat on the doorsteps, or issued out onto balconies, while the young men ranged up and down beneath, shouting up a greeting from time to time, and stopping here and there to enter into amorous talk. At the open windows merchants could be seen making up the day's account, and older women lifting jars from shelf to shelf. The streets were full of people, men for the most part, who interchanged their views of the world as they walked or gathered round the wine-tables at the street corner, where an old cripple was twanging his guitar strings, while a poor girl cried her passionate song in the gutter. The two English women excited some friendly curiosity, but no one molested them. Helen sauntered on, observing the different people in their shabby clothes, who seemed so careless and so natural with satisfaction. Just think of them all tonight, she exclaimed at length. It's the fifteenth of March, perhaps there's a court. She thought of the crowd waiting in the cold spring air to see the grand carriages go by. It's very cold if it's not raining, she said. First there are men selling picture postcards, then there are wretched little shop girls with round band boxes, then there are bank clerks in tailcoats, and then any number of dressmakers. People from South Kensington drove up in a hired fly. Officials have a pair of bays, earls on the other hand are allowed one footman to stand up behind. Jukes have two, royal jukes, so I was told, have three. The king, I suppose, can have as many as he likes, and the people believe in it. Not here it seemed as though the people of England must be shaped in the body, like the kings and queens, knights and pawns of the chess board. So strange were their differences, so marked and so implicitly believed in. They had to part in order to circumvent a crowd. They believe in God, said Rachel, as they regained each other. She meant that the people in the crowd believed in him, for she remembered the crosses with bleeding plaster figures that stood where footpaths joined, and the inexplicable mystery of a service in a Roman Catholic church. We shall never understand, she sighed. They had walked some way, and it was now night, but they could see a large iron gate a little way farther down the road on their left. Do you mean to go right up to the hotel, Helen asked. Rachel gave the gate a push. It swung open, and seeing no one about and judging that nothing was private in this country, they walked straight in. An avenue of trees ran along the road, which was completely straight. The trees suddenly came to an end. The road turned a corner, and they found themselves confronted by a large square building. They had come out upon the broad terrace which ran round the hotel, and were only a few feet distant from the windows. A row of long windows opened almost to the ground. They were all of them uncurtained and all brilliantly lighted, so that they could see everything inside. Each window revealed a different section of the life of the hotel. They drew into one of the broad columns of shadow which separated the windows and gazed in. They found themselves just outside the dining room. It was being swept, a waiter was eating a bunch of grapes with his leg across the corner of a table. The next door was the kitchen where they were washing up. White cooks were dipping their arms into cold rooms, while the waiters made their meal voraciously off broken meats, sopping up the gravy with bits of crumb. Moving on they became lost in a plantation of bushes, and then suddenly found themselves outside the drawing room, where the ladies and gentlemen having dined well lay back in deep armchairs, occasionally speaking or turning over the pages of magazines. A thin woman was flourishing up and down the piano. What is a dahabiya, Charles? The distinct voice of a widow seated in an armchair by the window asked her son. It was the end of the piece, and his answer was lost in the general clearing of throats and tapping of knees. They're all old in this room, Rachel whispered. Creeping on they found that the next window revealed two men in shirtsleeves playing billiards with two young ladies. He pinched my arm. The plump young woman cried as she missed her stroke. Now you two, no ragging. The young man with the red face reproved them, who was marking. Take care, or we shall be seen, whispered Helen, plucking Rachel by the arm. Incautiously her head had risen to the middle of the window. Turning the corner they came to the largest room in the hotel which was supplied with four windows and was called the lounge, although it was really a hall. Hung with armour and native embroideries, furnished with divans and screens which shut off convenient corners, the room was less formal than the others and was evidently the haunt of youth. Signor Rodriguez, whom they knew to be the manager of the hotel, stood quite near them in the doorway surveying the scene. The gentleman lounging in chairs, the couples leaning over coffee cups, the game of cards in the centre under profuse clusters of electric light. He was congratulating himself upon the enterprise which had turned through a factory, a cold stone room with pots on trestles, into the most comfortable room in the house. The hotel was very full and proved his wisdom in decreeing that no hotel can flourish without a lounge. The people were scattered about in couples or parties of four and either they were actually better acquainted or the informal room made their manners easier. Through the open window came an uneven humming sound like that which rises from a flock of sheep penned with hurdles at dusk. The card party occupied the centre of the foreground. Helen and Rachel watched them play for some minutes without being able to distinguish a word. Helen was observing one of the men intently. He was a lean, somewhat cadaverous man of about her own age, whose profile was turned to them, and he was the partner of a highly coloured girl, obviously English by birth. Suddenly in a strange way in which some words detached themselves from the rest they heard him say quite distinctly, or you want his practice, Miss Warrington, courage and practice, one's no good without the other. Huling Elliot, of course, Helen exclaimed. She ducked her head immediately for at the sound of his name he looked up. The game went on for a few minutes and was then broken up by the approach of a wheeled chair containing a voluminous old lady who paused by the table and said, Better luck tonight, Susan. All the luck's on our side, said the young man who until now had kept his back turned to the window. He appeared to be rather stout and had a thick crop of hair. Luck, Mr. Hewitt, said his partner, a middle-aged lady with spectacles. I assure you, Mrs. Paley, our success is due solely to our brilliant play. Unless I go to bed early I get practically no sleep at all. Mrs. Paley was heard to explain as if to justify her seizure of Susan who got up and proceeded to wheel the chair to the door. They'll get someone else to take my place, she said cheerfully, but she was wrong. No attempt was made to find another player and after the young man had built three stories of a card house which fell down, the players strolled off in different directions. Mr. Hewitt turned his full face towards the window. They could see that he had large eyes obscured by glasses. His complexion was rosy, his lips clean-shaven, and seen among ordinary people it appeared to be an interesting face. He came straight towards them, but his eyes were fixed not upon the eavesdroppers, but upon a spot where the curtain hung in folds. Asleep, he said. Helen and Rachel started to think that someone had been sitting near to them unobserved all the time. There were legs in the shadow, a melancholy voice issued from above them. Two women, it said. A scuffling was heard on the gravel. The women had fled. They did not stop running until they felt certain that no eye could penetrate the darkness and the hotel was only a square shadow in the distance with red holes regularly cut in it. End of Chapter 8