Chapter III


Early next morning there was a sound as of chains being drawn roughly overhead; the steady heart of the
Euphrosyne slowly ceased to beat; and Helen, poking her nose above deck, saw a stationary castle upon a
stationary hill. They had dropped anchor in the mouth of the Tagus, and instead of cleaving new waves
Chapter III 17
perpetually, the same waves kept returning and washing against the sides of the ship.
As soon as breakfast was done, Willoughby disappeared over the vessel's side, carrying a brown leather case,
shouting over his shoulder that every one was to mind and behave themselves, for he would be kept in Lisbon
doing business until five o'clock that afternoon.
At about that hour he reappeared, carrying his case, professing himself tired, bothered, hungry, thirsty, cold,
and in immediate need of his tea. Rubbing his hands, he told them the adventures of the day: how he had
come upon poor old Jackson combing his moustache before the glass in the office, little expecting his descent,
had put him through such a morning's work as seldom came his way; then treated him to a lunch of
champagne and ortolans; paid a call upon Mrs. Jackson, who was fatter than ever, poor woman, but asked
kindly after Rachel−−and O Lord, little Jackson had confessed to a confounded piece of weakness−−well,
well, no harm was done, he supposed, but what was the use of his giving orders if they were promptly
disobeyed? He had said distinctly that he would take no passengers on this trip. Here he began searching in his
pockets and eventually discovered a card, which he planked down on the table before Rachel. On it she read,
"Mr. and Mrs. Richard Dalloway, 23 Browne Street, Mayfair."
"Mr. Richard Dalloway," continued Vinrace, "seems to be a gentleman who thinks that because he was once a
member of Parliament, and his wife's the daughter of a peer, they can have what they like for the asking. They
got round poor little Jackson anyhow. Said they must have passages−−produced a letter from Lord Glenaway,
asking me as a personal favour−−overruled any objections Jackson made (I don't believe they came to much),
and so there's nothing for it but to submit, I suppose."
But it was evident that for some reason or other Willoughby was quite pleased to submit, although he made a
show of growling.
The truth was that Mr. and Mrs. Dalloway had found themselves stranded in Lisbon. They had been travelling
on the Continent for some weeks, chiefly with a view to broadening Mr. Dalloway's mind. Unable for a
season, by one of the accidents of political life, to serve his country in Parliament, Mr. Dalloway was doing
the best he could to serve it out of Parliament. For that purpose the Latin countries did very well, although the
East, of course, would have done better.
"Expect to hear of me next in Petersburg or Teheran," he had said, turning to wave farewell from the steps of
the Travellers'. But a disease had broken out in the East, there was cholera in Russia, and he was heard of, not
so romantically, in Lisbon. They had been through France; he had stopped at manufacturing centres where,
producing letters of introduction, he had been shown over works, and noted facts in a pocket−book. In Spain
he and Mrs. Dalloway had mounted mules, for they wished to understand how the peasants live. Are they ripe
for rebellion, for example? Mrs. Dalloway had then insisted upon a day or two at Madrid with the pictures.
Finally they arrived in Lisbon and spent six days which, in a journal privately issued afterwards, they
described as of "unique interest." Richard had audiences with ministers, and foretold a crisis at no distant date,
"the foundations of government being incurably corrupt. Yet how blame, etc."; while Clarissa inspected the
royal stables, and took several snapshots showing men now exiled and windows now broken. Among other
things she photographed Fielding's grave, and let loose a small bird which some ruffian had trapped, "because
one hates to think of anything in a cage where English people lie buried," the diary stated. Their tour was
thoroughly unconventional, and followed no meditated plan. The foreign correspondents of the Times decided
their route as much as anything else. Mr. Dalloway wished to look at certain guns, and was of opinion that the
African coast is far more unsettled than people at home were inclined to believe. For these reasons they
wanted a slow inquisitive kind of ship, comfortable, for they were bad sailors, but not extravagant, which
would stop for a day or two at this port and at that, taking in coal while the Dalloways saw things for
themselves. Meanwhile they found themselves stranded in Lisbon, unable for the moment to lay hands upon
the precise vessel they wanted. They heard of the Euphrosyne, but heard also that she was primarily a cargo
boat, and only took passengers by special arrangement, her business being to carry dry goods to the Amazons,
Chapter III 18
and rubber home again. "By special arrangement," however, were words of high encouragement to them, for
they came of a class where almost everything was specially arranged, or could be if necessary. On this
occasion all that Richard did was to write a note to Lord Glenaway, the head of the line which bears his title;
to call on poor old Jackson; to represent to him how Mrs. Dalloway was so−and−so, and he had been
something or other else, and what they wanted was such and such a thing. It was done. They parted with
compliments and pleasure on both sides, and here, a week later, came the boat rowing up to the ship in the
dusk with the Dalloways on board of it; in three minutes they were standing together on the deck of the
Euphrosyne. Their arrival, of course, created some stir, and it was seen by several pairs of eyes that Mrs.
Dalloway was a tall slight woman, her body wrapped in furs, her head in veils, while Mr. Dalloway appeared
to be a middle−sized man of sturdy build, dressed like a sportsman on an autumnal moor. Many solid leather
bags of a rich brown hue soon surrounded them, in addition to which Mr. Dalloway carried a despatch box,
and his wife a dressing−case suggestive of a diamond necklace and bottles with silver tops.
"It's so like Whistler!" she exclaimed, with a wave towards the shore, as she shook Rachel by the hand, and
Rachel had only time to look at the grey hills on one side of her before Willoughby introduced Mrs. Chailey,
who took the lady to her cabin.
Momentary though it seemed, nevertheless the interruption was upsetting; every one was more or less put out
by it, from Mr. Grice, the steward, to Ridley himself. A few minutes later Rachel passed the smoking−room,
and found Helen moving arm−chairs. She was absorbed in her arrangements, and on seeing Rachel remarked
confidentially:
"If one can give men a room to themselves where they will sit, it's all to the good. Arm−chairs are the
important things−−" She began wheeling them about. "Now, does it still look like a bar at a railway station?"
She whipped a plush cover off a table. The appearance of the place was marvellously improved.
Again, the arrival of the strangers made it obvious to Rachel, as the hour of dinner approached, that she must
change her dress; and the ringing of the great bell found her sitting on the edge of her berth in such a position
that the little glass above the washstand reflected her head and shoulders. In the glass she wore an expression
of tense melancholy, for she had come to the depressing conclusion, since the arrival of the Dalloways, that
her face was not the face she wanted, and in all probability never would be.
However, punctuality had been impressed on her, and whatever face she had, she must go in to dinner.
These few minutes had been used by Willoughby in sketching to the Dalloways the people they were to meet,
and checking them upon his fingers.
"There's my brother−in−law, Ambrose, the scholar (I daresay you've heard his name), his wife, my old friend
Pepper, a very quiet fellow, but knows everything, I'm told. And that's all. We're a very small party. I'm
dropping them on the coast."
Mrs. Dalloway, with her head a little on one side, did her best to recollect Ambrose−−was it a surname?−−but
failed. She was made slightly uneasy by what she had heard. She knew that scholars married any one−−girls
they met in farms on reading parties; or little suburban women who said disagreeably, "Of course I know it's
my husband you want; not me."
But Helen came in at that point, and Mrs. Dalloway saw with relief that though slightly eccentric in
appearance, she was not untidy, held herself well, and her voice had restraint in it, which she held to be the
sign of a lady. Mr. Pepper had not troubled to change his neat ugly suit.
"But after all," Clarissa thought to herself as she followed Vinrace in to dinner, "every one's interesting
Chapter III 19
really."
When seated at the table she had some need of that assurance, chiefly because of Ridley, who came in late,
looked decidedly unkempt, and took to his soup in profound gloom.
An imperceptible signal passed between husband and wife, meaning that they grasped the situation and would
stand by each other loyally. With scarcely a pause Mrs. Dalloway turned to Willoughby and began:
"What I find so tiresome about the sea is that there are no flowers in it. Imagine fields of hollyhocks and
violets in mid−ocean! How divine!"
"But somewhat dangerous to navigation," boomed Richard, in the bass, like the bassoon to the flourish of his
wife's violin. "Why, weeds can be bad enough, can't they, Vinrace? I remember crossing in the Mauretania
once, and saying to the Captain−−Richards−−did you know him?−−'Now tell me what perils you really dread
most for your ship, Captain Richards?' expecting him to say icebergs, or derelicts, or fog, or something of that
sort. Not a bit of it. I've always remembered his answer. 'Sedgius aquatici,' he said, which I take to be a kind
of duck−weed."
Mr. Pepper looked up sharply, and was about to put a question when Willoughby continued:
"They've an awful time of it−−those captains! Three thousand souls on board!"
"Yes, indeed," said Clarissa. She turned to Helen with an air of profundity. "I'm convinced people are wrong
when they say it's work that wears one; it's responsibility. That's why one pays one's cook more than one's
housemaid, I suppose."
"According to that, one ought to pay one's nurse double; but one doesn't," said Helen.
"No; but think what a joy to have to do with babies, instead of saucepans!" said Mrs. Dalloway, looking with
more interest at Helen, a probable mother.
"I'd much rather be a cook than a nurse," said Helen. "Nothing would induce me to take charge of children."
"Mothers always exaggerate," said Ridley. "A well−bred child is no responsibility. I've travelled all over
Europe with mine. You just wrap 'em up warm and put 'em in the rack."
Helen laughed at that. Mrs. Dalloway exclaimed, looking at Ridley:
"How like a father! My husband's just the same. And then one talks of the equality of the sexes!"
"Does one?" said Mr. Pepper.
"Oh, some do!" cried Clarissa. "My husband had to pass an irate lady every afternoon last session who said
nothing else, I imagine."
"She sat outside the house; it was very awkward," said Dalloway. "At last I plucked up courage and said to
her, 'My good creature, you're only in the way where you are. You're hindering me, and you're doing no good
to yourself.'"
"And then she caught him by the coat, and would have scratched his eyes out−−" Mrs. Dalloway put in.
"Pooh−−that's been exaggerated," said Richard. "No, I pity them, I confess. The discomfort of sitting on those
Chapter III 20
steps must be awful."
"Serve them right," said Willoughby curtly.
"Oh, I'm entirely with you there," said Dalloway. "Nobody can condemn the utter folly and futility of such
behaviour more than I do; and as for the whole agitation, well! may I be in my grave before a woman has the
right to vote in England! That's all I say."
The solemnity of her husband's assertion made Clarissa grave.
"It's unthinkable," she said. "Don't tell me you're a suffragist?" she turned to Ridley.
"I don't care a fig one way or t'other," said Ambrose. "If any creature is so deluded as to think that a vote does
him or her any good, let him have it. He'll soon learn better."
"You're not a politician, I see," she smiled.
"Goodness, no," said Ridley.
"I'm afraid your husband won't approve of me," said Dalloway aside, to Mrs. Ambrose. She suddenly
recollected that he had been in Parliament.
"Don't you ever find it rather dull?" she asked, not knowing exactly what to say.
Richard spread his hands before him, as if inscriptions were to be read in the palms of them.
"If you ask me whether I ever find it rather dull," he said, "I am bound to say yes; on the other hand, if you ask
me what career do you consider on the whole, taking the good with the bad, the most enjoyable and enviable,
not to speak of its more serious side, of all careers, for a man, I am bound to say, 'The Politician's.'"
"The Bar or politics, I agree," said Willoughby. "You get more run for your money."
"All one's faculties have their play," said Richard. "I may be treading on dangerous ground; but what I feel
about poets and artists in general is this: on your own lines, you can't be beaten−−granted; but off your own
lines−−puff−−one has to make allowances. Now, I shouldn't like to think that any one had to make allowances
for me."
"I don't quite agree, Richard," said Mrs. Dalloway. "Think of Shelley. I feel that there's almost everything one
wants in 'Adonais.'"
"Read 'Adonais' by all means," Richard conceded. "But whenever I hear of Shelley I repeat to myself the
words of Matthew Arnold, 'What a set! What a set!'"
This roused Ridley's attention. "Matthew Arnold? A detestable prig!" he snapped.
"A prig−−granted," said Richard; "but, I think a man of the world. That's where my point comes in. We
politicians doubtless seem to you" (he grasped somehow that Helen was the representative of the arts) "a gross
commonplace set of people; but we see both sides; we may be clumsy, but we do our best to get a grasp of
things. Now your artists find things in a mess, shrug their shoulders, turn aside to their visions−−which I grant
may be very beautiful−−and leave things in a mess. Now that seems to me evading one's responsibilities.
Besides, we aren't all born with the artistic faculty."
Chapter III 21
"It's dreadful," said Mrs. Dalloway, who, while her husband spoke, had been thinking. "When I'm with artists
I feel so intensely the delights of shutting oneself up in a little world of one's own, with pictures and music
and everything beautiful, and then I go out into the streets and the first child I meet with its poor, hungry, dirty
little face makes me turn round and say, 'No, I can't shut myself up−−I won't live in a world of my own. I
should like to stop all the painting and writing and music until this kind of thing exists no longer.' Don't you
feel," she wound up, addressing Helen, "that life's a perpetual conflict?" Helen considered for a moment.
"No," she said. "I don't think I do."
There was a pause, which was decidedly uncomfortable. Mrs. Dalloway then gave a little shiver, and asked
whether she might have her fur cloak brought to her. As she adjusted the soft brown fur about her neck a fresh
topic struck her.
"I own," she said, "that I shall never forget the Antigone. I saw it at Cambridge years ago, and it's haunted me
ever since. Don't you think it's quite the most modern thing you ever saw?" she asked Ridley. "It seemed to
me I'd known twenty Clytemnestras. Old Lady Ditchling for one. I don't know a word of Greek, but I could
listen to it for ever−−"
Here Mr. Pepper struck up:
{Some editions of the work contain a brief passage from Antigone, in Greek, at this spot. ed.}
Mrs. Dalloway looked at him with compressed lips.
"I'd give ten years of my life to know Greek," she said, when he had done.
"I could teach you the alphabet in half an hour," said Ridley, "and you'd read Homer in a month. I should
think it an honour to instruct you."
Helen, engaged with Mr. Dalloway and the habit, now fallen into decline, of quoting Greek in the House of
Commons, noted, in the great commonplace book that lies open beside us as we talk, the fact that all men,
even men like Ridley, really prefer women to be fashionable.
Clarissa exclaimed that she could think of nothing more delightful. For an instant she saw herself in her
drawing−room in Browne Street with a Plato open on her knees−−Plato in the original Greek. She could not
help believing that a real scholar, if specially interested, could slip Greek into her head with scarcely any
trouble.
Ridley engaged her to come to−morrow.
"If only your ship is going to treat us kindly!" she exclaimed, drawing Willoughby into play. For the sake of
guests, and these were distinguished, Willoughby was ready with a bow of his head to vouch for the good
behaviour even of the waves.
"I'm dreadfully bad; and my husband's not very good," sighed Clarissa.
"I am never sick," Richard explained. "At least, I have only been actually sick once," he corrected himself.
"That was crossing the Channel. But a choppy sea, I confess, or still worse, a swell, makes me distinctly
uncomfortable. The great thing is never to miss a meal. You look at the food, and you say, 'I can't'; you take a
mouthful, and Lord knows how you're going to swallow it; but persevere, and you often settle the attack for
good. My wife's a coward."
They were pushing back their chairs. The ladies were hesitating at the doorway.
Chapter III 22
"I'd better show the way," said Helen, advancing.
Rachel followed. She had taken no part in the talk; no one had spoken to her; but she had listened to every
word that was said. She had looked from Mrs. Dalloway to Mr. Dalloway, and from Mr. Dalloway back again.
Clarissa, indeed, was a fascinating spectacle. She wore a white dress and a long glittering necklace. What with
her clothes, and her arch delicate face, which showed exquisitely pink beneath hair turning grey, she was
astonishingly like an eighteenth−century masterpiece−−a Reynolds or a Romney. She made Helen and the
others look coarse and slovenly beside her. Sitting lightly upright she seemed to be dealing with the world as
she chose; the enormous solid globe spun round this way and that beneath her fingers. And her husband! Mr.
Dalloway rolling that rich deliberate voice was even more impressive. He seemed to come from the humming
oily centre of the machine where the polished rods are sliding, and the pistons thumping; he grasped things so
firmly but so loosely; he made the others appear like old maids cheapening remnants. Rachel followed in the
wake of the matrons, as if in a trance; a curious scent of violets came back from Mrs. Dalloway, mingling
with the soft rustling of her skirts, and the tinkling of her chains. As she followed, Rachel thought with
supreme self−abasement, taking in the whole course of her life and the lives of all her friends, "She said we
lived in a world of our own. It's true. We're perfectly absurd."
"We sit in here," said Helen, opening the door of the saloon.
"You play?" said Mrs. Dalloway to Mrs. Ambrose, taking up the score of Tristan which lay on the table.
"My niece does," said Helen, laying her hand on Rachel's shoulder.
"Oh, how I envy you!" Clarissa addressed Rachel for the first time. "D'you remember this? Isn't it divine?"
She played a bar or two with ringed fingers upon the page.
"And then Tristan goes like this, and Isolde−−oh!−−it's all too thrilling! Have you been to Bayreuth?"
"No, I haven't," said Rachel. `"Then that's still to come. I shall never forget my first Parsifal−−a grilling
August day, and those fat old German women, come in their stuffy high frocks, and then the dark theatre, and
the music beginning, and one couldn't help sobbing. A kind man went and fetched me water, I remember; and
I could only cry on his shoulder! It caught me here" (she touched her throat). "It's like nothing else in the
world! But where's your piano?" "It's in another room," Rachel explained.
"But you will play to us?" Clarissa entreated. "I can't imagine anything nicer than to sit out in the moonlight
and listen to music−−only that sounds too like a schoolgirl! You know," she said, turning to Helen, "I don't
think music's altogether good for people−−I'm afraid not."
"Too great a strain?" asked Helen.
"Too emotional, somehow," said Clarissa. "One notices it at once when a boy or girl takes up music as a
profession. Sir William Broadley told me just the same thing. Don't you hate the kind of attitudes people go
into over Wagner−−like this−−" She cast her eyes to the ceiling, clasped her hands, and assumed a look of
intensity. "It really doesn't mean that they appreciate him; in fact, I always think it's the other way round. The
people who really care about an art are always the least affected. D'you know Henry Philips, the painter?" she
asked.
"I have seen him," said Helen.
"To look at, one might think he was a successful stockbroker, and not one of the greatest painters of the age.
That's what I like."
Chapter III 23
"There are a great many successful stockbrokers, if you like looking at them," said Helen.
Rachel wished vehemently that her aunt would not be so perverse.
"When you see a musician with long hair, don't you know instinctively that he's bad?" Clarissa asked, turning
to Rachel. "Watts and Joachim−−they looked just like you and me."
"And how much nicer they'd have looked with curls!" said Helen. "The question is, are you going to aim at
beauty or are you not?"
"Cleanliness!" said Clarissa, "I do want a man to look clean!"
"By cleanliness you really mean well−cut clothes," said Helen.
"There's something one knows a gentleman by," said Clarissa, "but one can't say what it is."
"Take my husband now, does he look like a gentleman?"
The question seemed to Clarissa in extraordinarily bad taste. "One of the things that can't be said," she would
have put it. She could find no answer, but a laugh.
"Well, anyhow," she said, turning to Rachel, "I shall insist upon your playing to me to−morrow."
There was that in her manner that made Rachel love her.
Mrs. Dalloway hid a tiny yawn, a mere dilation of the nostrils.
"D'you know," she said, "I'm extraordinarily sleepy. It's the sea air. I think I shall escape."
A man's voice, which she took to be that of Mr. Pepper, strident in discussion, and advancing upon the saloon,
gave her the alarm.
"Good−night−−good−night!" she said. "Oh, I know my way−−do pray for calm! Good−night!"
Her yawn must have been the image of a yawn. Instead of letting her mouth droop, dropping all her clothes in
a bunch as though they depended on one string, and stretching her limbs to the utmost end of her berth, she
merely changed her dress for a dressing−gown, with innumerable frills, and wrapping her feet in a rug, sat
down with a writing−pad on her knee. Already this cramped little cabin was the dressing room of a lady of
quality. There were bottles containing liquids; there were trays, boxes, brushes, pins. Evidently not an inch of
her person lacked its proper instrument. The scent which had intoxicated Rachel pervaded the air. Thus
established, Mrs. Dalloway began to write. A pen in her hands became a thing one caressed paper with, and
she might have been stroking and tickling a kitten as she wrote:
Picture us, my dear, afloat in the very oddest ship you can imagine. It's not the ship, so much as the people.
One does come across queer sorts as one travels. I must say I find it hugely amusing. There's the manager of
the line−−called Vinrace−−a nice big Englishman, doesn't say much−−you know the sort. As for the
rest−−they might have come trailing out of an old number of Punch. They're like people playing croquet in
the 'sixties. How long they've all been shut up in this ship I don't know−−years and years I should say−−but
one feels as though one had boarded a little separate world, and they'd never been on shore, or done ordinary
things in their lives. It's what I've always said about literary people−−they're far the hardest of any to get on
with. The worst of it is, these people−−a man and his wife and a niece−−might have been, one feels, just like
everybody else, if they hadn't got swallowed up by Oxford or Cambridge or some such place, and been made
Chapter III 24
cranks of. The man's really delightful (if he'd cut his nails), and the woman has quite a fine face, only she
dresses, of course, in a potato sack, and wears her hair like a Liberty shopgirl's. They talk about art, and think
us such poops for dressing in the evening. However, I can't help that; I'd rather die than come in to dinner
without changing−−wouldn't you? It matters ever so much more than the soup. (It's odd how things like that
do matter so much more than what's generally supposed to matter. I'd rather have my head cut off than wear
flannel next the skin.) Then there's a nice shy girl−−poor thing−−I wish one could rake her out before it's too
late. She has quite nice eyes and hair, only, of course, she'll get funny too. We ought to start a society for
broadening the minds of the young−−much more useful than missionaries, Hester! Oh, I'd forgotten there's a
dreadful little thing called Pepper. He's just like his name. He's indescribably insignificant, and rather queer in
his temper, poor dear. It's like sitting down to dinner with an ill−conditioned fox−terrier, only one can't comb
him out, and sprinkle him with powder, as one would one's dog. It's a pity, sometimes, one can't treat people
like dogs! The great comfort is that we're away from newspapers, so that Richard will have a real holiday this
time. Spain wasn't a holiday. . . .
"You coward!" said Richard, almost filling the room with his sturdy figure.
"I did my duty at dinner!" cried Clarissa.
"You've let yourself in for the Greek alphabet, anyhow."
"Oh, my dear! Who is Ambrose?"
"I gather that he was a Cambridge don; lives in London now, and edits classics."
"Did you ever see such a set of cranks? The woman asked me if I thought her husband looked like a
gentleman!"
"It was hard to keep the ball rolling at dinner, certainly," said Richard. "Why is it that the women, in that
class, are so much queerer than the men?"
"They're not half bad−looking, really−−only−−they're so odd!"
They both laughed, thinking of the same things, so that there was no need to compare their impressions.
"I see I shall have quite a lot to say to Vinrace," said Richard. "He knows Sutton and all that set. He can tell
me a good deal about the conditions of ship−building in the North."
"Oh, I'm glad. The men always are so much better than the women."
"One always has something to say to a man certainly," said Richard. "But I've no doubt you'll chatter away
fast enough about the babies, Clarice."
"Has she got children? She doesn't look like it somehow."
"Two. A boy and girl."
A pang of envy shot through Mrs. Dalloway's heart.
"We must have a son, Dick," she said.
"Good Lord, what opportunities there are now for young men!" said Dalloway, for his talk had set him
thinking. "I don't suppose there's been so good an opening since the days of Pitt."
Chapter III 25
"And it's yours!" said Clarissa.
"To be a leader of men," Richard soliloquised. "It's a fine career. My God−−what a career!"
The chest slowly curved beneath his waistcoat.
"D'you know, Dick, I can't help thinking of England," said his wife meditatively, leaning her head against his
chest. "Being on this ship seems to make it so much more vivid−−what it really means to be English. One
thinks of all we've done, and our navies, and the people in India and Africa, and how we've gone on century
after century, sending out boys from little country villages−−and of men like you, Dick, and it makes one feel
as if one couldn't bear not to be English! Think of the light burning over the House, Dick! When I stood on
deck just now I seemed to see it. It's what one means by London."
"It's the continuity," said Richard sententiously. A vision of English history, King following King, Prime
Minister Prime Minister, and Law Law had come over him while his wife spoke. He ran his mind along the
line of conservative policy, which went steadily from Lord Salisbury to Alfred, and gradually enclosed, as
though it were a lasso that opened and caught things, enormous chunks of the habitable globe.
"It's taken a long time, but we've pretty nearly done it," he said; "it remains to consolidate."
"And these people don't see it!" Clarissa exclaimed.
"It takes all sorts to make a world," said her husband. "There would never be a government if there weren't an
opposition."
"Dick, you're better than I am," said Clarissa. "You see round, where I only see there." She pressed a point on
the back of his hand.
"That's my business, as I tried to explain at dinner."
"What I like about you, Dick," she continued, "is that you're always the same, and I'm a creature of moods."
"You're a pretty creature, anyhow," he said, gazing at her with deeper eyes.
"You think so, do you? Then kiss me."
He kissed her passionately, so that her half−written letter slid to the ground. Picking it up, he read it without
asking leave.
"Where's your pen?" he said; and added in his little masculine hand:
R.D. loquitur: Clarice has omitted to tell you that she looked exceedingly pretty at dinner, and made a
conquest by which she has bound herself to learn the Greek alphabet. I will take this occasion of adding that
we are both enjoying ourselves in these outlandish parts, and only wish for the presence of our friends
(yourself and John, to wit) to make the trip perfectly enjoyable as it promises to be instructive. . . .
Voices were heard at the end of the corridor. Mrs. Ambrose was speaking low; William Pepper was remarking
in his definite and rather acid voice, "That is the type of lady with whom I find myself distinctly out of
sympathy. She−−"
But neither Richard nor Clarissa profited by the verdict, for directly it seemed likely that they would overhear,
Richard crackled a sheet of paper.
Chapter III 26
"I often wonder," Clarissa mused in bed, over the little white volume of Pascal which went with her
everywhere, "whether it is really good for a woman to live with a man who is morally her superior, as Richard
is mine. It makes one so dependent. I suppose I feel for him what my mother and women of her generation felt
for Christ. It just shows that one can't do without something." She then fell into a sleep, which was as usual
extremely sound and refreshing, but visited by fantastic dreams of great Greek letters stalking round the room,
when she woke up and laughed to herself, remembering where she was and that the Greek letters were real
people, lying asleep not many yards away. Then, thinking of the black sea outside tossing beneath the moon,
she shuddered, and thought of her husband and the others as companions on the voyage. The dreams were not
confined to her indeed, but went from one brain to another. They all dreamt of each other that night, as was
natural, considering how thin the partitions were between them, and how strangely they had been lifted off the
earth to sit next each other in mid−ocean, and see every detail of each other's faces, and hear whatever they
chanced to say.

Chapter IV


Next morning Clarissa was up before anyone else. She dressed, and was out on deck, breathing the fresh air of
a calm morning, and, making the circuit of the ship for the second time, she ran straight into the lean person of
Mr. Grice, the steward. She apologised, and at the same time asked him to enlighten her: what were those
shiny brass stands for, half glass on the top? She had been wondering, and could not guess. When he had done
explaining, she cried enthusiastically:
"I do think that to be a sailor must be the finest thing in the world!"
"And what d'you know about it?" said Mr. Grice, kindling in a strange manner. "Pardon me. What does any
man or woman brought up in England know about the sea? They profess to know; but they don't."
The bitterness with which he spoke was ominous of what was to come. He led her off to his own quarters,
and, sitting on the edge of a brass−bound table, looking uncommonly like a sea−gull, with her white tapering
body and thin alert face, Mrs. Dalloway had to listen to the tirade of a fanatical man. Did she realise, to begin
with, what a very small part of the world the land was? How peaceful, how beautiful, how benignant in
comparison the sea? The deep waters could sustain Europe unaided if every earthly animal died of the plague
to−morrow. Mr. Grice recalled dreadful sights which he had seen in the richest city of the world−−men and
women standing in line hour after hour to receive a mug of greasy soup. "And I thought of the good flesh
down here waiting and asking to be caught. I'm not exactly a Protestant, and I'm not a Catholic, but I could
almost pray for the days of popery to come again−−because of the fasts."
As he talked he kept opening drawers and moving little glass jars. Here were the treasures which the great
ocean had bestowed upon him−−pale fish in greenish liquids, blobs of jelly with streaming tresses, fish with
lights in their heads, they lived so deep.
"They have swum about among bones," Clarissa sighed.
"You're thinking of Shakespeare," said Mr. Grice, and taking down a copy from a shelf well lined with books,
recited in an emphatic nasal voice:
"Full fathom five thy father lies,
"A grand fellow, Shakespeare," he said, replacing the volume.
Clarissa was so glad to hear him say so.
"Which is your favourite play? I wonder if it's the same as mine?"
Chapter IV 27
"Henry the Fifth," said Mr. Grice.
"Joy!" cried Clarissa. "It is!"
Hamlet was what you might call too introspective for Mr. Grice, the sonnets too passionate; Henry the Fifth
was to him the model of an English gentleman. But his favourite reading was Huxley, Herbert Spencer, and
Henry George; while Emerson and Thomas Hardy he read for relaxation. He was giving Mrs. Dalloway his
views upon the present state of England when the breakfast bell rung so imperiously that she had to tear
herself away, promising to come back and be shown his sea−weeds.
The party, which had seemed so odd to her the night before, was already gathered round the table, still under
the influence of sleep, and therefore uncommunicative, but her entrance sent a little flutter like a breath of air
through them all.
"I've had the most interesting talk of my life!" she exclaimed, taking her seat beside Willoughby. "D'you
realise that one of your men is a philosopher and a poet?"
"A very interesting fellow−−that's what I always say," said Willoughby, distinguishing Mr. Grice. "Though
Rachel finds him a bore."
"He's a bore when he talks about currents," said Rachel. Her eyes were full of sleep, but Mrs. Dalloway still
seemed to her wonderful.
"I've never met a bore yet!" said Clarissa.
"And I should say the world was full of them!" exclaimed Helen. But her beauty, which was radiant in the
morning light, took the contrariness from her words.
"I agree that it's the worst one can possibly say of any one," said Clarissa. "How much rather one would be a
murderer than a bore!" she added, with her usual air of saying something profound. "One can fancy liking a
murderer. It's the same with dogs. Some dogs are awful bores, poor dears."
It happened that Richard was sitting next to Rachel. She was curiously conscious of his presence and
appearance−−his well−cut clothes, his crackling shirt−front, his cuffs with blue rings round them, and the
square−tipped, very clean fingers with the red stone on the little finger of the left hand.
"We had a dog who was a bore and knew it," he said, addressing her in cool, easy tones. "He was a Skye
terrier, one of those long chaps, with little feet poking out from their hair like−−like caterpillars−−no, like
sofas I should say. Well, we had another dog at the same time, a black brisk animal−−a Schipperke, I think,
you call them. You can't imagine a greater contrast. The Skye so slow and deliberate, looking up at you like
some old gentleman in the club, as much as to say, 'You don't really mean it, do you?' and the Schipperke as
quick as a knife. I liked the Skye best, I must confess. There was something pathetic about him."
The story seemed to have no climax.
"What happened to him?" Rachel asked.
"That's a very sad story," said Richard, lowering his voice and peeling an apple. "He followed my wife in the
car one day and got run over by a brute of a cyclist."
"Was he killed?" asked Rachel.
Chapter IV 28
But Clarissa at her end of the table had overheard.
"Don't talk of it!" she cried. "It's a thing I can't bear to think of to this day."
Surely the tears stood in her eyes?
"That's the painful thing about pets," said Mr. Dalloway; "they die. The first sorrow I can remember was for
the death of a dormouse. I regret to say that I sat upon it. Still, that didn't make one any the less sorry. Here
lies the duck that Samuel Johnson sat on, eh? I was big for my age."
"Then we had canaries," he continued, "a pair of ring−doves, a lemur, and at one time a martin."
"Did you live in the country?" Rachel asked him.
"We lived in the country for six months of the year. When I say 'we' I mean four sisters, a brother, and myself.
There's nothing like coming of a large family. Sisters particularly are delightful."
"Dick, you were horribly spoilt!" cried Clarissa across the table.
"No, no. Appreciated," said Richard.
Rachel had other questions on the tip of her tongue; or rather one enormous question, which she did not in the
least know how to put into words. The talk appeared too airy to admit of it.
"Please tell me−−everything." That was what she wanted to say. He had drawn apart one little chink and
showed astonishing treasures. It seemed to her incredible that a man like that should be willing to talk to her.
He had sisters and pets, and once lived in the country. She stirred her tea round and round; the bubbles which
swam and clustered in the cup seemed to her like the union of their minds.
The talk meanwhile raced past her, and when Richard suddenly stated in a jocular tone of voice, "I'm sure
Miss Vinrace, now, has secret leanings towards Catholicism," she had no idea what to answer, and Helen
could not help laughing at the start she gave.
However, breakfast was over and Mrs. Dalloway was rising. "I always think religion's like collecting beetles,"
she said, summing up the discussion as she went up the stairs with Helen. "One person has a passion for black
beetles; another hasn't; it's no good arguing about it. What's your black beetle now?"
"I suppose it's my children," said Helen.
"Ah−−that's different," Clarissa breathed. "Do tell me. You have a boy, haven't you? Isn't it detestable, leaving
them?"
It was as though a blue shadow had fallen across a pool. Their eyes became deeper, and their voices more
cordial. Instead of joining them as they began to pace the deck, Rachel was indignant with the prosperous
matrons, who made her feel outside their world and motherless, and turning back, she left them abruptly. She
slammed the door of her room, and pulled out her music. It was all old music−−Bach and Beethoven, Mozart
and Purcell−−the pages yellow, the engraving rough to the finger. In three minutes she was deep in a very
difficult, very classical fugue in A, and over her face came a queer remote impersonal expression of complete
absorption and anxious satisfaction. Now she stumbled; now she faltered and had to play the same bar twice
over; but an invisible line seemed to string the notes together, from which rose a shape, a building. She was so
far absorbed in this work, for it was really difficult to find how all these sounds should stand together, and
drew upon the whole of her faculties, that she never heard a knock at the door. It was burst impulsively open,
Chapter IV 29
and Mrs. Dalloway stood in the room leaving the door open, so that a strip of the white deck and of the blue
sea appeared through the opening. The shape of the Bach fugue crashed to the ground.
"Don't let me interrupt," Clarissa implored. "I heard you playing, and I couldn't resist. I adore Bach!"
Rachel flushed and fumbled her fingers in her lap. She stood up awkwardly.
"It's too difficult," she said.
"But you were playing quite splendidly! I ought to have stayed outside."
"No," said Rachel.
She slid Cowper's Letters and Wuthering Heights out of the arm−chair, so that Clarissa was invited to sit
there.
"What a dear little room!" she said, looking round. "Oh, _Cowper's Letters_! I've never read them. Are they
nice?"
"Rather dull," said Rachel.
"He wrote awfully well, didn't he?" said Clarissa; "−−if one likes that kind of thing−−finished his sentences
and all that. Wuthering Heights! Ah−−that's more in my line. I really couldn't exist without the Brontes! Don't
you love them? Still, on the whole, I'd rather live without them than without Jane Austen."
Lightly and at random though she spoke, her manner conveyed an extraordinary degree of sympathy and
desire to befriend.
"Jane Austen? I don't like Jane Austen," said Rachel.
"You monster!" Clarissa exclaimed. "I can only just forgive you. Tell me why?"
"She's so−−so−−well, so like a tight plait," Rachel floundered. "Ah−−I see what you mean. But I don't agree.
And you won't when you're older. At your age I only liked Shelley. I can remember sobbing over him in the
garden.
He has outsoared the shadow of our night, Envy and calumny and hate and pain−− you remember?
Can touch him not and torture not again From the contagion of the world's slow stain.
How divine!−−and yet what nonsense!" She looked lightly round the room. "I always think it's living, not
dying, that counts. I really respect some snuffy old stockbroker who's gone on adding up column after column
all his days, and trotting back to his villa at Brixton with some old pug dog he worships, and a dreary little
wife sitting at the end of the table, and going off to Margate for a fortnight−−I assure you I know heaps like
that−−well, they seem to me really nobler than poets whom every one worships, just because they're geniuses
and die young. But I don't expect you to agree with me!"
She pressed Rachel's shoulder.
"Um−m−m−−" she went on quoting−−
Unrest which men miscall delight−−
Chapter IV 30
"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 Bach."
"I long to ask questions," she continued. "You interest me so much. If I'm impertinent, you must just box my
ears."
"And I−−I want to ask questions," said Rachel with such earnestness that Mrs. Dalloway had to check her
smile.
"D'you mind if we walk?" she said. "The air's so delicious."
She snuffed it like a racehorse as they shut the door and stood on deck.
"Isn't it good to be alive?" she exclaimed, and drew Rachel's arm within hers.
"Look, look! How exquisite!"
The shores of Portugal were beginning to lose their substance; but the land was still the land, though at a great
distance. They could distinguish the little towns that were sprinkled in the folds of the hills, and the smoke
rising faintly. The towns appeared to be very small in comparison with the great purple mountains behind
them.
"Honestly, though," said Clarissa, having looked, "I don't like views. They're too inhuman." They walked on.
"How odd it is!" she continued impulsively. "This time yesterday we'd never met. I was packing in a stuffy
little room in the hotel. We know absolutely nothing about each other−−and yet−−I feel as if I did know you!"
"You have children−−your husband was in Parliament?"
"You've never been to school, and you live−−?"
"With my aunts at Richmond."
"Richmond?"
"You see, my aunts like the Park. They like the quiet."
"And you don't! I understand!" Clarissa laughed.
"I like walking in the Park alone; but not−−with the dogs," she finished.
"No; and some people are dogs; aren't they?" said Clarissa, as if she had guessed a secret. "But not every
one−−oh no, not every one."
"Not every one," said Rachel, and stopped.
"I can quite imagine you walking alone," said Clarissa: "and thinking−−in a little world of your own. But how
you will enjoy it−−some day!"
Chapter IV 31
"I shall enjoy walking with a man−−is that what you mean?" said Rachel, regarding Mrs. Dalloway with her
large enquiring eyes.
"I wasn't thinking of a man particularly," said Clarissa. "But you will."
"No. I shall never marry," Rachel determined.
"I shouldn't be so sure of that," said Clarissa. Her sidelong glance told Rachel that she found her attractive
although she was inexplicably amused.
"Why do people marry?" Rachel asked.
"That's what you're going to find out," Clarissa laughed.
Rachel followed her eyes and found that they rested for a second, on the robust figure of Richard Dalloway,
who was engaged in striking a match on the sole of his boot; while Willoughby expounded something, which
seemed to be of great interest to them both.
"There's nothing like it," she concluded. "Do tell me about the Ambroses. Or am I asking too many
questions?"
"I find you easy to talk to," said Rachel.
The short sketch of the Ambroses was, however, somewhat perfunctory, and contained little but the fact that
Mr. Ambrose was her uncle.
"Your mother's brother?"
When a name has dropped out of use, the lightest touch upon it tells. Mrs. Dalloway went on:
"Are you like your mother?"
"No; she was different," said Rachel.
She was overcome by an intense desire to tell Mrs. Dalloway things she had never told any one−−things she
had not realised herself until this moment.
"I am lonely," she began. "I want−−" She did not know what she wanted, so that she could not finish the
sentence; but her lip quivered.
But it seemed that Mrs. Dalloway was able to understand without words.
"I know," she said, actually putting one arm round Rachel's shoulder. "When I was your age I wanted too. No
one understood until I met Richard. He gave me all I wanted. He's man and woman as well." Her eyes rested
upon Mr. Dalloway, leaning upon the rail, still talking. "Don't think I say that because I'm his wife−−I see his
faults more clearly than I see any one else's. What one wants in the person one lives with is that they should
keep one at one's best. I often wonder what I've done to be so happy!" she exclaimed, and a tear slid down her
cheek. She wiped it away, squeezed Rachel's hand, and exclaimed:
"How good life is!" At that moment, standing out in the fresh breeze, with the sun upon the waves, and Mrs.
Dalloway's hand upon her arm, it seemed indeed as if life which had been unnamed before was infinitely
wonderful, and too good to be true.
Chapter IV 32
Here Helen passed them, and seeing Rachel arm−in−arm with a comparative stranger, looking excited, was
amused, but at the same time slightly irritated. But they were immediately joined by Richard, who had
enjoyed a very interesting talk with Willoughby and was in a sociable mood.
"Observe my Panama," he said, touching the brim of his hat. "Are you aware, Miss Vinrace, how much can be
done to induce fine weather by appropriate headdress? I have determined that it is a hot summer day; I warn
you that nothing you can say will shake me. Therefore I am going to sit down. I advise you to follow my
example." Three chairs in a row invited them to be seated.
Leaning back, Richard surveyed the waves.
"That's a very pretty blue," he said. "But there's a little too much of it. Variety is essential to a view. Thus, if
you have hills you ought to have a river; if a river, hills. The best view in the world in my opinion is that from
Boars Hill on a fine day−−it must be a fine day, mark you−−A rug?−−Oh, thank you, my dear . . . in that case
you have also the advantage of associations−−the Past."
"D'you want to talk, Dick, or shall I read aloud?"
Clarissa had fetched a book with the rugs.
"Persuasion," announced Richard, examining the volume.
"That's for Miss Vinrace," said Clarissa. "She can't bear our beloved Jane."
"That−−if I may say so−−is because you have not read her," said Richard. "She is incomparably the greatest
female writer we possess."
"She is the greatest," he continued, "and for this reason: she does not attempt to write like a man. Every other
woman does; on that account, I don't read 'em."
"Produce your instances, Miss Vinrace," he went on, joining his finger−tips. "I'm ready to be converted."
He waited, while Rachel vainly tried to vindicate her sex from the slight he put upon it.
"I'm afraid he's right," said Clarissa. "He generally is−−the wretch!"
"I brought Persuasion," she went on, "because I thought it was a little less threadbare than the
others−−though, Dick, it's no good your pretending to know Jane by heart, considering that she always sends
you to sleep!"
"After the labours of legislation, I deserve sleep," said Richard.
"You're not to think about those guns," said Clarissa, seeing that his eye, passing over the waves, still sought
the land meditatively, "or about navies, or empires, or anything." So saying she opened the book and began to
read:
"'Sir Walter Elliott, of Kellynch Hall, in Somersetshire, was a man who, for his own amusement, never took
up any book but the Baronetage'−−don't you know Sir Walter?−−'There he found occupation for an idle hour,
and consolation in a distressed one.' She does write well, doesn't she? 'There−−'" She read on in a light
humorous voice. She was determined that Sir Walter should take her husband's mind off the guns of Britain,
and divert him in an exquisite, quaint, sprightly, and slightly ridiculous world. After a time it appeared that the
sun was sinking in that world, and the points becoming softer. Rachel looked up to see what caused the
Chapter IV 33
change. Richard's eyelids were closing and opening; opening and closing. A loud nasal breath announced that
he no longer considered appearances, that he was sound asleep.
"Triumph!" Clarissa whispered at the end of a sentence. Suddenly she raised her hand in protest. A sailor
hesitated; she gave the book to Rachel, and stepped lightly to take the message−−"Mr. Grice wished to know
if it was convenient," etc. She followed him. Ridley, who had prowled unheeded, started forward, stopped,
and, with a gesture of disgust, strode off to his study. The sleeping politician was left in Rachel's charge. She
read a sentence, and took a look at him. In sleep he looked like a coat hanging at the end of a bed; there were
all the wrinkles, and the sleeves and trousers kept their shape though no longer filled out by legs and arms.
You can then best judge the age and state of the coat. She looked him all over until it seemed to her that he
must protest.
He was a man of forty perhaps; and here there were lines round his eyes, and there curious clefts in his
cheeks. Slightly battered he appeared, but dogged and in the prime of life.
"Sisters and a dormouse and some canaries," Rachel murmured, never taking her eyes off him. "I wonder, I
wonder" she ceased, her chin upon her hand, still looking at him. A bell chimed behind them, and Richard
raised his head. Then he opened his eyes which wore for a second the queer look of a shortsighted person's
whose spectacles are lost. It took him a moment to recover from the impropriety of having snored, and
possibly grunted, before a young lady. To wake and find oneself left alone with one was also slightly
disconcerting.
"I suppose I've been dozing," he said. "What's happened to everyone? Clarissa?"
"Mrs. Dalloway has gone to look at Mr. Grice's fish," Rachel replied.
"I might have guessed," said Richard. "It's a common occurrence. And how have you improved the shining
hour? Have you become a convert?"
"I don't think I've read a line," said Rachel.
"That's what I always find. There are too many things to look at. I find nature very stimulating myself. My
best ideas have come to me out of doors."
"When you were walking?"
"Walking−−riding−−yachting−−I suppose the most momentous conversations of my life took place while
perambulating the great court at Trinity. I was at both universities. It was a fad of my father's. He thought it
broadening to the mind. I think I agree with him. I can remember−−what an age ago it seems!−−settling the
basis of a future state with the present Secretary for India. We thought ourselves very wise. I'm not sure we
weren't. We were happy, Miss Vinrace, and we were young−−gifts which make for wisdom."
"Have you done what you said you'd do?" she asked.
"A searching question! I answer−−Yes and No. If on the one hand I have not accomplished what I set out to
accomplish−−which of us does!−−on the other I can fairly say this: I have not lowered my ideal."
He looked resolutely at a sea−gull, as though his ideal flew on the wings of the bird.
"But," said Rachel, "what is your ideal?"
"There you ask too much, Miss Vinrace," said Richard playfully.
Chapter IV 34
She could only say that she wanted to know, and Richard was sufficiently amused to answer.
"Well, how shall I reply? In one word−−Unity. Unity of aim, of dominion, of progress. The dispersion of the
best ideas over the greatest area."
"The English?"
"I grant that the English seem, on the whole, whiter than most men, their records cleaner. But, good Lord,
don't run away with the idea that I don't see the drawbacks−−horrors−−unmentionable things done in our very
midst! I'm under no illusions. Few people, I suppose, have fewer illusions than I have. Have you ever been in
a factory, Miss Vinrace!−−No, I suppose not−−I may say I hope not."
As for Rachel, she had scarcely walked through a poor street, and always under the escort of father, maid, or
aunts.
"I was going to say that if you'd ever seen the kind of thing that's going on round you, you'd understand what
it is that makes me and men like me politicians. You asked me a moment ago whether I'd done what I set out
to do. Well, when I consider my life, there is one fact I admit that I'm proud of; owing to me some thousands
of girls in Lancashire−−and many thousands to come after them−−can spend an hour every day in the open air
which their mothers had to spend over their looms. I'm prouder of that, I own, than I should be of writing
Keats and Shelley into the bargain!"
It became painful to Rachel to be one of those who write Keats and Shelley. She liked Richard Dalloway, and
warmed as he warmed. He seemed to mean what he said.
"I know nothing!" she exclaimed.
"It's far better that you should know nothing," he said paternally, "and you wrong yourself, I'm sure. You play
very nicely, I'm told, and I've no doubt you've read heaps of learned books."
Elderly banter would no longer check her.
"You talk of unity," she said. "You ought to make me understand."
"I never allow my wife to talk politics," he said seriously. "For this reason. It is impossible for human beings,
constituted as they are, both to fight and to have ideals. If I have preserved mine, as I am thankful to say that
in great measure I have, it is due to the fact that I have been able to come home to my wife in the evening and
to find that she has spent her day in calling, music, play with the children, domestic duties−−what you will;
her illusions have not been destroyed. She gives me courage to go on. The strain of public life is very great,"
he added.
This made him appear a battered martyr, parting every day with some of the finest gold, in the service of
mankind.
"I can't think," Rachel exclaimed, "how any one does it!"
"Explain, Miss Vinrace," said Richard. "This is a matter I want to clear up."
His kindness was genuine, and she determined to take the chance he gave her, although to talk to a man of
such worth and authority made her heart beat.
"It seems to me like this," she began, doing her best first to recollect and then to expose her shivering private
Chapter IV 35
visions.
"There's an old widow in her room, somewhere, let us suppose in the suburbs of Leeds."
Richard bent his head to show that he accepted the widow.
"In London you're spending your life, talking, writing things, getting bills through, missing what seems
natural. The result of it all is that she goes to her cupboard and finds a little more tea, a few lumps of sugar, or
a little less tea and a newspaper. Widows all over the country I admit do this. Still, there's the mind of the
widow−−the affections; those you leave untouched. But you waste you own."
"If the widow goes to her cupboard and finds it bare," Richard answered, "her spiritual outlook we may admit
will be affected. If I may pick holes in your philosophy, Miss Vinrace, which has its merits, I would point out
that a human being is not a set of compartments, but an organism. Imagination, Miss Vinrace; use your
imagination; that's where you young Liberals fail. Conceive the world as a whole. Now for your second point;
when you assert that in trying to set the house in order for the benefit of the young generation I am wasting
my higher capabilities, I totally disagree with you. I can conceive no more exalted aim−−to be the citizen of
the Empire. Look at it in this way, Miss Vinrace; conceive the state as a complicated machine; we citizens are
parts of that machine; some fulfil more important duties; others (perhaps I am one of them) serve only to
connect some obscure parts of the mechanism, concealed from the public eye. Yet if the meanest screw fails
in its task, the proper working of the whole is imperilled."
It was impossible to combine the image of a lean black widow, gazing out of her window, and longing for
some one to talk to, with the image of a vast machine, such as one sees at South Kensington, thumping,
thumping, thumping. The attempt at communication had been a failure.
"We don't seem to understand each other," she said.
"Shall I say something that will make you very angry?" he replied.
"It won't," said Rachel.
"Well, then; no woman has what I may call the political instinct. You have very great virtues; I am the first, I
hope, to admit that; but I have never met a woman who even saw what is meant by statesmanship. I am going
to make you still more angry. I hope that I never shall meet such a woman. Now, Miss Vinrace, are we
enemies for life?"
Vanity, irritation, and a thrusting desire to be understood, urged her to make another attempt.
"Under the streets, in the sewers, in the wires, in the telephones, there is something alive; is that what you
mean? In things like dust−carts, and men mending roads? You feel that all the time when you walk about
London, and when you turn on a tap and the water comes?"
"Certainly," said Richard. "I understand you to mean that the whole of modern society is based upon
cooperative effort. If only more people would realise that, Miss Vinrace, there would be fewer of your old
widows in solitary lodgings!"
Rachel considered.
"Are you a Liberal or are you a Conservative?" she asked.
"I call myself a Conservative for convenience sake," said Richard, smiling. "But there is more in common
Chapter IV 36
between the two parties than people generally allow."
There was a pause, which did not come on Rachel's side from any lack of things to say; as usual she could not
say them, and was further confused by the fact that the time for talking probably ran short. She was haunted
by absurd jumbled ideas−−how, if one went back far enough, everything perhaps was intelligible; everything
was in common; for the mammoths who pastured in the fields of Richmond High Street had turned into
paving stones and boxes full of ribbon, and her aunts.
"Did you say you lived in the country when you were a child?" she asked.
Crude as her manners seemed to him, Richard was flattered. There could be no doubt that her interest was
genuine.
"I did," he smiled.
"And what happened?" she asked. "Or do I ask too many questions?"
"I'm flattered, I assure you. But−−let me see−−what happened? Well, riding, lessons, sisters. There was an
enchanted rubbish heap, I remember, where all kinds of queer things happened. Odd, what things impress
children! I can remember the look of the place to this day. It's a fallacy to think that children are happy.
They're not; they're unhappy. I've never suffered so much as I did when I was a child."
"Why?" she asked.
"I didn't get on well with my father," said Richard shortly. "He was a very able man, but hard. Well−−it makes
one determined not to sin in that way oneself. Children never forget injustice. They forgive heaps of things
grown−up people mind; but that sin is the unpardonable sin. Mind you−−I daresay I was a difficult child to
manage; but when I think what I was ready to give! No, I was more sinned against than sinning. And then I
went to school, where I did very fairly well; and and then, as I say, my father sent me to both universities. . . .
D'you know, Miss Vinrace, you've made me think? How little, after all, one can tell anybody about one's life!
Here I sit; there you sit; both, I doubt not, chock−full of the most interesting experiences, ideas, emotions; yet
how communicate? I've told you what every second person you meet might tell you."
"I don't think so," she said. "It's the way of saying things, isn't it, not the things?"
"True," said Richard. "Perfectly true." He paused. "When I look back over my life−−I'm forty−two−−what are
the great facts that stand out? What were the revelations, if I may call them so? The misery of the poor and−−"
(he hesitated and pitched over) "love!"
Upon that word he lowered his voice; it was a word that seemed to unveil the skies for Rachel.
"It's an odd thing to say to a young lady," he continued. "But have you any idea what−−what I mean by that?
No, of course not. I don't use the word in a conventional sense. I use it as young men use it. Girls are kept
very ignorant, aren't they? Perhaps it's wise−−perhaps−−You don't know?"
He spoke as if he had lost consciousness of what he was saying.
"No; I don't," she said, scarcely speaking above her breath.
"Warships, Dick! Over there! Look!" Clarissa, released from Mr. Grice, appreciative of all his seaweeds,
skimmed towards them, gesticulating.
Chapter IV 37
She had sighted two sinister grey vessels, low in the water, and bald as bone, one closely following the other
with the look of eyeless beasts seeking their prey. Consciousness returned to Richard instantly.
"By George!" he exclaimed, and stood shielding his eyes.
"Ours, Dick?" said Clarissa.
"The Mediterranean Fleet," he answered.
"The Euphrosyne was slowly dipping her flag. Richard raised his hat. Convulsively Clarissa squeezed
Rachel's hand.
"Aren't you glad to be English!" she said.
The warships drew past, casting a curious effect of discipline and sadness upon the waters, and it was not until
they were again invisible that people spoke to each other naturally. At lunch the talk was all of valour and
death, and the magnificent qualities of British admirals. Clarissa quoted one poet, Willoughby quoted another.
Life on board a man−of−war was splendid, so they agreed, and sailors, whenever one met them, were quite
especially nice and simple.
This being so, no one liked it when Helen remarked that it seemed to her as wrong to keep sailors as to keep a
Zoo, and that as for dying on a battle−field, surely it was time we ceased to praise courage−−"or to write bad
poetry about it," snarled Pepper.
But Helen was really wondering why Rachel, sitting silent, looked so queer and flushed.

Chapter V


She was not able to follow up her observations, however, or to come to any conclusion, for by one of those
accidents which are liable to happen at sea, the whole course of their lives was now put out of order.
Even at tea the floor rose beneath their feet and pitched too low again, and at dinner the ship seemed to groan
and strain as though a lash were descending. She who had been a broad−backed dray−horse, upon whose
hind−quarters pierrots might waltz, became a colt in a field. The plates slanted away from the knives, and
Mrs. Dalloway's face blanched for a second as she helped herself and saw the potatoes roll this way and that.
Willoughby, of course, extolled the virtues of his ship, and quoted what had been said of her by experts and
distinguished passengers, for he loved his own possessions. Still, dinner was uneasy, and directly the ladies
were alone Clarissa owned that she would be better off in bed, and went, smiling bravely.
Next morning the storm was on them, and no politeness could ignore it. Mrs. Dalloway stayed in her room.
Richard faced three meals, eating valiantly at each; but at the third, certain glazed asparagus swimming in oil
finally conquered him.
"That beats me," he said, and withdrew.
"Now we are alone once more," remarked William Pepper, looking round the table; but no one was ready to
engage him in talk, and the meal ended in silence.
On the following day they met−−but as flying leaves meet in the air. Sick they were not; but the wind
propelled them hastily into rooms, violently downstairs. They passed each other gasping on deck; they
shouted across tables. They wore fur coats; and Helen was never seen without a bandanna on her head. For
comfort they retreated to their cabins, where with tightly wedged feet they let the ship bounce and tumble.
Chapter V 38
Their sensations were the sensations of potatoes in a sack on a galloping horse. The world outside was merely
a violent grey tumult. For two days they had a perfect rest from their old emotions. Rachel had just enough
consciousness to suppose herself a donkey on the summit of a moor in a hail−storm, with its coat blown into
furrows; then she became a wizened tree, perpetually driven back by the salt Atlantic gale.
Helen, on the other hand, staggered to Mrs. Dalloway's door, knocked, could not be heard for the slamming of
doors and the battering of wind, and entered.
There were basins, of course. Mrs. Dalloway lay half−raised on a pillow, and did not open her eyes. Then she
murmured, "Oh, Dick, is that you?"
Helen shouted−−for she was thrown against the washstand−−"How are you?"
Clarissa opened one eye. It gave her an incredibly dissipated appearance. "Awful!" she gasped. Her lips were
white inside.
Planting her feet wide, Helen contrived to pour champagne into a tumbler with a tooth−brush in it.
"Champagne," she said.
"There's a tooth−brush in it," murmured Clarissa, and smiled; it might have been the contortion of one
weeping. She drank.
"Disgusting," she whispered, indicating the basins. Relics of humour still played over her face like
moonshine.
"Want more?" Helen shouted. Speech was again beyond Clarissa's reach. The wind laid the ship shivering on
her side. Pale agonies crossed Mrs. Dalloway in waves. When the curtains flapped, grey lights puffed across
her. Between the spasms of the storm, Helen made the curtain fast, shook the pillows, stretched the
bed−clothes, and smoothed the hot nostrils and forehead with cold scent.
"You are good!" Clarissa gasped. "Horrid mess!"
She was trying to apologise for white underclothes fallen and scattered on the floor. For one second she
opened a single eye, and saw that the room was tidy.
"That's nice," she gasped.
Helen left her; far, far away she knew that she felt a kind of liking for Mrs. Dalloway. She could not help
respecting her spirit and her desire, even in the throes of sickness, for a tidy bedroom. Her petticoats,
however, rose above her knees.
Quite suddenly the storm relaxed its grasp. It happened at tea; the expected paroxysm of the blast gave out just
as it reached its climax and dwindled away, and the ship instead of taking the usual plunge went steadily. The
monotonous order of plunging and rising, roaring and relaxing, was interfered with, and every one at table
looked up and felt something loosen within them. The strain was slackened and human feelings began to peep
again, as they do when daylight shows at the end of a tunnel.
"Try a turn with me," Ridley called across to Rachel.
"Foolish!" cried Helen, but they went stumbling up the ladder. Choked by the wind their spirits rose with a
rush, for on the skirts of all the grey tumult was a misty spot of gold. Instantly the world dropped into shape;
Chapter V 39
they were no longer atoms flying in the void, but people riding a triumphant ship on the back of the sea. Wind
and space were banished; the world floated like an apple in a tub, and the mind of man, which had been
unmoored also, once more attached itself to the old beliefs.
Having scrambled twice round the ship and received many sound cuffs from the wind, they saw a sailor's face
positively shine golden. They looked, and beheld a complete yellow circle of sun; next minute it was traversed
by sailing stands of cloud, and then completely hidden. By breakfast the next morning, however, the sky was
swept clean, the waves, although steep, were blue, and after their view of the strange under−world, inhabited
by phantoms, people began to live among tea−pots and loaves of bread with greater zest than ever.
Richard and Clarissa, however, still remained on the borderland. She did not attempt to sit up; her husband
stood on his feet, contemplated his waistcoat and trousers, shook his head, and then lay down again. The
inside of his brain was still rising and falling like the sea on the stage. At four o'clock he woke from sleep and
saw the sunlight make a vivid angle across the red plush curtains and the grey tweed trousers. The ordinary
world outside slid into his mind, and by the time he was dressed he was an English gentleman again.
He stood beside his wife. She pulled him down to her by the lapel of his coat, kissed him, and held him fast
for a minute.
"Go and get a breath of air, Dick," she said. "You look quite washed out. . . . How nice you smell! . . . And be
polite to that woman. She was so kind to me."
Thereupon Mrs. Dalloway turned to the cool side of her pillow, terribly flattened but still invincible.
Richard found Helen talking to her brother−in−law, over two dishes of yellow cake and smooth bread and
butter.
"You look very ill!" she exclaimed on seeing him. "Come and have some tea."
He remarked that the hands that moved about the cups were beautiful.
"I hear you've been very good to my wife," he said. "She's had an awful time of it. You came in and fed her
with champagne. Were you among the saved yourself?"
"I? Oh, I haven't been sick for twenty years−−sea−sick, I mean."
"There are three stages of convalescence, I always say," broke in the hearty voice of Willoughby. "The milk
stage, the bread−and−butter stage, and the roast−beef stage. I should say you were at the bread−and−butter
stage." He handed him the plate.
"Now, I should advise a hearty tea, then a brisk walk on deck; and by dinner−time you'll be clamouring for
beef, eh?" He went off laughing, excusing himself on the score of business.
"What a splendid fellow he is!" said Richard. "Always keen on something."
"Yes," said Helen, "he's always been like that."
"This is a great undertaking of his," Richard continued. "It's a business that won't stop with ships, I should
say. We shall see him in Parliament, or I'm much mistaken. He's the kind of man we want in Parliament−−the
man who has done things."
But Helen was not much interested in her brother−in−law.
Chapter V 40
"I expect your head's aching, isn't it?" she asked, pouring a fresh cup.
"Well, it is," said Richard. "It's humiliating to find what a slave one is to one's body in this world. D'you
know, I can never work without a kettle on the hob. As often as not I don't drink tea, but I must feel that I can
if I want to."
"That's very bad for you," said Helen.
"It shortens one's life; but I'm afraid, Mrs. Ambrose, we politicians must make up our minds to that at the
outset. We've got to burn the candle at both ends, or−−"
"You've cooked your goose!" said Helen brightly.
"We can't make you take us seriously, Mrs. Ambrose," he protested. "May I ask how you've spent your time?
Reading−−philosophy?" (He saw the black book.) "Metaphysics and fishing!" he exclaimed. "If I had to live
again I believe I should devote myself to one or the other." He began turning the pages.
"'Good, then, is indefinable,'" he read out. "How jolly to think that's going on still! 'So far as I know there is
only one ethical writer, Professor Henry Sidgwick, who has clearly recognised and stated this fact.' That's just
the kind of thing we used to talk about when we were boys. I can remember arguing until five in the morning
with Duffy−−now Secretary for India−−pacing round and round those cloisters until we decided it was too
late to go to bed, and we went for a ride instead. Whether we ever came to any conclusion−−that's another
matter. Still, it's the arguing that counts. It's things like that that stand out in life. Nothing's been quite so vivid
since. It's the philosophers, it's the scholars," he continued, "they're the people who pass the torch, who keep
the light burning by which we live. Being a politician doesn't necessarily blind one to that, Mrs. Ambrose."
"No. Why should it?" said Helen. "But can you remember if your wife takes sugar?"
She lifted the tray and went off with it to Mrs. Dalloway.
Richard twisted a muffler twice round his throat and struggled up on deck. His body, which had grown white
and tender in a dark room, tingled all over in the fresh air. He felt himself a man undoubtedly in the prime of
life. Pride glowed in his eye as he let the wind buffet him and stood firm. With his head slightly lowered he
sheered round corners, strode uphill, and met the blast. There was a collision. For a second he could not see
what the body was he had run into. "Sorry." "Sorry." It was Rachel who apologised. They both laughed, too
much blown about to speak. She drove open the door of her room and stepped into its calm. In order to speak
to her, it was necessary that Richard should follow. They stood in a whirlpool of wind; papers began flying
round in circles, the door crashed to, and they tumbled, laughing, into chairs. Richard sat upon Bach.
"My word! What a tempest!" he exclaimed.
"Fine, isn't it?" said Rachel. Certainly the struggle and wind had given her a decision she lacked; red was in
her cheeks, and her hair was down.
"Oh, what fun!" he cried. "What am I sitting on? Is this your room? How jolly!" "There−−sit there," she
commanded. Cowper slid once more.
"How jolly to meet again," said Richard. "It seems an age. _Cowper's Letters? . . . Bach? . . . Wuthering
Heights_? . . . Is this where you meditate on the world, and then come out and pose poor politicians with
questions? In the intervals of sea−sickness I've thought a lot of our talk. I assure you, you made me think."
"I made you think! But why?"
Chapter V 41
"What solitary icebergs we are, Miss Vinrace! How little we can communicate! There are lots of things I
should like to tell you about−−to hear your opinion of. Have you ever read Burke?"
"Burke?" she repeated. "Who was Burke?"
"No? Well, then I shall make a point of sending you a copy. The Speech on the French Revolution−−The
American Rebellion? Which shall it be, I wonder?" He noted something in his pocket−book. "And then you
must write and tell me what you think of it. This reticence−−this isolation−−that's what's the matter with
modern life! Now, tell me about yourself. What are your interests and occupations? I should imagine that you
were a person with very strong interests. Of course you are! Good God! When I think of the age we live in,
with its opportunities and possibilities, the mass of things to be done and enjoyed−−why haven't we ten lives
instead of one? But about yourself?"
"You see, I'm a woman," said Rachel.
"I know−−I know," said Richard, throwing his head back, and drawing his fingers across his eyes.
"How strange to be a woman! A young and beautiful woman," he continued sententiously, "has the whole
world at her feet. That's true, Miss Vinrace. You have an inestimable power−−for good or for evil. What
couldn't you do−−" he broke off.
"What?" asked Rachel.
"You have beauty," he said. The ship lurched. Rachel fell slightly forward. Richard took her in his arms and
kissed her. Holding her tight, he kissed her passionately, so that she felt the hardness of his body and the
roughness of his cheek printed upon hers. She fell back in her chair, with tremendous beats of the heart, each
of which sent black waves across her eyes. He clasped his forehead in his hands.
"You tempt me," he said. The tone of his voice was terrifying. He seemed choked in fright. They were both
trembling. Rachel stood up and went. Her head was cold, her knees shaking, and the physical pain of the
emotion was so great that she could only keep herself moving above the great leaps of her heart. She leant
upon the rail of the ship, and gradually ceased to feel, for a chill of body and mind crept over her. Far out
between the waves little black and white sea−birds were riding. Rising and falling with smooth and graceful
movements in the hollows of the waves they seemed singularly detached and unconcerned.
"You're peaceful," she said. She became peaceful too, at the same time possessed with a strange exultation.
Life seemed to hold infinite possibilities she had never guessed at. She leant upon the rail and looked over the
troubled grey waters, where the sunlight was fitfully scattered upon the crests of the waves, until she was cold
and absolutely calm again. Nevertheless something wonderful had happened.
At dinner, however, she did not feel exalted, but merely uncomfortable, as if she and Richard had seen
something together which is hidden in ordinary life, so that they did not like to look at each other. Richard slid
his eyes over her uneasily once, and never looked at her again. Formal platitudes were manufactured with
effort, but Willoughby was kindled.
"Beef for Mr. Dalloway!" he shouted. "Come now−−after that walk you're at the beef stage, Dalloway!"
Wonderful masculine stories followed about Bright and Disraeli and coalition governments, wonderful stories
which made the people at the dinner−table seem featureless and small. After dinner, sitting alone with Rachel
under the great swinging lamp, Helen was struck by her pallor. It once more occurred to her that there was
something strange in the girl's behaviour.
Chapter V 42
"You look tired. Are you tired?" she asked.
"Not tired," said Rachel. "Oh, yes, I suppose I am tired."
Helen advised bed, and she went, not seeing Richard again. She must have been very tired for she fell asleep
at once, but after an hour or two of dreamless sleep, she dreamt. She dreamt that she was walking down a long
tunnel, which grew so narrow by degrees that she could touch the damp bricks on either side. At length the
tunnel opened and became a vault; she found herself trapped in it, bricks meeting her wherever she turned,
alone with a little deformed man who squatted on the floor gibbering, with long nails. His face was pitted and
like the face of an animal. The wall behind him oozed with damp, which collected into drops and slid down.
Still and cold as death she lay, not daring to move, until she broke the agony by tossing herself across the bed,
and woke crying "Oh!"
Light showed her the familiar things: her clothes, fallen off the chair; the water jug gleaming white; but the
horror did not go at once. She felt herself pursued, so that she got up and actually locked her door. A voice
moaned for her; eyes desired her. All night long barbarian men harassed the ship; they came scuffling down
the passages, and stopped to snuffle at her door. She could not sleep again.

Chapter VI


"That's the tragedy of life−−as I always say!" said Mrs. Dalloway. "Beginning things and having to end them.
Still, I'm not going to let this end, if you're willing." It was the morning, the sea was calm, and the ship once
again was anchored not far from another shore.
She was dressed in her long fur cloak, with the veils wound around her head, and once more the rich boxes
stood on top of each other so that the scene of a few days back seemed to be repeated.
"D'you suppose we shall ever meet in London?" said Ridley ironically. "You'll have forgotten all about me by
the time you step out there."
He pointed to the shore of the little bay, where they could now see the separate trees with moving branches.
"How horrid you are!" she laughed. "Rachel's coming to see me anyhow−−the instant you get back," she said,
pressing Rachel's arm. "Now−−you've no excuse!"
With a silver pencil she wrote her name and address on the flyleaf of Persuasion, and gave the book to
Rachel. Sailors were shouldering the luggage, and people were beginning to congregate. There were Captain
Cobbold, Mr. Grice, Willoughby, Helen, and an obscure grateful man in a blue jersey.
"Oh, it's time," said Clarissa. "Well, good−bye. I do like you," she murmured as she kissed Rachel. People in
the way made it unnecessary for Richard to shake Rachel by the hand; he managed to look at her very stiffly
for a second before he followed his wife down the ship's side.
The boat separating from the vessel made off towards the land, and for some minutes Helen, Ridley, and
Rachel leant over the rail, watching. Once Mrs. Dalloway turned and waved; but the boat steadily grew
smaller and smaller until it ceased to rise and fall, and nothing could be seen save two resolute backs.
"Well, that's over," said Ridley after a long silence. "We shall never see them again," he added, turning to go
to his books. A feeling of emptiness and melancholy came over them; they knew in their hearts that it was
over, and that they had parted for ever, and the knowledge filled them with far greater depression than the
length of their acquaintance seemed to justify. Even as the boat pulled away they could feel other sights and
sounds beginning to take the place of the Dalloways, and the feeling was so unpleasant that they tried to resist
Chapter VI 43
it. For so, too, would they be forgotten.
In much the same way as Mrs. Chailey downstairs was sweeping the withered rose−leaves off the
dressing−table, so Helen was anxious to make things straight again after the visitors had gone. Rachel's
obvious languor and listlessness made her an easy prey, and indeed Helen had devised a kind of trap. That
something had happened she now felt pretty certain; moreover, she had come to think that they had been
strangers long enough; she wished to know what the girl was like, partly of course because Rachel showed no
disposition to be known. So, as they turned from the rail, she said:
"Come and talk to me instead of practising," and led the way to the sheltered side where the deck−chairs were
stretched in the sun. Rachel followed her indifferently. Her mind was absorbed by Richard; by the extreme
strangeness of what had happened, and by a thousand feelings of which she had not been conscious before.
She made scarcely any attempt to listen to what Helen was saying, as Helen indulged in commonplaces to
begin with. While Mrs. Ambrose arranged her embroidery, sucked her silk, and threaded her needle, she lay
back gazing at the horizon.
"Did you like those people?" Helen asked her casually.
"Yes," she replied blankly.
"You talked to him, didn't you?"
She said nothing for a minute.
"He kissed me," she said without any change of tone.
Helen started, looked at her, but could not make out what she felt.
"M−m−m'yes," she said, after a pause. "I thought he was that kind of man."
"What kind of man?" said Rachel.
"Pompous and sentimental."
"I like him," said Rachel.
"So you really didn't mind?"
For the first time since Helen had known her Rachel's eyes lit up brightly.
"I did mind," she said vehemently. "I dreamt. I couldn't sleep."
"Tell me what happened," said Helen. She had to keep her lips from twitching as she listened to Rachel's
story. It was poured out abruptly with great seriousness and no sense of humour.
"We talked about politics. He told me what he had done for the poor somewhere. I asked him all sorts of
questions. He told me about his own life. The day before yesterday, after the storm, he came in to see me. It
happened then, quite suddenly. He kissed me. I don't know why." As she spoke she grew flushed. "I was a
good deal excited," she continued. "But I didn't mind till afterwards; when−−" she paused, and saw the figure
of the bloated little man again−−"I became terrified."
From the look in her eyes it was evident she was again terrified. Helen was really at a loss what to say. From
Chapter VI 44
the little she knew of Rachel's upbringing she supposed that she had been kept entirely ignorant as to the
relations of men with women. With a shyness which she felt with women and not with men she did not like to
explain simply what these are. Therefore she took the other course and belittled the whole affair.
"Oh, well," she said, "He was a silly creature, and if I were you, I'd think no more about it."
"No," said Rachel, sitting bolt upright, "I shan't do that. I shall think about it all day and all night until I find
out exactly what it does mean."
"Don't you ever read?" Helen asked tentatively.
"Cowper's Letters−−that kind of thing. Father gets them for me or my Aunts."
Helen could hardly restrain herself from saying out loud what she thought of a man who brought up his
daughter so that at the age of twenty−four she scarcely knew that men desired women and was terrified by a
kiss. She had good reason to fear that Rachel had made herself incredibly ridiculous.
"You don't know many men?" she asked.
"Mr. Pepper," said Rachel ironically.
"So no one's ever wanted to marry you?"
"No," she answered ingenuously.
Helen reflected that as, from what she had said, Rachel certainly would think these things out, it might be as
well to help her.
"You oughtn't to be frightened," she said. "It's the most natural thing in the world. Men will want to kiss you,
just as they'll want to marry you. The pity is to get things out of proportion. It's like noticing the noises people
make when they eat, or men spitting; or, in short, any small thing that gets on one's nerves."
Rachel seemed to be inattentive to these remarks.
"Tell me," she said suddenly, "what are those women in Piccadilly?"
"In Picadilly? They are prostituted," said Helen.
"It is terrifying−−it is disgusting," Rachel asserted, as if she included Helen in the hatred.
"It is," said Helen. "But−−"
"I did like him," Rachel mused, as if speaking to herself. "I wanted to talk to him; I wanted to know what he'd
done. The women in Lancashire−−"
It seemed to her as she recalled their talk that there was something lovable about Richard, good in their
attempted friendship, and strangely piteous in the way they had parted.
The softening of her mood was apparent to Helen.
"You see," she said, "you must take things as they are; and if you want friendship with men you must run
risks. Personally," she continued, breaking into a smile, "I think it's worth it; I don't mind being kissed; I'm
Chapter VI 45
rather jealous, I believe, that Mr. Dalloway kissed you and didn't kiss me. Though," she added, "he bored me
considerably."
But Rachel did not return the smile or dismiss the whole affair, as Helen meant her to. Her mind was working
very quickly, inconsistently and painfully. Helen's words hewed down great blocks which had stood there
always, and the light which came in was cold. After sitting for a time with fixed eyes, she burst out:
"So that's why I can't walk alone!"
By this new light she saw her life for the first time a creeping hedged−in thing, driven cautiously between
high walls, here turned aside, there plunged in darkness, made dull and crippled for ever−−her life that was
the only chance she had−−a thousand words and actions became plain to her.
"Because men are brutes! I hate men!" she exclaimed.
"I thought you said you liked him?" said Helen.
"I liked him, and I liked being kissed," she answered, as if that only added more difficulties to her problem.
Helen was surprised to see how genuine both shock and problem were, but she could think of no way of
easing the difficulty except by going on talking. She wanted to make her niece talk, and so to understand why
this rather dull, kindly, plausible politician had made so deep an impression on her, for surely at the age of
twenty−four this was not natural.
"And did you like Mrs. Dalloway too?" she asked.
As she spoke she saw Rachel redden; for she remembered silly things she had said, and also, it occurred to her
that she treated this exquisite woman rather badly, for Mrs. Dalloway had said that she loved her husband.
"She was quite nice, but a thimble−pated creature," Helen continued. "I never heard such nonsense!
Chitter−chatter−chitter−chatter−−fish and the Greek alphabet−−never listened to a word any one
said−−chock−full of idiotic theories about the way to bring up children−−I'd far rather talk to him any day. He
was pompous, but he did at least understand what was said to him."
The glamour insensibly faded a little both from Richard and Clarissa. They had not been so wonderful after
all, then, in the eyes of a mature person.
"It's very difficult to know what people are like," Rachel remarked, and Helen saw with pleasure that she
spoke more naturally. "I suppose I was taken in."
There was little doubt about that according to Helen, but she restrained herself and said aloud:
"One has to make experiments."
"And they were nice," said Rachel. "They were extraordinarily interesting." She tried to recall the image of
the world as a live thing that Richard had given her, with drains like nerves, and bad houses like patches of
diseased skin. She recalled his watch−words−−Unity−−Imagination, and saw again the bubbles meeting in her
tea−cup as he spoke of sisters and canaries, boyhood and his father, her small world becoming wonderfully
enlarged.
"But all people don't seem to you equally interesting, do they?" asked Mrs. Ambrose.
Chapter VI 46
Rachel explained that most people had hitherto been symbols; but that when they talked to one they ceased to
be symbols, and became−−"I could listen to them for ever!" she exclaimed. She then jumped up, disappeared
downstairs for a minute, and came back with a fat red book.
"Who's Who," she said, laying it upon Helen's knee and turning the pages. "It gives short lives of people−−for
instance: 'Sir Roland Beal; born 1852; parents from Moffatt; educated at Rugby; passed first into R.E.;
married 1878 the daughter of T. Fishwick; served in the Bechuanaland Expedition 1884−85 (honourably
mentioned). Clubs: United Service, Naval and Military. Recreations: an enthusiastic curler.'"
Sitting on the deck at Helen's feet she went on turning the pages and reading biographies of bankers, writers,
clergymen, sailors, surgeons, judges, professors, statesmen, editors, philanthropists, merchants, and actresses;
what clubs they belonged to, where they lived, what games they played, and how many acres they owned.
She became absorbed in the book.
Helen meanwhile stitched at her embroidery and thought over the things they had said. Her conclusion was
that she would very much like to show her niece, if it were possible, how to live, or as she put it, how to be a
reasonable person. She thought that there must be something wrong in this confusion between politics and
kissing politicians, and that an elder person ought to be able to help.
"I quite agree," she said, "that people are very interesting; only−−" Rachel, putting her finger between the
pages, looked up enquiringly.
"Only I think you ought to discriminate," she ended. "It's a pity to be intimate with people who are−−well,
rather second−rate, like the Dalloways, and to find it out later."
"But how does one know?" Rachel asked.
"I really can't tell you," replied Helen candidly, after a moment's thought. "You'll have to find out for yourself.
But try and−−Why don't you call me Helen?" she added. "'Aunt's' a horrid name. I never liked my Aunts."
"I should like to call you Helen," Rachel answered.
"D'you think me very unsympathetic?"
Rachel reviewed the points which Helen had certainly failed to understand; they arose chiefly from the
difference of nearly twenty years in age between them, which made Mrs. Ambrose appear too humorous and
cool in a matter of such moment.
"No," she said. "Some things you don't understand, of course."
"Of course," Helen agreed. "So now you can go ahead and be a person on your own account," she added.
The vision of her own personality, of herself as a real everlasting thing, different from anything else,
unmergeable, like the sea or the wind, flashed into Rachel's mind, and she became profoundly excited at the
thought of living.
"I can by m−m−myself," she stammered, "in spite of you, in spite of the Dalloways, and Mr. Pepper, and
Father, and my Aunts, in spite of these?" She swept her hand across a whole page of statesmen and soldiers.
"In spite of them all," said Helen gravely. She then put down her needle, and explained a plan which had
come into her head as they talked. Instead of wandering on down the Amazons until she reached some
Chapter VI 47
sulphurous tropical port, where one had to lie within doors all day beating off insects with a fan, the sensible
thing to do surely was to spend the season with them in their villa by the seaside, where among other
advantages Mrs. Ambrose herself would be at hand to−−"After all, Rachel," she broke off, "it's silly to pretend
that because there's twenty years' difference between us we therefore can't talk to each other like human
beings."
"No; because we like each other," said Rachel.
"Yes," Mrs. Ambrose agreed.
That fact, together with other facts, had been made clear by their twenty minutes' talk, although how they had
come to these conclusions they could not have said.
However they were come by, they were sufficiently serious to send Mrs. Ambrose a day or two later in search
of her brother−in−law. She found him sitting in his room working, applying a stout blue pencil authoritatively
to bundles of filmy paper. Papers lay to left and to right of him, there were great envelopes so gorged with
papers that they spilt papers on to the table. Above him hung a photograph of a woman's head. The need of
sitting absolutely still before a Cockney photographer had given her lips a queer little pucker, and her eyes for
the same reason looked as though she thought the whole situation ridiculous. Nevertheless it was the head of
an individual and interesting woman, who would no doubt have turned and laughed at Willoughby if she
could have caught his eye; but when he looked up at her he sighed profoundly. In his mind this work of his,
the great factories at Hull which showed like mountains at night, the ships that crossed the ocean punctually,
the schemes for combining this and that and building up a solid mass of industry, was all an offering to her; he
laid his success at her feet; and was always thinking how to educate his daughter so that Theresa might be
glad. He was a very ambitious man; and although he had not been particularly kind to her while she lived, as
Helen thought, he now believed that she watched him from Heaven, and inspired what was good in him.
Mrs. Ambrose apologised for the interruption, and asked whether she might speak to him about a plan of hers.
Would he consent to leave his daughter with them when they landed, instead of taking her on up the
Amazons?
"We would take great care of her," she added, "and we should really like it."
Willoughby looked very grave and carefully laid aside his papers.
"She's a good girl," he said at length. "There is a likeness?"−−he nodded his head at the photograph of Theresa
and sighed. Helen looked at Theresa pursing up her lips before the Cockney photographer. It suggested her in
an absurd human way, and she felt an intense desire to share some joke.
"She's the only thing that's left to me," sighed Willoughby. "We go on year after year without talking about
these things−−" He broke off. "But it's better so. Only life's very hard."
Helen was sorry for him, and patted him on the shoulder, but she felt uncomfortable when her brother−in−law
expressed his feelings, and took refuge in praising Rachel, and explaining why she thought her plan might be
a good one.
"True," said Willoughby when she had done. "The social conditions are bound to be primitive. I should be out
a good deal. I agreed because she wished it. And of course I have complete confidence in you. . . . You see,
Helen," he continued, becoming confidential, "I want to bring her up as her mother would have wished. I don't
hold with these modern views−−any more than you do, eh? She's a nice quiet girl, devoted to her music−−a
little less of that would do no harm. Still, it's kept her happy, and we lead a very quiet life at Richmond. I
should like her to begin to see more people. I want to take her about with me when I get home. I've half a
Chapter VI 48
mind to rent a house in London, leaving my sisters at Richmond, and take her to see one or two people who'd
be kind to her for my sake. I'm beginning to realise," he continued, stretching himself out, "that all this is
tending to Parliament, Helen. It's the only way to get things done as one wants them done. I talked to
Dalloway about it. In that case, of course, I should want Rachel to be able to take more part in things. A
certain amount of entertaining would be necessary−−dinners, an occasional evening party. One's constituents
like to be fed, I believe. In all these ways Rachel could be of great help to me. So," he wound up, "I should be
very glad, if we arrange this visit (which must be upon a business footing, mind), if you could see your way to
helping my girl, bringing her out−−she's a little shy now,−−making a woman of her, the kind of woman her
mother would have liked her to be," he ended, jerking his head at the photograph.
Willoughby's selfishness, though consistent as Helen saw with real affection for his daughter, made her
determined to have the girl to stay with her, even if she had to promise a complete course of instruction in the
feminine graces. She could not help laughing at the notion of it−−Rachel a Tory hostess!−−and marvelling as
she left him at the astonishing ignorance of a father.
Rachel, when consulted, showed less enthusiasm than Helen could have wished. One moment she was eager,
the next doubtful. Visions of a great river, now blue, now yellow in the tropical sun and crossed by bright
birds, now white in the moon, now deep in shade with moving trees and canoes sliding out from the tangled
banks, beset her. Helen promised a river. Then she did not want to leave her father. That feeling seemed
genuine too, but in the end Helen prevailed, although when she had won her case she was beset by doubts, and
more than once regretted the impulse which had entangled her with the fortunes of another human being.

Chapter VII


From a distance the Euphrosyne looked very small. Glasses were turned upon her from the decks of great
liners, and she was pronounced a tramp, a cargo−boat, or one of those wretched little passenger steamers
where people rolled about among the cattle on deck. The insect−like figures of Dalloways, Ambroses, and
Vinraces were also derided, both from the extreme smallness of their persons and the doubt which only strong
glasses could dispel as to whether they were really live creatures or only lumps on the rigging. Mr. Pepper
with all his learning had been mistaken for a cormorant, and then, as unjustly, transformed into a cow. At
night, indeed, when the waltzes were swinging in the saloon, and gifted passengers reciting, the little
ship−−shrunk to a few beads of light out among the dark waves, and one high in air upon the
mast−head−−seemed something mysterious and impressive to heated partners resting from the dance. She
became a ship passing in the night−−an emblem of the loneliness of human life, an occasion for queer
confidences and sudden appeals for sympathy.
On and on she went, by day and by night, following her path, until one morning broke and showed the land.
Losing its shadow−like appearance it became first cleft and mountainous, next coloured grey and purple, next
scattered with white blocks which gradually separated themselves, and then, as the progress of the ship acted
upon the view like a field−glass of increasing power, became streets of houses. By nine o'clock the
Euphrosyne had taken up her position in the middle of a great bay; she dropped her anchor; immediately, as if
she were a recumbent giant requiring examination, small boats came swarming about her. She rang with cries;
men jumped on to her; her deck was thumped by feet. The lonely little island was invaded from all quarters at
once, and after four weeks of silence it was bewildering to hear human speech. Mrs. Ambrose alone heeded
none of this stir. She was pale with suspense while the boat with mail bags was making towards them.
Absorbed in her letters she did not notice that she had left the Euphrosyne, and felt no sadness when the ship
lifted up her voice and bellowed thrice like a cow separated from its calf.
"The children are well!" she exclaimed. Mr. Pepper, who sat opposite with a great mound of bag and rug upon
his knees, said, "Gratifying." Rachel, to whom the end of the voyage meant a complete change of perspective,
was too much bewildered by the approach of the shore to realise what children were well or why it was
gratifying. Helen went on reading.
Chapter VII 49
Moving very slowly, and rearing absurdly high over each wave, the little boat was now approaching a white
crescent of sand. Behind this was a deep green valley, with distinct hills on either side. On the slope of the
right−hand hill white houses with brown roofs were settled, like nesting sea−birds, and at intervals cypresses
striped the hill with black bars. Mountains whose sides were flushed with red, but whose crowns were bald,
rose as a pinnacle, half−concealing another pinnacle behind it. The hour being still early, the whole view was
exquisitely light and airy; the blues and greens of sky and tree were intense but not sultry. As they drew nearer
and could distinguish details, the effect of the earth with its minute objects and colours and different forms of
life was overwhelming after four weeks of the sea, and kept them silent.
"Three hundred years odd," said Mr. Pepper meditatively at length.
As nobody said, "What?" he merely extracted a bottle and swallowed a pill. The piece of information that died
within him was to the effect that three hundred years ago five Elizabethan barques had anchored where the
Euphrosyne now floated. Half−drawn up upon the beach lay an equal number of Spanish galleons, unmanned,
for the country was still a virgin land behind a veil. Slipping across the water, the English sailors bore away
bars of silver, bales of linen, timbers of cedar wood, golden crucifixes knobbed with emeralds. When the
Spaniards came down from their drinking, a fight ensued, the two parties churning up the sand, and driving
each other into the surf. The Spaniards, bloated with fine living upon the fruits of the miraculous land, fell in
heaps; but the hardy Englishmen, tawny with sea−voyaging, hairy for lack of razors, with muscles like wire,
fangs greedy for flesh, and fingers itching for gold, despatched the wounded, drove the dying into the sea, and
soon reduced the natives to a state of superstitious wonderment. Here a settlement was made; women were
imported; children grew. All seemed to favour the expansion of the British Empire, and had there been men
like Richard Dalloway in the time of Charles the First, the map would undoubtedly be red where it is now an
odious green. But it must be supposed that the political mind of that age lacked imagination, and, merely for
want of a few thousand pounds and a few thousand men, the spark died that should have been a conflagration.
From the interior came Indians with subtle poisons, naked bodies, and painted idols; from the sea came
vengeful Spaniards and rapacious Portuguese; exposed to all these enemies (though the climate proved
wonderfully kind and the earth abundant) the English dwindled away and all but disappeared. Somewhere
about the middle of the seventeenth century a single sloop watched its season and slipped out by night,
bearing within it all that was left of the great British colony, a few men, a few women, and perhaps a dozen
dusky children. English history then denies all knowledge of the place. Owing to one cause and another
civilisation shifted its centre to a spot some four or five hundred miles to the south, and to−day Santa Marina
is not much larger than it was three hundred years ago. In population it is a happy compromise, for Portuguese
fathers wed Indian mothers, and their children intermarry with the Spanish. Although they get their ploughs
from Manchester, they make their coats from their own sheep, their silk from their own worms, and their
furniture from their own cedar trees, so that in arts and industries the place is still much where it was in
Elizabethan days.
The reasons which had drawn the English across the sea to found a small colony within the last ten years are
not so easily described, and will never perhaps be recorded in history books. Granted facility of travel, peace,
good trade, and so on, there was besides a kind of dissatisfaction among the English with the older countries
and the enormous accumulations of carved stone, stained glass, and rich brown painting which they offered to
the tourist. The movement in search of something new was of course infinitely small, affecting only a handful
of well−to−do people. It began by a few schoolmasters serving their passage out to South America as the
pursers of tramp steamers. They returned in time for the summer term, when their stories of the splendours
and hardships of life at sea, the humours of sea−captains, the wonders of night and dawn, and the marvels of
the place delighted outsiders, and sometimes found their way into print. The country itself taxed all their
powers of description, for they said it was much bigger than Italy, and really nobler than Greece. Again, they
declared that the natives were strangely beautiful, very big in stature, dark, passionate, and quick to seize the
knife. The place seemed new and full of new forms of beauty, in proof of which they showed handkerchiefs
which the women had worn round their heads, and primitive carvings coloured bright greens and blues.
Somehow or other, as fashions do, the fashion spread; an old monastery was quickly turned into a hotel, while
Chapter VII 50
a famous line of steamships altered its route for the convenience of passengers.
Oddly enough it happened that the least satisfactory of Helen Ambrose's brothers had been sent out years
before to make his fortune, at any rate to keep clear of race−horses, in the very spot which had now become so
popular. Often, leaning upon the column in the verandah, he had watched the English ships with English
schoolmasters for pursers steaming into the bay. Having at length earned enough to take a holiday, and being
sick of the place, he proposed to put his villa, on the slope of the mountain, at his sister's disposal. She, too,
had been a little stirred by the talk of a new world, where there was always sun and never a fog, which went
on around her, and the chance, when they were planning where to spend the winter out of England, seemed
too good to be missed. For these reasons she determined to accept Willoughby's offer of free passages on his
ship, to place the children with their grand−parents, and to do the thing thoroughly while she was about it.
Taking seats in a carriage drawn by long−tailed horses with pheasants' feathers erect between their ears, the
Ambroses, Mr. Pepper, and Rachel rattled out of the harbour. The day increased in heat as they drove up the
hill. The road passed through the town, where men seemed to be beating brass and crying "Water," where the
passage was blocked by mules and cleared by whips and curses, where the women walked barefoot, their
heads balancing baskets, and cripples hastily displayed mutilated members; it issued among steep green fields,
not so green but that the earth showed through. Great trees now shaded all but the centre of the road, and a
mountain stream, so shallow and so swift that it plaited itself into strands as it ran, raced along the edge.
Higher they went, until Ridley and Rachel walked behind; next they turned along a lane scattered with stones,
where Mr. Pepper raised his stick and silently indicated a shrub, bearing among sparse leaves a voluminous
purple blossom; and at a rickety canter the last stage of the way was accomplished.
The villa was a roomy white house, which, as is the case with most continental houses, looked to an English
eye frail, ramshackle, and absurdly frivolous, more like a pagoda in a tea−garden than a place where one slept.
The garden called urgently for the services of gardener. Bushes waved their branches across the paths, and the
blades of grass, with spaces of earth between them, could be counted. In the circular piece of ground in front
of the verandah were two cracked vases, from which red flowers drooped, with a stone fountain between
them, now parched in the sun. The circular garden led to a long garden, where the gardener's shears had
scarcely been, unless now and then, when he cut a bough of blossom for his beloved. A few tall trees shaded
it, and round bushes with wax−like flowers mobbed their heads together in a row. A garden smoothly laid
with turf, divided by thick hedges, with raised beds of bright flowers, such as we keep within walls in
England, would have been out of place upon the side of this bare hill. There was no ugliness to shut out, and
the villa looked straight across the shoulder of a slope, ribbed with olive trees, to the sea.
The indecency of the whole place struck Mrs. Chailey forcibly. There were no blinds to shut out the sun, nor
was there any furniture to speak of for the sun to spoil. Standing in the bare stone hall, and surveying a
staircase of superb breadth, but cracked and carpetless, she further ventured the opinion that there were rats, as
large as terriers at home, and that if one put one's foot down with any force one would come through the floor.
As for hot water−−at this point her investigations left her speechless.
"Poor creature!" she murmured to the sallow Spanish servant−girl who came out with the pigs and hens to
receive them, "no wonder you hardly look like a human being!" Maria accepted the compliment with an
exquisite Spanish grace. In Chailey's opinion they would have done better to stay on board an English ship,
but none knew better than she that her duty commanded her to stay.
When they were settled in, and in train to find daily occupation, there was some speculation as to the reasons
which induced Mr. Pepper to stay, taking up his lodging in the Ambroses' house. Efforts had been made for
some days before landing to impress upon him the advantages of the Amazons.
"That great stream!" Helen would begin, gazing as if she saw a visionary cascade, "I've a good mind to go
with you myself, Willoughby−−only I can't. Think of the sunsets and the moonrises−−I believe the colours are
Chapter VII 51
unimaginable."
"There are wild peacocks," Rachel hazarded.
"And marvellous creatures in the water," Helen asserted.
"One might discover a new reptile," Rachel continued.
"There's certain to be a revolution, I'm told," Helen urged.
The effect of these subterfuges was a little dashed by Ridley, who, after regarding Pepper for some moments,
sighed aloud, "Poor fellow!" and inwardly speculated upon the unkindness of women.
He stayed, however, in apparent contentment for six days, playing with a microscope and a notebook in one of
the many sparsely furnished sitting−rooms, but on the evening of the seventh day, as they sat at dinner, he
appeared more restless than usual. The dinner−table was set between two long windows which were left
uncurtained by Helen's orders. Darkness fell as sharply as a knife in this climate, and the town then sprang out
in circles and lines of bright dots beneath them. Buildings which never showed by day showed by night, and
the sea flowed right over the land judging by the moving lights of the steamers. The sight fulfilled the same
purpose as an orchestra in a London restaurant, and silence had its setting. William Pepper observed it for
some time; he put on his spectacles to contemplate the scene.
"I've identified the big block to the left," he observed, and pointed with his fork at a square formed by several
rows of lights.
"One should infer that they can cook vegetables," he added.
"An hotel?" said Helen.
"Once a monastery," said Mr. Pepper.
Nothing more was said then, but, the day after, Mr. Pepper returned from a midday walk, and stood silently
before Helen who was reading in the verandah.
"I've taken a room over there," he said.
"You're not going?" she exclaimed.
"On the whole−−yes," he remarked. "No private cook can cook vegetables."
Knowing his dislike of questions, which she to some extent shared, Helen asked no more. Still, an uneasy
suspicion lurked in her mind that William was hiding a wound. She flushed to think that her words, or her
husband's, or Rachel's had penetrated and stung. She was half−moved to cry, "Stop, William; explain!" and
would have returned to the subject at luncheon if William had not shown himself inscrutable and chill, lifting
fragments of salad on the point of his fork, with the gesture of a man pronging seaweed, detecting gravel,
suspecting germs.
"If you all die of typhoid I won't be responsible!" he snapped.
"If you die of dulness, neither will I," Helen echoed in her heart.
She reflected that she had never yet asked him whether he had been in love. They had got further and further
Chapter VII 52
from that subject instead of drawing nearer to it, and she could not help feeling it a relief when William
Pepper, with all his knowledge, his microscope, his note−books, his genuine kindliness and good sense, but a
certain dryness of soul, took his departure. Also she could not help feeling it sad that friendships should end
thus, although in this case to have the room empty was something of a comfort, and she tried to console
herself with the reflection that one never knows how far other people feel the things they might be supposed
to feel.

Chapter VIII


The next few months passed away, as many years can pass away, without definite events, and yet, if suddenly
disturbed, it would be seen that such months or years had a character unlike others. The three months which
had passed had brought them to the beginning of March. The climate had kept its promise, and the change of
season from winter to spring had made very little difference, so that Helen, who was sitting in the
drawing−room with a pen in her hand, could keep the windows open though a great fire of logs burnt on one
side of her. Below, the sea was still blue and the roofs still brown and white, though the day was fading
rapidly. It was dusk in the room, which, large and empty at all times, now appeared larger and emptier than
usual. Her own figure, as she sat writing with a pad on her knee, shared the general effect of size and lack of
detail, for the flames which ran along the branches, suddenly devouring little green tufts, burnt intermittently
and sent irregular illuminations across her face and the plaster walls. There were no pictures on the walls but
here and there boughs laden with heavy−petalled flowers spread widely against them. Of the books fallen on
the bare floor and heaped upon the large table, it was only possible in this light to trace the outline.
Mrs. Ambrose was writing a very long letter. Beginning "Dear Bernard," it went on to describe what had been
happening in the Villa San Gervasio during the past three months, as, for instance, that they had had the
British Consul to dinner, and had been taken over a Spanish man−of−war, and had seen a great many
processions and religious festivals, which were so beautiful that Mrs. Ambrose couldn't conceive why, if
people must have a religion, they didn't all become Roman Catholics. They had made several expeditions
though none of any length. It was worth coming if only for the sake of the flowering trees which grew wild
quite near the house, and the amazing colours of sea and earth. The earth, instead of being brown, was red,
purple, green. "You won't believe me," she added, "there is no colour like it in England." She adopted, indeed,
a condescending tone towards that poor island, which was now advancing chilly crocuses and nipped violets
in nooks, in copses, in cosy corners, tended by rosy old gardeners in mufflers, who were always touching their
hats and bobbing obsequiously. She went on to deride the islanders themselves. Rumours of London all in a
ferment over a General Election had reached them even out here. "It seems incredible," she went on, "that
people should care whether Asquith is in or Austen Chamberlin out, and while you scream yourselves hoarse
about politics you let the only people who are trying for something good starve or simply laugh at them.
When have you ever encouraged a living artist? Or bought his best work? Why are you all so ugly and so
servile? Here the servants are human beings. They talk to one as if they were equals. As far as I can tell there
are no aristocrats."
Perhaps it was the mention of aristocrats that reminded her of Richard Dalloway and Rachel, for she ran on
with the same penful to describe her niece.
"It's an odd fate that has put me in charge of a girl," she wrote, "considering that I have never got on well with
women, or had much to do with them. However, I must retract some of the things that I have said against
them. If they were properly educated I don't see why they shouldn't be much the same as men−−as satisfactory
I mean; though, of course, very different. The question is, how should one educate them. The present method
seems to me abominable. This girl, though twenty−four, had never heard that men desired women, and, until I
explained it, did not know how children were born. Her ignorance upon other matters as important" (here Mrs.
Ambrose's letter may not be quoted) . . . "was complete. It seems to me not merely foolish but criminal to
bring people up like that. Let alone the suffering to them, it explains why women are what they are−−the
wonder is they're no worse. I have taken it upon myself to enlighten her, and now, though still a good deal
Chapter VIII 53
prejudiced and liable to exaggerate, she is more or less a reasonable human being. Keeping them ignorant, of
course, defeats its own object, and when they begin to understand they take it all much too seriously. My
brother−in−law really deserved a catastrophe−−which he won't get. I now pray for a young man to come to
my help; some one, I mean, who would talk to her openly, and prove how absurd most of her ideas about life
are. Unluckily such men seem almost as rare as the women. The English colony certainly doesn't provide one;
artists, merchants, cultivated people−−they are stupid, conventional, and flirtatious. . . ." She ceased, and with
her pen in her hand sat looking into the fire, making the logs into caves and mountains, for it had grown too
dark to go on writing. Moreover, the house began to stir as the hour of dinner approached; she could hear the
plates being chinked in the dining−room next door, and Chailey instructing the Spanish girl where to put
things down in vigorous English. The bell rang; she rose, met Ridley and Rachel outside, and they all went in
to dinner.
Three months had made but little difference in the appearance either of Ridley or Rachel; yet a keen observer
might have thought that the girl was more definite and self−confident in her manner than before. Her skin was
brown, her eyes certainly brighter, and she attended to what was said as though she might be going to
contradict it. The meal began with the comfortable silence of people who are quite at their ease together. Then
Ridley, leaning on his elbow and looking out of the window, observed that it was a lovely night.
"Yes," said Helen. She added, "The season's begun," looking at the lights beneath them. She asked Maria in
Spanish whether the hotel was not filling up with visitors. Maria informed her with pride that there would
come a time when it was positively difficult to buy eggs−−the shopkeepers would not mind what prices they
asked; they would get them, at any rate, from the English.
"That's an English steamer in the bay," said Rachel, looking at a triangle of lights below. "She came in early
this morning."
"Then we may hope for some letters and send ours back," said Helen.
For some reason the mention of letters always made Ridley groan, and the rest of the meal passed in a brisk
argument between husband and wife as to whether he was or was not wholly ignored by the entire civilised
world.
"Considering the last batch," said Helen, "you deserve beating. You were asked to lecture, you were offered a
degree, and some silly woman praised not only your books but your beauty−−she said he was what Shelley
would have been if Shelley had lived to fifty−five and grown a beard. Really, Ridley, I think you're the
vainest man I know," she ended, rising from the table, "which I may tell you is saying a good deal."
Finding her letter lying before the fire she added a few lines to it, and then announced that she was going to
take the letters now−−Ridley must bring his−−and Rachel?
"I hope you've written to your Aunts? It's high time."
The women put on cloaks and hats, and after inviting Ridley to come with them, which he emphatically
refused to do, exclaiming that Rachel he expected to be a fool, but Helen surely knew better, they turned to
go. He stood over the fire gazing into the depths of the looking−glass, and compressing his face into the
likeness of a commander surveying a field of battle, or a martyr watching the flames lick his toes, rather than
that of a secluded Professor.
Helen laid hold of his beard.
"Am I a fool?" she said.
Chapter VIII 54
"Let me go, Helen."
"Am I a fool?" she repeated.
"Vile woman!" he exclaimed, and kissed her.
"We'll leave you to your vanities," she called back as they went out of the door.
It was a beautiful evening, still light enough to see a long way down the road, though the stars were coming
out. The pillar−box was let into a high yellow wall where the lane met the road, and having dropped the letters
into it, Helen was for turning back.
"No, no," said Rachel, taking her by the wrist. "We're going to see life. You promised."
"Seeing life" was the phrase they used for their habit of strolling through the town after dark. The social life of
Santa Marina was carried on almost entirely by lamp−light, which the warmth of the nights and the scents
culled from flowers made pleasant enough. The young women, with their hair magnificently swept in coils, a
red flower behind the ear, sat on the doorsteps, or issued out on to balconies, while the young men ranged up
and down beneath, shouting up a greeting from time to time and stopping here and there to enter into amorous
talk. At the open windows merchants could be seen making up the day's account, and older women lifting jars
from shelf to shelf. The streets were full of people, men for the most part, who interchanged their views of the
world as they walked, or gathered round the wine−tables at the street corner, where an old cripple was
twanging his guitar strings, while a poor girl cried her passionate song in the gutter. The two Englishwomen
excited some friendly curiosity, but no one molested them.
Helen sauntered on, observing the different people in their shabby clothes, who seemed so careless and so
natural, with satisfaction.
"Just think of the Mall to−night!" she exclaimed at length. "It's the fifteenth of March. Perhaps there's a
Court." She thought of the crowd waiting in the cold spring air to see the grand carriages go by. "It's very
cold, if it's not raining," she said. "First there are men selling picture postcards; then there are wretched little
shop−girls with round bandboxes; then there are bank clerks in tail coats; and then−−any number of
dressmakers. People from South Kensington drive up in a hired fly; officials have a pair of bays; earls, on the
other hand, are allowed one footman to stand up behind; dukes have two, royal dukes−−so I was told−−have
three; the king, I suppose, can have as many as he likes. And the people believe in it!"
Out here it seemed as though the people of England must be shaped in the body like the kings and queens,
knights and pawns of the chessboard, so strange were their differences, so marked and so implicitly believed
in.
They had to part in order to circumvent a crowd.
"They believe in God," said Rachel as they regained each other. She meant that the people in the crowd
believed in Him; for she remembered the crosses with bleeding plaster figures that stood where foot−paths
joined, and the inexplicable mystery of a service in a Roman Catholic church.
"We shall never understand!" she sighed.
They had walked some way and it was now night, but they could see a large iron gate a little way farther
down the road on their left.
"Do you mean to go right up to the hotel?" Helen asked.
Chapter VIII 55
Rachel gave the gate a push; it swung open, and, seeing no one about and judging that nothing was private in
this country, they walked straight on. An avenue of trees ran along the road, which was completely straight.
The trees suddenly came to an end; the road turned a corner, and they found themselves confronted by a large
square building. They had come out upon the broad terrace which ran round the hotel and were only a few feet
distant from the windows. A row of long windows opened almost to the ground. They were all of them
uncurtained, and all brilliantly lighted, so that they could see everything inside. Each window revealed a
different section of the life of the hotel. They drew into one of the broad columns of shadow which separated
the windows and gazed in. They found themselves just outside the dining−room. It was being swept; a waiter
was eating a bunch of grapes with his leg across the corner of a table. Next door was the kitchen, where they
were washing up; white cooks were dipping their arms into cauldrons, while the waiters made their meal
voraciously off broken meats, sopping up the gravy with bits of crumb. Moving on, they became lost in a
plantation of bushes, and then suddenly found themselves outside the drawing−room, where the ladies and
gentlemen, having dined well, lay back in deep arm−chairs, occasionally speaking or turning over the pages of
magazines. A thin woman was flourishing up and down the piano.
"What is a dahabeeyah, Charles?" the distinct voice of a widow, seated in an arm−chair by the window, asked
her son.
It was the end of the piece, and his answer was lost in the general clearing of throats and tapping of knees.
"They're all old in this room," Rachel whispered.
Creeping on, they found that the next window revealed two men in shirt−sleeves playing billiards with two
young ladies.
"He pinched my arm!" the plump young woman cried, as she missed her stroke.
"Now you two−−no ragging," the young man with the red face reproved them, who was marking.
"Take care or we shall be seen," whispered Helen, plucking Rachel by the arm. Incautiously her head had
risen to the middle of the window.
Turning the corner they came to the largest room in the hotel, which was supplied with four windows, and
was called the Lounge, although it was really a hall. Hung with armour and native embroideries, furnished
with divans and screens, which shut off convenient corners, the room was less formal than the others, and was
evidently the haunt of youth. Signor Rodriguez, whom they knew to be the manager of the hotel, stood quite
near them in the doorway surveying the scene−−the gentlemen lounging in chairs, the couples leaning over
coffee−cups, the game of cards in the centre under profuse clusters of electric light. He was congratulating
himself upon the enterprise which had turned the refectory, a cold stone room with pots on trestles, into the
most comfortable room in the house. The hotel was very full, and proved his wisdom in decreeing that no
hotel can flourish without a lounge.
The people were scattered about in couples or parties of four, and either they were actually better acquainted,
or the informal room made their manners easier. Through the open window came an uneven humming sound
like that which rises from a flock of sheep pent within hurdles at dusk. The card−party occupied the centre of
the foreground.
Helen and Rachel watched them play for some minutes without being able to distinguish a word. Helen was
observing one of the men intently. He was a lean, somewhat cadaverous man of about her own age, whose
profile was turned to them, and he was the partner of a highly−coloured girl, obviously English by birth.
Suddenly, in the strange way in which some words detach themselves from the rest, they heard him say quite
Chapter VIII 56
distinctly:−−
"All you want is practice, Miss Warrington; courage and practice−−one's no good without the other."
"Hughling Elliot! Of course!" Helen exclaimed. She ducked her head immediately, for at the sound of his
name he looked up. The game went on for a few minutes, and was then broken up by the approach of a
wheeled chair, containing a voluminous old lady who paused by the table and said:−−
"Better luck to−night, Susan?"
"All the luck's on our side," said a young man who until now had kept his back turned to the window. He
appeared to be rather stout, and had a thick crop of hair.
"Luck, Mr. Hewet?" said his partner, a middle−aged lady with spectacles. "I assure you, Mrs. Paley, our
success is due solely to our brilliant play."
"Unless I go to bed early I get practically no sleep at all," Mrs. Paley was heard to explain, as if to justify her
seizure of Susan, who got up and proceeded to wheel the chair to the door.
"They'll get some one else to take my place," she said cheerfully. But she was wrong. No attempt was made to
find another player, and after the young man had built three stories of a card−house, which fell down, the
players strolled off in different directions.
Mr. Hewet turned his full face towards the window. They could see that he had large eyes obscured by
glasses; his complexion was rosy, his lips clean−shaven; and, seen among ordinary people, it appeared to be
an interesting face. He came straight towards them, but his eyes were fixed not upon the eavesdroppers but
upon a spot where the curtain hung in folds.
"Asleep?" he said.
Helen and Rachel started to think that some one had been sitting near to them unobserved all the time. There
were legs in the shadow. A melancholy voice issued from above them.
"Two women," it said.
A scuffling was heard on the gravel. The women had fled. They did not stop running until they felt certain that
no eye could penetrate the darkness and the hotel was only a square shadow in the distance, with red holes
regularly cut in it.

Chapter IX


An hour passed, and the downstairs rooms at the hotel grew dim and were almost deserted, while the little
box−like squares above them were brilliantly irradiated. Some forty or fifty people were going to bed. The
thump of jugs set down on the floor above could be heard and the clink of china, for there was not as thick a
partition between the rooms as one might wish, so Miss Allan, the elderly lady who had been playing bridge,
determined, giving the wall a smart rap with her knuckles. It was only matchboard, she decided, run up to
make many little rooms of one large one. Her grey petticoats slipped to the ground, and, stooping, she folded
her clothes with neat, if not loving fingers, screwed her hair into a plait, wound her father's great gold watch,
and opened the complete works of Wordsworth. She was reading the "Prelude," partly because she always
read the "Prelude" abroad, and partly because she was engaged in writing a short Primer of English
Literature−−Beowulf to Swinburne−−which would have a paragraph on Wordsworth. She was deep in the
fifth book, stopping indeed to pencil a note, when a pair of boots dropped, one after another, on the floor
Chapter IX 57
above her. She looked up and speculated. Whose boots were they, she wondered. She then became aware of a
swishing sound next door−−a woman, clearly, putting away her dress. It was succeeded by a gentle tapping
sound, such as that which accompanies hair−dressing. It was very difficult to keep her attention fixed upon the
"Prelude." Was it Susan Warrington tapping? She forced herself, however, to read to the end of the book,
when she placed a mark between the pages, sighed contentedly, and then turned out the light.
Very different was the room through the wall, though as like in shape as one egg−box is like another. As Miss
Allan read her book, Susan Warrington was brushing her hair. Ages have consecrated this hour, and the most
majestic of all domestic actions, to talk of love between women; but Miss Warrington being alone could not
talk; she could only look with extreme solicitude at her own face in the glass. She turned her head from side to
side, tossing heavy locks now this way now that; and then withdrew a pace or two, and considered herself
seriously.
"I'm nice−looking," she determined. "Not pretty−−possibly," she drew herself up a little. "Yes−−most people
would say I was handsome."
She was really wondering what Arthur Venning would say she was. Her feeling about him was decidedly
queer. She would not admit to herself that she was in love with him or that she wanted to marry him, yet she
spent every minute when she was alone in wondering what he thought of her, and in comparing what they had
done to−day with what they had done the day before.
"He didn't ask me to play, but he certainly followed me into the hall," she meditated, summing up the evening.
She was thirty years of age, and owing to the number of her sisters and the seclusion of life in a country
parsonage had as yet had no proposal of marriage. The hour of confidences was often a sad one, and she had
been known to jump into bed, treating her hair unkindly, feeling herself overlooked by life in comparison with
others. She was a big, well−made woman, the red lying upon her cheeks in patches that were too well defined,
but her serious anxiety gave her a kind of beauty.
She was just about to pull back the bed−clothes when she exclaimed, "Oh, but I'm forgetting," and went to her
writing−table. A brown volume lay there stamped with the figure of the year. She proceeded to write in the
square ugly hand of a mature child, as she wrote daily year after year, keeping the diaries, though she seldom
looked at them.
"A.M.−−Talked to Mrs. H. Elliot about country neighbours. She knows the Manns; also the
Selby−Carroways. How small the world is! Like her. Read a chapter of Miss Appleby's Adventure to Aunt E.
P.M.−−Played lawn−tennis with Mr. Perrott and Evelyn M. Don't like Mr. P. Have a feeling that he is not
'quite,' though clever certainly. Beat them. Day splendid, view wonderful. One gets used to no trees, though
much too bare at first. Cards after dinner. Aunt E. cheerful, though twingy, she says. Mem.: ask about damp
sheets."
She knelt in prayer, and then lay down in bed, tucking the blankets comfortably about her, and in a few
minutes her breathing showed that she was asleep. With its profoundly peaceful sighs and hesitations it
resembled that of a cow standing up to its knees all night through in the long grass.
A glance into the next room revealed little more than a nose, prominent above the sheets. Growing
accustomed to the darkness, for the windows were open and showed grey squares with splinters of starlight,
one could distinguish a lean form, terribly like the body of a dead person, the body indeed of William Pepper,
asleep too. Thirty−six, thirty−seven, thirty−eight−−here were three Portuguese men of business, asleep
presumably, since a snore came with the regularity of a great ticking clock. Thirty−nine was a corner room, at
the end of the passage, but late though it was−−"One" struck gently downstairs−−a line of light under the door
showed that some one was still awake.
Chapter IX 58
"How late you are, Hugh!" a woman, lying in bed, said in a peevish but solicitous voice. Her husband was
brushing his teeth, and for some moments did not answer.
"You should have gone to sleep," he replied. "I was talking to Thornbury."
"But you know that I never can sleep when I'm waiting for you," she said.
To that he made no answer, but only remarked, "Well then, we'll turn out the light." They were silent.
The faint but penetrating pulse of an electric bell could now be heard in the corridor. Old Mrs. Paley, having
woken hungry but without her spectacles, was summoning her maid to find the biscuit−box. The maid having
answered the bell, drearily respectful even at this hour though muffled in a mackintosh, the passage was left in
silence. Downstairs all was empty and dark; but on the upper floor a light still burnt in the room where the
boots had dropped so heavily above Miss Allan's head. Here was the gentleman who, a few hours previously,
in the shade of the curtain, had seemed to consist entirely of legs. Deep in an arm−chair he was reading the
third volume of Gibbon's History of the Decline and Fall of Rome by candle−light. As he read he knocked the
ash automatically, now and again, from his cigarette and turned the page, while a whole procession of
splendid sentences entered his capacious brow and went marching through his brain in order. It seemed likely
that this process might continue for an hour or more, until the entire regiment had shifted its quarters, had not
the door opened, and the young man, who was inclined to be stout, come in with large naked feet.
"Oh, Hirst, what I forgot to say was−−"
"Two minutes," said Hirst, raising his finger.
He safely stowed away the last words of the paragraph.
"What was it you forgot to say?" he asked.
"D'you think you do make enough allowance for feelings?" asked Mr. Hewet. He had again forgotten what he
had meant to say.
After intense contemplation of the immaculate Gibbon Mr. Hirst smiled at the question of his friend. He laid
aside his book and considered.
"I should call yours a singularly untidy mind," he observed. "Feelings? Aren't they just what we do allow for?
We put love up there, and all the rest somewhere down below." With his left hand he indicated the top of a
pyramid, and with his right the base.
"But you didn't get out of bed to tell me that," he added severely.
"I got out of bed," said Hewet vaguely, "merely to talk I suppose."
"Meanwhile I shall undress," said Hirst. When naked of all but his shirt, and bent over the basin, Mr. Hirst no
longer impressed one with the majesty of his intellect, but with the pathos of his young yet ugly body, for he
stooped, and he was so thin that there were dark lines between the different bones of his neck and shoulders.
"Women interest me," said Hewet, who, sitting on the bed with his chin resting on his knees, paid no attention
to the undressing of Mr. Hirst.
"They're so stupid," said Hirst. "You're sitting on my pyjamas."
Chapter IX 59
"I suppose they are stupid?" Hewet wondered.
"There can't be two opinions about that, I imagine," said Hirst, hopping briskly across the room, "unless
you're in love−−that fat woman Warrington?" he enquired.
"Not one fat woman−−all fat women," Hewet sighed.
"The women I saw to−night were not fat," said Hirst, who was taking advantage of Hewet's company to cut
his toe−nails.
"Describe them," said Hewet.
"You know I can't describe things!" said Hirst. "They were much like other women, I should think. They
always are."
"No; that's where we differ," said Hewet. "I say everything's different. No two people are in the least the same.
Take you and me now."
"So I used to think once," said Hirst. "But now they're all types. Don't take us,−−take this hotel. You could
draw circles round the whole lot of them, and they'd never stray outside."
("You can kill a hen by doing that"), Hewet murmured.
"Mr. Hughling Elliot, Mrs. Hughling Elliot, Miss Allan, Mr. and Mrs. Thornbury−−one circle," Hirst
continued. "Miss Warrington, Mr. Arthur Venning, Mr. Perrott, Evelyn M. another circle; then there are a
whole lot of natives; finally ourselves."
"Are we all alone in our circle?" asked Hewet.
"Quite alone," said Hirst. "You try to get out, but you can't. You only make a mess of things by trying."
"I'm not a hen in a circle," said Hewet. "I'm a dove on a tree−top."
"I wonder if this is what they call an ingrowing toe−nail?" said Hirst, examining the big toe on his left foot.
"I flit from branch to branch," continued Hewet. "The world is profoundly pleasant." He lay back on the bed,
upon his arms.
"I wonder if it's really nice to be as vague as you are?" asked Hirst, looking at him. "It's the lack of
continuity−−that's what's so odd bout you," he went on. "At the age of twenty−seven, which is nearly thirty,
you seem to have drawn no conclusions. A party of old women excites you still as though you were three."
Hewet contemplated the angular young man who was neatly brushing the rims of his toe−nails into the
fire−place in silence for a moment.
"I respect you, Hirst," he remarked.
"I envy you−−some things," said Hirst. "One: your capacity for not thinking; two: people like you better than
they like me. Women like you, I suppose."
"I wonder whether that isn't really what matters most?" said Hewet. Lying now flat on the bed he waved his
hand in vague circles above him.
Chapter IX 60
"Of course it is," said Hirst. "But that's not the difficulty. The difficulty is, isn't it, to find an appropriate
object?"
"There are no female hens in your circle?" asked Hewet.
"Not the ghost of one," said Hirst.
Although they had known each other for three years Hirst had never yet heard the true story of Hewet's loves.
In general conversation it was taken for granted that they were many, but in private the subject was allowed to
lapse. The fact that he had money enough to do no work, and that he had left Cambridge after two terms
owing to a difference with the authorities, and had then travelled and drifted, made his life strange at many
points where his friends' lives were much of a piece.
"I don't see your circles−−I don't see them," Hewet continued. "I see a thing like a teetotum spinning in and
out−−knocking into things−−dashing from side to side−−collecting numbers−−more and more and more, till
the whole place is thick with them. Round and round they go−−out there, over the rim−−out of sight."
His fingers showed that the waltzing teetotums had spun over the edge of the counterpane and fallen off the
bed into infinity.
"Could you contemplate three weeks alone in this hotel?" asked Hirst, after a moment's pause.
Hewet proceeded to think.
"The truth of it is that one never is alone, and one never is in company," he concluded.
"Meaning?" said Hirst.
"Meaning? Oh, something about bubbles−−auras−−what d'you call 'em? You can't see my bubble; I can't see
yours; all we see of each other is a speck, like the wick in the middle of that flame. The flame goes about with
us everywhere; it's not ourselves exactly, but what we feel; the world is short, or people mainly; all kinds of
people."
"A nice streaky bubble yours must be!" said Hirst.
"And supposing my bubble could run into some one else's bubble−−"
"And they both burst?" put in Hirst.
"Then−−then−−then−−" pondered Hewet, as if to himself, "it would be an e−nor−mous world," he said,
stretching his arms to their full width, as though even so they could hardly clasp the billowy universe, for
when he was with Hirst he always felt unusually sanguine and vague.
"I don't think you altogether as foolish as I used to, Hewet," said Hirst. "You don't know what you mean but
you try to say it."
"But aren't you enjoying yourself here?" asked Hewet.
"On the whole−−yes," said Hirst. "I like observing people. I like looking at things. This country is amazingly
beautiful. Did you notice how the top of the mountain turned yellow to−night? Really we must take our lunch
and spend the day out. You're getting disgustingly fat." He pointed at the calf of Hewet's bare leg.
Chapter IX 61
"We'll get up an expedition," said Hewet energetically. "We'll ask the entire hotel. We'll hire donkeys and−−"
"Oh, Lord!" said Hirst, "do shut it! I can see Miss Warrington and Miss Allan and Mrs. Elliot and the rest
squatting on the stones and quacking, 'How jolly!'"
"We'll ask Venning and Perrott and Miss Murgatroyd−−every one we can lay hands on," went on Hewet.
"What's the name of the little old grasshopper with the eyeglasses? Pepper?−−Pepper shall lead us."
"Thank God, you'll never get the donkeys," said Hirst.
"I must make a note of that," said Hewet, slowly dropping his feet to the floor. "Hirst escorts Miss
Warrington; Pepper advances alone on a white ass; provisions equally distributed−−or shall we hire a mule?
The matrons−−there's Mrs. Paley, by Jove!−−share a carriage."
"That's where you'll go wrong," said Hirst. "Putting virgins among matrons."
"How long should you think that an expedition like that would take, Hirst?" asked Hewet.
"From twelve to sixteen hours I would say," said Hirst. "The time usually occupied by a first confinement."
"It will need considerable organisation," said Hewet. He was now padding softly round the room, and stopped
to stir the books on the table. They lay heaped one upon another.
"We shall want some poets too," he remarked. "Not Gibbon; no; d'you happen to have Modern Love or John
Donne? You see, I contemplate pauses when people get tired of looking at the view, and then it would be nice
to read something rather difficult aloud."
"Mrs. Paley will enjoy herself," said Hirst.
"Mrs. Paley will enjoy it certainly," said Hewet. "It's one of the saddest things I know−−the way elderly ladies
cease to read poetry. And yet how appropriate this is:
I speak as one who plumbs Life's dim profound, One who at length can sound Clear views and certain.
But−−after love what comes? A scene that lours, A few sad vacant hours, And then, the Curtain.
I daresay Mrs. Paley is the only one of us who can really understand that."
"We'll ask her," said Hirst. "Please, Hewet, if you must go to bed, draw my curtain. Few things distress me
more than the moonlight."
Hewet retreated, pressing the poems of Thomas Hardy beneath his arm, and in their beds next door to each
other both the young men were soon asleep.
Between the extinction of Hewet's candle and the rising of a dusky Spanish boy who was the first to survey
the desolation of the hotel in the early morning, a few hours of silence intervened. One could almost hear a
hundred people breathing deeply, and however wakeful and restless it would have been hard to escape sleep in
the middle of so much sleep. Looking out of the windows, there was only darkness to be seen. All over the
shadowed half of the world people lay prone, and a few flickering lights in empty streets marked the places
where their cities were built. Red and yellow omnibuses were crowding each other in Piccadilly; sumptuous
women were rocking at a standstill; but here in the darkness an owl flitted from tree to tree, and when the
breeze lifted the branches the moon flashed as if it were a torch. Until all people should awake again the
Chapter IX 62
houseless animals were abroad, the tigers and the stags, and the elephants coming down in the darkness to
drink at pools. The wind at night blowing over the hills and woods was purer and fresher than the wind by
day, and the earth, robbed of detail, more mysterious than the earth coloured and divided by roads and fields.
For six hours this profound beauty existed, and then as the east grew whiter and whiter the ground swam to
the surface, the roads were revealed, the smoke rose and the people stirred, and the sun shone upon the
windows of the hotel at Santa Marina until they were uncurtained, and the gong blaring all through the house
gave notice of breakfast.
Directly breakfast was over, the ladies as usual circled vaguely, picking up papers and putting them down
again, about the hall.
"And what are you going to do to−day?" asked Mrs. Elliot drifting up against Miss Warrington.
Mrs. Elliot, the wife of Hughling the Oxford Don, was a short woman, whose expression was habitually
plaintive. Her eyes moved from thing to thing as though they never found anything sufficiently pleasant to
rest upon for any length of time.
"I'm going to try to get Aunt Emma out into the town," said Susan. "She's not seen a thing yet."
"I call it so spirited of her at her age," said Mrs. Elliot, "coming all this way from her own fireside."
"Yes, we always tell her she'll die on board ship," Susan replied. "She was born on one," she added.
"In the old days," said Mrs. Elliot, "a great many people were. I always pity the poor women so! We've got a
lot to complain of!" She shook her head. Her eyes wandered about the table, and she remarked irrelevantly,
"The poor little Queen of Holland! Newspaper reporters practically, one may say, at her bedroom door!"
"Were you talking of the Queen of Holland?" said the pleasant voice of Miss Allan, who was searching for the
thick pages of The Times among a litter of thin foreign sheets.
"I always envy any one who lives in such an excessively flat country," she remarked.
"How very strange!" said Mrs. Elliot. "I find a flat country so depressing."
"I'm afraid you can't be very happy here then, Miss Allan," said Susan.
"On the contrary," said Miss Allan, "I am exceedingly fond of mountains." Perceiving The Times at some
distance, she moved off to secure it.
"Well, I must find my husband," said Mrs. Elliot, fidgeting away.
"And I must go to my aunt," said Miss Warrington, and taking up the duties of the day they moved away.
Whether the flimsiness of foreign sheets and the coarseness of their type is any proof of frivolity and
ignorance, there is no doubt that English people scarce consider news read there as news, any more than a
programme bought from a man in the street inspires confidence in what it says. A very respectable elderly
pair, having inspected the long tables of newspapers, did not think it worth their while to read more than the
headlines.
"The debate on the fifteenth should have reached us by now," Mrs. Thornbury murmured. Mr. Thornbury,
who was beautifully clean and had red rubbed into his handsome worn face like traces of paint on a
weather−beaten wooden figure, looked over his glasses and saw that Miss Allan had The Times.
Chapter IX 63
The couple therefore sat themselves down in arm−chairs and waited.
"Ah, there's Mr. Hewet," said Mrs. Thornbury. "Mr. Hewet," she continued, "do come and sit by us. I was
telling my husband how much you reminded me of a dear old friend of mine−−Mary Umpleby. She was a
most delightful woman, I assure you. She grew roses. We used to stay with her in the old days."
"No young man likes to have it said that he resembles an elderly spinster," said Mr. Thornbury.
"On the contrary," said Mr. Hewet, "I always think it a compliment to remind people of some one else. But
Miss Umpleby−−why did she grow roses?"
"Ah, poor thing," said Mrs. Thornbury, "that's a long story. She had gone through dreadful sorrows. At one
time I think she would have lost her senses if it hadn't been for her garden. The soil was very much against
her−−a blessing in disguise; she had to be up at dawn−−out in all weathers. And then there are creatures that
eat roses. But she triumphed. She always did. She was a brave soul." She sighed deeply but at the same time
with resignation.
"I did not realise that I was monopolising the paper," said Miss Allan, coming up to them.
"We were so anxious to read about the debate," said Mrs. Thornbury, accepting it on behalf of her husband.
"One doesn't realise how interesting a debate can be until one has sons in the navy. My interests are equally
balanced, though; I have sons in the army too; and one son who makes speeches at the Union−−my baby!"
"Hirst would know him, I expect," said Hewet.
"Mr. Hirst has such an interesting face," said Mrs. Thornbury. "But I feel one ought to be very clever to talk to
him. Well, William?" she enquired, for Mr. Thornbury grunted.
"They're making a mess of it," said Mr. Thornbury. He had reached the second column of the report, a
spasmodic column, for the Irish members had been brawling three weeks ago at Westminster over a question
of naval efficiency. After a disturbed paragraph or two, the column of print once more ran smoothly.
"You have read it?" Mrs. Thornbury asked Miss Allan.
"No, I am ashamed to say I have only read about the discoveries in Crete," said Miss Allan.
"Oh, but I would give so much to realise the ancient world!" cried Mrs. Thornbury. "Now that we old people
are alone,−−we're on our second honeymoon,−−I am really going to put myself to school again. After all we
are founded on the past, aren't we, Mr. Hewet? My soldier son says that there is still a great deal to be learnt
from Hannibal. One ought to know so much more than one does. Somehow when I read the paper, I begin
with the debates first, and, before I've done, the door always opens−−we're a very large party at home−−and
so one never does think enough about the ancients and all they've done for us. But you begin at the beginning,
Miss Allan."
"When I think of the Greeks I think of them as naked black men," said Miss Allan, "which is quite incorrect,
I'm sure."
"And you, Mr. Hirst?" said Mrs. Thornbury, perceiving that the gaunt young man was near. "I'm sure you read
everything."
"I confine myself to cricket and crime," said Hirst. "The worst of coming from the upper classes," he
Chapter IX 64
continued, "is that one's friends are never killed in railway accidents."
Mr. Thornbury threw down the paper, and emphatically dropped his eyeglasses. The sheets fell in the middle
of the group, and were eyed by them all.
"It's not gone well?" asked his wife solicitously.
Hewet picked up one sheet and read, "A lady was walking yesterday in the streets of Westminster when she
perceived a cat in the window of a deserted house. The famished animal−−"
"I shall be out of it anyway," Mr. Thornbury interrupted peevishly.
"Cats are often forgotten," Miss Allan remarked.
"Remember, William, the Prime Minister has reserved his answer," said Mrs. Thornbury.
"At the age of eighty, Mr. Joshua Harris of Eeles Park, Brondesbury, has had a son," said Hirst.
". . . The famished animal, which had been noticed by workmen for some days, was rescued, but−−by Jove! it
bit the man's hand to pieces!"
"Wild with hunger, I suppose," commented Miss Allan.
"You're all neglecting the chief advantage of being abroad," said Mr. Hughling Elliot, who had joined the
group. "You might read your news in French, which is equivalent to reading no news at all."
Mr. Elliot had a profound knowledge of Coptic, which he concealed as far as possible, and quoted French
phrases so exquisitely that it was hard to believe that he could also speak the ordinary tongue. He had an
immense respect for the French.
"Coming?" he asked the two young men. "We ought to start before it's really hot."
"I beg of you not to walk in the heat, Hugh," his wife pleaded, giving him an angular parcel enclosing half a
chicken and some raisins.
"Hewet will be our barometer," said Mr. Elliot. "He will melt before I shall." Indeed, if so much as a drop had
melted off his spare ribs, the bones would have lain bare. The ladies were left alone now, surrounding The
Times which lay upon the floor. Miss Allan looked at her father's watch.
"Ten minutes to eleven," she observed.
"Work?" asked Mrs. Thornbury.
"Work," replied Miss Allan.
"What a fine creature she is!" murmured Mrs. Thornbury, as the square figure in its manly coat withdrew.
"And I'm sure she has a hard life," sighed Mrs. Elliot.
"Oh, it is a hard life," said Mrs. Thornbury. "Unmarried women−−earning their livings−−it's the hardest life of
all."
Chapter IX 65
"Yet she seems pretty cheerful," said Mrs. Elliot.
"It must be very interesting," said Mrs. Thornbury. "I envy her her knowledge."
"But that isn't what women want," said Mrs. Elliot.
"I'm afraid it's all a great many can hope to have," sighed Mrs. Thornbury. "I believe that there are more of us
than ever now. Sir Harley Lethbridge was telling me only the other day how difficult it is to find boys for the
navy−−partly because of their teeth, it is true. And I have heard young women talk quite openly of−−"
"Dreadful, dreadful!" exclaimed Mrs. Elliot. "The crown, as one may call it, of a woman's life. I, who know
what it is to be childless−−" she sighed and ceased.
"But we must not be hard," said Mrs. Thornbury. "The conditions are so much changed since I was a young
woman."
"Surely maternity does not change," said Mrs. Elliot.
"In some ways we can learn a great deal from the young," said Mrs. Thornbury. "I learn so much from my
own daughters."
"I believe that Hughling really doesn't mind," said Mrs. Elliot. "But then he has his work."
"Women without children can do so much for the children of others," observed Mrs. Thornbury gently.
"I sketch a great deal," said Mrs. Elliot, "but that isn't really an occupation. It's so disconcerting to find girls
just beginning doing better than one does oneself! And nature's difficult−−very difficult!"
"Are there not institutions−−clubs−−that you could help?" asked Mrs. Thornbury.
"They are so exhausting," said Mrs. Elliot. "I look strong, because of my colour; but I'm not; the youngest of
eleven never is."
"If the mother is careful before," said Mrs. Thornbury judicially, "there is no reason why the size of the family
should make any difference. And there is no training like the training that brothers and sisters give each other.
I am sure of that. I have seen it with my own children. My eldest boy Ralph, for instance−−"
But Mrs. Elliot was inattentive to the elder lady's experience, and her eyes wandered about the hall.
"My mother had two miscarriages, I know," she said suddenly. "The first because she met one of those great
dancing bears−−they shouldn't be allowed; the other−−it was a horrid story−−our cook had a child and there
was a dinner party. So I put my dyspepsia down to that."
"And a miscarriage is so much worse than a confinement," Mrs. Thornbury murmured absentmindedly,
adjusting her spectacles and picking up The Times. Mrs. Elliot rose and fluttered away.
When she had heard what one of the million voices speaking in the paper had to say, and noticed that a cousin
of hers had married a clergyman at Minehead−−ignoring the drunken women, the golden animals of Crete, the
movements of battalions, the dinners, the reforms, the fires, the indignant, the learned and benevolent, Mrs.
Thornbury went upstairs to write a letter for the mail.
The paper lay directly beneath the clock, the two together seeming to represent stability in a changing world.
Chapter IX 66
Mr. Perrott passed through; Mr. Venning poised for a second on the edge of a table. Mrs. Paley was wheeled
past. Susan followed. Mr. Venning strolled after her. Portuguese military families, their clothes suggesting
late rising in untidy bedrooms, trailed across, attended by confidential nurses carrying noisy children. As
midday drew on, and the sun beat straight upon the roof, an eddy of great flies droned in a circle; iced drinks
were served under the palms; the long blinds were pulled down with a shriek, turning all the light yellow. The
clock now had a silent hall to tick in, and an audience of four or five somnolent merchants. By degrees white
figures with shady hats came in at the door, admitting a wedge of the hot summer day, and shutting it out
again. After resting in the dimness for a minute, they went upstairs. Simultaneously, the clock wheezed one,
and the gong sounded, beginning softly, working itself into a frenzy, and ceasing. There was a pause. Then all
those who had gone upstairs came down; cripples came, planting both feet on the same step lest they should
slip; prim little girls came, holding the nurse's finger; fat old men came still buttoning waistcoats. The gong
had been sounded in the garden, and by degrees recumbent figures rose and strolled in to eat, since the time
had come for them to feed again. There were pools and bars of shade in the garden even at midday, where two
or three visitors could lie working or talking at their ease.
Owing to the heat of the day, luncheon was generally a silent meal, when people observed their neighbors and
took stock of any new faces there might be, hazarding guesses as to who they were and what they did. Mrs.
Paley, although well over seventy and crippled in the legs, enjoyed her food and the peculiarities of her
fellow−beings. She was seated at a small table with Susan.
"I shouldn't like to say what she is!" she chuckled, surveying a tall woman dressed conspicuously in white,
with paint in the hollows of her cheeks, who was always late, and always attended by a shabby female
follower, at which remark Susan blushed, and wondered why her aunt said such things.
Lunch went on methodically, until each of the seven courses was left in fragments and the fruit was merely a
toy, to be peeled and sliced as a child destroys a daisy, petal by petal. The food served as an extinguisher upon
any faint flame of the human spirit that might survive the midday heat, but Susan sat in her room afterwards,
turning over and over the delightful fact that Mr. Venning had come to her in the garden, and had sat there
quite half an hour while she read aloud to her aunt. Men and women sought different corners where they could
lie unobserved, and from two to four it might be said without exaggeration that the hotel was inhabited by
bodies without souls. Disastrous would have been the result if a fire or a death had suddenly demanded
something heroic of human nature, but tragedies come in the hungry hours. Towards four o'clock the human
spirit again began to lick the body, as a flame licks a black promontory of coal. Mrs. Paley felt it unseemly to
open her toothless jaw so widely, though there was no one near, and Mrs. Elliot surveyed her found flushed
face anxiously in the looking−glass.
Half an hour later, having removed the traces of sleep, they met each other in the hall, and Mrs. Paley
observed that she was going to have her tea.
"You like your tea too, don't you?" she said, and invited Mrs. Elliot, whose husband was still out, to join her at
a special table which she had placed for her under a tree.
"A little silver goes a long way in this country," she chuckled.
She sent Susan back to fetch another cup.
"They have such excellent biscuits here," she said, contemplating a plateful. "Not sweet biscuits, which I don't
like−−dry biscuits . . . Have you been sketching?"
"Oh, I've done two or three little daubs," said Mrs. Elliot, speaking rather louder than usual. "But it's so
difficult after Oxfordshire, where there are so many trees. The light's so strong here. Some people admire it, I
know, but I find it very fatiguing."
Chapter IX 67
"I really don't need cooking, Susan," said Mrs. Paley, when her niece returned. "I must trouble you to move
me." Everything had to be moved. Finally the old lady was placed so that the light wavered over her, as
though she were a fish in a net. Susan poured out tea, and was just remarking that they were having hot
weather in Wiltshire too, when Mr. Venning asked whether he might join them.
"It's so nice to find a young man who doesn't despise tea," said Mrs. Paley, regaining her good humour. "One
of my nephews the other day asked for a glass of sherry−−at five o'clock! I told him he could get it at the
public house round the corner, but not in my drawing room."
"I'd rather go without lunch than tea," said Mr. Venning. "That's not strictly true. I want both."
Mr. Venning was a dark young man, about thirty−two years of age, very slapdash and confident in his
manner, although at this moment obviously a little excited. His friend Mr. Perrott was a barrister, and as Mr.
Perrott refused to go anywhere without Mr. Venning it was necessary, when Mr. Perrott came to Santa Marina
about a Company, for Mr. Venning to come too. He was a barrister also, but he loathed a profession which
kept him indoors over books, and directly his widowed mother died he was going, so he confided to Susan, to
take up flying seriously, and become partner in a large business for making aeroplanes. The talk rambled on.
It dealt, of course, with the beauties and singularities of the place, the streets, the people, and the quantities of
unowned yellow dogs.
"Don't you think it dreadfully cruel the way they treat dogs in this country?" asked Mrs. Paley.
"I'd have 'em all shot," said Mr. Venning.
"Oh, but the darling puppies," said Susan.
"Jolly little chaps," said Mr. Venning. "Look here, you've got nothing to eat." A great wedge of cake was
handed Susan on the point of a trembling knife. Her hand trembled too as she took it.
"I have such a dear dog at home," said Mrs. Elliot.
"My parrot can't stand dogs," said Mrs. Paley, with the air of one making a confidence. "I always suspect that
he (or she) was teased by a dog when I was abroad."
"You didn't get far this morning, Miss Warrington," said Mr. Venning.
"It was hot," she answered. Their conversation became private, owing to Mrs. Paley's deafness and the long
sad history which Mrs. Elliot had embarked upon of a wire−haired terrier, white with just one black spot,
belonging to an uncle of hers, which had committed suicide. "Animals do commit suicide," she sighed, as if
she asserted a painful fact.
"Couldn't we explore the town this evening?" Mr. Venning suggested.
"My aunt−−" Susan began.
"You deserve a holiday," he said. "You're always doing things for other people."
"But that's my life," she said, under cover of refilling the teapot.
"That's no one's life," he returned, "no young person's. You'll come?"
"I should like to come," she murmured.
Chapter IX 68
At this moment Mrs. Elliot looked up and exclaimed, "Oh, Hugh! He's bringing some one," she added.
"He would like some tea," said Mrs. Paley. "Susan, run and get some cups−−there are the two young men."
"We're thirsting for tea," said Mr. Elliot. "You know Mr. Ambrose, Hilda? We met on the hill."
"He dragged me in," said Ridley, "or I should have been ashamed. I'm dusty and dirty and disagreeable." He
pointed to his boots which were white with dust, while a dejected flower drooping in his buttonhole, like an
exhausted animal over a gate, added to the effect of length and untidiness. He was introduced to the others.
Mr. Hewet and Mr. Hirst brought chairs, and tea began again, Susan pouring cascades of water from pot to
pot, always cheerfully, and with the competence of long use.
"My wife's brother," Ridley explained to Hilda, whom he failed to remember, "has a house here, which he has
lent us. I was sitting on a rock thinking of nothing at all when Elliot started up like a fairy in a pantomime."
"Our chicken got into the salt," Hewet said dolefully to Susan. "Nor is it true that bananas include moisture as
well as sustenance."
Hirst was already drinking.
"We've been cursing you," said Ridley in answer to Mrs. Elliot's kind enquiries about his wife. "You tourists
eat up all the eggs, Helen tells me. That's an eye−sore too"−−he nodded his head at the hotel. "Disgusting
luxury, I call it. We live with pigs in the drawing−room."
"The food is not at all what it ought to be, considering the price," said Mrs. Paley seriously. "But unless one
goes to a hotel where is one to go to?"
"Stay at home," said Ridley. "I often wish I had! Everyone ought to stay at home. But, of course, they won't."
Mrs. Paley conceived a certain grudge against Ridley, who seemed to be criticising her habits after an
acquaintance of five minutes.
"I believe in foreign travel myself," she stated, "if one knows one's native land, which I think I can honestly
say I do. I should not allow any one to travel until they had visited Kent and Dorsetshire−−Kent for the hops,
and Dorsetshire for its old stone cottages. There is nothing to compare with them here."
"Yes−−I always think that some people like the flat and other people like the downs," said Mrs. Elliot rather
vaguely.
Hirst, who had been eating and drinking without interruption, now lit a cigarette, and observed, "Oh, but we're
all agreed by this time that nature's a mistake. She's either very ugly, appallingly uncomfortable, or absolutely
terrifying. I don't know which alarms me most−−a cow or a tree. I once met a cow in a field by night. The
creature looked at me. I assure you it turned my hair grey. It's a disgrace that the animals should be allowed to
go at large."
"And what did the cow think of him?" Venning mumbled to Susan, who immediately decided in her own
mind that Mr. Hirst was a dreadful young man, and that although he had such an air of being clever he
probably wasn't as clever as Arthur, in the ways that really matter.
"Wasn't it Wilde who discovered the fact that nature makes no allowance for hip−bones?" enquired Hughling
Elliot. He knew by this time exactly what scholarships and distinction Hirst enjoyed, and had formed a very
high opinion of his capacities.
Chapter IX 69
But Hirst merely drew his lips together very tightly and made no reply.
Ridley conjectured that it was now permissible for him to take his leave. Politeness required him to thank
Mrs. Elliot for his tea, and to add, with a wave of his hand, "You must come up and see us."
The wave included both Hirst and Hewet, and Hewet answered, "I should like it immensely."
The party broke up, and Susan, who had never felt so happy in her life, was just about to start for her walk in
the town with Arthur, when Mrs. Paley beckoned her back. She could not understand from the book how
Double Demon patience is played; and suggested that if they sat down and worked it out together it would fill
up the time nicely before dinner.

Chapter X


Among the promises which Mrs. Ambrose had made her niece should she stay was a room cut off from the
rest of the house, large, private−−a room in which she could play, read, think, defy the world, a fortress as
well as a sanctuary. Rooms, she knew, became more like worlds than rooms at the age of twenty−four. Her
judgment was correct, and when she shut the door Rachel entered an enchanted place, where the poets sang
and things fell into their right proportions. Some days after the vision of the hotel by night she was sitting
alone, sunk in an arm−chair, reading a brightly−covered red volume lettered on the back Works of Henrik
Ibsen. Music was open on the piano, and books of music rose in two jagged pillars on the floor; but for the
moment music was deserted.
Far from looking bored or absent−minded, her eyes were concentrated almost sternly upon the page, and from
her breathing, which was slow but repressed, it could be seen that her whole body was constrained by the
working of her mind. At last she shut the book sharply, lay back, and drew a deep breath, expressive of the
wonder which always marks the transition from the imaginary world to the real world.
"What I want to know," she said aloud, "is this: What is the truth? What's the truth of it all?" She was
speaking partly as herself, and partly as the heroine of the play she had just read. The landscape outside,
because she had seen nothing but print for the space of two hours, now appeared amazingly solid and clear,
but although there were men on the hill washing the trunks of olive trees with a white liquid, for the moment
she herself was the most vivid thing in it−−an heroic statue in the middle of the foreground, dominating the
view. Ibsen's plays always left her in that condition. She acted them for days at a time, greatly to Helen's
amusement; and then it would be Meredith's turn and she became Diana of the Crossways. But Helen was
aware that it was not all acting, and that some sort of change was taking place in the human being. When
Rachel became tired of the rigidity of her pose on the back of the chair, she turned round, slid comfortably
down into it, and gazed out over the furniture through the window opposite which opened on the garden. (Her
mind wandered away from Nora, but she went on thinking of things that the book suggested to her, of women
and life.)
During the three months she had been here she had made up considerably, as Helen meant she should, for
time spent in interminable walks round sheltered gardens, and the household gossip of her aunts. But Mrs.
Ambrose would have been the first to disclaim any influence, or indeed any belief that to influence was within
her power. She saw her less shy, and less serious, which was all to the good, and the violent leaps and the
interminable mazes which had led to that result were usually not even guessed at by her. Talk was the
medicine she trusted to, talk about everything, talk that was free, unguarded, and as candid as a habit of
talking with men made natural in her own case. Nor did she encourage those habits of unselfishness and
amiability founded upon insincerity which are put at so high a value in mixed households of men and women.
She desired that Rachel should think, and for this reason offered books and discouraged too entire a
dependence upon Bach and Beethoven and Wagner. But when Mrs. Ambrose would have suggested Defoe,
Maupassant, or some spacious chronicle of family life, Rachel chose modern books, books in shiny yellow
Chapter X 70
covers, books with a great deal of gilding on the back, which were tokens in her aunt's eyes of harsh
wrangling and disputes about facts which had no such importance as the moderns claimed for them. But she
did not interfere. Rachel read what she chose, reading with the curious literalness of one to whom written
sentences are unfamiliar, and handling words as though they were made of wood, separately of great
importance, and possessed of shapes like tables or chairs. In this way she came to conclusions, which had to
be remodelled according to the adventures of the day, and were indeed recast as liberally as any one could
desire, leaving always a small grain of belief behind them.
Ibsen was succeeded by a novel such as Mrs. Ambrose detested, whose purpose was to distribute the guilt of a
woman's downfall upon the right shoulders; a purpose which was achieved, if the reader's discomfort were
any proof of it. She threw the book down, looked out of the window, turned away from the window, and
relapsed into an arm−chair.
The morning was hot, and the exercise of reading left her mind contracting and expanding like the
main−spring of a clock, and the small noises of midday, which one can ascribe to no definite cause, in a
regular rhythm. It was all very real, very big, very impersonal, and after a moment or two she began to raise
her first finger and to let it fall on the arm of her chair so as to bring back to herself some consciousness of her
own existence. She was next overcome by the unspeakable queerness of the fact that she should be sitting in
an arm−chair, in the morning, in the middle of the world. Who were the people moving in the house−−moving
things from one place to another? And life, what was that? It was only a light passing over the surface and
vanishing, as in time she would vanish, though the furniture in the room would remain. Her dissolution
became so complete that she could not raise her finger any more, and sat perfectly still, listening and looking
always at the same spot. It became stranger and stranger. She was overcome with awe that things should exist
at all. . . . She forgot that she had any fingers to raise. . . . The things that existed were so immense and so
desolate. . . . She continued to be conscious of these vast masses of substance for a long stretch of time, the
clock still ticking in the midst of the universal silence.
"Come in," she said mechanically, for a string in her brain seemed to be pulled by a persistent knocking at the
door. With great slowness the door opened and a tall human being came towards her, holding out her arm and
saying:
"What am I to say to this?"
The utter absurdity of a woman coming into a room with a piece of paper in her hand amazed Rachel.
"I don't know what to answer, or who Terence Hewet is," Helen continued, in the toneless voice of a ghost.
She put a paper before Rachel on which were written the incredible words:
DEAR MRS. AMBROSE−−I am getting up a picnic for next Friday, when we propose to start at
eleven−thirty if the weather is fine, and to make the ascent of Monte Rosa. It will take some time, but the
view should be magnificent. It would give me great pleasure if you and Miss Vinrace would consent to be of
the party.−−
Yours sincerely, TERENCE HEWET
Rachel read the words aloud to make herself believe in them. For the same reason she put her hand on Helen's
shoulder.
"Books−−books−−books," said Helen, in her absent−minded way. "More new books−−I wonder what you
find in them. . . ."
For the second time Rachel read the letter, but to herself. This time, instead of seeming vague as ghosts, each
Chapter X 71
word was astonishingly prominent; they came out as the tops of mountains come through a mist.
Friday−−eleven−thirty−−Miss Vinrace. The blood began to run in her veins; she felt her eyes brighten.
"We must go," she said, rather surprising Helen by her decision. "We must certainly go"−−such was the relief
of finding that things still happened, and indeed they appeared the brighter for the mist surrounding them.
"Monte Rosa−−that's the mountain over there, isn't it?" said Helen; "but Hewet−−who's he? One of the young
men Ridley met, I suppose. Shall I say yes, then? It may be dreadfully dull."
She took the letter back and went, for the messenger was waiting for her answer.
The party which had been suggested a few nights ago in Mr. Hirst's bedroom had taken shape and was the
source of great satisfaction to Mr. Hewet, who had seldom used his practical abilities, and was pleased to find
them equal to the strain. His invitations had been universally accepted, which was the more encouraging as
they had been issued against Hirst's advice to people who were very dull, not at all suited to each other, and
sure not to come.
"Undoubtedly," he said, as he twirled and untwirled a note signed Helen Ambrose, "the gifts needed to make a
great commander have been absurdly overrated. About half the intellectual effort which is needed to review a
book of modern poetry has enabled me to get together seven or eight people, of opposite sexes, at the same
spot at the same hour on the same day. What else is generalship, Hirst? What more did Wellington do on the
field of Waterloo? It's like counting the number of pebbles of a path, tedious but not difficult."
He was sitting in his bedroom, one leg over the arm of the chair, and Hirst was writing a letter opposite. Hirst
was quick to point out that all the difficulties remained.
"For instance, here are two women you've never seen. Suppose one of them suffers from mountain−sickness,
as my sister does, and the other−−"
"Oh, the women are for you," Hewet interrupted. "I asked them solely for your benefit. What you want, Hirst,
you know, is the society of young women of your own age. You don't know how to get on with women,
which is a great defect, considering that half the world consists of women."
Hirst groaned that he was quite aware of that.
But Hewet's complacency was a little chilled as he walked with Hirst to the place where a general meeting had
been appointed. He wondered why on earth he had asked these people, and what one really expected to get
from bunching human beings up together.
"Cows," he reflected, "draw together in a field; ships in a calm; and we're just the same when we've nothing
else to do. But why do we do it?−−is it to prevent ourselves from seeing to the bottom of things" (he stopped
by a stream and began stirring it with his walking−stick and clouding the water with mud), "making cities and
mountains and whole universes out of nothing, or do we really love each other, or do we, on the other hand,
live in a state of perpetual uncertainty, knowing nothing, leaping from moment to moment as from world to
world?−−which is, on the whole, the view I incline to."
He jumped over the stream; Hirst went round and joined him, remarking that he had long ceased to look for
the reason of any human action.
Half a mile further, they came to a group of plane trees and the salmon−pink farmhouse standing by the
stream which had been chosen as meeting−place. It was a shady spot, lying conveniently just where the hill
sprung out from the flat. Between the thin stems of the plane trees the young men could see little knots of
Chapter X 72
donkeys pasturing, and a tall woman rubbing the nose of one of them, while another woman was kneeling by
the stream lapping water out of her palms.
As they entered the shady place, Helen looked up and then held out her hand.
"I must introduce myself," she said. "I am Mrs. Ambrose."
Having shaken hands, she said, "That's my niece."
Rachel approached awkwardly. She held out her hand, but withdrew it. "It's all wet," she said.
Scarcely had they spoken, when the first carriage drew up.
The donkeys were quickly jerked into attention, and the second carriage arrived. By degrees the grove filled
with people−−the Elliots, the Thornburys, Mr. Venning and Susan, Miss Allan, Evelyn Murgatroyd, and Mr.
Perrott. Mr. Hirst acted the part of hoarse energetic sheep−dog. By means of a few words of caustic Latin he
had the animals marshalled, and by inclining a sharp shoulder he lifted the ladies. "What Hewet fails to
understand," he remarked, "is that we must break the back of the ascent before midday." He was assisting a
young lady, by name Evelyn Murgatroyd, as he spoke. She rose light as a bubble to her seat. With a feather
drooping from a broad−brimmed hat, in white from top to toe, she looked like a gallant lady of the time of
Charles the First leading royalist troops into action.
"Ride with me," she commanded; and, as soon as Hirst had swung himself across a mule, the two started,
leading the cavalcade.
"You're not to call me Miss Murgatroyd. I hate it," she said. "My name's Evelyn. What's yours?"
"St. John," he said.
"I like that," said Evelyn. "And what's your friend's name?"
"His initials being R. S. T., we call him Monk," said Hirst.
"Oh, you're all too clever," she said. "Which way? Pick me a branch. Let's canter."
She gave her donkey a sharp cut with a switch and started forward. The full and romantic career of Evelyn
Murgatroyd is best hit off by her own words, "Call me Evelyn and I'll call you St. John." She said that on very
slight provocation−−her surname was enough−−but although a great many young men had answered her
already with considerable spirit she went on saying it and making choice of none. But her donkey stumbled to
a jog−trot, and she had to ride in advance alone, for the path when it began to ascend one of the spines of the
hill became narrow and scattered with stones. The cavalcade wound on like a jointed caterpillar, tufted with
the white parasols of the ladies, and the panama hats of the gentlemen. At one point where the ground rose
sharply, Evelyn M. jumped off, threw her reins to the native boy, and adjured St. John Hirst to dismount too.
Their example was followed by those who felt the need of stretching.
"I don't see any need to get off," said Miss Allan to Mrs. Elliot just behind her, "considering the difficulty I
had getting on."
"These little donkeys stand anything, n'est−ce pas?" Mrs. Elliot addressed the guide, who obligingly bowed
his head.
"Flowers," said Helen, stooping to pick the lovely little bright flowers which grew separately here and there.
Chapter X 73
"You pinch their leaves and then they smell," she said, laying one on Miss Allan's knee.
"Haven't we met before?" asked Miss Allan, looking at her.
"I was taking it for granted," Helen laughed, for in the confusion of meeting they had not been introduced.
"How sensible!" chirped Mrs. Elliot. "That's just what one would always like−−only unfortunately it's not
possible." "Not possible?" said Helen. "Everything's possible. Who knows what mayn't happen before
night−fall?" she continued, mocking the poor lady's timidity, who depended implicitly upon one thing
following another that the mere glimpse of a world where dinner could be disregarded, or the table moved one
inch from its accustomed place, filled her with fears for her own stability.
Higher and higher they went, becoming separated from the world. The world, when they turned to look back,
flattened itself out, and was marked with squares of thin green and grey.
"Towns are very small," Rachel remarked, obscuring the whole of Santa Marina and its suburbs with one
hand. The sea filled in all the angles of the coast smoothly, breaking in a white frill, and here and there ships
were set firmly in the blue. The sea was stained with purple and green blots, and there was a glittering line
upon the rim where it met the sky. The air was very clear and silent save for the sharp noise of grasshoppers
and the hum of bees, which sounded loud in the ear as they shot past and vanished. The party halted and sat
for a time in a quarry on the hillside.
"Amazingly clear," exclaimed St. John, identifying one cleft in the land after another.
Evelyn M. sat beside him, propping her chin on her hand. She surveyed the view with a certain look of
triumph.
"D'you think Garibaldi was ever up here?" she asked Mr. Hirst. Oh, if she had been his bride! If, instead of a
picnic party, this was a party of patriots, and she, red−shirted like the rest, had lain among grim men, flat on
the turf, aiming her gun at the white turrets beneath them, screening her eyes to pierce through the smoke! So
thinking, her foot stirred restlessly, and she exclaimed:
"I don't call this life, do you?"
"What do you call life?" said St. John.
"Fighting−−revolution," she said, still gazing at the doomed city. "You only care for books, I know."
"You're quite wrong," said St. John.
"Explain," she urged, for there were no guns to be aimed at bodies, and she turned to another kind of warfare.
"What do I care for? People," he said.
"Well, I am surprised!" she exclaimed. "You look so awfully serious. Do let's be friends and tell each other
what we're like. I hate being cautious, don't you?"
But St. John was decidedly cautious, as she could see by the sudden constriction of his lips, and had no
intention of revealing his soul to a young lady. "The ass is eating my hat," he remarked, and stretched out for
it instead of answering her. Evelyn blushed very slightly and then turned with some impetuosity upon Mr.
Perrott, and when they mounted again it was Mr. Perrott who lifted her to her seat.
Chapter X 74
"When one has laid the eggs one eats the omelette," said Hughling Elliot, exquisitely in French, a hint to the
rest of them that it was time to ride on again.
The midday sun which Hirst had foretold was beginning to beat down hotly. The higher they got the more of
the sky appeared, until the mountain was only a small tent of earth against an enormous blue background. The
English fell silent; the natives who walked beside the donkeys broke into queer wavering songs and tossed
jokes from one to the other. The way grew very steep, and each rider kept his eyes fixed on the hobbling
curved form of the rider and donkey directly in front of him. Rather more strain was being put upon their
bodies than is quite legitimate in a party of pleasure, and Hewet overheard one or two slightly grumbling
remarks.
"Expeditions in such heat are perhaps a little unwise," Mrs. Elliot murmured to Miss Allan.
But Miss Allan returned, "I always like to get to the top"; and it was true, although she was a big woman, stiff
in the joints, and unused to donkey−riding, but as her holidays were few she made the most of them.
The vivacious white figure rode well in front; she had somehow possessed herself of a leafy branch and wore
it round her hat like a garland. They went on for a few minutes in silence.
"The view will be wonderful," Hewet assured them, turning round in his saddle and smiling encouragement.
Rachel caught his eye and smiled too. They struggled on for some time longer, nothing being heard but the
clatter of hooves striving on the loose stones. Then they saw that Evelyn was off her ass, and that Mr. Perrott
was standing in the attitude of a statesman in Parliament Square, stretching an arm of stone towards the view.
A little to the left of them was a low ruined wall, the stump of an Elizabethan watch−tower.
"I couldn't have stood it much longer," Mrs. Elliot confided to Mrs. Thornbury, but the excitement of being at
the top in another moment and seeing the view prevented any one from answering her. One after another they
came out on the flat space at the top and stood overcome with wonder. Before them they beheld an immense
space−−grey sands running into forest, and forest merging in mountains, and mountains washed by air, the
infinite distances of South America. A river ran across the plain, as flat as the land, and appearing quite as
stationary. The effect of so much space was at first rather chilling. They felt themselves very small, and for
some time no one said anything. Then Evelyn exclaimed, "Splendid!" She took hold of the hand that was next
her; it chanced to be Miss Allan's hand.
"North−−South−−East−−West," said Miss Allan, jerking her head slightly towards the points of the compass.
Hewet, who had gone a little in front, looked up at his guests as if to justify himself for having brought them.
He observed how strangely the people standing in a row with their figures bent slightly forward and their
clothes plastered by the wind to the shape of their bodies resembled naked statues. On their pedestal of earth
they looked unfamiliar and noble, but in another moment they had broken their rank, and he had to see to the
laying out of food. Hirst came to his help, and they handed packets of chicken and bread from one to another.
As St. John gave Helen her packet she looked him full in the face and said:
"Do you remember−−two women?"
He looked at her sharply.
"I do," he answered.
"So you're the two women!" Hewet exclaimed, looking from Helen to Rachel.
Chapter X 75
"Your lights tempted us," said Helen. "We watched you playing cards, but we never knew that we were being
watched."
"It was like a thing in a play," Rachel added.
"And Hirst couldn't describe you," said Hewet.
It was certainly odd to have seen Helen and to find nothing to say about her.
Hughling Elliot put up his eyeglass and grasped the situation.
"I don't know of anything more dreadful," he said, pulling at the joint of a chicken's leg, "than being seen
when one isn't conscious of it. One feels sure one has been caught doing something ridiculous−−looking at
one's tongue in a hansom, for instance."
Now the others ceased to look at the view, and drawing together sat down in a circle round the baskets.
"And yet those little looking−glasses in hansoms have a fascination of their own," said Mrs. Thornbury.
"One's features look so different when one can only see a bit of them."
"There will soon be very few hansom cabs left," said Mrs. Elliot. "And four−wheeled cabs−−I assure you
even at Oxford it's almost impossible to get a four−wheeled cab."
"I wonder what happens to the horses," said Susan.
"Veal pie," said Arthur.
"It's high time that horses should become extinct anyhow," said Hirst. "They're distressingly ugly, besides
being vicious."
But Susan, who had been brought up to understand that the horse is the noblest of God's creatures, could not
agree, and Venning thought Hirst an unspeakable ass, but was too polite not to continue the conversation.
"When they see us falling out of aeroplanes they get some of their own back, I expect," he remarked.
"You fly?" said old Mr. Thornbury, putting on his spectacles to look at him.
"I hope to, some day," said Arthur.
Here flying was discussed at length, and Mrs. Thornbury delivered an opinion which was almost a speech to
the effect that it would be quite necessary in time of war, and in England we were terribly behind−hand. "If I
were a young fellow," she concluded, "I should certainly qualify." It was odd to look at the little elderly lady,
in her grey coat and skirt, with a sandwich in her hand, her eyes lighting up with zeal as she imagined herself
a young man in an aeroplane. For some reason, however, the talk did not run easily after this, and all they said
was about drink and salt and the view. Suddenly Miss Allan, who was seated with her back to the ruined wall,
put down her sandwich, picked something off her neck, and remarked, "I'm covered with little creatures." It
was true, and the discovery was very welcome. The ants were pouring down a glacier of loose earth heaped
between the stones of the ruin−−large brown ants with polished bodies. She held out one on the back of her
hand for Helen to look at.
"Suppose they sting?" said Helen.
Chapter X 76
"They will not sting, but they may infest the victuals," said Miss Allan, and measures were taken at once to
divert the ants from their course. At Hewet's suggestion it was decided to adopt the methods of modern
warfare against an invading army. The table−cloth represented the invaded country, and round it they built
barricades of baskets, set up the wine bottles in a rampart, made fortifications of bread and dug fosses of salt.
When an ant got through it was exposed to a fire of bread−crumbs, until Susan pronounced that that was cruel,
and rewarded those brave spirits with spoil in the shape of tongue. Playing this game they lost their stiffness,
and even became unusually daring, for Mr. Perrott, who was very shy, said, "Permit me," and removed an ant
from Evelyn's neck.
"It would be no laughing matter really," said Mrs. Elliot confidentially to Mrs. Thornbury, "if an ant did get
between the vest and the skin."
The noise grew suddenly more clamorous, for it was discovered that a long line of ants had found their way
on to the table−cloth by a back entrance, and if success could be gauged by noise, Hewet had every reason to
think his party a success. Nevertheless he became, for no reason at all, profoundly depressed.
"They are not satisfactory; they are ignoble," he thought, surveying his guests from a little distance, where he
was gathering together the plates. He glanced at them all, stooping and swaying and gesticulating round the
table−cloth. Amiable and modest, respectable in many ways, lovable even in their contentment and desire to
be kind, how mediocre they all were, and capable of what insipid cruelty to one another! There was Mrs.
Thornbury, sweet but trivial in her maternal egoism; Mrs. Elliot, perpetually complaining of her lot; her
husband a mere pea in a pod; and Susan−−she had no self, and counted neither one way nor the other;
Venning was as honest and as brutal as a schoolboy; poor old Thornbury merely trod his round like a horse in
a mill; and the less one examined into Evelyn's character the better, he suspected. Yet these were the people
with money, and to them rather than to others was given the management of the world. Put among them some
one more vital, who cared for life or for beauty, and what an agony, what a waste would they inflict on him if
he tried to share with them and not to scourge!
"There's Hirst," he concluded, coming to the figure of his friend; with his usual little frown of concentration
upon his forehead he was peeling the skin off a banana. "And he's as ugly as sin." For the ugliness of St. John
Hirst, and the limitations that went with it, he made the rest in some way responsible. It was their fault that he
had to live alone. Then he came to Helen, attracted to her by the sound of her laugh. She was laughing at Miss
Allan. "You wear combinations in this heat?" she said in a voice which was meant to be private. He liked the
look of her immensely, not so much her beauty, but her largeness and simplicity, which made her stand out
from the rest like a great stone woman, and he passed on in a gentler mood. His eye fell upon Rachel. She was
lying back rather behind the others resting on one elbow; she might have been thinking precisely the same
thoughts as Hewet himself. Her eyes were fixed rather sadly but not intently upon the row of people opposite
her. Hewet crawled up to her on his knees, with a piece of bread in his hand.
"What are you looking at?" he asked.
She was a little startled, but answered directly, "Human beings."

Chapter XI


One after another they rose and stretched themselves, and in a few minutes divided more or less into two
separate parties. One of these parties was dominated by Hughling Elliot and Mrs. Thornbury, who, having
both read the same books and considered the same questions, were now anxious to name the places beneath
them and to hang upon them stores of information about navies and armies, political parties, natives and
mineral products−−all of which combined, they said, to prove that South America was the country of the
future.
Chapter XI 77
Evelyn M. listened with her bright blue eyes fixed upon the oracles.
"How it makes one long to be a man!" she exclaimed.
Mr. Perrott answered, surveying the plain, that a country with a future was a very fine thing.
"If I were you," said Evelyn, turning to him and drawing her glove vehemently through her fingers, "I'd raise a
troop and conquer some great territory and make it splendid. You'd want women for that. I'd love to start life
from the very beginning as it ought to be−−nothing squalid−−but great halls and gardens and splendid men
and women. But you−−you only like Law Courts!"
"And would you really be content without pretty frocks and sweets and all the things young ladies like?"
asked Mr. Perrott, concealing a certain amount of pain beneath his ironical manner.
"I'm not a young lady," Evelyn flashed; she bit her underlip. "Just because I like splendid things you laugh at
me. Why are there no men like Garibaldi now?" she demanded.
"Look here," said Mr. Perrott, "you don't give me a chance. You think we ought to begin things fresh. Good.
But I don't see precisely−−conquer a territory? They're all conquered already, aren't they?"
"It's not any territory in particular," Evelyn explained. "It's the idea, don't you see? We lead such tame lives.
And I feel sure you've got splendid things in you."
Hewet saw the scars and hollows in Mr. Perrott's sagacious face relax pathetically. He could imagine the
calculations which even then went on within his mind, as to whether he would be justified in asking a woman
to marry him, considering that he made no more than five hundred a year at the Bar, owned no private means,
and had an invalid sister to support. Mr. Perrott again knew that he was not "quite," as Susan stated in her
diary; not quite a gentleman she meant, for he was the son of a grocer in Leeds, had started life with a basket
on his back, and now, though practically indistinguishable from a born gentleman, showed his origin to keen
eyes in an impeccable neatness of dress, lack of freedom in manner, extreme cleanliness of person, and a
certain indescribable timidity and precision with his knife and fork which might be the relic of days when
meat was rare, and the way of handling it by no means gingerly.
The two parties who were strolling about and losing their unity now came together, and joined each other in a
long stare over the yellow and green patches of the heated landscape below. The hot air danced across it,
making it impossible to see the roofs of a village on the plain distinctly. Even on the top of the mountain
where a breeze played lightly, it was very hot, and the heat, the food, the immense space, and perhaps some
less well−defined cause produced a comfortable drowsiness and a sense of happy relaxation in them. They did
not say much, but felt no constraint in being silent.
"Suppose we go and see what's to be seen over there?" said Arthur to Susan, and the pair walked off together,
their departure certainly sending some thrill of emotion through the rest.
"An odd lot, aren't they?" said Arthur. "I thought we should never get 'em all to the top. But I'm glad we came,
by Jove! I wouldn't have missed this for something."
"I don't like Mr. Hirst," said Susan inconsequently. "I suppose he's very clever, but why should clever people
be so−−I expect he's awfully nice, really," she added, instinctively qualifying what might have seemed an
unkind remark.
"Hirst? Oh, he's one of these learned chaps," said Arthur indifferently. "He don't look as if he enjoyed it. You
should hear him talking to Elliot. It's as much as I can do to follow 'em at all. . . . I was never good at my
Chapter XI 78
books."
With these sentences and the pauses that came between them they reached a little hillock, on the top of which
grew several slim trees.
"D'you mind if we sit down here?" said Arthur, looking about him. "It's jolly in the shade−−and the view−−"
They sat down, and looked straight ahead of them in silence for some time.
"But I do envy those clever chaps sometimes," Arthur remarked. "I don't suppose they ever . . ." He did not
finish his sentence.
"I can't see why you should envy them," said Susan, with great sincerity.
"Odd things happen to one," said Arthur. "One goes along smoothly enough, one thing following another, and
it's all very jolly and plain sailing, and you think you know all about it, and suddenly one doesn't know where
one is a bit, and everything seems different from what it used to seem. Now to−day, coming up that path,
riding behind you, I seemed to see everything as if−−" he paused and plucked a piece of grass up by the roots.
He scattered the little lumps of earth which were sticking to the roots−−"As if it had a kind of meaning.
You've made the difference to me," he jerked out, "I don't see why I shouldn't tell you. I've felt it ever since I
knew you. . . . It's because I love you."
Even while they had been saying commonplace things Susan had been conscious of the excitement of
intimacy, which seemed not only to lay bare something in her, but in the trees and the sky, and the progress of
his speech which seemed inevitable was positively painful to her, for no human being had ever come so close
to her before.
She was struck motionless as his speech went on, and her heart gave great separate leaps at the last words. She
sat with her fingers curled round a stone, looking straight in front of her down the mountain over the plain. So
then, it had actually happened to her, a proposal of marriage.
Arthur looked round at her; his face was oddly twisted. She was drawing her breath with such difficulty that
she could hardly answer.
"You might have known." He seized her in his arms; again and again and again they clasped each other,
murmuring inarticulately.
"Well," sighed Arthur, sinking back on the ground, "that's the most wonderful thing that's ever happened to
me." He looked as if he were trying to put things seen in a dream beside real things.
There was a long silence.
"It's the most perfect thing in the world," Susan stated, very gently and with great conviction. It was no longer
merely a proposal of marriage, but of marriage with Arthur, with whom she was in love.
In the silence that followed, holding his hand tightly in hers, she prayed to God that she might make him a
good wife.
"And what will Mr. Perrott say?" she asked at the end of it.
"Dear old fellow," said Arthur who, now that the first shock was over, was relaxing into an enormous sense of
pleasure and contentment. "We must be very nice to him, Susan."
Chapter XI 79
He told her how hard Perrott's life had been, and how absurdly devoted he was to Arthur himself. He went on
to tell her about his mother, a widow lady, of strong character. In return Susan sketched the portraits of her
own family−−Edith in particular, her youngest sister, whom she loved better than any one else, "except you,
Arthur. . . . Arthur," she continued, "what was it that you first liked me for?"
"It was a buckle you wore one night at sea," said Arthur, after due consideration. "I remember noticing−−it's
an absurd thing to notice!−−that you didn't take peas, because I don't either."
From this they went on to compare their more serious tastes, or rather Susan ascertained what Arthur cared
about, and professed herself very fond of the same thing. They would live in London, perhaps have a cottage
in the country near Susan's family, for they would find it strange without her at first. Her mind, stunned to
begin with, now flew to the various changes that her engagement would make−−how delightful it would be to
join the ranks of the married women−−no longer to hang on to groups of girls much younger than herself−−to
escape the long solitude of an old maid's life. Now and then her amazing good fortune overcame her, and she
turned to Arthur with an exclamation of love.
They lay in each other's arms and had no notion that they were observed. Yet two figures suddenly appeared
among the trees above them. "Here's shade," began Hewet, when Rachel suddenly stopped dead. They saw a
man and woman lying on the ground beneath them, rolling slightly this way and that as the embrace tightened
and slackened. The man then sat upright and the woman, who now appeared to be Susan Warrington, lay back
upon the ground, with her eyes shut and an absorbed look upon her face, as though she were not altogether
conscious. Nor could you tell from her expression whether she was happy, or had suffered something. When
Arthur again turned to her, butting her as a lamb butts a ewe, Hewet and Rachel retreated without a word.
Hewet felt uncomfortably shy.
"I don't like that," said Rachel after a moment.
"I can remember not liking it either," said Hewet. "I can remember−−" but he changed his mind and continued
in an ordinary tone of voice, "Well, we may take it for granted that they're engaged. D'you think he'll ever fly,
or will she put a stop to that?"
But Rachel was still agitated; she could not get away from the sight they had just seen. Instead of answering
Hewet she persisted.
"Love's an odd thing, isn't it, making one's heart beat."
"It's so enormously important, you see," Hewet replied. "Their lives are now changed for ever."
"And it makes one sorry for them too," Rachel continued, as though she were tracing the course of her
feelings. "I don't know either of them, but I could almost burst into tears. That's silly, isn't it?"
"Just because they're in love," said Hewet. "Yes," he added after a moment's consideration, "there's something
horribly pathetic about it, I agree."
And now, as they had walked some way from the grove of trees, and had come to a rounded hollow very
tempting to the back, they proceeded to sit down, and the impression of the lovers lost some of its force,
though a certain intensity of vision, which was probably the result of the sight, remained with them. As a day
upon which any emotion has been repressed is different from other days, so this day was now different,
merely because they had seen other people at a crisis of their lives.
"A great encampment of tents they might be," said Hewet, looking in front of him at the mountains. "Isn't it
like a water−colour too−−you know the way water−colours dry in ridges all across the paper−−I've been
Chapter XI 80
wondering what they looked like."
His eyes became dreamy, as though he were matching things, and reminded Rachel in their colour of the
green flesh of a snail. She sat beside him looking at the mountains too. When it became painful to look any
longer, the great size of the view seeming to enlarge her eyes beyond their natural limit, she looked at the
ground; it pleased her to scrutinise this inch of the soil of South America so minutely that she noticed every
grain of earth and made it into a world where she was endowed with the supreme power. She bent a blade of
grass, and set an insect on the utmost tassel of it, and wondered if the insect realised his strange adventure,
and thought how strange it was that she should have bent that tassel rather than any other of the million
tassels.
"You've never told me you name," said Hewet suddenly. "Miss Somebody Vinrace. . . . I like to know
people's Christian names."
"Rachel," she replied.
"Rachel," he repeated. "I have an aunt called Rachel, who put the life of Father Damien into verse. She is a
religious fanatic−−the result of the way she was brought up, down in Northamptonshire, never seeing a soul.
Have you any aunts?"
"I live with them," said Rachel.
"And I wonder what they're doing now?" Hewet enquired.
"They are probably buying wool," Rachel determined. She tried to describe them. "They are small, rather pale
women," she began, "very clean. We live in Richmond. They have an old dog, too, who will only eat the
marrow out of bones. . . . They are always going to church. They tidy their drawers a good deal." But here she
was overcome by the difficulty of describing people.
"It's impossible to believe that it's all going on still!" she exclaimed.
The sun was behind them and two long shadows suddenly lay upon the ground in front of them, one waving
because it was made by a skirt, and the other stationary, because thrown by a pair of legs in trousers.
"You look very comfortable!" said Helen's voice above them.
"Hirst," said Hewet, pointing at the scissorlike shadow; he then rolled round to look up at them.
"There's room for us all here," he said.
When Hirst had seated himself comfortably, he said:
"Did you congratulate the young couple?"
It appeared that, coming to the same spot a few minutes after Hewet and Rachel, Helen and Hirst had seen
precisely the same thing.
"No, we didn't congratulate them," said Hewet. "They seemed very happy."
"Well," said Hirst, pursing up his lips, "so long as I needn't marry either of them−−"
"We were very much moved," said Hewet.
Chapter XI 81
"I thought you would be," said Hirst. "Which was it, Monk? The thought of the immortal passions, or the
thought of new−born males to keep the Roman Catholics out? I assure you," he said to Helen, "he's capable of
being moved by either."
Rachel was a good deal stung by his banter, which she felt to be directed equally against them both, but she
could think of no repartee.
"Nothing moves Hirst," Hewet laughed; he did not seem to be stung at all. "Unless it were a transfinite
number falling in love with a finite one−−I suppose such things do happen, even in mathematics."
"On the contrary," said Hirst with a touch of annoyance, "I consider myself a person of very strong passions."
It was clear from the way he spoke that he meant it seriously; he spoke of course for the benefit of the ladies.
"By the way, Hirst," said Hewet, after a pause, "I have a terrible confession to make. Your book−−the poems
of Wordsworth, which if you remember I took off your table just as we were starting, and certainly put in my
pocket here−−"
"Is lost," Hirst finished for him.
"I consider that there is still a chance," Hewet urged, slapping himself to right and left, "that I never did take it
after all."
"No," said Hirst. "It is here." He pointed to his breast.
"Thank God," Hewet exclaimed. "I need no longer feel as though I'd murdered a child!"
"I should think you were always losing things," Helen remarked, looking at him meditatively.
"I don't lose things," said Hewet. "I mislay them. That was the reason why Hirst refused to share a cabin with
me on the voyage out."
"You came out together?" Helen enquired.
"I propose that each member of this party now gives a short biographical sketch of himself or herself," said
Hirst, sitting upright. "Miss Vinrace, you come first; begin."
Rachel stated that she was twenty−four years of age, the daughter of a ship−owner, that she had never been
properly educated; played the piano, had no brothers or sisters, and lived at Richmond with aunts, her mother
being dead.
"Next," said Hirst, having taken in these facts; he pointed at Hewet. "I am the son of an English gentleman. I
am twenty−seven," Hewet began. "My father was a fox−hunting squire. He died when I was ten in the hunting
field. I can remember his body coming home, on a shutter I suppose, just as I was going down to tea, and
noticing that there was jam for tea, and wondering whether I should be allowed−−"
"Yes; but keep to the facts," Hirst put in.
"I was educated at Winchester and Cambridge, which I had to leave after a time. I have done a good many
things since−−"
"Profession?"
Chapter XI 82
"None−−at least−−"
"Tastes?"
"Literary. I'm writing a novel."
"Brothers and sisters?"
"Three sisters, no brother, and a mother."
"Is that all we're to hear about you?" said Helen. She stated that she was very old−−forty last October, and her
father had been a solicitor in the city who had gone bankrupt, for which reason she had never had much
education−−they lived in one place after another−−but an elder brother used to lend her books.
"If I were to tell you everything−−" she stopped and smiled. "It would take too long," she concluded. "I
married when I was thirty, and I have two children. My husband is a scholar. And now−−it's your turn," she
nodded at Hirst.
"You've left out a great deal," he reproved her. "My name is St. John Alaric Hirst," he began in a jaunty tone
of voice. "I'm twenty−four years old. I'm the son of the Reverend Sidney Hirst, vicar of Great Wappyng in
Norfolk. Oh, I got scholarships everywhere−−Westminster−−King's. I'm now a fellow of King's. Don't it
sound dreary? Parents both alive (alas). Two brothers and one sister. I'm a very distinguished young man," he
added.
"One of the three, or is it five, most distinguished men in England," Hewet remarked.
"Quite correct," said Hirst.
"That's all very interesting," said Helen after a pause. "But of course we've left out the only questions that
matter. For instance, are we Christians?"
"I am not," "I am not," both the young men replied.
"I am," Rachel stated.
"You believe in a personal God?" Hirst demanded, turning round and fixing her with his eyeglasses.
"I believe−−I believe," Rachel stammered, "I believe there are things we don't know about, and the world
might change in a minute and anything appear."
At this Helen laughed outright. "Nonsense," she said. "You're not a Christian. You've never thought what you
are.−−And there are lots of other questions," she continued, "though perhaps we can't ask them yet." Although
they had talked so freely they were all uncomfortably conscious that they really knew nothing about each
other.
"The important questions," Hewet pondered, "the really interesting ones. I doubt that one ever does ask them."
Rachel, who was slow to accept the fact that only a very few things can be said even by people who know
each other well, insisted on knowing what he meant.
"Whether we've ever been in love?" she enquired. "Is that the kind of question you mean?"
Chapter XI 83
Again Helen laughed at her, benignantly strewing her with handfuls of the long tasselled grass, for she was so
brave and so foolish.
"Oh, Rachel," she cried. "It's like having a puppy in the house having you with one−−a puppy that brings one's
underclothes down into the hall."
But again the sunny earth in front of them was crossed by fantastic wavering figures, the shadows of men and
women.
"There they are!" exclaimed Mrs. Elliot. There was a touch of peevishness in her voice. "And we've had such
a hunt to find you. Do you know what the time is?"
Mrs. Elliot and Mr. and Mrs. Thornbury now confronted them; Mrs. Elliot was holding out her watch, and
playfully tapping it upon the face. Hewet was recalled to the fact that this was a party for which he was
responsible, and he immediately led them back to the watch−tower, where they were to have tea before
starting home again. A bright crimson scarf fluttered from the top of the wall, which Mr. Perrott and Evelyn
were tying to a stone as the others came up. The heat had changed just so far that instead of sitting in the
shadow they sat in the sun, which was still hot enough to paint their faces red and yellow, and to colour great
sections of the earth beneath them.
"There's nothing half so nice as tea!" said Mrs. Thornbury, taking her cup.
"Nothing," said Helen. "Can't you remember as a child chopping up hay−−" she spoke much more quickly
than usual, and kept her eye fixed upon Mrs. Thornbury, "and pretending it was tea, and getting scolded by the
nurses−−why I can't imagine, except that nurses are such brutes, won't allow pepper instead of salt though
there's no earthly harm in it. Weren't your nurses just the same?"
During this speech Susan came into the group, and sat down by Helen's side. A few minutes later Mr.
Venning strolled up from the opposite direction. He was a little flushed, and in the mood to answer hilariously
whatever was said to him.
"What have you been doing to that old chap's grave?" he asked, pointing to the red flag which floated from the
top of the stones.
"We have tried to make him forget his misfortune in having died three hundred years ago," said Mr. Perrott.
"It would be awful−−to be dead!" ejaculated Evelyn M.
"To be dead?" said Hewet. "I don't think it would be awful. It's quite easy to imagine. When you go to bed
to−night fold your hands so−−breathe slower and slower−−" He lay back with his hands clasped upon his
breast, and his eyes shut, "Now," he murmured in an even monotonous voice, "I shall never, never, never
move again." His body, lying flat among them, did for a moment suggest death.
"This is a horrible exhibition, Mr. Hewet!" cried Mrs. Thornbury.
"More cake for us!" said Arthur.
"I assure you there's nothing horrible about it," said Hewet, sitting up and laying hands upon the cake.
"It's so natural," he repeated. "People with children should make them do that exercise every night. . . . Not
that I look forward to being dead."
Chapter XI 84
"And when you allude to a grave," said Mr. Thornbury, who spoke almost for the first time, "have you any
authority for calling that ruin a grave? I am quite with you in refusing to accept the common interpretation
which declares it to be the remains of an Elizabethan watch−tower−−any more than I believe that the circular
mounds or barrows which we find on the top of our English downs were camps. The antiquaries call
everything a camp. I am always asking them, Well then, where do you think our ancestors kept their cattle?
Half the camps in England are merely the ancient pound or barton as we call it in my part of the world. The
argument that no one would keep his cattle in such exposed and inaccessible spots has no weight at all, if you
reflect that in those days a man's cattle were his capital, his stock−in−trade, his daughter's dowries. Without
cattle he was a serf, another man's man. . . ." His eyes slowly lost their intensity, and he muttered a few
concluding words under his breath, looking curiously old and forlorn.
Hughling Elliot, who might have been expected to engage the old gentleman in argument, was absent at the
moment. He now came up holding out a large square of cotton upon which a fine design was printed in
pleasant bright colours that made his hand look pale.
"A bargain," he announced, laying it down on the cloth. "I've just bought it from the big man with the
ear−rings. Fine, isn't it? It wouldn't suit every one, of course, but it's just the thing−−isn't it, Hilda?−−for Mrs.
Raymond Parry."
"Mrs. Raymond Parry!" cried Helen and Mrs. Thornbury at the same moment.
They looked at each other as though a mist hitherto obscuring their faces had been blown away.
"Ah−−you have been to those wonderful parties too?" Mrs. Elliot asked with interest.
Mrs. Parry's drawing−room, though thousands of miles away, behind a vast curve of water on a tiny piece of
earth, came before their eyes. They who had had no solidity or anchorage before seemed to be attached to it
somehow, and at once grown more substantial. Perhaps they had been in the drawing−room at the same
moment; perhaps they had passed each other on the stairs; at any rate they knew some of the same people.
They looked one another up and down with new interest. But they could do no more than look at each other,
for there was no time to enjoy the fruits of the discovery. The donkeys were advancing, and it was advisable
to begin the descent immediately, for the night fell so quickly that it would be dark before they were home
again.
Accordingly, remounting in order, they filed off down the hillside. Scraps of talk came floating back from one
to another. There were jokes to begin with, and laughter; some walked part of the way, and picked flowers,
and sent stones bounding before them.
"Who writes the best Latin verse in your college, Hirst?" Mr. Elliot called back incongruously, and Mr. Hirst
returned that he had no idea.
The dusk fell as suddenly as the natives had warned them, the hollows of the mountain on either side filling
up with darkness and the path becoming so dim that it was surprising to hear the donkeys' hooves still striking
on hard rock. Silence fell upon one, and then upon another, until they were all silent, their minds spilling out
into the deep blue air. The way seemed shorter in the dark than in the day; and soon the lights of the town
were seen on the flat far beneath them.
Suddenly some one cried, "Ah!"
In a moment the slow yellow drop rose again from the plain below; it rose, paused, opened like a flower, and
fell in a shower of drops.
Chapter XI 85
"Fireworks," they cried.
Another went up more quickly; and then another; they could almost hear it twist and roar.
"Some Saint's day, I suppose," said a voice. The rush and embrace of the rockets as they soared up into the air
seemed like the fiery way in which lovers suddenly rose and united, leaving the crowd gazing up at them with
strained white faces. But Susan and Arthur, riding down the hill, never said a word to each other, and kept
accurately apart.
Then the fireworks became erratic, and soon they ceased altogether, and the rest of the journey was made
almost in darkness, the mountain being a great shadow behind them, and bushes and trees little shadows
which threw darkness across the road. Among the plane−trees they separated, bundling into carriages and
driving off, without saying good−night, or saying it only in a half−muffled way.
It was so late that there was no time for normal conversation between their arrival at the hotel and their
retirement to bed. But Hirst wandered into Hewet's room with a collar in his hand.
"Well, Hewet," he remarked, on the crest of a gigantic yawn, "that was a great success, I consider." He
yawned. "But take care you're not landed with that young woman. . . . I don't really like young women. . . ."
Hewet was too much drugged by hours in the open air to make any reply. In fact every one of the party was
sound asleep within ten minutes or so of each other, with the exception of Susan Warrington. She lay for a
considerable time looking blankly at the wall opposite, her hands clasped above her heart, and her light
burning by her side. All articulate thought had long ago deserted her; her heart seemed to have grown to the
size of a sun, and to illuminate her entire body, shedding like the sun a steady tide of warmth.
"I'm happy, I'm happy, I'm happy," she repeated. "I love every one. I'm happy."

Chapter XII


When Susan's engagement had been approved at home, and made public to any one who took an interest in it
at the hotel−−and by this time the society at the hotel was divided so as to point to invisible chalk−marks such
as Mr. Hirst had described, the news was felt to justify some celebration−−an expedition? That had been done
already. A dance then. The advantage of a dance was that it abolished one of those long evenings which were
apt to become tedious and lead to absurdly early hours in spite of bridge.
Two or three people standing under the erect body of the stuffed leopard in the hall very soon had the matter
decided. Evelyn slid a pace or two this way and that, and pronounced that the floor was excellent. Signor
Rodriguez informed them of an old Spaniard who fiddled at weddings−−fiddled so as to make a tortoise
waltz; and his daughter, although endowed with eyes as black as coal−scuttles, had the same power over the
piano. If there were any so sick or so surly as to prefer sedentary occupations on the night in question to
spinning and watching others spin, the drawing−room and billiard−room were theirs. Hewet made it his
business to conciliate the outsiders as much as possible. To Hirst's theory of the invisible chalk−marks he
would pay no attention whatever. He was treated to a snub or two, but, in reward, found obscure lonely
gentlemen delighted to have this opportunity of talking to their kind, and the lady of doubtful character
showed every symptom of confiding her case to him in the near future. Indeed it was made quite obvious to
him that the two or three hours between dinner and bed contained an amount of unhappiness, which was really
pitiable, so many people had not succeeded in making friends.
It was settled that the dance was to be on Friday, one week after the engagement, and at dinner Hewet
declared himself satisfied.
Chapter XII 86
"They're all coming!" he told Hirst. "Pepper!" he called, seeing William Pepper slip past in the wake of the
soup with a pamphlet beneath his arm, "We're counting on you to open the ball."
"You will certainly put sleep out of the question," Pepper returned.
"You are to take the floor with Miss Allan," Hewet continued, consulting a sheet of pencilled notes.
Pepper stopped and began a discourse upon round dances, country dances, morris dances, and quadrilles, all
of which are entirely superior to the bastard waltz and spurious polka which have ousted them most unjustly
in contemporary popularity−−when the waiters gently pushed him on to his table in the corner.
The dining−room at this moment had a certain fantastic resemblance to a farmyard scattered with grain on
which bright pigeons kept descending. Almost all the ladies wore dresses which they had not yet displayed,
and their hair rose in waves and scrolls so as to appear like carved wood in Gothic churches rather than hair.
The dinner was shorter and less formal than usual, even the waiters seeming to be affected with the general
excitement. Ten minutes before the clock struck nine the committee made a tour through the ballroom. The
hall, when emptied of its furniture, brilliantly lit, adorned with flowers whose scent tinged the air, presented a
wonderful appearance of ethereal gaiety.
"It's like a starlit sky on an absolutely cloudless night," Hewet murmured, looking about him, at the airy
empty room.
"A heavenly floor, anyhow," Evelyn added, taking a run and sliding two or three feet along.
"What about those curtains?" asked Hirst. The crimson curtains were drawn across the long windows. "It's a
perfect night outside."
"Yes, but curtains inspire confidence," Miss Allan decided. "When the ball is in full swing it will be time to
draw them. We might even open the windows a little. . . . If we do it now elderly people will imagine there are
draughts."
Her wisdom had come to be recognised, and held in respect. Meanwhile as they stood talking, the musicians
were unwrapping their instruments, and the violin was repeating again and again a note struck upon the piano.
Everything was ready to begin.
After a few minutes' pause, the father, the daughter, and the son−in−law who played the horn flourished with
one accord. Like the rats who followed the piper, heads instantly appeared in the doorway. There was another
flourish; and then the trio dashed spontaneously into the triumphant swing of the waltz. It was as though the
room were instantly flooded with water. After a moment's hesitation first one couple, then another, leapt into
mid−stream, and went round and round in the eddies. The rhythmic swish of the dancers sounded like a
swirling pool. By degrees the room grew perceptibly hotter. The smell of kid gloves mingled with the strong
scent of flowers. The eddies seemed to circle faster and faster, until the music wrought itself into a crash,
ceased, and the circles were smashed into little separate bits. The couples struck off in different directions,
leaving a thin row of elderly people stuck fast to the walls, and here and there a piece of trimming or a
handkerchief or a flower lay upon the floor. There was a pause, and then the music started again, the eddies
whirled, the couples circled round in them, until there was a crash, and the circles were broken up into
separate pieces.
When this had happened about five times, Hirst, who leant against a window−frame, like some singular
gargoyle, perceived that Helen Ambrose and Rachel stood in the doorway. The crowd was such that they
could not move, but he recognised them by a piece of Helen's shoulder and a glimpse of Rachel's head turning
round. He made his way to them; they greeted him with relief.
Chapter XII 87
"We are suffering the tortures of the damned," said Helen.
"This is my idea of hell," said Rachel.
Her eyes were bright and she looked bewildered.
Hewet and Miss Allan, who had been waltzing somewhat laboriously, paused and greeted the newcomers.
"This is nice," said Hewet. "But where is Mr. Ambrose?"
"Pindar," said Helen. "May a married woman who was forty in October dance? I can't stand still." She seemed
to fade into Hewet, and they both dissolved in the crowd.
"We must follow suit," said Hirst to Rachel, and he took her resolutely by the elbow. Rachel, without being
expert, danced well, because of a good ear for rhythm, but Hirst had no taste for music, and a few dancing
lessons at Cambridge had only put him into possession of the anatomy of a waltz, without imparting any of its
spirit. A single turn proved to them that their methods were incompatible; instead of fitting into each other
their bones seemed to jut out in angles making smooth turning an impossibility, and cutting, moreover, into
the circular progress of the other dancers.
"Shall we stop?" said Hirst. Rachel gathered from his expression that he was annoyed.
They staggered to seats in the corner, from which they had a view of the room. It was still surging, in waves
of blue and yellow, striped by the black evening−clothes of the gentlemen.
"An amazing spectacle," Hirst remarked. "Do you dance much in London?" They were both breathing fast,
and both a little excited, though each was determined not to show any excitement at all.
"Scarcely ever. Do you?"
"My people give a dance every Christmas."
"This isn't half a bad floor," Rachel said. Hirst did not attempt to answer her platitude. He sat quite silent,
staring at the dancers. After three minutes the silence became so intolerable to Rachel that she was goaded to
advance another commonplace about the beauty of the night. Hirst interrupted her ruthlessly.
"Was that all nonsense what you said the other day about being a Christian and having no education?" he
asked.
"It was practically true," she replied. "But I also play the piano very well," she said, "better, I expect than any
one in this room. You are the most distinguished man in England, aren't you?" she asked shyly.
"One of the three," he corrected.
Helen whirling past here tossed a fan into Rachel's lap.
"She is very beautiful," Hirst remarked.
They were again silent. Rachel was wondering whether he thought her also nice−looking; St. John was
considering the immense difficulty of talking to girls who had no experience of life. Rachel had obviously
never thought or felt or seen anything, and she might be intelligent or she might be just like all the rest. But
Hewet's taunt rankled in his mind−−"you don't know how to get on with women," and he was determined to
Chapter XII 88
profit by this opportunity. Her evening−clothes bestowed on her just that degree of unreality and distinction
which made it romantic to speak to her, and stirred a desire to talk, which irritated him because he did not
know how to begin. He glanced at her, and she seemed to him very remote and inexplicable, very young and
chaste. He drew a sigh, and began.
"About books now. What have you read? Just Shakespeare and the Bible?"
"I haven't read many classics," Rachel stated. She was slightly annoyed by his jaunty and rather unnatural
manner, while his masculine acquirements induced her to take a very modest view of her own power.
"D'you mean to tell me you've reached the age of twenty−four without reading Gibbon?" he demanded.
"Yes, I have," she answered.
"Mon Dieu!" he exclaimed, throwing out his hands. "You must begin to−morrow. I shall send you my copy.
What I want to know is−−" he looked at her critically. "You see, the problem is, can one really talk to you?
Have you got a mind, or are you like the rest of your sex? You seem to me absurdly young compared with
men of your age."
Rachel looked at him but said nothing.
"About Gibbon," he continued. "D'you think you'll be able to appreciate him? He's the test, of course. It's
awfully difficult to tell about women," he continued, "how much, I mean, is due to lack of training, and how
much is native incapacity. I don't see myself why you shouldn't understand−−only I suppose you've led an
absurd life until now−−you've just walked in a crocodile, I suppose, with your hair down your back."
The music was again beginning. Hirst's eye wandered about the room in search of Mrs. Ambrose. With the
best will in the world he was conscious that they were not getting on well together.
"I'd like awfully to lend you books," he said, buttoning his gloves, and rising from his seat. "We shall meet
again. I'm going to leave you now."
He got up and left her.
Rachel looked round. She felt herself surrounded, like a child at a party, by the faces of strangers all hostile to
her, with hooked noses and sneering, indifferent eyes. She was by a window, she pushed it open with a jerk.
She stepped out into the garden. Her eyes swam with tears of rage.
"Damn that man!" she exclaimed, having acquired some of Helen's words. "Damn his insolence!"
She stood in the middle of the pale square of light which the window she had opened threw upon the grass.
The forms of great black trees rose massively in front of her. She stood still, looking at them, shivering
slightly with anger and excitement. She heard the trampling and swinging of the dancers behind her, and the
rhythmic sway of the waltz music.
"There are trees," she said aloud. Would the trees make up for St. John Hirst? She would be a Persian princess
far from civilisation, riding her horse upon the mountains alone, and making her women sing to her in the
evening, far from all this, from the strife and men and women−−a form came out of the shadow; a little red
light burnt high up in its blackness.
"Miss Vinrace, is it?" said Hewet, peering at her. "You were dancing with Hirst?"
Chapter XII 89
"He's made me furious!" she cried vehemently. "No one's any right to be insolent!"
"Insolent?" Hewet repeated, taking his cigar from his mouth in surprise. "Hirst−−insolent?"
"It's insolent to−−" said Rachel, and stopped. She did not know exactly why she had been made so angry.
With a great effort she pulled herself together.
"Oh, well," she added, the vision of Helen and her mockery before her, "I dare say I'm a fool." She made as
though she were going back into the ballroom, but Hewet stopped her.
"Please explain to me," he said. "I feel sure Hirst didn't mean to hurt you."
When Rachel tried to explain, she found it very difficult. She could not say that she found the vision of herself
walking in a crocodile with her hair down her back peculiarly unjust and horrible, nor could she explain why
Hirst's assumption of the superiority of his nature and experience had seemed to her not only galling but
terrible−−as if a gate had clanged in her face. Pacing up and down the terrace beside Hewet she said bitterly:
"It's no good; we should live separate; we cannot understand each other; we only bring out what's worst."
Hewet brushed aside her generalisation as to the natures of the two sexes, for such generalisations bored him
and seemed to him generally untrue. But, knowing Hirst, he guessed fairly accurately what had happened,
and, though secretly much amused, was determined that Rachel should not store the incident away in her mind
to take its place in the view she had of life.
"Now you'll hate him," he said, "which is wrong. Poor old Hirst−−he can't help his method. And really, Miss
Vinrace, he was doing his best; he was paying you a compliment−−he was trying−−he was trying−−" he could
not finish for the laughter that overcame him.
Rachel veered round suddenly and laughed out too. She saw that there was something ridiculous about Hirst,
and perhaps about herself.
"It's his way of making friends, I suppose," she laughed. "Well−−I shall do my part. I shall begin−−'Ugly in
body, repulsive in mind as you are, Mr. Hirst−−"
"Hear, hear!" cried Hewet. "That's the way to treat him. You see, Miss Vinrace, you must make allowances
for Hirst. He's lived all his life in front of a looking−glass, so to speak, in a beautiful panelled room, hung with
Japanese prints and lovely old chairs and tables, just one splash of colour, you know, in the right
place,−−between the windows I think it is,−−and there he sits hour after hour with his toes on the fender,
talking about philosophy and God and his liver and his heart and the hearts of his friends. They're all broken.
You can't expect him to be at his best in a ballroom. He wants a cosy, smoky, masculine place, where he can
stretch his legs out, and only speak when he's got something to say. For myself, I find it rather dreary. But I do
respect it. They're all so much in earnest. They do take the serious things very seriously."
The description of Hirst's way of life interested Rachel so much that she almost forgot her private grudge
against him, and her respect revived.
"They are really very clever then?" she asked.
"Of course they are. So far as brains go I think it's true what he said the other day; they're the cleverest people
in England. But−−you ought to take him in hand," he added. "There's a great deal more in him than's ever
been got at. He wants some one to laugh at him. . . . The idea of Hirst telling you that you've had no
experiences! Poor old Hirst!"
Chapter XII 90
They had been pacing up and down the terrace while they talked, and now one by one the dark windows were
uncurtained by an invisible hand, and panes of light fell regularly at equal intervals upon the grass. They
stopped to look in at the drawing−room, and perceived Mr. Pepper writing alone at a table.
"There's Pepper writing to his aunt," said Hewet. "She must be a very remarkable old lady, eighty−five he tells
me, and he takes her for walking tours in the New Forest. . . . Pepper!" he cried, rapping on the window. "Go
and do your duty. Miss Allan expects you."
When they came to the windows of the ballroom, the swing of the dancers and the lilt of the music was
irresistible.
"Shall we?" said Hewet, and they clasped hands and swept off magnificently into the great swirling pool.
Although this was only the second time they had met, the first time they had seen a man and woman kissing
each other, and the second time Mr. Hewet had found that a young woman angry is very like a child. So that
when they joined hands in the dance they felt more at their ease than is usual.
It was midnight and the dance was now at its height. Servants were peeping in at the windows; the garden was
sprinkled with the white shapes of couples sitting out. Mrs. Thornbury and Mrs. Elliot sat side by side under a
palm tree, holding fans, handkerchiefs, and brooches deposited in their laps by flushed maidens. Occasionally
they exchanged comments.
"Miss Warrington does look happy," said Mrs. Elliot; they both smiled; they both sighed.
"He has a great deal of character," said Mrs. Thornbury, alluding to Arthur.
"And character is what one wants," said Mrs. Elliot. "Now that young man is clever enough," she added,
nodding at Hirst, who came past with Miss Allan on his arm.
"He does not look strong," said Mrs. Thornbury. "His complexion is not good.−−Shall I tear it off?" she
asked, for Rachel had stopped, conscious of a long strip trailing behind her.
"I hope you are enjoying yourselves?" Hewet asked the ladies.
"This is a very familiar position for me!" smiled Mrs. Thornbury. "I have brought out five daughters−−and
they all loved dancing! You love it too, Miss Vinrace?" she asked, looking at Rachel with maternal eyes. "I
know I did when I was your age. How I used to beg my mother to let me stay−−and now I sympathise with
the poor mothers−−but I sympathise with the daughters too!"
She smiled sympathetically, and at the same time rather keenly, at Rachel.
"They seem to find a great deal to say to each other," said Mrs. Elliot, looking significantly at the backs of the
couple as they turned away. "Did you notice at the picnic? He was the only person who could make her utter."
"Her father is a very interesting man," said Mrs. Thornbury. "He has one of the largest shipping businesses in
Hull. He made a very able reply, you remember, to Mr. Asquith at the last election. It is so interesting to find
that a man of his experience is a strong Protectionist."
She would have liked to discuss politics, which interested her more than personalities, but Mrs. Elliot would
only talk about the Empire in a less abstract form.
"I hear there are dreadful accounts from England about the rats," she said. "A sister−in−law, who lives at
Norwich, tells me it has been quite unsafe to order poultry. The plague−−you see. It attacks the rats, and
Chapter XII 91
through them other creatures."
"And the local authorities are not taking proper steps?" asked Mrs. Thornbury.
"That she does not say. But she describes the attitude of the educated people−−who should know better−−as
callous in the extreme. Of course, my sister−in−law is one of those active modern women, who always takes
things up, you know−−the kind of woman one admires, though one does not feel, at least I do not feel−−but
then she has a constitution of iron."
Mrs. Elliot, brought back to the consideration of her own delicacy, here sighed.
"A very animated face," said Mrs. Thornbury, looking at Evelyn M. who had stopped near them to pin tight a
scarlet flower at her breast. It would not stay, and, with a spirited gesture of impatience, she thrust it into her
partner's button−hole. He was a tall melancholy youth, who received the gift as a knight might receive his
lady's token.
"Very trying to the eyes," was Mrs. Eliot's next remark, after watching the yellow whirl in which so few of the
whirlers had either name or character for her, for a few minutes. Bursting out of the crowd, Helen approached
them, and took a vacant chair.
"May I sit by you?" she said, smiling and breathing fast. "I suppose I ought to be ashamed of myself," she
went on, sitting down, "at my age."
Her beauty, now that she was flushed and animated, was more expansive than usual, and both the ladies felt
the same desire to touch her.
"I am enjoying myself," she panted. "Movement−−isn't it amazing?"
"I have always heard that nothing comes up to dancing if one is a good dancer," said Mrs. Thornbury, looking
at her with a smile.
Helen swayed slightly as if she sat on wires.
"I could dance for ever!" she said. "They ought to let themselves go more!" she exclaimed. "They ought to
leap and swing. Look! How they mince!"
"Have you seen those wonderful Russian dancers?" began Mrs. Elliot. But Helen saw her partner coming and
rose as the moon rises. She was half round the room before they took their eyes off her, for they could not
help admiring her, although they thought it a little odd that a woman of her age should enjoy dancing.
Directly Helen was left alone for a minute she was joined by St. John Hirst, who had been watching for an
opportunity.
"Should you mind sitting out with me?" he asked. "I'm quite incapable of dancing." He piloted Helen to a
corner which was supplied with two arm−chairs, and thus enjoyed the advantage of semi−privacy. They sat
down, and for a few minutes Helen was too much under the influence of dancing to speak.
"Astonishing!" she exclaimed at last. "What sort of shape can she think her body is?" This remark was called
forth by a lady who came past them, waddling rather than walking, and leaning on the arm of a stout man with
globular green eyes set in a fat white face. Some support was necessary, for she was very stout, and so
compressed that the upper part of her body hung considerably in advance of her feet, which could only trip in
tiny steps, owing to the tightness of the skirt round her ankles. The dress itself consisted of a small piece of
Chapter XII 92
shiny yellow satin, adorned here and there indiscriminately with round shields of blue and green beads made
to imitate hues of a peacock's breast. On the summit of a frothy castle of hair a purple plume stood erect,
while her short neck was encircled by a black velvet ribbon knobbed with gems, and golden bracelets were
tightly wedged into the flesh of her fat gloved arms. She had the face of an impertinent but jolly little pig,
mottled red under a dusting of powder.
St. John could not join in Helen's laughter.
"It makes me sick," he declared. "The whole thing makes me sick. . . . Consider the minds of those
people−−their feelings. Don't you agree?"
"I always make a vow never to go to another party of any description," Helen replied, "and I always break it."
She leant back in her chair and looked laughingly at the young man. She could see that he was genuinely
cross, if at the same time slightly excited.
"However," he said, resuming his jaunty tone, "I suppose one must just make up one's mind to it."
"To what?"
"There never will be more than five people in the world worth talking to."
Slowly the flush and sparkle in Helen's face died away, and she looked as quiet and as observant as usual.
"Five people?" she remarked. "I should say there were more than five."
"You've been very fortunate, then," said Hirst. "Or perhaps I've been very unfortunate." He became silent.
"Should you say I was a difficult kind of person to get on with?" he asked sharply.
"Most clever people are when they're young," Helen replied.
"And of course I am−−immensely clever," said Hirst. "I'm infinitely cleverer than Hewet. It's quite possible,"
he continued in his curiously impersonal manner, "that I'm going to be one of the people who really matter.
That's utterly different from being clever, though one can't expect one's family to see it," he added bitterly.
Helen thought herself justified in asking, "Do you find your family difficult to get on with?"
"Intolerable. . . . They want me to be a peer and a privy councillor. I've come out here partly in order to settle
the matter. It's got to be settled. Either I must go to the bar, or I must stay on in Cambridge. Of course, there
are obvious drawbacks to each, but the arguments certainly do seem to me in favour of Cambridge. This kind
of thing!" he waved his hand at the crowded ballroom. "Repulsive. I'm conscious of great powers of affection
too. I'm not susceptible, of course, in the way Hewet is. I'm very fond of a few people. I think, for example,
that there's something to be said for my mother, though she is in many ways so deplorable. . . . At Cambridge,
of course, I should inevitably become the most important man in the place, but there are other reasons why I
dread Cambridge−−" he ceased.
"Are you finding me a dreadful bore?" he asked. He changed curiously from a friend confiding in a friend to a
conventional young man at a party.
"Not in the least," said Helen. "I like it very much."
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"You can't think," he exclaimed, speaking almost with emotion, "what a difference it makes finding someone
to talk to! Directly I saw you I felt you might possibly understand me. I'm very fond of Hewet, but he hasn't
the remotest idea what I'm like. You're the only woman I've ever met who seems to have the faintest
conception of what I mean when I say a thing."
The next dance was beginning; it was the Barcarolle out of Hoffman, which made Helen beat her toe in time
to it; but she felt that after such a compliment it was impossible to get up and go, and, besides being amused,
she was really flattered, and the honesty of his conceit attracted her. She suspected that he was not happy, and
was sufficiently feminine to wish to receive confidences.
"I'm very old," she sighed.
"The odd thing is that I don't find you old at all," he replied. "I feel as though we were exactly the same age.
Moreover−−" here he hesitated, but took courage from a glance at her face, "I feel as if I could talk quite
plainly to you as one does to a man−−about the relations between the sexes, about . . . and . . ."
In spite of his certainty a slight redness came into his face as he spoke the last two words.
She reassured him at once by the laugh with which she exclaimed, "I should hope so!"
He looked at her with real cordiality, and the lines which were drawn about his nose and lips slackened for the
first time.
"Thank God!" he exclaimed. "Now we can behave like civilised human beings."
Certainly a barrier which usually stands fast had fallen, and it was possible to speak of matters which are
generally only alluded to between men and women when doctors are present, or the shadow of death. In five
minutes he was telling her the history of his life. It was long, for it was full of extremely elaborate incidents,
which led on to a discussion of the principles on which morality is founded, and thus to several very
interesting matters, which even in this ballroom had to be discussed in a whisper, lest one of the pouter pigeon
ladies or resplendent merchants should overhear them, and proceed to demand that they should leave the
place. When they had come to an end, or, to speak more accurately, when Helen intimated by a slight
slackening of her attention that they had sat there long enough, Hirst rose, exclaiming, "So there's no reason
whatever for all this mystery!"
"None, except that we are English people," she answered. She took his arm and they crossed the ball−room,
making their way with difficulty between the spinning couples, who were now perceptibly dishevelled, and
certainly to a critical eye by no means lovely in their shapes. The excitement of undertaking a friendship and
the length of their talk, made them hungry, and they went in search of food to the dining−room, which was
now full of people eating at little separate tables. In the doorway they met Rachel, going up to dance again
with Arthur Venning. She was flushed and looked very happy, and Helen was struck by the fact that in this
mood she was certainly more attractive than the generality of young women. She had never noticed it so
clearly before.
"Enjoying yourself?" she asked, as they stopped for a second.
"Miss Vinrace," Arthur answered for her, "has just made a confession; she'd no idea that dances could be so
delightful."
"Yes!" Rachel exclaimed. "I've changed my view of life completely!"
"You don't say so!" Helen mocked. They passed on.
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"That's typical of Rachel," she said. "She changes her view of life about every other day. D'you know, I
believe you're just the person I want," she said, as they sat down, "to help me complete her education? She's
been brought up practically in a nunnery. Her father's too absurd. I've been doing what I can−−but I'm too old,
and I'm a woman. Why shouldn't you talk to her−−explain things to her−−talk to her, I mean, as you talk to
me?"
"I have made one attempt already this evening," said St. John. "I rather doubt that it was successful. She
seems to me so very young and inexperienced. I have promised to lend her Gibbon."
"It's not Gibbon exactly," Helen pondered. "It's the facts of life, I think−−d'you see what I mean? What really
goes on, what people feel, although they generally try to hide it? There's nothing to be frightened of. It's so
much more beautiful than the pretences−−always more interesting−−always better, I should say, than that
kind of thing."
She nodded her head at a table near them, where two girls and two young men were chaffing each other very
loudly, and carrying on an arch insinuating dialogue, sprinkled with endearments, about, it seemed, a pair of
stockings or a pair of legs. One of the girls was flirting a fan and pretending to be shocked, and the sight was
very unpleasant, partly because it was obvious that the girls were secretly hostile to each other.
"In my old age, however," Helen sighed, "I'm coming to think that it doesn't much matter in the long run what
one does: people always go their own way−−nothing will ever influence them." She nodded her head at the
supper party.
But St. John did not agree. He said that he thought one could really make a great deal of difference by one's
point of view, books and so on, and added that few things at the present time mattered more than the
enlightenment of women. He sometimes thought that almost everything was due to education.
In the ballroom, meanwhile, the dancers were being formed into squares for the lancers. Arthur and Rachel,
Susan and Hewet, Miss Allan and Hughling Elliot found themselves together.
Miss Allan looked at her watch.
"Half−past one," she stated. "And I have to despatch Alexander Pope to−morrow."
"Pope!" snorted Mr. Elliot. "Who reads Pope, I should like to know? And as for reading about him−−No, no,
Miss Allan; be persuaded you will benefit the world much more by dancing than by writing." It was one of
Mr. Elliot's affectations that nothing in the world could compare with the delights of dancing−−nothing in the
world was so tedious as literature. Thus he sought pathetically enough to ingratiate himself with the young,
and to prove to them beyond a doubt that though married to a ninny of a wife, and rather pale and bent and
careworn by his weight of learning, he was as much alive as the youngest of them all.
"It's a question of bread and butter," said Miss Allan calmly. "However, they seem to expect me." She took up
her position and pointed a square black toe.
"Mr. Hewet, you bow to me." It was evident at once that Miss Allan was the only one of them who had a
thoroughly sound knowledge of the figures of the dance.
After the lancers there was a waltz; after the waltz a polka; and then a terrible thing happened; the music,
which had been sounding regularly with five−minute pauses, stopped suddenly. The lady with the great dark
eyes began to swathe her violin in silk, and the gentleman placed his horn carefully in its case. They were
surrounded by couples imploring them in English, in French, in Spanish, of one more dance, one only; it was
still early. But the old man at the piano merely exhibited his watch and shook his head. He turned up the collar
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of his coat and produced a red silk muffler, which completely dashed his festive appearance. Strange as it
seemed, the musicians were pale and heavy−eyed; they looked bored and prosaic, as if the summit of their
desire was cold meat and beer, succeeded immediately by bed.
Rachel was one of those who had begged them to continue. When they refused she began turning over the
sheets of dance music which lay upon the piano. The pieces were generally bound in coloured covers, with
pictures on them of romantic scenes−−gondoliers astride on the crescent of the moon, nuns peering through
the bars of a convent window, or young women with their hair down pointing a gun at the stars. She
remembered that the general effect of the music to which they had danced so gaily was one of passionate
regret for dead love and the innocent years of youth; dreadful sorrows had always separated the dancers from
their past happiness.
"No wonder they get sick of playing stuff like this," she remarked reading a bar or two; "they're really hymn
tunes, played very fast, with bits out of Wagner and Beethoven."
"Do you play? Would you play? Anything, so long as we can dance to it!" From all sides her gift for playing
the piano was insisted upon, and she had to consent. As very soon she had played the only pieces of dance
music she could remember, she went on to play an air from a sonata by Mozart.
"But that's not a dance," said some one pausing by the piano.
"It is," she replied, emphatically nodding her head. "Invent the steps." Sure of her melody she marked the
rhythm boldly so as to simplify the way. Helen caught the idea; seized Miss Allan by the arm, and whirled
round the room, now curtseying, now spinning round, now tripping this way and that like a child skipping
through a meadow.
"This is the dance for people who don't know how to dance!" she cried. The tune changed to a minuet; St.
John hopped with incredible swiftness first on his left leg, then on his right; the tune flowed melodiously;
Hewet, swaying his arms and holding out the tails of his coat, swam down the room in imitation of the
voluptuous dreamy dance of an Indian maiden dancing before her Rajah. The tune marched; and Miss Allen
advanced with skirts extended and bowed profoundly to the engaged pair. Once their feet fell in with the
rhythm they showed a complete lack of self−consciousness. From Mozart Rachel passed without stopping to
old English hunting songs, carols, and hymn tunes, for, as she had observed, any good tune, with a little
management, became a tune one could dance to. By degrees every person in the room was tripping and
turning in pairs or alone. Mr. Pepper executed an ingenious pointed step derived from figure−skating, for
which he once held some local championship; while Mrs. Thornbury tried to recall an old country dance
which she had seen danced by her father's tenants in Dorsetshire in the old days. As for Mr. and Mrs. Elliot,
they gallopaded round and round the room with such impetuosity that the other dancers shivered at their
approach. Some people were heard to criticise the performance as a romp; to others it was the most enjoyable
part of the evening.
"Now for the great round dance!" Hewet shouted. Instantly a gigantic circle was formed, the dancers holding
hands and shouting out, "D'you ken John Peel," as they swung faster and faster and faster, until the strain was
too great, and one link of the chain−−Mrs. Thornbury−−gave way, and the rest went flying across the room in
all directions, to land upon the floor or the chairs or in each other's arms as seemed most convenient.
Rising from these positions, breathless and unkempt, it struck them for the first time that the electric lights
pricked the air very vainly, and instinctively a great many eyes turned to the windows. Yes−−there was the
dawn. While they had been dancing the night had passed, and it had come. Outside, the mountains showed
very pure and remote; the dew was sparkling on the grass, and the sky was flushed with blue, save for the pale
yellows and pinks in the East. The dancers came crowding to the windows, pushed them open, and here and
there ventured a foot upon the grass.
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"How silly the poor old lights look!" said Evelyn M. in a curiously subdued tone of voice. "And ourselves; it
isn't becoming." It was true; the untidy hair, and the green and yellow gems, which had seemed so festive half
an hour ago, now looked cheap and slovenly. The complexions of the elder ladies suffered terribly, and, as if
conscious that a cold eye had been turned upon them, they began to say good−night and to make their way up
to bed.
Rachel, though robbed of her audience, had gone on playing to herself. From John Peel she passed to Bach,
who was at this time the subject of her intense enthusiasm, and one by one some of the younger dancers came
in from the garden and sat upon the deserted gilt chairs round the piano, the room being now so clear that they
turned out the lights. As they sat and listened, their nerves were quieted; the heat and soreness of their lips, the
result of incessant talking and laughing, was smoothed away. They sat very still as if they saw a building with
spaces and columns succeeding each other rising in the empty space. Then they began to see themselves and
their lives, and the whole of human life advancing very nobly under the direction of the music. They felt
themselves ennobled, and when Rachel stopped playing they desired nothing but sleep.
Susan rose. "I think this has been the happiest night of my life!" she exclaimed. "I do adore music," she said,
as she thanked Rachel. "It just seems to say all the things one can't say oneself." She gave a nervous little
laugh and looked from one to another with great benignity, as though she would like to say something but
could not find the words in which to express it. "Every one's been so kind−−so very kind," she said. Then she
too went to bed.
The party having ended in the very abrupt way in which parties do end, Helen and Rachel stood by the door
with their cloaks on, looking for a carriage.
"I suppose you realise that there are no carriages left?" said St. John, who had been out to look. "You must
sleep here."
"Oh, no," said Helen; "we shall walk."
"May we come too?" Hewet asked. "We can't go to bed. Imagine lying among bolsters and looking at one's
washstand on a morning like this−−Is that where you live?" They had begun to walk down the avenue, and he
turned and pointed at the white and green villa on the hillside, which seemed to have its eyes shut.
"That's not a light burning, is it?" Helen asked anxiously.
"It's the sun," said St. John. The upper windows had each a spot of gold on them.
"I was afraid it was my husband, still reading Greek," she said. "All this time he's been editing Pindar."
They passed through the town and turned up the steep road, which was perfectly clear, though still unbordered
by shadows. Partly because they were tired, and partly because the early light subdued them, they scarcely
spoke, but breathed in the delicious fresh air, which seemed to belong to a different state of life from the air at
midday. When they came to the high yellow wall, where the lane turned off from the road, Helen was for
dismissing the two young men.
"You've come far enough," she said. "Go back to bed."
But they seemed unwilling to move.
"Let's sit down a moment," said Hewet. He spread his coat on the ground. "Let's sit down and consider." They
sat down and looked out over the bay; it was very still, the sea was rippling faintly, and lines of green and blue
were beginning to stripe it. There were no sailing boats as yet, but a steamer was anchored in the bay, looking
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very ghostly in the mist; it gave one unearthly cry, and then all was silent.
Rachel occupied herself in collecting one grey stone after another and building them into a little cairn; she did
it very quietly and carefully.
"And so you've changed your view of life, Rachel?" said Helen.
Rachel added another stone and yawned. "I don't remember," she said, "I feel like a fish at the bottom of the
sea." She yawned again. None of these people possessed any power to frighten her out here in the dawn, and
she felt perfectly familiar even with Mr. Hirst.
"My brain, on the contrary," said Hirst, "is in a condition of abnormal activity." He sat in his favourite
position with his arms binding his legs together and his chin resting on the top of his knees. "I see through
everything−−absolutely everything. Life has no more mysteries for me." He spoke with conviction, but did
not appear to wish for an answer. Near though they sat, and familiar though they felt, they seemed mere
shadows to each other.
"And all those people down there going to sleep," Hewet began dreamily, "thinking such different
things,−−Miss Warrington, I suppose, is now on her knees; the Elliots are a little startled, it's not often they
get out of breath, and they want to get to sleep as quickly as possible; then there's the poor lean young man
who danced all night with Evelyn; he's putting his flower in water and asking himself, 'Is this love?'−−and
poor old Perrott, I daresay, can't get to sleep at all, and is reading his favourite Greek book to console
himself−−and the others−−no, Hirst," he wound up, "I don't find it simple at all."
"I have a key," said Hirst cryptically. His chin was still upon his knees and his eyes fixed in front of him.
A silence followed. Then Helen rose and bade them good−night. "But," she said, "remember that you've got to
come and see us."
They waved good−night and parted, but the two young men did not go back to the hotel; they went for a walk,
during which they scarcely spoke, and never mentioned the names of the two women, who were, to a
considerable extent, the subject of their thoughts. They did not wish to share their impressions. They returned
to the hotel in time for breakfast.