Chapter XXIII


But no brush was able to efface completely the expression of happiness, so that Mrs. Ambrose could not treat
them when they came downstairs as if they had spent the morning in a way that could be discussed naturally.
This being so, she joined in the world's conspiracy to consider them for the time incapacitated from the
business of life, struck by their intensity of feeling into enmity against life, and almost succeeded in
dismissing them from her thoughts.
She reflected that she had done all that it was necessary to do in practical matters. She had written a great
many letters, and had obtained Willoughby's consent. She had dwelt so often upon Mr. Hewet's prospects, his
profession, his birth, appearance, and temperament, that she had almost forgotten what he was really like.
When she refreshed herself by a look at him, she used to wonder again what he was like, and then, concluding
that they were happy at any rate, thought no more about it.
She might more profitably consider what would happen in three years' time, or what might have happened if
Rachel had been left to explore the world under her father's guidance. The result, she was honest enough to
own, might have been better−−who knows? She did not disguise from herself that Terence had faults. She was
inclined to think him too easy and tolerant, just as he was inclined to think her perhaps a trifle hard−−no, it
was rather that she was uncompromising. In some ways she found St. John preferable; but then, of course, he
would never have suited Rachel. Her friendship with St. John was established, for although she fluctuated
between irritation and interest in a way that did credit to the candour of her disposition, she liked his company
on the whole. He took her outside this little world of love and emotion. He had a grasp of facts. Supposing, for
instance, that England made a sudden move towards some unknown port on the coast of Morocco, St. John
knew what was at the back of it, and to hear him engaged with her husband in argument about finance and the
balance of power, gave her an odd sense of stability. She respected their arguments without always listening
to them, much as she respected a solid brick wall, or one of those immense municipal buildings which,
although they compose the greater part of our cities, have been built day after day and year after year by
unknown hands. She liked to sit and listen, and even felt a little elated when the engaged couple, after
showing their profound lack of interest, slipped from the room, and were seen pulling flowers to pieces in the
garden. It was not that she was jealous of them, but she did undoubtedly envy them their great unknown future
that lay before them. Slipping from one such thought to another, she was at the dining−room with fruit in her
hands. Sometimes she stopped to straighten a candle stooping with the heat, or disturbed some too rigid
arrangement of the chairs. She had reason to suspect that Chailey had been balancing herself on the top of a
ladder with a wet duster during their absence, and the room had never been quite like itself since. Returning
from the dining−room for the third time, she perceived that one of the arm−chairs was now occupied by St.
John. He lay back in it, with his eyes half shut, looking, as he always did, curiously buttoned up in a neat grey
suit and fenced against the exuberance of a foreign climate which might at any moment proceed to take
liberties with him. Her eyes rested on him gently and then passed on over his head. Finally she took the chair
opposite.
"I didn't want to come here," he said at last, "but I was positively driven to it. . . . Evelyn M.," he groaned.
Chapter XXIII 174
He sat up, and began to explain with mock solemnity how the detestable woman was set upon marrying him.
"She pursues me about the place. This morning she appeared in the smoking−room. All I could do was to
seize my hat and fly. I didn't want to come, but I couldn't stay and face another meal with her."
"Well, we must make the best of it," Helen replied philosophically. It was very hot, and they were indifferent
to any amount of silence, so that they lay back in their chairs waiting for something to happen. The bell rang
for luncheon, but there was no sound of movement in the house. Was there any news? Helen asked; anything
in the papers? St. John shook his head. O yes, he had a letter from home, a letter from his mother, describing
the suicide of the parlour−maid. She was called Susan Jane, and she came into the kitchen one afternoon, and
said that she wanted cook to keep her money for her; she had twenty pounds in gold. Then she went out to buy
herself a hat. She came in at half−past five and said that she had taken poison. They had only just time to get
her into bed and call a doctor before she died.
"Well?" Helen enquired.
"There'll have to be an inquest," said St. John.
Why had she done it? He shrugged his shoulders. Why do people kill themselves? Why do the lower orders do
any of the things they do do? Nobody knows. They sat in silence.
"The bell's run fifteen minutes and they're not down," said Helen at length.
When they appeared, St. John explained why it had been necessary for him to come to luncheon. He imitated
Evelyn's enthusiastic tone as she confronted him in the smoking−room. "She thinks there can be nothing quite
so thrilling as mathematics, so I've lent her a large work in two volumes. It'll be interesting to see what she
makes of it."
Rachel could now afford to laugh at him. She reminded him of Gibbon; she had the first volume somewhere
still; if he were undertaking the education of Evelyn, that surely was the test; or she had heard that Burke,
upon the American Rebellion−−Evelyn ought to read them both simultaneously. When St. John had disposed
of her argument and had satisfied his hunger, he proceeded to tell them that the hotel was seething with
scandals, some of the most appalling kind, which had happened in their absence; he was indeed much given to
the study of his kind.
"Evelyn M., for example−−but that was told me in confidence."
"Nonsense!" Terence interposed.
"You've heard about poor Sinclair, too?"
"Oh, yes, I've heard about Sinclair. He's retired to his mine with a revolver. He writes to Evelyn daily that he's
thinking of committing suicide. I've assured her that he's never been so happy in his life, and, on the whole,
she's inclined to agree with me."
"But then she's entangled herself with Perrott," St. John continued; "and I have reason to think, from
something I saw in the passage, that everything isn't as it should be between Arthur and Susan. There's a
young female lately arrived from Manchester. A very good thing if it were broken off, in my opinion. Their
married life is something too horrible to contemplate. Oh, and I distinctly heard old Mrs. Paley rapping out the
most fearful oaths as I passed her bedroom door. It's supposed that she tortures her maid in private−−it's
practically certain she does. One can tell it from the look in her eyes."
Chapter XXIII 175
"When you're eighty and the gout tweezes you, you'll be swearing like a trooper," Terence remarked. "You'll
be very fat, very testy, very disagreeable. Can't you imagine him−−bald as a coot, with a pair of sponge−bag
trousers, a little spotted tie, and a corporation?"
After a pause Hirst remarked that the worst infamy had still to be told. He addressed himself to Helen.
"They've hoofed out the prostitute. One night while we were away that old numskull Thornbury was
doddering about the passages very late. (Nobody seems to have asked him what he was up to.) He saw the
Signora Lola Mendoza, as she calls herself, cross the passage in her nightgown. He communicated his
suspicions next morning to Elliot, with the result that Rodriguez went to the woman and gave her twenty−four
hours in which to clear out of the place. No one seems to have enquired into the truth of the story, or to have
asked Thornbury and Elliot what business it was of theirs; they had it entirely their own way. I propose that
we should all sign a Round Robin, go to Rodriguez in a body, and insist upon a full enquiry. Something's got
to be done, don't you agree?"
Hewet remarked that there could be no doubt as to the lady's profession.
"Still," he added, "it's a great shame, poor woman; only I don't see what's to be done−−"
"I quite agree with you, St. John," Helen burst out. "It's monstrous. The hypocritical smugness of the English
makes my blood boil. A man who's made a fortune in trade as Mr. Thornbury has is bound to be twice as bad
as any prostitute."
She respected St. John's morality, which she took far more seriously than any one else did, and now entered
into a discussion with him as to the steps that were to be taken to enforce their peculiar view of what was
right. The argument led to some profoundly gloomy statements of a general nature. Who were they, after
all−−what authority had they−−what power against the mass of superstition and ignorance? It was the English,
of course; there must be something wrong in the English blood. Directly you met an English person, of the
middle classes, you were conscious of an indefinable sensation of loathing; directly you saw the brown
crescent of houses above Dover, the same thing came over you. But unfortunately St. John added, you
couldn't trust these foreigners−−
They were interrupted by sounds of strife at the further end of the table. Rachel appealed to her aunt.
"Terence says we must go to tea with Mrs. Thornbury because she's been so kind, but I don't see it; in fact, I'd
rather have my right hand sawn in pieces−−just imagine! the eyes of all those women!"
"Fiddlesticks, Rachel," Terence replied. "Who wants to look at you? You're consumed with vanity! You're a
monster of conceit! Surely, Helen, you ought to have taught her by this time that she's a person of no
conceivable importance whatever−−not beautiful, or well dressed, or conspicuous for elegance or intellect, or
deportment. A more ordinary sight than you are," he concluded, "except for the tear across your dress has
never been seen. However, stay at home if you want to. I'm going."
She appealed again to her aunt. It wasn't the being looked at, she explained, but the things people were sure to
say. The women in particular. She liked women, but where emotion was concerned they were as flies on a
lump of sugar. They would be certain to ask her questions. Evelyn M. would say: "Are you in love? Is it nice
being in love?" And Mrs. Thornbury−−her eyes would go up and down, up and down−−she shuddered at the
thought of it. Indeed, the retirement of their life since their engagement had made her so sensitive, that she
was not exaggerating her case.
She found an ally in Helen, who proceeded to expound her views of the human race, as she regarded with
complacency the pyramid of variegated fruits in the centre of the table. It wasn't that they were cruel, or meant
Chapter XXIII 176
to hurt, or even stupid exactly; but she had always found that the ordinary person had so little emotion in his
own life that the scent of it in the lives of others was like the scent of blood in the nostrils of a bloodhound.
Warming to the theme, she continued:
"Directly anything happens−−it may be a marriage, or a birth, or a death−−on the whole they prefer it to be a
death−−every one wants to see you. They insist upon seeing you. They've got nothing to say; they don't care a
rap for you; but you've got to go to lunch or to tea or to dinner, and if you don't you're damned. It's the smell
of blood," she continued; "I don't blame 'em; only they shan't have mind if I know it!"
She looked about her as if she had called up a legion of human beings, all hostile and all disagreeable, who
encircled the table, with mouths gaping for blood, and made it appear a little island of neutral country in the
midst of the enemy's country.
Her words roused her husband, who had been muttering rhythmically to himself, surveying his guests and his
food and his wife with eyes that were now melancholy and now fierce, according to the fortunes of the lady in
his ballad. He cut Helen short with a protest. He hated even the semblance of cynicism in women. "Nonsense,
nonsense," he remarked abruptly.
Terence and Rachel glanced at each other across the table, which meant that when they were married they
would not behave like that. The entrance of Ridley into the conversation had a strange effect. It became at
once more formal and more polite. It would have been impossible to talk quite easily of anything that came
into their heads, and to say the word prostitute as simply as any other word. The talk now turned upon
literature and politics, and Ridley told stories of the distinguished people he had known in his youth. Such talk
was of the nature of an art, and the personalities and informalities of the young were silenced. As they rose to
go, Helen stopped for a moment, leaning her elbows on the table.
"You've all been sitting here," she said, "for almost an hour, and you haven't noticed my figs, or my flowers,
or the way the light comes through, or anything. I haven't been listening, because I've been looking at you.
You looked very beautiful; I wish you'd go on sitting for ever."
She led the way to the drawing−room, where she took up her embroidery, and began again to dissuade
Terence from walking down to the hotel in this heat. But the more she dissuaded, the more he was determined
to go. He became irritated and obstinate. There were moments when they almost disliked each other. He
wanted other people; he wanted Rachel, to see them with him. He suspected that Mrs. Ambrose would now
try to dissuade her from going. He was annoyed by all this space and shade and beauty, and Hirst, recumbent,
drooping a magazine from his wrist.
"I'm going," he repeated. "Rachel needn't come unless she wants to."
"If you go, Hewet, I wish you'd make enquiries about the prostitute," said Hirst. "Look here," he added, "I'll
walk half the way with you."
Greatly to their surprise he raised himself, looked at his watch, and remarked that, as it was now half an hour
since luncheon, the gastric juices had had sufficient time to secrete; he was trying a system, he explained,
which involved short spells of exercise interspaced by longer intervals of rest.
"I shall be back at four," he remarked to Helen, "when I shall lie down on the sofa and relax all my muscles
completely."
"So you're going, Rachel?" Helen asked. "You won't stay with me?"
She smiled, but she might have been sad.
Chapter XXIII 177
Was she sad, or was she really laughing? Rachel could not tell, and she felt for the moment very
uncomfortable between Helen and Terence. Then she turned away, saying merely that she would go with
Terence, on condition that he did all the talking.
A narrow border of shadow ran along the road, which was broad enough for two, but not broad enough for
three. St. John therefore dropped a little behind the pair, and the distance between them increased by degrees.
Walking with a view to digestion, and with one eye upon his watch, he looked from time to time at the pair in
front of him. They seemed to be so happy, so intimate, although they were walking side by side much as other
people walk. They turned slightly toward each other now and then, and said something which he thought must
be something very private. They were really disputing about Helen's character, and Terence was trying to
explain why it was that she annoyed him so much sometimes. But St. John thought that they were saying
things which they did not want him to hear, and was led to think of his own isolation. These people were
happy, and in some ways he despised them for being made happy so simply, and in other ways he envied
them. He was much more remarkable than they were, but he was not happy. People never liked him; he
doubted sometimes whether even Helen liked him. To be simple, to be able to say simply what one felt,
without the terrific self−consciousness which possessed him, and showed him his own face and words
perpetually in a mirror, that would be worth almost any other gift, for it made one happy. Happiness,
happiness, what was happiness? He was never happy. He saw too clearly the little vices and deceits and flaws
of life, and, seeing them, it seemed to him honest to take notice of them. That was the reason, no doubt, why
people generally disliked him, and complained that he was heartless and bitter. Certainly they never told him
the things he wanted to be told, that he was nice and kind, and that they liked him. But it was true that half the
sharp things that he said about them were said because he was unhappy or hurt himself. But he admitted that
he had very seldom told any one that he cared for them, and when he had been demonstrative, he had
generally regretted it afterwards. His feelings about Terence and Rachel were so complicated that he had
never yet been able to bring himself to say that he was glad that they were going to be married. He saw their
faults so clearly, and the inferior nature of a great deal of their feeling for each other, and he expected that
their love would not last. He looked at them again, and, very strangely, for he was so used to thinking that he
seldom saw anything, the look of them filled him with a simple emotion of affection in which there were
some traces of pity also. What, after all, did people's faults matter in comparison with what was good in them?
He resolved that he would now tell them what he felt. He quickened his pace and came up with them just as
they reached the corner where the lane joined the main road. They stood still and began to laugh at him, and to
ask him whether the gastric juices−−but he stopped them and began to speak very quickly and stiffly.
"D'you remember the morning after the dance?" he demanded. "It was here we sat, and you talked nonsense,
and Rachel made little heaps of stones. I, on the other hand, had the whole meaning of life revealed to me in a
flash." He paused for a second, and drew his lips together in a tight little purse. "Love," he said. "It seems to
me to explain everything. So, on the whole, I'm very glad that you two are going to be married." He then
turned round abruptly, without looking at them, and walked back to the villa. He felt both exalted and
ashamed of himself for having thus said what he felt. Probably they were laughing at him, probably they
thought him a fool, and, after all, had he really said what he felt?
It was true that they laughed when he was gone; but the dispute about Helen which had become rather sharp,
ceased, and they became peaceful and friendly.

Chapter XXIV


They reached the hotel rather early in the afternoon, so that most people were still lying down, or sitting
speechless in their bedrooms, and Mrs. Thornbury, although she had asked them to tea, was nowhere to be
seen. They sat down, therefore, in the shady hall, which was almost empty, and full of the light swishing
sounds of air going to and fro in a large empty space. Yes, this arm−chair was the same arm−chair in which
Rachel had sat that afternoon when Evelyn came up, and this was the magazine she had been looking at, and
this the very picture, a picture of New York by lamplight. How odd it seemed−−nothing had changed.
Chapter XXIV 178
By degrees a certain number of people began to come down the stairs and to pass through the hall, and in this
dim light their figures possessed a sort of grace and beauty, although they were all unknown people.
Sometimes they went straight through and out into the garden by the swing door, sometimes they stopped for
a few minutes and bent over the tables and began turning over the newspapers. Terence and Rachel sat
watching them through their half−closed eyelids−−the Johnsons, the Parkers, the Baileys, the Simmons', the
Lees, the Morleys, the Campbells, the Gardiners. Some were dressed in white flannels and were carrying
racquets under their arms, some were short, some tall, some were only children, and some perhaps were
servants, but they all had their standing, their reason for following each other through the hall, their money,
their position, whatever it might be. Terence soon gave up looking at them, for he was tired; and, closing his
eyes, he fell half asleep in his chair. Rachel watched the people for some time longer; she was fascinated by
the certainty and the grace of their movements, and by the inevitable way in which they seemed to follow each
other, and loiter and pass on and disappear. But after a time her thoughts wandered, and she began to think of
the dance, which had been held in this room, only then the room itself looked quite different. Glancing round,
she could hardly believe that it was the same room. It had looked so bare and so bright and formal on that
night when they came into it out of the darkness; it had been filled, too, with little red, excited faces, always
moving, and people so brightly dressed and so animated that they did not seem in the least like real people,
nor did you feel that you could talk to them. And now the room was dim and quiet, and beautiful silent people
passed through it, to whom you could go and say anything you liked. She felt herself amazingly secure as she
sat in her arm−chair, and able to review not only the night of the dance, but the entire past, tenderly and
humorously, as if she had been turning in a fog for a long time, and could now see exactly where she had
turned. For the methods by which she had reached her present position, seemed to her very strange, and the
strangest thing about them was that she had not known where they were leading her. That was the strange
thing, that one did not know where one was going, or what one wanted, and followed blindly, suffering so
much in secret, always unprepared and amazed and knowing nothing; but one thing led to another and by
degrees something had formed itself out of nothing, and so one reached at last this calm, this quiet, this
certainty, and it was this process that people called living. Perhaps, then, every one really knew as she knew
now where they were going; and things formed themselves into a pattern not only for her, but for them, and in
that pattern lay satisfaction and meaning. When she looked back she could see that a meaning of some kind
was apparent in the lives of her aunts, and in the brief visit of the Dalloways whom she would never see again,
and in the life of her father.
The sound of Terence, breathing deep in his slumber, confirmed her in her calm. She was not sleepy although
she did not see anything very distinctly, but although the figures passing through the hall became vaguer and
vaguer, she believed that they all knew exactly where they were going, and the sense of their certainty filled
her with comfort. For the moment she was as detached and disinterested as if she had no longer any lot in life,
and she thought that she could now accept anything that came to her without being perplexed by the form in
which it appeared. What was there to frighten or to perplex in the prospect of life? Why should this insight
ever again desert her? The world was in truth so large, so hospitable, and after all it was so simple. "Love," St.
John had said, "that seems to explain it all." Yes, but it was not the love of man for woman, of Terence for
Rachel. Although they sat so close together, they had ceased to be little separate bodies; they had ceased to
struggle and desire one another. There seemed to be peace between them. It might be love, but it was not the
love of man for woman.
Through her half−closed eyelids she watched Terence lying back in his chair, and she smiled as she saw how
big his mouth was, and his chin so small, and his nose curved like a switchback with a knob at the end.
Naturally, looking like that he was lazy, and ambitious, and full of moods and faults. She remembered their
quarrels, and in particular how they had been quarreling about Helen that very afternoon, and she thought how
often they would quarrel in the thirty, or forty, or fifty years in which they would be living in the same house
together, catching trains together, and getting annoyed because they were so different. But all this was
superficial, and had nothing to do with the life that went on beneath the eyes and the mouth and the chin, for
that life was independent of her, and independent of everything else. So too, although she was going to marry
him and to live with him for thirty, or forty, or fifty years, and to quarrel, and to be so close to him, she was
Chapter XXIV 179
independent of him; she was independent of everything else. Nevertheless, as St. John said, it was love that
made her understand this, for she had never felt this independence, this calm, and this certainty until she fell in
love with him, and perhaps this too was love. She wanted nothing else.
For perhaps two minutes Miss Allan had been standing at a little distance looking at the couple lying back so
peacefully in their arm−chairs. She could not make up her mind whether to disturb them or not, and then,
seeming to recollect something, she came across the hall. The sound of her approach woke Terence, who sat
up and rubbed his eyes. He heard Miss Allan talking to Rachel.
"Well," she was saying, "this is very nice. It is very nice indeed. Getting engaged seems to be quite the
fashion. It cannot often happen that two couples who have never seen each other before meet in the same hotel
and decide to get married." Then she paused and smiled, and seemed to have nothing more to say, so that
Terence rose and asked her whether it was true that she had finished her book. Some one had said that she had
really finished it. Her face lit up; she turned to him with a livelier expression than usual.
"Yes, I think I can fairly say I have finished it," she said. "That is, omitting Swinburne−−Beowulf to
Browning−−I rather like the two B's myself. Beowulf to Browning," she repeated, "I think that is the kind of
title which might catch one's eye on a railway book−stall."
She was indeed very proud that she had finished her book, for no one knew what an amount of determination
had gone to the making of it. Also she thought that it was a good piece of work, and, considering what anxiety
she had been in about her brother while she wrote it, she could not resist telling them a little more about it.
"I must confess," she continued, "that if I had known how many classics there are in English literature, and
how verbose the best of them contrive to be, I should never have undertaken the work. They only allow one
seventy thousand words, you see."
"Only seventy thousand words!" Terence exclaimed.
"Yes, and one has to say something about everybody," Miss Allan added. "That is what I find so difficult,
saying something different about everybody." Then she thought that she had said enough about herself, and
she asked whether they had come down to join the tennis tournament. "The young people are very keen about
it. It begins again in half an hour."
Her gaze rested benevolently upon them both, and, after a momentary pause, she remarked, looking at Rachel
as if she had remembered something that would serve to keep her distinct from other people.
"You're the remarkable person who doesn't like ginger." But the kindness of the smile in her rather worn and
courageous face made them feel that although she would scarcely remember them as individuals, she had laid
upon them the burden of the new generation.
"And in that I quite agree with her," said a voice behind; Mrs. Thornbury had overheard the last few words
about not liking ginger. "It's associated in my mind with a horrid old aunt of ours (poor thing, she suffered
dreadfully, so it isn't fair to call her horrid) who used to give it to us when we were small, and we never had
the courage to tell her we didn't like it. We just had to put it out in the shrubbery−−she had a big house near
Bath."
They began moving slowly across the hall, when they were stopped by the impact of Evelyn, who dashed into
them, as though in running downstairs to catch them her legs had got beyond her control.
"Well," she exclaimed, with her usual enthusiasm, seizing Rachel by the arm, "I call this splendid! I guessed it
was going to happen from the very beginning! I saw you two were made for each other. Now you've just got
Chapter XXIV 180
to tell me all about it−−when's it to be, where are you going to live−−are you both tremendously happy?"
But the attention of the group was diverted to Mrs. Elliot, who was passing them with her eager but uncertain
movement, carrying in her hands a plate and an empty hot−water bottle. She would have passed them, but
Mrs. Thornbury went up and stopped her.
"Thank you, Hughling's better," she replied, in answer to Mrs. Thornbury's enquiry, "but he's not an easy
patient. He wants to know what his temperature is, and if I tell him he gets anxious, and if I don't tell him he
suspects. You know what men are when they're ill! And of course there are none of the proper appliances,
and, though he seems very willing and anxious to help" (here she lowered her voice mysteriously), "one can't
feel that Dr. Rodriguez is the same as a proper doctor. If you would come and see him, Mr. Hewet," she
added, "I know it would cheer him up−−lying there in bed all day−−and the flies−−But I must go and find
Angelo−−the food here−−of course, with an invalid, one wants things particularly nice." And she hurried past
them in search of the head waiter. The worry of nursing her husband had fixed a plaintive frown upon her
forehead; she was pale and looked unhappy and more than usually inefficient, and her eyes wandered more
vaguely than ever from point to point.
"Poor thing!" Mrs. Thornbury exclaimed. She told them that for some days Hughling Elliot had been ill, and
the only doctor available was the brother of the proprietor, or so the proprietor said, whose right to the title of
doctor was not above suspicion.
"I know how wretched it is to be ill in a hotel," Mrs. Thornbury remarked, once more leading the way with
Rachel to the garden. "I spent six weeks on my honeymoon in having typhoid at Venice," she continued. "But
even so, I look back upon them as some of the happiest weeks in my life. Ah, yes," she said, taking Rachel's
arm, "you think yourself happy now, but it's nothing to the happiness that comes afterwards. And I assure you
I could find it in my heart to envy you young people! You've a much better time than we had, I may tell you.
When I look back upon it, I can hardly believe how things have changed. When we were engaged I wasn't
allowed to go for walks with William alone−−some one had always to be in the room with us−−I really
believe I had to show my parents all his letters!−−though they were very fond of him too. Indeed, I may say
they looked upon him as their own son. It amuses me," she continued, "to think how strict they were to us,
when I see how they spoil their grand−children!"
The table was laid under the tree again, and taking her place before the teacups, Mrs. Thornbury beckoned and
nodded until she had collected quite a number of people, Susan and Arthur and Mr. Pepper, who were
strolling about, waiting for the tournament to begin. A murmuring tree, a river brimming in the moonlight,
Terence's words came back to Rachel as she sat drinking the tea and listening to the words which flowed on
so lightly, so kindly, and with such silvery smoothness. This long life and all these children had left her very
smooth; they seemed to have rubbed away the marks of individuality, and to have left only what was old and
maternal.
"And the things you young people are going to see!" Mrs. Thornbury continued. She included them all in her
forecast, she included them all in her maternity, although the party comprised William Pepper and Miss Allan,
both of whom might have been supposed to have seen a fair share of the panorama. "When I see how the
world has changed in my lifetime," she went on, "I can set no limit to what may happen in the next fifty years.
Ah, no, Mr. Pepper, I don't agree with you in the least," she laughed, interrupting his gloomy remark about
things going steadily from bad to worse. "I know I ought to feel that, but I don't, I'm afraid. They're going to
be much better people than we were. Surely everything goes to prove that. All round me I see women, young
women, women with household cares of every sort, going out and doing things that we should not have
thought it possible to do."
Mr. Pepper thought her sentimental and irrational like all old women, but her manner of treating him as if he
were a cross old baby baffled him and charmed him, and he could only reply to her with a curious grimace
Chapter XXIV 181
which was more a smile than a frown.
"And they remain women," Mrs. Thornbury added. "They give a great deal to their children."
As she said this she smiled slightly in the direction of Susan and Rachel. They did not like to be included in
the same lot, but they both smiled a little self−consciously, and Arthur and Terence glanced at each other too.
She made them feel that they were all in the same boat together, and they looked at the women they were
going to marry and compared them. It was inexplicable how any one could wish to marry Rachel, incredible
that any one should be ready to spend his life with Susan; but singular though the other's taste must be, they
bore each other no ill−will on account of it; indeed, they liked each other rather the better for the eccentricity
of their choice.
"I really must congratulate you," Susan remarked, as she leant across the table for the jam.
There seemed to be no foundation for St. John's gossip about Arthur and Susan. Sunburnt and vigorous they
sat side by side, with their racquets across their knees, not saying much but smiling slightly all the time.
Through the thin white clothes which they wore, it was possible to see the lines of their bodies and legs, the
beautiful curves of their muscles, his leanness and her flesh, and it was natural to think of the firm−fleshed
sturdy children that would be theirs. Their faces had too little shape in them to be beautiful, but they had clear
eyes and an appearance of great health and power of endurance, for it seemed as if the blood would never
cease to run in his veins, or to lie deeply and calmly in her cheeks. Their eyes at the present moment were
brighter than usual, and wore the peculiar expression of pleasure and self−confidence which is seen in the
eyes of athletes, for they had been playing tennis, and they were both first−rate at the game.
Evelyn had not spoken, but she had been looking from Susan to Rachel. Well−−they had both made up their
minds very easily, they had done in a very few weeks what it sometimes seemed to her that she would never
be able to do. Although they were so different, she thought that she could see in each the same look of
satisfaction and completion, the same calmness of manner, and the same slowness of movement. It was that
slowness, that confidence, that content which she hated, she thought to herself. They moved so slowly because
they were not single but double, and Susan was attached to Arthur, and Rachel to Terence, and for the sake of
this one man they had renounced all other men, and movement, and the real things of life. Love was all very
well, and those snug domestic houses, with the kitchen below and the nursery above, which were so secluded
and self−contained, like little islands in the torrents of the world; but the real things were surely the things that
happened, the causes, the wars, the ideals, which happened in the great world outside, and went so
independently of these women, turning so quietly and beautifully towards the men. She looked at them
sharply. Of course they were happy and content, but there must be better things than that. Surely one could get
nearer to life, one could get more out of life, one could enjoy more and feel more than they would ever do.
Rachel in particular looked so young−−what could she know of life? She became restless, and getting up,
crossed over to sit beside Rachel. She reminded her that she had promised to join her club.
"The bother is," she went on, "that I mayn't be able to start work seriously till October. I've just had a letter
from a friend of mine whose brother is in business in Moscow. They want me to stay with them, and as they're
in the thick of all the conspiracies and anarchists, I've a good mind to stop on my way home. It sounds too
thrilling." She wanted to make Rachel see how thrilling it was. "My friend knows a girl of fifteen who's been
sent to Siberia for life merely because they caught her addressing a letter to an anarchist. And the letter wasn't
from her, either. I'd give all I have in the world to help on a revolution against the Russian government, and
it's bound to come."
She looked from Rachel to Terence. They were both a little touched by the sight of her remembering how
lately they had been listening to evil words about her, and Terence asked her what her scheme was, and she
explained that she was going to found a club−−a club for doing things, really doing them. She became very
animated, as she talked on and on, for she professed herself certain that if once twenty people−−no, ten would
Chapter XXIV 182
be enough if they were keen−−set about doing things instead of talking about doing them, they could abolish
almost every evil that exists. It was brains that were needed. If only people with brains−−of course they would
want a room, a nice room, in Bloomsbury preferably, where they could meet once a week. . . .
As she talked Terence could see the traces of fading youth in her face, the lines that were being drawn by talk
and excitement round her mouth and eyes, but he did not pity her; looking into those bright, rather hard, and
very courageous eyes, he saw that she did not pity herself, or feel any desire to exchange her own life for the
more refined and orderly lives of people like himself and St. John, although, as the years went by, the fight
would become harder and harder. Perhaps, though, she would settle down; perhaps, after all, she would marry
Perrott. While his mind was half occupied with what she was saying, he thought of her probable destiny, the
light clouds of tobacco smoke serving to obscure his face from her eyes.
Terence smoked and Arthur smoked and Evelyn smoked, so that the air was full of the mist and fragrance of
good tobacco. In the intervals when no one spoke, they heard far off the low murmur of the sea, as the waves
quietly broke and spread the beach with a film of water, and withdrew to break again. The cool green light fell
through the leaves of the tree, and there were soft crescents and diamonds of sunshine upon the plates and the
tablecloth. Mrs. Thornbury, after watching them all for a time in silence, began to ask Rachel kindly
questions−−When did they all go back? Oh, they expected her father. She must want to see her father−−there
would be a great deal to tell him, and (she looked sympathetically at Terence) he would be so happy, she felt
sure. Years ago, she continued, it might have been ten or twenty years ago, she remembered meeting Mr.
Vinrace at a party, and, being so much struck by his face, which was so unlike the ordinary face one sees at a
party, that she had asked who he was, and she was told that it was Mr. Vinrace, and she had always
remembered the name,−−an uncommon name,−−and he had a lady with him, a very sweet−looking woman,
but it was one of those dreadful London crushes, where you don't talk,−−you only look at each other,−−and
although she had shaken hands with Mr. Vinrace, she didn't think they had said anything. She sighed very
slightly, remembering the past.
Then she turned to Mr. Pepper, who had become very dependent on her, so that he always chose a seat near
her, and attended to what she was saying, although he did not often make any remark of his own.
"You who know everything, Mr. Pepper," she said, "tell us how did those wonderful French ladies manage
their salons? Did we ever do anything of the same kind in England, or do you think that there is some reason
why we cannot do it in England?"
Mr. Pepper was pleased to explain very accurately why there has never been an English salon. There were
three reasons, and they were very good ones, he said. As for himself, when he went to a party, as one was
sometimes obliged to, from a wish not to give offence−−his niece, for example, had been married the other
day−−he walked into the middle of the room, said "Ha! ha!" as loud as ever he could, considered that he had
done his duty, and walked away again. Mrs. Thornbury protested. She was going to give a party directly she
got back, and they were all to be invited, and she should set people to watch Mr. Pepper, and if she heard that
he had been caught saying "Ha! ha!" she would−−she would do something very dreadful indeed to him.
Arthur Venning suggested that what she must do was to rig up something in the nature of a surprise−−a
portrait, for example, of a nice old lady in a lace cap, concealing a bath of cold water, which at a signal could
be sprung on Pepper's head; or they'd have a chair which shot him twenty feet high directly he sat on it.
Susan laughed. She had done her tea; she was feeling very well contented, partly because she had been
playing tennis brilliantly, and then every one was so nice; she was beginning to find it so much easier to talk,
and to hold her own even with quite clever people, for somehow clever people did not frighten her any more.
Even Mr. Hirst, whom she had disliked when she first met him, really wasn't disagreeable; and, poor man, he
always looked so ill; perhaps he was in love; perhaps he had been in love with Rachel−−she really shouldn't
wonder; or perhaps it was Evelyn−−she was of course very attractive to men. Leaning forward, she went on
with the conversation. She said that she thought that the reason why parties were so dull was mainly because
Chapter XXIV 183
gentlemen will not dress: even in London, she stated, it struck her very much how people don't think it
necessary to dress in the evening, and of course if they don't dress in London they won't dress in the country.
It was really quite a treat at Christmas−time when there were the Hunt balls, and the gentlemen wore nice red
coats, but Arthur didn't care for dancing, so she supposed that they wouldn't go even to the ball in their little
country town. She didn't think that people who were fond of one sport often care for another, although her
father was an exception. But then he was an exception in every way−−such a gardener, and he knew all about
birds and animals, and of course he was simply adored by all the old women in the village, and at the same
time what he really liked best was a book. You always knew where to find him if he were wanted; he would
be in his study with a book. Very likely it would be an old, old book, some fusty old thing that no one else
would dream of reading. She used to tell him that he would have made a first−rate old bookworm if only he
hadn't had a family of six to support, and six children, she added, charmingly confident of universal sympathy,
didn't leave one much time for being a bookworm.
Still talking about her father, of whom she was very proud, she rose, for Arthur upon looking at his watch
found that it was time they went back again to the tennis court. The others did not move.
"They're very happy!" said Mrs. Thornbury, looking benignantly after them. Rachel agreed; they seemed to be
so certain of themselves; they seemed to know exactly what they wanted.
"D'you think they are happy?" Evelyn murmured to Terence in an undertone, and she hoped that he would say
that he did not think them happy; but, instead, he said that they must go too−−go home, for they were always
being late for meals, and Mrs. Ambrose, who was very stern and particular, didn't like that. Evelyn laid hold
of Rachel's skirt and protested. Why should they go? It was still early, and she had so many things to say to
them. "No," said Terence, "we must go, because we walk so slowly. We stop and look at things, and we talk."
"What d'you talk about?" Evelyn enquired, upon which he laughed and said that they talked about everything.
Mrs. Thornbury went with them to the gate, trailing very slowly and gracefully across the grass and the
gravel, and talking all the time about flowers and birds. She told them that she had taken up the study of
botany since her daughter married, and it was wonderful what a number of flowers there were which she had
never seen, although she had lived in the country all her life and she was now seventy−two. It was a good
thing to have some occupation which was quite independent of other people, she said, when one got old. But
the odd thing was that one never felt old. She always felt that she was twenty−five, not a day more or a day
less, but, of course, one couldn't expect other people to agree to that.
"It must be very wonderful to be twenty−five, and not merely to imagine that you're twenty−five," she said,
looking from one to the other with her smooth, bright glance. "It must be very wonderful, very wonderful
indeed." She stood talking to them at the gate for a long time; she seemed reluctant that they should go.

Chapter XXV


The afternoon was very hot, so hot that the breaking of the waves on the shore sounded like the repeated sigh
of some exhausted creature, and even on the terrace under an awning the bricks were hot, and the air danced
perpetually over the short dry grass. The red flowers in the stone basins were drooping with the heat, and the
white blossoms which had been so smooth and thick only a few weeks ago were now dry, and their edges
were curled and yellow. Only the stiff and hostile plants of the south, whose fleshy leaves seemed to be grown
upon spines, still remained standing upright and defied the sun to beat them down. It was too hot to talk, and it
was not easy to find any book that would withstand the power of the sun. Many books had been tried and then
let fall, and now Terence was reading Milton aloud, because he said the words of Milton had substance and
shape, so that it was not necessary to understand what he was saying; one could merely listen to his words;
one could almost handle them.
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There is a gentle nymph not far from hence,
he read,
That with moist curb sways the smooth Severn stream. Sabrina is her name, a virgin pure; Whilom she was
the daughter of Locrine, That had the sceptre from his father Brute.
The words, in spite of what Terence had said, seemed to be laden with meaning, and perhaps it was for this
reason that it was painful to listen to them; they sounded strange; they meant different things from what they
usually meant. Rachel at any rate could not keep her attention fixed upon them, but went off upon curious
trains of thought suggested by words such as "curb" and "Locrine" and "Brute," which brought unpleasant
sights before her eyes, independently of their meaning. Owing to the heat and the dancing air the garden too
looked strange−−the trees were either too near or too far, and her head almost certainly ached. She was not
quite certain, and therefore she did not know, whether to tell Terence now, or to let him go on reading. She
decided that she would wait until he came to the end of a stanza, and if by that time she had turned her head
this way and that, and it ached in every position undoubtedly, she would say very calmly that her head ached.
Sabrina fair, Listen where thou art sitting Under the glassy, cool, translucent wave, In twisted braids of lilies
knitting The loose train of thy amber dropping hair, Listen for dear honour's sake, Goddess of the silver lake,
Listen and save!
But her head ached; it ached whichever way she turned it.
She sat up and said as she had determined, "My head aches so that I shall go indoors." He was half−way
through the next verse, but he dropped the book instantly.
"Your head aches?" he repeated.
For a few moments they sat looking at one another in silence, holding each other's hands. During this time his
sense of dismay and catastrophe were almost physically painful; all round him he seemed to hear the shiver of
broken glass which, as it fell to earth, left him sitting in the open air. But at the end of two minutes, noticing
that she was not sharing his dismay, but was only rather more languid and heavy−eyed than usual, he
recovered, fetched Helen, and asked her to tell him what they had better do, for Rachel had a headache.
Mrs. Ambrose was not discomposed, but advised that she should go to bed, and added that she must expect
her head to ache if she sat up to all hours and went out in the heat, but a few hours in bed would cure it
completely. Terence was unreasonably reassured by her words, as he had been unreasonably depressed the
moment before. Helen's sense seemed to have much in common with the ruthless good sense of nature, which
avenged rashness by a headache, and, like nature's good sense, might be depended upon.
Rachel went to bed; she lay in the dark, it seemed to her, for a very long time, but at length, waking from a
transparent kind of sleep, she saw the windows white in front of her, and recollected that some time before she
had gone to bed with a headache, and that Helen had said it would be gone when she woke. She supposed,
therefore, that she was now quite well again. At the same time the wall of her room was painfully white, and
curved slightly, instead of being straight and flat. Turning her eyes to the window, she was not reassured by
what she saw there. The movement of the blind as it filled with air and blew slowly out, drawing the cord with
a little trailing sound along the floor, seemed to her terrifying, as if it were the movement of an animal in the
room. She shut her eyes, and the pulse in her head beat so strongly that each thump seemed to tread upon a
nerve, piercing her forehead with a little stab of pain. It might not be the same headache, but she certainly had
a headache. She turned from side to side, in the hope that the coolness of the sheets would cure her, and that
when she next opened her eyes to look the room would be as usual. After a considerable number of vain
experiments, she resolved to put the matter beyond a doubt. She got out of bed and stood upright, holding on
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to the brass ball at the end of the bedstead. Ice−cold at first, it soon became as hot as the palm of her hand, and
as the pains in her head and body and the instability of the floor proved that it would be far more intolerable to
stand and walk than to lie in bed, she got into bed again; but though the change was refreshing at first, the
discomfort of bed was soon as great as the discomfort of standing up. She accepted the idea that she would
have to stay in bed all day long, and as she laid her head on the pillow, relinquished the happiness of the day.
When Helen came in an hour or two later, suddenly stopped her cheerful words, looked startled for a second
and then unnaturally calm, the fact that she was ill was put beyond a doubt. It was confirmed when the whole
household knew of it, when the song that some one was singing in the garden stopped suddenly, and when
Maria, as she brought water, slipped past the bed with averted eyes. There was all the morning to get through,
and then all the afternoon, and at intervals she made an effort to cross over into the ordinary world, but she
found that her heat and discomfort had put a gulf between her world and the ordinary world which she could
not bridge. At one point the door opened, and Helen came in with a little dark man who had−−it was the chief
thing she noticed about him−−very hairy hands. She was drowsy and intolerably hot, and as he seemed shy
and obsequious she scarcely troubled to answer him, although she understood that he was a doctor. At another
point the door opened and Terence came in very gently, smiling too steadily, as she realised, for it to be
natural. He sat down and talked to her, stroking her hands until it became irksome to her to lie any more in the
same position and she turned round, and when she looked up again Helen was beside her and Terence had
gone. It did not matter; she would see him to−morrow when things would be ordinary again. Her chief
occupation during the day was to try to remember how the lines went:
Under the glassy, cool, translucent wave, In twisted braids of lilies knitting The loose train of thy amber
dropping hair;
and the effort worried her because the adjectives persisted in getting into the wrong places.
The second day did not differ very much from the first day, except that her bed had become very important,
and the world outside, when she tried to think of it, appeared distinctly further off. The glassy, cool,
translucent wave was almost visible before her, curling up at the end of the bed, and as it was refreshingly
cool she tried to keep her mind fixed upon it. Helen was here, and Helen was there all day long; sometimes
she said that it was lunchtime, and sometimes that it was teatime; but by the next day all landmarks were
obliterated, and the outer world was so far away that the different sounds, such as the sounds of people
moving overhead, could only be ascribed to their cause by a great effort of memory. The recollection of what
she had felt, or of what she had been doing and thinking three days before, had faded entirely. On the other
hand, every object in the room, and the bed itself, and her own body with its various limbs and their different
sensations were more and more important each day. She was completely cut off, and unable to communicate
with the rest of the world, isolated alone with her body.
Hours and hours would pass thus, without getting any further through the morning, or again a few minutes
would lead from broad daylight to the depths of the night. One evening when the room appeared very dim,
either because it was evening or because the blinds were drawn, Helen said to her, "Some one is going to sit
here to−night. You won't mind?"
Opening her eyes, Rachel saw not only Helen but a nurse in spectacles, whose face vaguely recalled
something that she had once seen. She had seen her in the chapel. "Nurse McInnis," said Helen, and the nurse
smiled steadily as they all did, and said that she did not find many people who were frightened of her. After
waiting for a moment they both disappeared, and having turned on her pillow Rachel woke to find herself in
the midst of one of those interminable nights which do not end at twelve, but go on into the double
figures−−thirteen, fourteen, and so on until they reach the twenties, and then the thirties, and then the forties.
She realised that there is nothing to prevent nights from doing this if they choose. At a great distance an
elderly woman sat with her head bent down; Rachel raised herself slightly and saw with dismay that she was
playing cards by the light of a candle which stood in the hollow of a newspaper. The sight had something
Chapter XXV 186
inexplicably sinister about it, and she was terrified and cried out, upon which the woman laid down her cards
and came across the room, shading the candle with her hands. Coming nearer and nearer across the great
space of the room, she stood at last above Rachel's head and said, "Not asleep? Let me make you
comfortable."
She put down the candle and began to arrange the bedclothes. It struck Rachel that a woman who sat playing
cards in a cavern all night long would have very cold hands, and she shrunk from the touch of them.
"Why, there's a toe all the way down there!" the woman said, proceeding to tuck in the bedclothes. Rachel did
not realise that the toe was hers.
"You must try and lie still," she proceeded, "because if you lie still you will be less hot, and if you toss about
you will make yourself more hot, and we don't want you to be any hotter than you are." She stood looking
down upon Rachel for an enormous length of time.
"And the quieter you lie the sooner you will be well," she repeated.
Rachel kept her eyes fixed upon the peaked shadow on the ceiling, and all her energy was concentrated upon
the desire that this shadow should move. But the shadow and the woman seemed to be eternally fixed above
her. She shut her eyes. When she opened them again several more hours had passed, but the night still lasted
interminably. The woman was still playing cards, only she sat now in a tunnel under a river, and the light
stood in a little archway in the wall above her. She cried "Terence!" and the peaked shadow again moved
across the ceiling, as the woman with an enormous slow movement rose, and they both stood still above her.
"It's just as difficult to keep you in bed as it was to keep Mr. Forrest in bed," the woman said, "and he was
such a tall gentleman."
In order to get rid of this terrible stationary sight Rachel again shut her eyes, and found herself walking
through a tunnel under the Thames, where there were little deformed women sitting in archways playing
cards, while the bricks of which the wall was made oozed with damp, which collected into drops and slid
down the wall. But the little old women became Helen and Nurse McInnis after a time, standing in the
window together whispering, whispering incessantly.
Meanwhile outside her room the sounds, the movements, and the lives of the other people in the house went
on in the ordinary light of the sun, throughout the usual succession of hours. When, on the first day of her
illness, it became clear that she would not be absolutely well, for her temperature was very high, until Friday,
that day being Tuesday, Terence was filled with resentment, not against her, but against the force outside them
which was separating them. He counted up the number of days that would almost certainly be spoilt for them.
He realised, with an odd mixture of pleasure and annoyance, that, for the first time in his life, he was so
dependent upon another person that his happiness was in her keeping. The days were completely wasted upon
trifling, immaterial things, for after three weeks of such intimacy and intensity all the usual occupations were
unbearably flat and beside the point. The least intolerable occupation was to talk to St. John about Rachel's
illness, and to discuss every symptom and its meaning, and, when this subject was exhausted, to discuss
illness of all kinds, and what caused them, and what cured them.
Twice every day he went in to sit with Rachel, and twice every day the same thing happened. On going into
her room, which was not very dark, where the music was lying about as usual, and her books and letters, his
spirits rose instantly. When he saw her he felt completely reassured. She did not look very ill. Sitting by her
side he would tell her what he had been doing, using his natural voice to speak to her, only a few tones lower
down than usual; but by the time he had sat there for five minutes he was plunged into the deepest gloom. She
was not the same; he could not bring them back to their old relationship; but although he knew that it was
foolish he could not prevent himself from endeavouring to bring her back, to make her remember, and when
Chapter XXV 187
this failed he was in despair. He always concluded as he left her room that it was worse to see her than not to
see her, but by degrees, as the day wore on, the desire to see her returned and became almost too great to be
borne.
On Thursday morning when Terence went into her room he felt the usual increase of confidence. She turned
round and made an effort to remember certain facts from the world that was so many millions of miles away.
"You have come up from the hotel?" she asked.
"No; I'm staying here for the present," he said. "We've just had luncheon," he continued, "and the mail has
come in. There's a bundle of letters for you−−letters from England."
Instead of saying, as he meant her to say, that she wished to see them, she said nothing for some time.
"You see, there they go, rolling off the edge of the hill," she said suddenly.
"Rolling, Rachel? What do you see rolling? There's nothing rolling."
"The old woman with the knife," she replied, not speaking to Terence in particular, and looking past him. As
she appeared to be looking at a vase on the shelf opposite, he rose and took it down.
"Now they can't roll any more," he said cheerfully. Nevertheless she lay gazing at the same spot, and paid him
no further attention although he spoke to her. He became so profoundly wretched that he could not endure to
sit with her, but wandered about until he found St. John, who was reading The Times in the verandah. He laid
it aside patiently, and heard all that Terence had to say about delirium. He was very patient with Terence. He
treated him like a child.
By Friday it could not be denied that the illness was no longer an attack that would pass off in a day or two; it
was a real illness that required a good deal of organisation, and engrossed the attention of at least five people,
but there was no reason to be anxious. Instead of lasting five days it was going to last ten days. Rodriguez was
understood to say that there were well−known varieties of this illness. Rodriguez appeared to think that they
were treating the illness with undue anxiety. His visits were always marked by the same show of confidence,
and in his interviews with Terence he always waved aside his anxious and minute questions with a kind of
flourish which seemed to indicate that they were all taking it much too seriously. He seemed curiously
unwilling to sit down.
"A high temperature," he said, looking furtively about the room, and appearing to be more interested in the
furniture and in Helen's embroidery than in anything else. "In this climate you must expect a high
temperature. You need not be alarmed by that. It is the pulse we go by" (he tapped his own hairy wrist), "and
the pulse continues excellent."
Thereupon he bowed and slipped out. The interview was conducted laboriously upon both sides in French,
and this, together with the fact that he was optimistic, and that Terence respected the medical profession from
hearsay, made him less critical than he would have been had he encountered the doctor in any other capacity.
Unconsciously he took Rodriguez' side against Helen, who seemed to have taken an unreasonable prejudice
against him.
When Saturday came it was evident that the hours of the day must be more strictly organised than they had
been. St. John offered his services; he said that he had nothing to do, and that he might as well spend the day
at the villa if he could be of use. As if they were starting on a difficult expedition together, they parcelled out
their duties between them, writing out an elaborate scheme of hours upon a large sheet of paper which was
pinned to the drawing−room door. Their distance from the town, and the difficulty of procuring rare things
Chapter XXV 188
with unknown names from the most unexpected places, made it necessary to think very carefully, and they
found it unexpectedly difficult to do the simple but practical things that were required of them, as if they,
being very tall, were asked to stoop down and arrange minute grains of sand in a pattern on the ground.
It was St. John's duty to fetch what was needed from the town, so that Terence would sit all through the long
hot hours alone in the drawing−room, near the open door, listening for any movement upstairs, or call from
Helen. He always forgot to pull down the blinds, so that he sat in bright sunshine, which worried him without
his knowing what was the cause of it. The room was terribly stiff and uncomfortable. There were hats in the
chairs, and medicine bottles among the books. He tried to read, but good books were too good, and bad books
were too bad, and the only thing he could tolerate was the newspaper, which with its news of London, and the
movements of real people who were giving dinner−parties and making speeches, seemed to give a little
background of reality to what was otherwise mere nightmare. Then, just as his attention was fixed on the
print, a soft call would come from Helen, or Mrs. Chailey would bring in something which was wanted
upstairs, and he would run up very quietly in his socks, and put the jug on the little table which stood crowded
with jugs and cups outside the bedroom door; or if he could catch Helen for a moment he would ask, "How is
she?"
"Rather restless. . . . On the whole, quieter, I think."
The answer would be one or the other.
As usual she seemed to reserve something which she did not say, and Terence was conscious that they
disagreed, and, without saying it aloud, were arguing against each other. But she was too hurried and
pre−occupied to talk.
The strain of listening and the effort of making practical arrangements and seeing that things worked
smoothly, absorbed all Terence's power. Involved in this long dreary nightmare, he did not attempt to think
what it amounted to. Rachel was ill; that was all; he must see that there was medicine and milk, and that
things were ready when they were wanted. Thought had ceased; life itself had come to a standstill. Sunday
was rather worse than Saturday had been, simply because the strain was a little greater every day, although
nothing else had changed. The separate feelings of pleasure, interest, and pain, which combine to make up the
ordinary day, were merged in one long−drawn sensation of sordid misery and profound boredom. He had
never been so bored since he was shut up in the nursery alone as a child. The vision of Rachel as she was now,
confused and heedless, had almost obliterated the vision of her as she had been once long ago; he could hardly
believe that they had ever been happy, or engaged to be married, for what were feelings, what was there to be
felt? Confusion covered every sight and person, and he seemed to see St. John, Ridley, and the stray people
who came up now and then from the hotel to enquire, through a mist; the only people who were not hidden in
this mist were Helen and Rodriguez, because they could tell him something definite about Rachel.
Nevertheless the day followed the usual forms. At certain hours they went into the dining−room, and when
they sat round the table they talked about indifferent things. St. John usually made it his business to start the
talk and to keep it from dying out.
"I've discovered the way to get Sancho past the white house," said St. John on Sunday at luncheon. "You
crackle a piece of paper in his ear, then he bolts for about a hundred yards, but he goes on quite well after
that."
"Yes, but he wants corn. You should see that he has corn."
"I don't think much of the stuff they give him; and Angelo seems a dirty little rascal."
There was then a long silence. Ridley murmured a few lines of poetry under his breath, and remarked, as if to
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conceal the fact that he had done so, "Very hot to−day."
"Two degrees higher than it was yesterday," said St. John. "I wonder where these nuts come from," he
observed, taking a nut out of the plate, turning it over in his fingers, and looking at it curiously.
"London, I should think," said Terence, looking at the nut too.
"A competent man of business could make a fortune here in no time," St. John continued. "I suppose the heat
does something funny to people's brains. Even the English go a little queer. Anyhow they're hopeless people
to deal with. They kept me three−quarters of an hour waiting at the chemist's this morning, for no reason
whatever."
There was another long pause. Then Ridley enquired, "Rodriguez seems satisfied?"
"Quite," said Terence with decision. "It's just got to run its course." Whereupon Ridley heaved a deep sigh. He
was genuinely sorry for every one, but at the same time he missed Helen considerably, and was a little
aggrieved by the constant presence of the two young men.
They moved back into the drawing−room.
"Look here, Hirst," said Terence, "there's nothing to be done for two hours." He consulted the sheet pinned to
the door. "You go and lie down. I'll wait here. Chailey sits with Rachel while Helen has her luncheon."
It was asking a good deal of Hirst to tell him to go without waiting for a sight of Helen. These little glimpses
of Helen were the only respites from strain and boredom, and very often they seemed to make up for the
discomfort of the day, although she might not have anything to tell them. However, as they were on an
expedition together, he had made up his mind to obey.
Helen was very late in coming down. She looked like a person who has been sitting for a long time in the
dark. She was pale and thinner, and the expression of her eyes was harassed but determined. She ate her
luncheon quickly, and seemed indifferent to what she was doing. She brushed aside Terence's enquiries, and
at last, as if he had not spoken, she looked at him with a slight frown and said:
"We can't go on like this, Terence. Either you've got to find another doctor, or you must tell Rodriguez to stop
coming, and I'll manage for myself. It's no use for him to say that Rachel's better; she's not better; she's
worse."
Terence suffered a terrific shock, like that which he had suffered when Rachel said, "My head aches." He
stilled it by reflecting that Helen was overwrought, and he was upheld in this opinion by his obstinate sense
that she was opposed to him in the argument.
"Do you think she's in danger?" he asked.
"No one can go on being as ill as that day after day−−" Helen replied. She looked at him, and spoke as if she
felt some indignation with somebody.
"Very well, I'll talk to Rodriguez this afternoon," he replied.
Helen went upstairs at once.
Nothing now could assuage Terence's anxiety. He could not read, nor could he sit still, and his sense of
security was shaken, in spite of the fact that he was determined that Helen was exaggerating, and that Rachel
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was not very ill. But he wanted a third person to confirm him in his belief.
Directly Rodriguez came down he demanded, "Well, how is she? Do you think her worse?"
"There is no reason for anxiety, I tell you−−none," Rodriguez replied in his execrable French, smiling
uneasily, and making little movements all the time as if to get away.
Hewet stood firmly between him and the door. He was determined to see for himself what kind of man he
was. His confidence in the man vanished as he looked at him and saw his insignificance, his dirty appearance,
his shiftiness, and his unintelligent, hairy face. It was strange that he had never seen this before.
"You won't object, of course, if we ask you to consult another doctor?" he continued.
At this the little man became openly incensed.
"Ah!" he cried. "You have not confidence in me? You object to my treatment? You wish me to give up the
case?"
"Not at all," Terence replied, "but in serious illness of this kind−−"
Rodriguez shrugged his shoulders.
"It is not serious, I assure you. You are overanxious. The young lady is not seriously ill, and I am a doctor.
The lady of course is frightened," he sneered. "I understand that perfectly."
"The name and address of the doctor is−−?" Terence continued.
"There is no other doctor," Rodriguez replied sullenly. "Every one has confidence in me. Look! I will show
you."
He took out a packet of old letters and began turning them over as if in search of one that would confute
Terence's suspicions. As he searched, he began to tell a story about an English lord who had trusted him−−a
great English lord, whose name he had, unfortunately, forgotten.
"There is no other doctor in the place," he concluded, still turning over the letters.
"Never mind," said Terence shortly. "I will make enquiries for myself." Rodriguez put the letters back in his
pocket.
"Very well," he remarked. "I have no objection."
He lifted his eyebrows, shrugged his shoulders, as if to repeat that they took the illness much too seriously and
that there was no other doctor, and slipped out, leaving behind him an impression that he was conscious that
he was distrusted, and that his malice was aroused.
After this Terence could no longer stay downstairs. He went up, knocked at Rachel's door, and asked Helen
whether he might see her for a few minutes. He had not seen her yesterday. She made no objection, and went
and sat at a table in the window.
Terence sat down by the bedside. Rachel's face was changed. She looked as though she were entirely
concentrated upon the effort of keeping alive. Her lips were drawn, and her cheeks were sunken and flushed,
though without colour. Her eyes were not entirely shut, the lower half of the white part showing, not as if she
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saw, but as if they remained open because she was too much exhausted to close them. She opened them
completely when he kissed her. But she only saw an old woman slicing a man's head off with a knife.
"There it falls!" she murmured. She then turned to Terence and asked him anxiously some question about a
man with mules, which he could not understand. "Why doesn't he come? Why doesn't he come?" she
repeated. He was appalled to think of the dirty little man downstairs in connection with illness like this, and
turning instinctively to Helen, but she was doing something at a table in the window, and did not seem to
realise how great the shock to him must be. He rose to go, for he could not endure to listen any longer; his
heart beat quickly and painfully with anger and misery. As he passed Helen she asked him in the same weary,
unnatural, but determined voice to fetch her more ice, and to have the jug outside filled with fresh milk.
When he had done these errands he went to find Hirst. Exhausted and very hot, St. John had fallen asleep on a
bed, but Terence woke him without scruple.
"Helen thinks she's worse," he said. "There's no doubt she's frightfully ill. Rodriguez is useless. We must get
another doctor."
"But there is no other doctor," said Hirst drowsily, sitting up and rubbing his eyes.
"Don't be a damned fool!" Terence exclaimed. "Of course there's another doctor, and, if there isn't, you've got
to find one. It ought to have been done days ago. I'm going down to saddle the horse." He could not stay still
in one place.
In less than ten minutes St. John was riding to the town in the scorching heat in search of a doctor, his orders
being to find one and bring him back if he had to be fetched in a special train.
"We ought to have done it days ago," Hewet repeated angrily.
When he went back into the drawing−room he found that Mrs. Flushing was there, standing very erect in the
middle of the room, having arrived, as people did in these days, by the kitchen or through the garden
unannounced.
"She's better?" Mrs. Flushing enquired abruptly; they did not attempt to shake hands.
"No," said Terence. "If anything, they think she's worse."
Mrs. Flushing seemed to consider for a moment or two, looking straight at Terence all the time.
"Let me tell you," she said, speaking in nervous jerks, "it's always about the seventh day one begins to get
anxious. I daresay you've been sittin' here worryin' by yourself. You think she's bad, but any one comin' with a
fresh eye would see she was better. Mr. Elliot's had fever; he's all right now," she threw out. "It wasn't anythin'
she caught on the expedition. What's it matter−−a few days' fever? My brother had fever for twenty−six days
once. And in a week or two he was up and about. We gave him nothin' but milk and arrowroot−−"
Here Mrs. Chailey came in with a message.
"I'm wanted upstairs," said Terence.
"You see−−she'll be better," Mrs. Flushing jerked out as he left the room. Her anxiety to persuade Terence
was very great, and when he left her without saying anything she felt dissatisfied and restless; she did not like
to stay, but she could not bear to go. She wandered from room to room looking for some one to talk to, but all
the rooms were empty.
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Terence went upstairs, stood inside the door to take Helen's directions, looked over at Rachel, but did not
attempt to speak to her. She appeared vaguely conscious of his presence, but it seemed to disturb her, and she
turned, so that she lay with her back to him.
For six days indeed she had been oblivious of the world outside, because it needed all her attention to follow
the hot, red, quick sights which passed incessantly before her eyes. She knew that it was of enormous
importance that she should attend to these sights and grasp their meaning, but she was always being just too
late to hear or see something which would explain it all. For this reason, the faces,−−Helen's face, the nurse's,
Terence's, the doctor's,−−which occasionally forced themselves very close to her, were worrying because they
distracted her attention and she might miss the clue. However, on the fourth afternoon she was suddenly
unable to keep Helen's face distinct from the sights themselves; her lips widened as she bent down over the
bed, and she began to gabble unintelligibly like the rest. The sights were all concerned in some plot, some
adventure, some escape. The nature of what they were doing changed incessantly, although there was always
a reason behind it, which she must endeavour to grasp. Now they were among trees and savages, now they
were on the sea, now they were on the tops of high towers; now they jumped; now they flew. But just as the
crisis was about to happen, something invariably slipped in her brain, so that the whole effort had to begin
over again. The heat was suffocating. At last the faces went further away; she fell into a deep pool of sticky
water, which eventually closed over her head. She saw nothing and heard nothing but a faint booming sound,
which was the sound of the sea rolling over her head. While all her tormentors thought that she was dead, she
was not dead, but curled up at the bottom of the sea. There she lay, sometimes seeing darkness, sometimes
light, while every now and then some one turned her over at the bottom of the sea.
After St. John had spent some hours in the heat of the sun wrangling with evasive and very garrulous natives,
he extracted the information that there was a doctor, a French doctor, who was at present away on a holiday in
the hills. It was quite impossible, so they said, to find him. With his experience of the country, St. John
thought it unlikely that a telegram would either be sent or received; but having reduced the distance of the hill
town, in which he was staying, from a hundred miles to thirty miles, and having hired a carriage and horses,
he started at once to fetch the doctor himself. He succeeded in finding him, and eventually forced the
unwilling man to leave his young wife and return forthwith. They reached the villa at midday on Tuesday.
Terence came out to receive them, and St. John was struck by the fact that he had grown perceptibly thinner in
the interval; he was white too; his eyes looked strange. But the curt speech and the sulky masterful manner of
Dr. Lesage impressed them both favourably, although at the same time it was obvious that he was very much
annoyed at the whole affair. Coming downstairs he gave his directions emphatically, but it never occurred to
him to give an opinion either because of the presence of Rodriguez who was now obsequious as well as
malicious, or because he took it for granted that they knew already what was to be known.
"Of course," he said with a shrug of his shoulders, when Terence asked him, "Is she very ill?"
They were both conscious of a certain sense of relief when Dr. Lesage was gone, leaving explicit directions,
and promising another visit in a few hours' time; but, unfortunately, the rise of their spirits led them to talk
more than usual, and in talking they quarrelled. They quarrelled about a road, the Portsmouth Road. St. John
said that it is macadamised where it passes Hindhead, and Terence knew as well as he knew his own name
that it is not macadamised at that point. In the course of the argument they said some very sharp things to each
other, and the rest of the dinner was eaten in silence, save for an occasional half−stifled reflection from
Ridley.
When it grew dark and the lamps were brought in, Terence felt unable to control his irritation any longer. St.
John went to bed in a state of complete exhaustion, bidding Terence good−night with rather more affection
than usual because of their quarrel, and Ridley retired to his books. Left alone, Terence walked up and down
the room; he stood at the open window.
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The lights were coming out one after another in the town beneath, and it was very peaceful and cool in the
garden, so that he stepped out on to the terrace. As he stood there in the darkness, able only to see the shapes
of trees through the fine grey light, he was overcome by a desire to escape, to have done with this suffering, to
forget that Rachel was ill. He allowed himself to lapse into forgetfulness of everything. As if a wind that had
been raging incessantly suddenly fell asleep, the fret and strain and anxiety which had been pressing on him
passed away. He seemed to stand in an unvexed space of air, on a little island by himself; he was free and
immune from pain. It did not matter whether Rachel was well or ill; it did not matter whether they were apart
or together; nothing mattered−−nothing mattered. The waves beat on the shore far away, and the soft wind
passed through the branches of the trees, seeming to encircle him with peace and security, with dark and
nothingness. Surely the world of strife and fret and anxiety was not the real world, but this was the real world,
the world that lay beneath the superficial world, so that, whatever happened, one was secure. The quiet and
peace seemed to lap his body in a fine cool sheet, soothing every nerve; his mind seemed once more to
expand, and become natural.
But when he had stood thus for a time a noise in the house roused him; he turned instinctively and went into
the drawing−room. The sight of the lamp−lit room brought back so abruptly all that he had forgotten that he
stood for a moment unable to move. He remembered everything, the hour, the minute even, what point they
had reached, and what was to come. He cursed himself for making believe for a minute that things were
different from what they are. The night was now harder to face than ever.
Unable to stay in the empty drawing−room, he wandered out and sat on the stairs half−way up to Rachel's
room. He longed for some one to talk to, but Hirst was asleep, and Ridley was asleep; there was no sound in
Rachel's room. The only sound in the house was the sound of Chailey moving in the kitchen. At last there was
a rustling on the stairs overhead, and Nurse McInnis came down fastening the links in her cuffs, in preparation
for the night's watch. Terence rose and stopped her. He had scarcely spoken to her, but it was possible that she
might confirm him in the belief which still persisted in his own mind that Rachel was not seriously ill. He told
her in a whisper that Dr. Lesage had been and what he had said.
"Now, Nurse," he whispered, "please tell me your opinion. Do you consider that she is very seriously ill? Is
she in any danger?"
"The doctor has said−−" she began.
"Yes, but I want your opinion. You have had experience of many cases like this?"
"I could not tell you more than Dr. Lesage, Mr. Hewet," she replied cautiously, as though her words might be
used against her. "The case is serious, but you may feel quite certain that we are doing all we can for Miss
Vinrace." She spoke with some professional self−approbation. But she realised perhaps that she did not satisfy
the young man, who still blocked her way, for she shifted her feet slightly upon the stair and looked out of the
window where they could see the moon over the sea.
"If you ask me," she began in a curiously stealthy tone, "I never like May for my patients."
"May?" Terence repeated.
"It may be a fancy, but I don't like to see anybody fall ill in May," she continued. "Things seem to go wrong in
May. Perhaps it's the moon. They say the moon affects the brain, don't they, Sir?"
He looked at her but he could not answer her; like all the others, when one looked at her she seemed to shrivel
beneath one's eyes and become worthless, malicious, and untrustworthy.
She slipped past him and disappeared.
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Though he went to his room he was unable even to take his clothes off. For a long time he paced up and
down, and then leaning out of the window gazed at the earth which lay so dark against the paler blue of the
sky. With a mixture of fear and loathing he looked at the slim black cypress trees which were still visible in
the garden, and heard the unfamiliar creaking and grating sounds which show that the earth is still hot. All
these sights and sounds appeared sinister and full of hostility and foreboding; together with the natives and the
nurse and the doctor and the terrible force of the illness itself they seemed to be in conspiracy against him.
They seemed to join together in their effort to extract the greatest possible amount of suffering from him. He
could not get used to his pain, it was a revelation to him. He had never realised before that underneath every
action, underneath the life of every day, pain lies, quiescent, but ready to devour; he seemed to be able to see
suffering, as if it were a fire, curling up over the edges of all action, eating away the lives of men and women.
He thought for the first time with understanding of words which had before seemed to him empty: the struggle
of life; the hardness of life. Now he knew for himself that life is hard and full of suffering. He looked at the
scattered lights in the town beneath, and thought of Arthur and Susan, or Evelyn and Perrott venturing out
unwittingly, and by their happiness laying themselves open to suffering such as this. How did they dare to
love each other, he wondered; how had he himself dared to live as he had lived, rapidly and carelessly,
passing from one thing to another, loving Rachel as he had loved her? Never again would he feel secure; he
would never believe in the stability of life, or forget what depths of pain lie beneath small happiness and
feelings of content and safety. It seemed to him as he looked back that their happiness had never been so great
as his pain was now. There had always been something imperfect in their happiness, something they had
wanted and had not been able to get. It had been fragmentary and incomplete, because they were so young and
had not known what they were doing.
The light of his candle flickered over the boughs of a tree outside the window, and as the branch swayed in the
darkness there came before his mind a picture of all the world that lay outside his window; he thought of the
immense river and the immense forest, the vast stretches of dry earth and the plains of the sea that encircled
the earth; from the sea the sky rose steep and enormous, and the air washed profoundly between the sky and
the sea. How vast and dark it must be tonight, lying exposed to the wind; and in all this great space it was
curious to think how few the towns were, and how small little rings of light, or single glow−worms he figured
them, scattered here and there, among the swelling uncultivated folds of the world. And in those towns were
little men and women, tiny men and women. Oh, it was absurd, when one thought of it, to sit here in a little
room suffering and caring. What did anything matter? Rachel, a tiny creature, lay ill beneath him, and here in
his little room he suffered on her account. The nearness of their bodies in this vast universe, and the
minuteness of their bodies, seemed to him absurd and laughable. Nothing mattered, he repeated; they had no
power, no hope. He leant on the window−sill, thinking, until he almost forgot the time and the place.
Nevertheless, although he was convinced that it was absurd and laughable, and that they were small and
hopeless, he never lost the sense that these thoughts somehow formed part of a life which he and Rachel
would live together.
Owing perhaps to the change of doctor, Rachel appeared to be rather better next day. Terribly pale and worn
though Helen looked, there was a slight lifting of the cloud which had hung all these days in her eyes.
"She talked to me," she said voluntarily. "She asked me what day of the week it was, like herself."
Then suddenly, without any warning or any apparent reason, the tears formed in her eyes and rolled steadily
down her cheeks. She cried with scarcely any attempt at movement of her features, and without any attempt to
stop herself, as if she did not know that she was crying. In spite of the relief which her words gave him,
Terence was dismayed by the sight; had everything given way? Were there no limits to the power of this
illness? Would everything go down before it? Helen had always seemed to him strong and determined, and
now she was like a child. He took her in his arms, and she clung to him like a child, crying softly and quietly
upon his shoulder. Then she roused herself and wiped her tears away; it was silly to behave like that, she said;
very silly, she repeated, when there could be no doubt that Rachel was better. She asked Terence to forgive
her for her folly. She stopped at the door and came back and kissed him without saying anything.
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On this day indeed Rachel was conscious of what went on round her. She had come to the surface of the dark,
sticky pool, and a wave seemed to bear her up and down with it; she had ceased to have any will of her own;
she lay on the top of the wave conscious of some pain, but chiefly of weakness. The wave was replaced by the
side of a mountain. Her body became a drift of melting snow, above which her knees rose in huge peaked
mountains of bare bone. It was true that she saw Helen and saw her room, but everything had become very
pale and semi−transparent. Sometimes she could see through the wall in front of her. Sometimes when Helen
went away she seemed to go so far that Rachel's eyes could hardly follow her. The room also had an odd
power of expanding, and though she pushed her voice out as far as possible until sometimes it became a bird
and flew away, she thought it doubtful whether it ever reached the person she was talking to. There were
immense intervals or chasms, for things still had the power to appear visibly before her, between one moment
and the next; it sometimes took an hour for Helen to raise her arm, pausing long between each jerky
movement, and pour out medicine. Helen's form stooping to raise her in bed appeared of gigantic size, and
came down upon her like the ceiling falling. But for long spaces of time she would merely lie conscious of her
body floating on the top of the bed and her mind driven to some remote corner of her body, or escaped and
gone flitting round the room. All sights were something of an effort, but the sight of Terence was the greatest
effort, because he forced her to join mind to body in the desire to remember something. She did not wish to
remember; it troubled her when people tried to disturb her loneliness; she wished to be alone. She wished for
nothing else in the world.
Although she had cried, Terence observed Helen's greater hopefulness with something like triumph; in the
argument between them she had made the first sign of admitting herself in the wrong. He waited for Dr.
Lesage to come down that afternoon with considerable anxiety, but with the same certainty at the back of his
mind that he would in time force them all to admit that they were in the wrong.
As usual, Dr. Lesage was sulky in his manner and very short in his answers. To Terence's demand, "She
seems to be better?" he replied, looking at him in an odd way, "She has a chance of life."
The door shut and Terence walked across to the window. He leant his forehead against the pane.
"Rachel," he repeated to himself. "She has a chance of life. Rachel."
How could they say these things of Rachel? Had any one yesterday seriously believed that Rachel was dying?
They had been engaged for four weeks. A fortnight ago she had been perfectly well. What could fourteen days
have done to bring her from that state to this? To realise what they meant by saying that she had a chance of
life was beyond him, knowing as he did that they were engaged. He turned, still enveloped in the same dreary
mist, and walked towards the door. Suddenly he saw it all. He saw the room and the garden, and the trees
moving in the air, they could go on without her; she could die. For the first time since she fell ill he
remembered exactly what she looked like and the way in which they cared for each other. The immense
happiness of feeling her close to him mingled with a more intense anxiety than he had felt yet. He could not
let her die; he could not live without her. But after a momentary struggle, the curtain fell again, and he saw
nothing and felt nothing clearly. It was all going on−−going on still, in the same way as before. Save for a
physical pain when his heart beat, and the fact that his fingers were icy cold, he did not realise that he was
anxious about anything. Within his mind he seemed to feel nothing about Rachel or about any one or anything
in the world. He went on giving orders, arranging with Mrs. Chailey, writing out lists, and every now and then
he went upstairs and put something quietly on the table outside Rachel's door. That night Dr. Lesage seemed
to be less sulky than usual. He stayed voluntarily for a few moments, and, addressing St. John and Terence
equally, as if he did not remember which of them was engaged to the young lady, said, "I consider that her
condition to−night is very grave."
Neither of them went to bed or suggested that the other should go to bed. They sat in the drawing−room
playing picquet with the door open. St. John made up a bed upon the sofa, and when it was ready insisted that
Terence should lie upon it. They began to quarrel as to who should lie on the sofa and who should lie upon a
Chapter XXV 196
couple of chairs covered with rugs. St. John forced Terence at last to lie down upon the sofa.
"Don't be a fool, Terence," he said. "You'll only get ill if you don't sleep."
"Old fellow," he began, as Terence still refused, and stopped abruptly, fearing sentimentality; he found that he
was on the verge of tears.
He began to say what he had long been wanting to say, that he was sorry for Terence, that he cared for him,
that he cared for Rachel. Did she know how much he cared for her−−had she said anything, asked perhaps?
He was very anxious to say this, but he refrained, thinking that it was a selfish question after all, and what was
the use of bothering Terence to talk about such things? He was already half asleep. But St. John could not
sleep at once. If only, he thought to himself, as he lay in the darkness, something would happen−−if only this
strain would come to an end. He did not mind what happened, so long as the succession of these hard and
dreary days was broken; he did not mind if she died. He felt himself disloyal in not minding it, but it seemed
to him that he had no feelings left.
All night long there was no call or movement, except the opening and shutting of the bedroom door once. By
degrees the light returned into the untidy room. At six the servants began to move; at seven they crept
downstairs into the kitchen; and half an hour later the day began again.
Nevertheless it was not the same as the days that had gone before, although it would have been hard to say in
what the difference consisted. Perhaps it was that they seemed to be waiting for something. There were
certainly fewer things to be done than usual. People drifted through the drawing−room−−Mr. Flushing, Mr.
and Mrs. Thornbury. They spoke very apologetically in low tones, refusing to sit down, but remaining for a
considerable time standing up, although the only thing they had to say was, "Is there anything we can do?"
and there was nothing they could do.
Feeling oddly detached from it all, Terence remembered how Helen had said that whenever anything
happened to you this was how people behaved. Was she right, or was she wrong? He was too little interested
to frame an opinion of his own. He put things away in his mind, as if one of these days he would think about
them, but not now. The mist of unreality had deepened and deepened until it had produced a feeling of
numbness all over his body. Was it his body? Were those really his own hands?
This morning also for the first time Ridley found it impossible to sit alone in his room. He was very
uncomfortable downstairs, and, as he did not know what was going on, constantly in the way; but he would
not leave the drawing−room. Too restless to read, and having nothing to do, he began to pace up and down
reciting poetry in an undertone. Occupied in various ways−−now in undoing parcels, now in uncorking
bottles, now in writing directions, the sound of Ridley's song and the beat of his pacing worked into the minds
of Terence and St. John all the morning as a half comprehended refrain.
They wrestled up, they wrestled down, They wrestled sore and still: The fiend who blinds the eyes of men,
That night he had his will.
Like stags full spent, among the bent They dropped awhile to rest−−
"Oh, it's intolerable!" Hirst exclaimed, and then checked himself, as if it were a breach of their agreement.
Again and again Terence would creep half−way up the stairs in case he might be able to glean news of
Rachel. But the only news now was of a very fragmentary kind; she had drunk something; she had slept a
little; she seemed quieter. In the same way, Dr. Lesage confined himself to talking about details, save once
when he volunteered the information that he had just been called in to ascertain, by severing a vein in the
wrist, that an old lady of eighty−five was really dead. She had a horror of being buried alive.
Chapter XXV 197
"It is a horror," he remarked, "that we generally find in the very old, and seldom in the young." They both
expressed their interest in what he told them; it seemed to them very strange. Another strange thing about the
day was that the luncheon was forgotten by all of them until it was late in the afternoon, and then Mrs.
Chailey waited on them, and looked strange too, because she wore a stiff print dress, and her sleeves were
rolled up above her elbows. She seemed as oblivious of her appearance, however, as if she had been called out
of her bed by a midnight alarm of fire, and she had forgotten, too, her reserve and her composure; she talked
to them quite familiarly as if she had nursed them and held them naked on her knee. She assured them over
and over again that it was their duty to eat.
The afternoon, being thus shortened, passed more quickly than they expected. Once Mrs. Flushing opened the
door, but on seeing them shut it again quickly; once Helen came down to fetch something, but she stopped as
she left the room to look at a letter addressed to her. She stood for a moment turning it over, and the
extraordinary and mournful beauty of her attitude struck Terence in the way things struck him now−−as
something to be put away in his mind and to be thought about afterwards. They scarcely spoke, the argument
between them seeming to be suspended or forgotten.
Now that the afternoon sun had left the front of the house, Ridley paced up and down the terrace repeating
stanzas of a long poem, in a subdued but suddenly sonorous voice. Fragments of the poem were wafted in at
the open window as he passed and repassed.
Peor and Baalim Forsake their Temples dim, With that twice batter'd God of Palestine And mooned
Astaroth−−
The sound of these words were strangely discomforting to both the young men, but they had to be borne. As
the evening drew on and the red light of the sunset glittered far away on the sea, the same sense of desperation
attacked both Terence and St. John at the thought that the day was nearly over, and that another night was at
hand. The appearance of one light after another in the town beneath them produced in Hirst a repetition of his
terrible and disgusting desire to break down and sob. Then the lamps were brought in by Chailey. She
explained that Maria, in opening a bottle, had been so foolish as to cut her arm badly, but she had bound it up;
it was unfortunate when there was so much work to be done. Chailey herself limped because of the
rheumatism in her feet, but it appeared to her mere waste of time to take any notice of the unruly flesh of
servants. The evening went on. Dr. Lesage arrived unexpectedly, and stayed upstairs a very long time. He
came down once and drank a cup of coffee.
"She is very ill," he said in answer to Ridley's question. All the annoyance had by this time left his manner, he
was grave and formal, but at the same time it was full of consideration, which had not marked it before. He
went upstairs again. The three men sat together in the drawing−room. Ridley was quite quiet now, and his
attention seemed to be thoroughly awakened. Save for little half−voluntary movements and exclamations that
were stifled at once, they waited in complete silence. It seemed as if they were at last brought together face to
face with something definite.
It was nearly eleven o'clock when Dr. Lesage again appeared in the room. He approached them very slowly,
and did not speak at once. He looked first at St. John and then at Terence, and said to Terence, "Mr. Hewet, I
think you should go upstairs now."
Terence rose immediately, leaving the others seated with Dr. Lesage standing motionless between them.
Chailey was in the passage outside, repeating over and over again, "It's wicked−−it's wicked."
Terence paid her no attention; he heard what she was saying, but it conveyed no meaning to his mind. All the
way upstairs he kept saying to himself, "This has not happened to me. It is not possible that this has happened
to me."
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He looked curiously at his own hand on the banisters. The stairs were very steep, and it seemed to take him a
long time to surmount them. Instead of feeling keenly, as he knew that he ought to feel, he felt nothing at all.
When he opened the door he saw Helen sitting by the bedside. There were shaded lights on the table, and the
room, though it seemed to be full of a great many things, was very tidy. There was a faint and not unpleasant
smell of disinfectants. Helen rose and gave up her chair to him in silence. As they passed each other their eyes
met in a peculiar level glance, he wondered at the extraordinary clearness of his eyes, and at the deep calm
and sadness that dwelt in them. He sat down by the bedside, and a moment afterwards heard the door shut
gently behind her. He was alone with Rachel, and a faint reflection of the sense of relief that they used to feel
when they were left alone possessed him. He looked at her. He expected to find some terrible change in her,
but there was none. She looked indeed very thin, and, as far as he could see, very tired, but she was the same
as she had always been. Moreover, she saw him and knew him. She smiled at him and said, "Hullo, Terence."
The curtain which had been drawn between them for so long vanished immediately.
"Well, Rachel," he replied in his usual voice, upon which she opened her eyes quite widely and smiled with
her familiar smile. He kissed her and took her hand.
"It's been wretched without you," he said.
She still looked at him and smiled, but soon a slight look of fatigue or perplexity came into her eyes and she
shut them again.
"But when we're together we're perfectly happy," he said. He continued to hold her hand.
The light being dim, it was impossible to see any change in her face. An immense feeling of peace came over
Terence, so that he had no wish to move or to speak. The terrible torture and unreality of the last days were
over, and he had come out now into perfect certainty and peace. His mind began to work naturally again and
with great ease. The longer he sat there the more profoundly was he conscious of the peace invading every
corner of his soul. Once he held his breath and listened acutely; she was still breathing; he went on thinking
for some time; they seemed to be thinking together; he seemed to be Rachel as well as himself; and then he
listened again; no, she had ceased to breathe. So much the better−−this was death. It was nothing; it was to
cease to breathe. It was happiness, it was perfect happiness. They had now what they had always wanted to
have, the union which had been impossible while they lived. Unconscious whether he thought the words or
spoke them aloud, he said, "No two people have ever been so happy as we have been. No one has ever loved
as we have loved."
It seemed to him that their complete union and happiness filled the room with rings eddying more and more
widely. He had no wish in the world left unfulfilled. They possessed what could never be taken from them.
He was not conscious that any one had come into the room, but later, moments later, or hours later perhaps, he
felt an arm behind him. The arms were round him. He did not want to have arms round him, and the
mysterious whispering voices annoyed him. He laid Rachel's hand, which was now cold, upon the
counterpane, and rose from his chair, and walked across to the window. The windows were uncurtained, and
showed the moon, and a long silver pathway upon the surface of the waves.
"Why," he said, in his ordinary tone of voice, "look at the moon. There's a halo round the mo

There's a halo round the moon. We shall
have rain to−morrow."
The arms, whether they were the arms of man or of woman, were round him again; they were pushing him
gently towards the door. He turned of his own accord and walked steadily in advance of the arms, conscious
of a little amusement at the strange way in which people behaved merely because some one was dead. He
would go if they wished it, but nothing they could do would disturb his happiness.
As he saw the passage outside the room, and the table with the cups and the plates, it suddenly came over him
that here was a world in which he would never see Rachel again.
"Rachel! Rachel!" he shrieked, trying to rush back to her. But they prevented him, and pushed him down the
passage and into a bedroom far from her room. Downstairs they could hear the thud of his feet on the floor, as
he struggled to break free; and twice they heard him shout, "Rachel, Rachel!"

Chapter XXVI


For two or three hours longer the moon poured its light through the empty air. Unbroken by clouds it fell
straightly, and lay almost like a chill white frost over the sea and the earth. During these hours the silence was
not broken, and the only movement was caused by the movement of trees and branches which stirred slightly,
and then the shadows that lay across the white spaces of the land moved too. In this profound silence one
sound only was audible, the sound of a slight but continuous breathing which never ceased, although it never
rose and never fell. It continued after the birds had begun to flutter from branch to branch, and could be heard
behind the first thin notes of their voices. It continued all through the hours when the east whitened, and grew
red, and a faint blue tinged the sky, but when the sun rose it ceased, and gave place to other sounds.
The first sounds that were heard were little inarticulate cries, the cries, it seemed, of children or of the very
poor, of people who were very weak or in pain. But when the sun was above the horizon, the air which had
been thin and pale grew every moment richer and warmer, and the sounds of life became bolder and more full
of courage and authority. By degrees the smoke began to ascend in wavering breaths over the houses, and
these slowly thickened, until they were as round and straight as columns, and instead of striking upon pale
white blinds, the sun shone upon dark windows, beyond which there was depth and space.
The sun had been up for many hours, and the great dome of air was warmed through and glittering with thin
gold threads of sunlight, before any one moved in the hotel. White and massive it stood in the early light, half
asleep with its blinds down.
At about half−past nine Miss Allan came very slowly into the hall, and walked very slowly to the table where
the morning papers were laid, but she did not put out her hand to take one; she stood still, thinking, with her
head a little sunk upon her shoulders. She looked curiously old, and from the way in which she stood, a little
hunched together and very massive, you could see what she would be like when she was really old, how she
would sit day after day in her chair looking placidly in front of her. Other people began to come into the room,
and to pass her, but she did not speak to any of them or even look at them, and at last, as if it were necessary
to do something, she sat down in a chair, and looked quietly and fixedly in front of her. She felt very old this
morning, and useless too, as if her life had been a failure, as if it had been hard and laborious to no purpose.
She did not want to go on living, and yet she knew that she would. She was so strong that she would live to be
a very old woman. She would probably live to be eighty, and as she was now fifty, that left thirty years more
for her to live. She turned her hands over and over in her lap and looked at them curiously; her old hands, that
had done so much work for her. There did not seem to be much point in it all; one went on, of course one went
on. . . . She looked up to see Mrs. Thornbury standing beside her, with lines drawn upon her forehead, and her
lips parted as if she were about to ask a question.
Miss Allan anticipated her.
"Yes," she said. "She died this morning, very early, about three o'clock."
Mrs. Thornbury made a little exclamation, drew her lips together, and the tears rose in her eyes. Through them
she looked at the hall which was now laid with great breadths of sunlight, and at the careless, casual groups of
people who were standing beside the solid arm−chairs and tables. They looked to her unreal, or as people look
who remain unconscious that some great explosion is about to take place beside them. But there was no
Chapter XXVI 200
explosion, and they went on standing by the chairs and the tables. Mrs. Thornbury no longer saw them, but,
penetrating through them as though they were without substance, she saw the house, the people in the house,
the room, the bed in the room, and the figure of the dead lying still in the dark beneath the sheets. She could
almost see the dead. She could almost hear the voices of the mourners.
"They expected it?" she asked at length.
Miss Allan could only shake her head.
"I know nothing," she replied, "except what Mrs. Flushing's maid told me. She died early this morning."
The two women looked at each other with a quiet significant gaze, and then, feeling oddly dazed, and seeking
she did not know exactly what, Mrs. Thornbury went slowly upstairs and walked quietly along the passages,
touching the wall with her fingers as if to guide herself. Housemaids were passing briskly from room to room,
but Mrs. Thornbury avoided them; she hardly saw them; they seemed to her to be in another world. She did
not even look up directly when Evelyn stopped her. It was evident that Evelyn had been lately in tears, and
when she looked at Mrs. Thornbury she began to cry again. Together they drew into the hollow of a window,
and stood there in silence. Broken words formed themselves at last among Evelyn's sobs. "It was wicked," she
sobbed, "it was cruel−−they were so happy."
Mrs. Thornbury patted her on the shoulder.
"It seems hard−−very hard," she said. She paused and looked out over the slope of the hill at the Ambroses'
villa; the windows were blazing in the sun, and she thought how the soul of the dead had passed from those
windows. Something had passed from the world. It seemed to her strangely empty.
"And yet the older one grows," she continued, her eyes regaining more than their usual brightness, "the more
certain one becomes that there is a reason. How could one go on if there were no reason?" she asked.
She asked the question of some one, but she did not ask it of Evelyn. Evelyn's sobs were becoming quieter.
"There must be a reason," she said. "It can't only be an accident. For it was an accident−−it need never have
happened."
Mrs. Thornbury sighed deeply.
"But we must not let ourselves think of that," she added, "and let us hope that they don't either. Whatever they
had done it might have been the same. These terrible illnesses−−"
"There's no reason−−I don't believe there's any reason at all!" Evelyn broke out, pulling the blind down and
letting it fly back with a little snap.
"Why should these things happen? Why should people suffer? I honestly believe," she went on, lowering her
voice slightly, "that Rachel's in Heaven, but Terence. . . ."
"What's the good of it all?" she demanded.
Mrs. Thornbury shook her head slightly but made no reply, and pressing Evelyn's hand she went on down the
passage. Impelled by a strong desire to hear something, although she did not know exactly what there was to
hear, she was making her way to the Flushings' room. As she opened their door she felt that she had
interrupted some argument between husband and wife. Mrs. Flushing was sitting with her back to the light,
and Mr. Flushing was standing near her, arguing and trying to persuade her of something.
Chapter XXVI 201
"Ah, here is Mrs. Thornbury," he began with some relief in his voice. "You have heard, of course. My wife
feels that she was in some way responsible. She urged poor Miss Vinrace to come on the expedition. I'm sure
you will agree with me that it is most unreasonable to feel that. We don't even know−−in fact I think it most
unlikely−−that she caught her illness there. These diseases−−Besides, she was set on going. She would have
gone whether you asked her or not, Alice."
"Don't, Wilfrid," said Mrs. Flushing, neither moving nor taking her eyes off the spot on the floor upon which
they rested. "What's the use of talking? What's the use−−?" She ceased.
"I was coming to ask you," said Mrs. Thornbury, addressing Wilfrid, for it was useless to speak to his wife.
"Is there anything you think that one could do? Has the father arrived? Could one go and see?"
The strongest wish in her being at this moment was to be able to do something for the unhappy people−−to
see them−−to assure them−−to help them. It was dreadful to be so far away from them. But Mr. Flushing
shook his head; he did not think that now−−later perhaps one might be able to help. Here Mrs. Flushing rose
stiffly, turned her back to them, and walked to the dressing−room opposite. As she walked, they could see her
breast slowly rise and slowly fall. But her grief was silent. She shut the door behind her.
When she was alone by herself she clenched her fists together, and began beating the back of a chair with
them. She was like a wounded animal. She hated death; she was furious, outraged, indignant with death, as if
it were a living creature. She refused to relinquish her friends to death. She would not submit to dark and
nothingness. She began to pace up and down, clenching her hands, and making no attempt to stop the quick
tears which raced down her cheeks. She sat still at last, but she did not submit. She looked stubborn and strong
when she had ceased to cry.
In the next room, meanwhile, Wilfrid was talking to Mrs. Thornbury with greater freedom now that his wife
was not sitting there.
"That's the worst of these places," he said. "People will behave as though they were in England, and they're
not. I've no doubt myself that Miss Vinrace caught the infection up at the villa itself. She probably ran risks a
dozen times a day that might have given her the illness. It's absurd to say she caught it with us."
If he had not been sincerely sorry for them he would have been annoyed. "Pepper tells me," he continued,
"that he left the house because he thought them so careless. He says they never washed their vegetables
properly. Poor people! It's a fearful price to pay. But it's only what I've seen over and over again−−people
seem to forget that these things happen, and then they do happen, and they're surprised."
Mrs. Thornbury agreed with him that they had been very careless, and that there was no reason whatever to
think that she had caught the fever on the expedition; and after talking about other things for a short time, she
left him and went sadly along the passage to her own room. There must be some reason why such things
happen, she thought to herself, as she shut the door. Only at first it was not easy to understand what it was. It
seemed so strange−−so unbelievable. Why, only three weeks ago−−only a fortnight ago, she had seen Rachel;
when she shut her eyes she could almost see her now, the quiet, shy girl who was going to be married. She
thought of all that she would have missed had she died at Rachel's age, the children, the married life, the
unimaginable depths and miracles that seemed to her, as she looked back, to have lain about her, day after
day, and year after year. The stunned feeling, which had been making it difficult for her to think, gradually
gave way to a feeling of the opposite nature; she thought very quickly and very clearly, and, looking back
over all her experiences, tried to fit them into a kind of order. There was undoubtedly much suffering, much
struggling, but, on the whole, surely there was a balance of happiness−−surely order did prevail. Nor were the
deaths of young people really the saddest things in life−−they were saved so much; they kept so much. The
dead−−she called to mind those who had died early, accidentally−−were beautiful; she often dreamt of the
dead. And in time Terence himself would come to feel−−She got up and began to wander restlessly about the
Chapter XXVI 202
room.
For an old woman of her age she was very restless, and for one of her clear, quick mind she was unusually
perplexed. She could not settle to anything, so that she was relieved when the door opened. She went up to her
husband, took him in her arms, and kissed him with unusual intensity, and then as they sat down together she
began to pat him and question him as if he were a baby, an old, tired, querulous baby. She did not tell him
about Miss Vinrace's death, for that would only disturb him, and he was put out already. She tried to discover
why he was uneasy. Politics again? What were those horrid people doing? She spent the whole morning in
discussing politics with her husband, and by degrees she became deeply interested in what they were saying.
But every now and then what she was saying seemed to her oddly empty of meaning.
At luncheon it was remarked by several people that the visitors at the hotel were beginning to leave; there
were fewer every day. There were only forty people at luncheon, instead of the sixty that there had been. So
old Mrs. Paley computed, gazing about her with her faded eyes, as she took her seat at her own table in the
window. Her party generally consisted of Mr. Perrott as well as Arthur and Susan, and to−day Evelyn was
lunching with them also.
She was unusually subdued. Having noticed that her eyes were red, and guessing the reason, the others took
pains to keep up an elaborate conversation between themselves. She suffered it to go on for a few minutes,
leaning both elbows on the table, and leaving her soup untouched, when she exclaimed suddenly, "I don't
know how you feel, but I can simply think of nothing else!"
The gentlemen murmured sympathetically, and looked grave.
Susan replied, "Yes−−isn't it perfectly awful? When you think what a nice girl she was−−only just engaged,
and this need never have happened−−it seems too tragic." She looked at Arthur as though he might be able to
help her with something more suitable.
"Hard lines," said Arthur briefly. "But it was a foolish thing to do−−to go up that river." He shook his head.
"They should have known better. You can't expect Englishwomen to stand roughing it as the natives do
who've been acclimatised. I'd half a mind to warn them at tea that day when it was being discussed. But it's no
good saying these sort of things−−it only puts people's backs up−−it never makes any difference."
Old Mrs. Paley, hitherto contented with her soup, here intimated, by raising one hand to her ear, that she
wished to know what was being said.
"You heard, Aunt Emma, that poor Miss Vinrace has died of the fever," Susan informed her gently. She could
not speak of death loudly or even in her usual voice, so that Mrs. Paley did not catch a word. Arthur came to
the rescue.
"Miss Vinrace is dead," he said very distinctly.
Mrs. Paley merely bent a little towards him and asked, "Eh?"
"Miss Vinrace is dead," he repeated. It was only by stiffening all the muscles round his mouth that he could
prevent himself from bursting into laughter, and forced himself to repeat for the third time, "Miss Vinrace. . . .
She's dead."
Let alone the difficulty of hearing the exact words, facts that were outside her daily experience took some
time to reach Mrs. Paley's consciousness. A weight seemed to rest upon her brain, impeding, though not
damaging its action. She sat vague−eyed for at least a minute before she realised what Arthur meant.
Chapter XXVI 203
"Dead?" she said vaguely. "Miss Vinrace dead? Dear me . . . that's very sad. But I don't at the moment
remember which she was. We seem to have made so many new acquaintances here." She looked at Susan for
help. "A tall dark girl, who just missed being handsome, with a high colour?"
"No," Susan interposed. "She was−−" then she gave it up in despair. There was no use in explaining that Mrs.
Paley was thinking of the wrong person.
"She ought not to have died," Mrs. Paley continued. "She looked so strong. But people will drink the water. I
can never make out why. It seems such a simple thing to tell them to put a bottle of Seltzer water in your
bedroom. That's all the precaution I've ever taken, and I've been in every part of the world, I may say−−Italy a
dozen times over. . . . But young people always think they know better, and then they pay the penalty. Poor
thing−−I am very sorry for her." But the difficulty of peering into a dish of potatoes and helping herself
engrossed her attention.
Arthur and Susan both secretly hoped that the subject was now disposed of, for there seemed to them
something unpleasant in this discussion. But Evelyn was not ready to let it drop. Why would people never talk
about the things that mattered?
"I don't believe you care a bit!" she said, turning savagely upon Mr. Perrott, who had sat all this time in
silence.
"I? Oh, yes, I do," he answered awkwardly, but with obvious sincerity. Evelyn's questions made him too feel
uncomfortable.
"It seems so inexplicable," Evelyn continued. "Death, I mean. Why should she be dead, and not you or I? It
was only a fortnight ago that she was here with the rest of us. What d'you believe?" she demanded of mr.
Perrott. "D'you believe that things go on, that she's still somewhere−−or d'you think it's simply a game−−we
crumble up to nothing when we die? I'm positive Rachel's not dead."
Mr. Perrott would have said almost anything that Evelyn wanted him to say, but to assert that he believed in
the immortality of the soul was not in his power. He sat silent, more deeply wrinkled than usual, crumbling
his bread.
Lest Evelyn should next ask him what he believed, Arthur, after making a pause equivalent to a full stop,
started a completely different topic.
"Supposing," he said, "a man were to write and tell you that he wanted five pounds because he had known
your grandfather, what would you do? It was this way. My grandfather−−"
"Invented a stove," said Evelyn. "I know all about that. We had one in the conservatory to keep the plants
warm."
"Didn't know I was so famous," said Arthur. "Well," he continued, determined at all costs to spin his story out
at length, "the old chap, being about the second best inventor of his day, and a capable lawyer too, died, as
they always do, without making a will. Now Fielding, his clerk, with how much justice I don't know, always
claimed that he meant to do something for him. The poor old boy's come down in the world through trying
inventions on his own account, lives in Penge over a tobacconist's shop. I've been to see him there. The
question is−−must I stump up or not? What does the abstract spirit of justice require, Perrott? Remember, I
didn't benefit under my grandfather's will, and I've no way of testing the truth of the story."
"I don't know much about the abstract spirit of justice," said Susan, smiling complacently at the others, "but
I'm certain of one thing−−he'll get his five pounds!"
Chapter XXVI 204
As Mr. Perrott proceeded to deliver an opinion, and Evelyn insisted that he was much too stingy, like all
lawyers, thinking of the letter and not of the spirit, while Mrs. Paley required to be kept informed between the
courses as to what they were all saying, the luncheon passed with no interval of silence, and Arthur
congratulated himself upon the tact with which the discussion had been smoothed over.
As they left the room it happened that Mrs. Paley's wheeled chair ran into the Elliots, who were coming
through the door, as she was going out. Brought thus to a standstill for a moment, Arthur and Susan
congratulated Hughling Elliot upon his convalescence,−−he was down, cadaverous enough, for the first
time,−−and Mr. Perrott took occasion to say a few words in private to Evelyn.
"Would there be any chance of seeing you this afternoon, about three−thirty say? I shall be in the garden, by
the fountain."
The block dissolved before Evelyn answered. But as she left them in the hall, she looked at him brightly and
said, "Half−past three, did you say? That'll suit me."
She ran upstairs with the feeling of spiritual exaltation and quickened life which the prospect of an emotional
scene always aroused in her. That Mr. Perrott was again about to propose to her, she had no doubt, and she
was aware that on this occasion she ought to be prepared with a definite answer, for she was going away in
three days' time. But she could not bring her mind to bear upon the question. To come to a decision was very
difficult to her, because she had a natural dislike of anything final and done with; she liked to go on and
on−−always on and on. She was leaving, and, therefore, she occupied herself in laying her clothes out side by
side upon the bed. She observed that some were very shabby. She took the photograph of her father and
mother, and, before she laid it away in her box, she held it for a minute in her hand. Rachel had looked at it.
Suddenly the keen feeling of some one's personality, which things that they have owned or handled sometimes
preserves, overcame her; she felt Rachel in the room with her; it was as if she were on a ship at sea, and the
life of the day was as unreal as the land in the distance. But by degrees the feeling of Rachel's presence passed
away, and she could no longer realise her, for she had scarcely known her. But this momentary sensation left
her depressed and fatigued. What had she done with her life? What future was there before her? What was
make−believe, and what was real? Were these proposals and intimacies and adventures real, or was the
contentment which she had seen on the faces of Susan and Rachel more real than anything she had ever felt?
She made herself ready to go downstairs, absentmindedly, but her fingers were so well trained that they did
the work of preparing her almost of their own accord. When she was actually on the way downstairs, the
blood began to circle through her body of its own accord too, for her mind felt very dull.
Mr. Perrott was waiting for her. Indeed, he had gone straight into the garden after luncheon, and had been
walking up and down the path for more than half an hour, in a state of acute suspense.
"I'm late as usual!" she exclaimed, as she caught sight of him. "Well, you must forgive me; I had to pack up. .
. . My word! It looks stormy! And that's a new steamer in the bay, isn't it?"
She looked at the bay, in which a steamer was just dropping anchor, the smoke still hanging about it, while a
swift black shudder ran through the waves. "One's quite forgotten what rain looks like," she added.
But Mr. Perrott paid no attention to the steamer or to the weather.
"Miss Murgatroyd," he began with his usual formality, "I asked you to come here from a very selfish motive, I
fear. I do not think you need to be assured once more of my feelings; but, as you are leaving so soon, I felt
that I could not let you go without asking you to tell me−−have I any reason to hope that you will ever come
to care for me?"
Chapter XXVI 205
He was very pale, and seemed unable to say any more.
The little gush of vitality which had come into Evelyn as she ran downstairs had left her, and she felt herself
impotent. There was nothing for her to say; she felt nothing. Now that he was actually asking her, in his
elderly gentle words, to marry him, she felt less for him than she had ever felt before.
"Let's sit down and talk it over," she said rather unsteadily.
Mr. Perrott followed her to a curved green seat under a tree. They looked at the fountain in front of them,
which had long ceased to play. Evelyn kept looking at the fountain instead of thinking of what she was
saying; the fountain without any water seemed to be the type of her own being.
"Of course I care for you," she began, rushing her words out in a hurry; "I should be a brute if I didn't. I think
you're quite one of the nicest people I've ever known, and one of the finest too. But I wish . . . I wish you
didn't care for me in that way. Are you sure you do?" For the moment she honestly desired that he should say
no.
"Quite sure," said Mr. Perrott.
"You see, I'm not as simple as most women," Evelyn continued. "I think I want more. I don't know exactly
what I feel."
He sat by her, watching her and refraining from speech.
"I sometimes think I haven't got it in me to care very much for one person only. Some one else would make
you a better wife. I can imagine you very happy with some one else."
"If you think that there is any chance that you will come to care for me, I am quite content to wait," said Mr.
Perrott.
"Well−−there's no hurry, is there?" said Evelyn. "Suppose I thought it over and wrote and told you when I get
back? I'm going to Moscow; I'll write from Moscow."
But Mr. Perrott persisted.
"You cannot give me any kind of idea. I do not ask for a date . . . that would be most unreasonable." He
paused, looking down at the gravel path.
As she did not immediately answer, he went on.
"I know very well that I am not−−that I have not much to offer you either in myself or in my circumstances.
And I forget; it cannot seem the miracle to you that it does to me. Until I met you I had gone on in my own
quiet way−−we are both very quiet people, my sister and I−−quite content with my lot. My friendship with
Arthur was the most important thing in my life. Now that I know you, all that has changed. You seem to put
such a spirit into everything. Life seems to hold so many possibilities that I had never dreamt of."
"That's splendid!" Evelyn exclaimed, grasping his hand. "Now you'll go back and start all kinds of things and
make a great name in the world; and we'll go on being friends, whatever happens . . . we'll be great friends,
won't we?"
"Evelyn!" he moaned suddenly, and took her in his arms, and kissed her. She did not resent it, although it
made little impression on her.
Chapter XXVI 206
As she sat upright again, she said, "I never see why one shouldn't go on being friends−−though some people
do. And friendships do make a difference, don't they? They are the kind of things that matter in one's life?"
He looked at her with a bewildered expression as if he did not really understand what she was saying. With a
considerable effort he collected himself, stood up, and said, "Now I think I have told you what I feel, and I
will only add that I can wait as long as ever you wish."
Left alone, Evelyn walked up and down the path. What did matter than? What was the meaning of it all?

Chapter XXVII


All that evening the clouds gathered, until they closed entirely over the blue of the sky. They seemed to
narrow the space between earth and heaven, so that there was no room for the air to move in freely; and the
waves, too, lay flat, and yet rigid, as if they were restrained. The leaves on the bushes and trees in the garden
hung closely together, and the feeling of pressure and restraint was increased by the short chirping sounds
which came from birds and insects.
So strange were the lights and the silence that the busy hum of voices which usually filled the dining−room at
meal times had distinct gaps in it, and during these silences the clatter of the knives upon plates became
audible. The first roll of thunder and the first heavy drop striking the pane caused a little stir.
"It's coming!" was said simultaneously in many different languages.
There was then a profound silence, as if the thunder had withdrawn into itself. People had just begun to eat
again, when a gust of cold air came through the open windows, lifting tablecloths and skirts, a light flashed,
and was instantly followed by a clap of thunder right over the hotel. The rain swished with it, and immediately
there were all those sounds of windows being shut and doors slamming violently which accompany a storm.
The room grew suddenly several degrees darker, for the wind seemed to be driving waves of darkness across
the earth. No one attempted to eat for a time, but sat looking out at the garden, with their forks in the air. The
flashes now came frequently, lighting up faces as if they were going to be photographed, surprising them in
tense and unnatural expressions. The clap followed close and violently upon them. Several women half rose
from their chairs and then sat down again, but dinner was continued uneasily with eyes upon the garden. The
bushes outside were ruffled and whitened, and the wind pressed upon them so that they seemed to stoop to the
ground. The waiters had to press dishes upon the diners' notice; and the diners had to draw the attention of
waiters, for they were all absorbed in looking at the storm. As the thunder showed no signs of withdrawing,
but seemed massed right overhead, while the lightning aimed straight at the garden every time, an uneasy
gloom replaced the first excitement.
Finishing the meal very quickly, people congregated in the hall, where they felt more secure than in any other
place because they could retreat far from the windows, and although they heard the thunder, they could not
see anything. A little boy was carried away sobbing in the arms of his mother.
While the storm continued, no one seemed inclined to sit down, but they collected in little groups under the
central skylight, where they stood in a yellow atmosphere, looking upwards. Now and again their faces
became white, as the lightning flashed, and finally a terrific crash came, making the panes of the skylight lift
at the joints.
"Ah!" several voices exclaimed at the same moment.
"Something struck," said a man's voice.
Chapter XXVII 207
The rain rushed down. The rain seemed now to extinguish the lightning and the thunder, and the hall became
almost dark.
After a minute or two, when nothing was heard but the rattle of water upon the glass, there was a perceptible
slackening of the sound, and then the atmosphere became lighter.
"It's over," said another voice.
At a touch, all the electric lights were turned on, and revealed a crowd of people all standing, all looking with
rather strained faces up at the skylight, but when they saw each other in the artificial light they turned at once
and began to move away. For some minutes the rain continued to rattle upon the skylight, and the thunder
gave another shake or two; but it was evident from the clearing of the darkness and the light drumming of the
rain upon the roof, that the great confused ocean of air was travelling away from them, and passing high over
head with its clouds and its rods of fire, out to sea. The building, which had seemed so small in the tumult of
the storm, now became as square and spacious as usual.
As the storm drew away, the people in the hall of the hotel sat down; and with a comfortable sense of relief,
began to tell each other stories about great storms, and produced in many cases their occupations for the
evening. The chess−board was brought out, and Mr. Elliot, who wore a stock instead of a collar as a sign of
convalescence, but was otherwise much as usual, challenged Mr. Pepper to a final contest. Round them
gathered a group of ladies with pieces of needlework, or in default of needlework, with novels, to superintend
the game, much as if they were in charge of two small boys playing marbles. Every now and then they looked
at the board and made some encouraging remark to the gentlemen.
Mrs. Paley just round the corner had her cards arranged in long ladders before her, with Susan sitting near to
sympathise but not to correct, and the merchants and the miscellaneous people who had never been discovered
to possess names were stretched in their arm−chairs with their newspapers on their knees. The conversation in
these circumstances was very gentle, fragmentary, and intermittent, but the room was full of the indescribable
stir of life. Every now and then the moth, which was now grey of wing and shiny of thorax, whizzed over their
heads, and hit the lamps with a thud.
A young woman put down her needlework and exclaimed, "Poor creature! it would be kinder to kill it." But
nobody seemed disposed to rouse himself in order to kill the moth. They watched it dash from lamp to lamp,
because they were comfortable, and had nothing to do.
On the sofa, beside the chess−players, Mrs. Elliot was imparting a new stitch in knitting to Mrs. Thornbury, so
that their heads came very near together, and were only to be distinguished by the old lace cap which Mrs.
Thornbury wore in the evening. Mrs. Elliot was an expert at knitting, and disclaimed a compliment to that
effect with evident pride.
"I suppose we're all proud of something," she said, "and I'm proud of my knitting. I think things like that run
in families. We all knit well. I had an uncle who knitted his own socks to the day of his death−−and he did it
better than any of his daughters, dear old gentleman. Now I wonder that you, Miss Allan, who use your eyes
so much, don't take up knitting in the evenings. You'd find it such a relief, I should say−−such a rest to the
eyes−−and the bazaars are so glad of things." Her voice dropped into the smooth half−conscious tone of the
expert knitter; the words came gently one after another. "As much as I do I can always dispose of, which is a
comfort, for then I feel that I am not wasting my time−−"
Miss Allan, being thus addressed, shut her novel and observed the others placidly for a time. At last she said,
"It is surely not natural to leave your wife because she happens to be in love with you. But that−−as far as I
can make out−−is what the gentleman in my story does."
Chapter XXVII 208
"Tut, tut, that doesn't sound good−−no, that doesn't sound at all natural," murmured the knitters in their
absorbed voices.
"Still, it's the kind of book people call very clever," Miss Allan added.
"Maternity−−by Michael Jessop−−I presume," Mr. Elliot put in, for he could never resist the temptation of
talking while he played chess.
"D'you know," said Mrs. Elliot, after a moment, "I don't think people do write good novels now−−not as good
as they used to, anyhow."
No one took the trouble to agree with her or to disagree with her. Arthur Venning who was strolling about,
sometimes looking at the game, sometimes reading a page of a magazine, looked at Miss Allan, who was half
asleep, and said humorously, "A penny for your thoughts, Miss Allan."
The others looked up. They were glad that he had not spoken to them. But Miss Allan replied without any
hesitation, "I was thinking of my imaginary uncle. Hasn't every one got an imaginary uncle?" she continued.
"I have one−−a most delightful old gentleman. He's always giving me things. Sometimes it's a gold watch;
sometimes it's a carriage and pair; sometimes it's a beautiful little cottage in the New Forest; sometimes it's a
ticket to the place I most want to see."
She set them all thinking vaguely of the things they wanted. Mrs. Elliot knew exactly what she wanted; she
wanted a child; and the usual little pucker deepened on her brow.
"We're such lucky people," she said, looking at her husband. "We really have no wants." She was apt to say
this, partly in order to convince herself, and partly in order to convince other people. But she was prevented
from wondering how far she carried conviction by the entrance of Mr. and Mrs. Flushing, who came through
the hall and stopped by the chess−board. Mrs. Flushing looked wilder than ever. A great strand of black hair
looped down across her brow, her cheeks were whipped a dark blood red, and drops of rain made wet marks
upon them.
Mr. Flushing explained that they had been on the roof watching the storm.
"It was a wonderful sight," he said. "The lightning went right out over the sea, and lit up the waves and the
ships far away. You can't think how wonderful the mountains looked too, with the lights on them, and the
great masses of shadow. It's all over now."
He slid down into a chair, becoming interested in the final struggle of the game.
"And you go back to−morrow?" said Mrs. Thornbury, looking at Mrs. Flushing.
"Yes," she replied.
"And indeed one is not sorry to go back," said Mrs. Elliot, assuming an air of mournful anxiety, "after all this
illness."
"Are you afraid of dyin'?" Mrs. Flushing demanded scornfully.
"I think we are all afraid of that," said Mrs. Elliot with dignity.
"I suppose we're all cowards when it comes to the point," said Mrs. Flushing, rubbing her cheek against the
back of the chair. "I'm sure I am."
Chapter XXVII 209
"Not a bit of it!" said Mr. Flushing, turning round, for Mr. Pepper took a very long time to consider his move.
"It's not cowardly to wish to live, Alice. It's the very reverse of cowardly. Personally, I'd like to go on for a
hundred years−−granted, of course, that I had the full use of my faculties. Think of all the things that are
bound to happen!" "That is what I feel," Mrs. Thornbury rejoined. "The changes, the improvements, the
inventions−−and beauty. D'you know I feel sometimes that I couldn't bear to die and cease to see beautiful
things about me?"
"It would certainly be very dull to die before they have discovered whether there is life in Mars," Miss Allan
added.
"Do you really believe there's life in Mars?" asked Mrs. Flushing, turning to her for the first time with keen
interest. "Who tells you that? Some one who knows? D'you know a man called−−?"
Here Mrs. Thornbury laid down her knitting, and a look of extreme solicitude came into her eyes.
"There is Mr. Hirst," she said quietly.
St. John had just come through the swing door. He was rather blown about by the wind, and his cheeks looked
terribly pale, unshorn, and cavernous. After taking off his coat he was going to pass straight through the hall
and up to his room, but he could not ignore the presence of so many people he knew, especially as Mrs.
Thornbury rose and went up to him, holding out her hand. But the shock of the warm lamp−lit room, together
with the sight of so many cheerful human beings sitting together at their ease, after the dark walk in the rain,
and the long days of strain and horror, overcame him completely. He looked at Mrs. Thornbury and could not
speak.
Every one was silent. Mr. Pepper's hand stayed upon his Knight. Mrs. Thornbury somehow moved him to a
chair, sat herself beside him, and with tears in her own eyes said gently, "You have done everything for your
friend."
Her action set them all talking again as if they had never stopped, and Mr. Pepper finished the move with his
Knight.
"There was nothing to be done," said St. John. He spoke very slowly. "It seems impossible−−"
He drew his hand across his eyes as if some dream came between him and the others and prevented him from
seeing where he was.
"And that poor fellow," said Mrs. Thornbury, the tears falling again down her cheeks.
"Impossible," St. John repeated.
"Did he have the consolation of knowing−−?" Mrs. Thornbury began very tentatively.
But St. John made no reply. He lay back in his chair, half−seeing the others, half−hearing what they said. He
was terribly tired, and the light and warmth, the movements of the hands, and the soft communicative voices
soothed him; they gave him a strange sense of quiet and relief. As he sat there, motionless, this feeling of
relief became a feeling of profound happiness. Without any sense of disloyalty to Terence and Rachel he
ceased to think about either of them. The movements and the voices seemed to draw together from different
parts of the room, and to combine themselves into a pattern before his eyes; he was content to sit silently
watching the pattern build itself up, looking at what he hardly saw.
The game was really a good one, and Mr. Pepper and Mr. Elliot were becoming more and more set upon the
Chapter XXVII 210
struggle. Mrs. Thornbury, seeing that St. John did not wish to talk, resumed her knitting.
"Lightning again!" Mrs. Flushing suddenly exclaimed. A yellow light flashed across the blue window, and for
a second they saw the green trees outside. She strode to the door, pushed it open, and stood half out in the
open air.
But the light was only the reflection of the storm which was over. The rain had ceased, the heavy clouds were
blown away, and the air was thin and clear, although vapourish mists were being driven swiftly across the
moon. The sky was once more a deep and solemn blue, and the shape of the earth was visible at the bottom of
the air, enormous, dark, and solid, rising into the tapering mass of the mountain, and pricked here and there on
the slopes by the tiny lights of villas. The driving air, the drone of the trees, and the flashing light which now
and again spread a broad illumination over the earth filled Mrs. Flushing with exultation. Her breasts rose and
fell.
"Splendid! Splendid!" she muttered to herself. Then she turned back into the hall and exclaimed in a
peremptory voice, "Come outside and see, Wilfrid; it's wonderful."
Some half−stirred; some rose; some dropped their balls of wool and began to stoop to look for them.
"To bed−−to bed," said Miss Allan.
"It was the move with your Queen that gave it away, Pepper," exclaimed Mr. Elliot triumphantly, sweeping
the pieces together and standing up. He had won the game.
"What? Pepper beaten at last? I congratulate you!" said Arthur Venning, who was wheeling old Mrs. Paley to
bed.
All these voices sounded gratefully in St. John's ears as he lay half−asleep, and yet vividly conscious of
everything around him. Across his eyes passed a procession of objects, black and indistinct, the figures of
people picking up their books, their cards, their balls of wool, their work−baskets, and passing him one after
another on their way to bed.

The End