The Voyage Out Part 22

They would talk of such questions among books, or out in the sun, or sitting in the shade of a tree undisturbed. They were no longer embarra.s.sed, or half-choked with meaning which could not express itself; they were not afraid of each other, or, like travellers down a twisting river, dazzled with sudden beauties when the corner is turned; the unexpected happened, but even the ordinary was lovable, and in many ways preferable to the ecstatic and mysterious, for it was refreshingly solid, and called out effort, and effort under such circ.u.mstances was not effort but delight.

While Rachel played the piano, Terence sat near her, engaged, as far as the occasional writing of a word in pencil testified, in shaping the world as it appeared to him now that he and Rachel were going to be married. It was difficult certainly. The book called Silence would not now be the same book that it would have been. He would then put down his pencil and stare in front of him, and wonder in what respects the world was different - it had, perhaps, more solidity, more coherence, more importance, greater depth. Why, even the earth sometimes seemed to him very deep; not carved into hills and cities and fields, but heaped in great ma.s.ses. He would look out of the window for ten minutes at a time; but no, he did not care for the earth swept of human beings. He liked human beings - he liked them, he suspected, better than Rachel did. There she was, swaying enthusiastically over her music, quite forgetful of him, - but he liked that quality in her. He liked the impersonality which it produced in her. At last, having written down a series of little sentences, with notes of interrogation attached to them, he observed aloud, "Women - under the heading Women I've written: '"Not really vainer than men. Lack of self-confidence at the base of most serious faults. Dislike of own s.e.x traditional, or founded on fact? Every woman not so much a rake at heart, as an optimist, because they don't think."23 What do you say, Rachel?' He paused with his pencil in his hand and a sheet of paper on his knee. What do you say, Rachel?' He paused with his pencil in his hand and a sheet of paper on his knee.

Rachel said nothing. Up and up the steep spiral of a very late Beethoven sonata she climbed, like a person ascending a ruined staircase, energetically at first, then more laboriously advancing her feet with effort until she could go no higher and returned with a run to begin at the very bottom again.

'"Again, it's the fashion now to say that women are more practical and less idealistic than men, also that they have considerable organising ability but no sense of honour" - query, what is meant by masculine term, honour? - what corresponds to it in your s.e.x? Eh?'

Attacking her staircase once more, Rachel again neglected this opportunity of revealing the secrets of her s.e.x. She had, indeed, advanced so far in the pursuit of wisdom that she allowed these secrets to rest undisturbed; it seemed to be reserved for a later generation to discuss them philosophically.

Crashing down a final chord with her left hand, she exclaimed at last, swinging round upon him: 'No, Terence, it's no good; here am I, the best musician in South America, not to speak of Europe and Asia, and I can't play a note because of you in the room interrupting me every other second.'

'You don't seem to realise that that's what I've been aiming at for the last half-hour,' he remarked. 'I've no objection to nice simple tunes - indeed, I find them very helpful to my literary composition, but that kind of thing is merely like an unfortunate old dog going round on its hind legs in the rain.'

He began turning over the little sheets of notepaper which were scattered on the table, conveying the congratulations of their friends.

'" - all possible wishes for all possible happiness,'" he read; 'correct, but not very vivid, are they?'

'They're sheer nonsense!' Rachel exclaimed. 'Think of words compared with sounds!' she continued. 'Think of novels and plays and histories - ' Perched on the edge of the table, she stirred the red and yellow volumes contemptuously. She seemed to herself to be in a position where she could despise all human learning. Terence looked at them too.

'G.o.d, Rachel, you do read trash!' he exclaimed. 'And you're behind the times too, my dear. No one dreams of reading this kind of thing now - antiquated problem plays, harrowing descriptions of life in the east end - oh, no, we've exploded all that. Read poetry, Rachel, poetry, poetry, poetry!'

Picking up one of the books, he began to read aloud, his intention being to satirise the short sharp bark of the writer's English; but she paid no attention, and after an interval of meditation exclaimed: 'Does it ever seem to you, Terence, that the world is composed entirely of vast blocks of matter, and that we're nothing but patches of light - ' she looked at the soft spots of sun wavering over the carpet and up the wall - 'like that?'

'No,' said Terence, 'I feel solid; immensely solid; the legs of my chair might be rooted in the bowels of the earth. But at Cambridge, I can remember, there were times when one fell into ridiculous states of semi-coma about five o'clock in the morning. Hirst does now, I expect - oh, no, Hirst wouldn't.'

Rachel continued, 'The day your note came, asking us to go on the picnic, I was sitting where you're sitting now, thinking that; I wonder if I couldn't think that again? I wonder if the world's changed? and if so, when it'll stop changing, and which is the real world?'

'When I first saw you,' he began, 'I thought you were like a creature who'd lived all its life among pearls and old bones. Your hands were wet, d'you remember, and you never said a word until I gave you a bit of bread, and then you said, "Human Beings!"'

And I thought you - a prig,' she recollected. 'No; that's not quite it. There were the ants who stole the tongue, and I thought you and St. John were like those ants - very big, very ugly, very energetic, with all your virtues on your backs. However, when I talked to you I liked you - '

'You fell in love with me,' he corrected her. 'You were in love with me all the time, only you didn't know it.'

'No, I never fell in love with you,' she a.s.serted.

'Rachel - what a lie - didn't you sit here looking at my window - didn't you wander about the hotel like an owl in the sun - ?'

'No,' she repeated, 'I never fell in love, if falling in love is what people say it is, and it's the world that tells the lies and I tell the truth. Oh, what lies - what lies!'

She crumpled together a handful of letters from Evelyn M., from Mr. Pepper, from Mrs. Thornbury and Miss Allan, and Susan Warrington. It was strange, considering how very different these people were, that they used almost the same sentences when they wrote to congratulate her upon her engagement.

That any one of these people had ever felt what she felt, or could ever feel it, or had even the right to pretend for a single second that they were capable of feeling it, appalled her much as the church service had done, much as the face of the hospital nurse had done; and if they didn't feel a thing why did they go and pretend to? The simplicity and arrogance and hardness of her youth, now concentrated into a single spark as it was by her love of him, puzzled Terence; being engaged had not that effect on him; the world was different, but not in that way; he still wanted the things he had always wanted, and in particular he wanted the companionship of other people more than ever perhaps. He took the letters out of her hand, and protested: 'Of course they're absurd, Rachel; of course they say things just because other people say them, but even so, what a nice woman Miss Allan is; you can't deny that; and Mrs. Thornbury too; she's got too many children I grant you, but if half a-dozen of them had gone to the bad instead of rising infallibly to the tops of their trees - hasn't she a kind of beauty - of elemental simplicity as Flushing would say? Isn't she rather like a large old tree murmuring in the moonlight, or a river going on and on and on? By the way, Ralph's been made governor of the Carroway Islands - the youngest governor in the service; very good, isn't it?'

But Rachel was at present unable to conceive that the vast majority of the affairs of the world went on unconnected by a single thread with her own destiny.

'I won't have eleven children,' she a.s.serted; 'I won't have the eyes of an old woman. She looks at one up and down, up and down, as if one were a horse.'

'We must have a son and we must have a daughter,' said Terence, putting down the letters, 'because, let alone the inestimable advantage of being our children, they'd be so well brought up.' They went on to sketch an outline of the ideal education - how their daughter should be required from infancy to gaze at a large square of cardboard, painted blue, to suggest thoughts of infinity, for women were grown too practical; and their son - he should be taught to laugh at great men, that is, at distinguished successful men, at men who wore ribands and rose to the tops of their trees. He should in no way resemble (Rachel added) St. John Hirst.

At this Terence professed the greatest admiration for St. John Hirst. Dwelling upon his good qualities he became seriously convinced of them; he had a mind like a torpedo, he declared, aimed at falsehood. Where should we all be without him and his like? Choked in weeds; Christians, bigots - why, Rachel herself, would be a slave with a fan to sing songs to men when they felt drowsy.

'But you'll never see it!' he exclaimed; 'because with all your virtues you don't, and you never will, care with every fibre of your being for the pursuit of truth! You've no respect for facts, Rachel; you're essentially feminine.'

She did not trouble to deny it, nor did she think good to produce the one unanswerable argument against the merits which Terence admired. St. John had said that she was in love with him; she would never forgive that; but the argument was not one to appeal to a man.

'But I like him,' she said, and she thought to herself that she also pitied him, as one pities those unfortunate people who are outside the warm mysterious globe full of changes and miracles in which we ourselves move about; she thought that it must be very dull to be St. John Hirst.

She summed up what she felt about him by saying that she would not kiss him supposing he wished it, which was not likely.

As if some apology were due to Hirst for the kiss which she then bestowed upon him, Terence protested: And compared with Hirst I'm a perfect Zany.'

The clock here struck twelve instead of eleven.

'We're wasting the morning - I ought to be writing my book, and you ought to be answering these.'

'We've only got twenty-one whole mornings left,' said Rachel. And my father'll be here in a day or two.'

However, she drew a pen and paper towards her and began to write laboriously, 'My dear Evelyn - '

Terence, meanwhile, read a novel which some one else had written, a process which he found essential to the composition of his own. For a considerable time nothing was to be heard but the ticking of the clock and the fitful scratch of Rachel's pen, as she produced phrases which bore a considerable likeness to those which she had condemned. She was struck by it herself, for she stopped writing and looked up; looked at Terence deep in the arm-chair, looked at the different pieces of furniture, at her bed in the corner, at the window-pane which showed the branches of a tree filled in with sky, heard the clock ticking, and was amazed at the gulf which lay between all that and her sheet of paper. Would there ever be a time when the world was one and indivisible? Even with Terence himself - how far apart they could be, how little she knew what was pa.s.sing in his brain now! She then finished her sentence, which was awkward and ugly, and stated that they were 'both very happy, and are going to be married in the autumn probably and hope to live in London, where we hope you will come and see us when we get back.' Choosing 'affectionately,' after some further speculation, rather than sincerely, she signed the letter and was doggedly beginning on another when Terence remarked, quoting from his book: 'Listen to this, Rachel. "It is probable that Hugh" (he's the hero, a literary man), "had not realised at the time of his marriage, any more than the young man of parts and imagination usually does realise, the nature of the gulf which separates the needs and desires of the male from the needs and desires of the female ...br At first they had been very happy. The walking tour in Switzerland had been a time of jolly companionship and stimulating revelations for both of them. Betty had proved herself the ideal comrade ... They had shouted At first they had been very happy. The walking tour in Switzerland had been a time of jolly companionship and stimulating revelations for both of them. Betty had proved herself the ideal comrade ... They had shouted Love in the Valley Love in the Valley24 to each other across the snowy slopes of the Riffelhorn" (and so on, and so on - I'll skip the descriptions) ... "But in London, after the boy's birth, all was changed. Betty was an admirable mother; but it did not take her long to find out that motherhood, as that function is understood by the mother of the upper middle cla.s.ses, did not absorb the whole of her energies. She was young and strong, with healthy limbs and a body and brain that called urgently for exercise ..." (In short she began to give tea-parties.) ... "Coming in late from this singular talk with old Bob Murphy in his smoky, book-lined room, where the two men had each unloosened his soul to the other, with the sound of the traffic humming in his ears, and the foggy London sky slung tragically across his mind . . . he found women's hats dotted about among his papers. Women's wraps and absurd little feminine shoes and umbrellas were in the hall . . . Then the bills began to come in . . . He tried to speak frankly to her. He found her lying on the great polar-bear skin in their bedroom, half-undressed, for they were dining with the Greens in Wilton Crescent, the ruddy firelight making the diamonds wink and twinkle on her bare arms and in the delicious curve of her breast - a vision of adorable femininity. He forgave her all." (Well, this goes from bad to worse, and finally, about fifty pages later, Hugh takes a week-end ticket to Swanage and "has it out with himself on the downs above Corfe." . . . Here there's fifteen pages or so which we'll skip. The conclusion is . . .) "They were different. Perhaps, in the far future, when generations of men had struggled and failed as he must now struggle and fail, woman would be, indeed, what she now made a pretence of being - the friend and companion - not the enemy and parasite of man."' to each other across the snowy slopes of the Riffelhorn" (and so on, and so on - I'll skip the descriptions) ... "But in London, after the boy's birth, all was changed. Betty was an admirable mother; but it did not take her long to find out that motherhood, as that function is understood by the mother of the upper middle cla.s.ses, did not absorb the whole of her energies. She was young and strong, with healthy limbs and a body and brain that called urgently for exercise ..." (In short she began to give tea-parties.) ... "Coming in late from this singular talk with old Bob Murphy in his smoky, book-lined room, where the two men had each unloosened his soul to the other, with the sound of the traffic humming in his ears, and the foggy London sky slung tragically across his mind . . . he found women's hats dotted about among his papers. Women's wraps and absurd little feminine shoes and umbrellas were in the hall . . . Then the bills began to come in . . . He tried to speak frankly to her. He found her lying on the great polar-bear skin in their bedroom, half-undressed, for they were dining with the Greens in Wilton Crescent, the ruddy firelight making the diamonds wink and twinkle on her bare arms and in the delicious curve of her breast - a vision of adorable femininity. He forgave her all." (Well, this goes from bad to worse, and finally, about fifty pages later, Hugh takes a week-end ticket to Swanage and "has it out with himself on the downs above Corfe." . . . Here there's fifteen pages or so which we'll skip. The conclusion is . . .) "They were different. Perhaps, in the far future, when generations of men had struggled and failed as he must now struggle and fail, woman would be, indeed, what she now made a pretence of being - the friend and companion - not the enemy and parasite of man."'

'The end of it is, you see, Hugh went back to his wife, poor fellow. It was his duty, as a married man. Lord, Rachel,' he concluded, 'will it be like that when we're married?'

Instead of answering him she asked, 'Why don't people write about the things they do feel?'

Ah, that's the difficulty!' he sighed, tossing the book away.

'Well, then, what will it be like when we're married? What are the things people do feel?'

She seemed doubtful.

'Sit on the floor and let me look at you,' he commanded. Resting her chin on his knee, she looked straight at him.

He examined her curiously.

'You're not beautiful,' he began, 'but I like your face. I like the way your hair grows down in a point, and your eyes too - they never see anything. Your mouth's too big, and your cheeks would be better if they had more colour in them. But what I like about your face is that it makes one wonder what the devil you're thinking about - it makes me want to do that - ' He clenched his fist and shook it so near her that she started back, 'because now you look as if you'd blow my brains out. There are moments,' he continued, 'when, if we stood on a rock together, you'd throw me into the sea.'

Hypnotised by the force of his eyes in hers, she repeated, 'If we stood on a rock together - - '

To be flung into the sea, to be washed hither and thither, and driven about the roots of the world - the idea was incoherently delightful. She sprang up, and began moving about the room, bending and thrusting aside the chairs and tables as if she were indeed striking through the waters. He watched her with pleasure; she seemed to be cleaving a pa.s.sage for herself, and dealing triumphantly with the obstacles which would hinder their pa.s.sage through life.

'It does seem possible!' he exclaimed, 'though I've always thought it the most unlikely thing in the world - I shall be in love with you all my life, and our marriage will be the most exciting thing that's ever been done! We'll never have a moment's peace - ' He caught her in his arms as she pa.s.sed him, and they fought for mastery, imagining a rock, and the sea heaving beneath them. At last she was thrown to the floor, where she lay gasping, and crying for mercy.

'I'm a mermaid! I can swim,' she cried, 'so the game's up.' Her dress was torn across, and peace being established, she fetched a needle and thread and began to mend the tear.

'And now,' she said, 'be quiet and tell me about the world; tell me about everything that's ever happened, and I'll tell you - let me see, what can I tell you? - I'll tell you about Miss Montgomerie and the river party. She was left, you see, with one foot in the boat, and the other on sh.o.r.e.'

They had spent much time already in thus filling out for the other the course of their past lives, and the characters of their friends and relations, so that very soon Terence knew not only what Rachel's aunts might be expected to say upon every occasion, but also how their bedrooms were furnished, and what kind of bonnets they wore. He could sustain a conversation between Mrs. Hunt and Rachel, and carry on a tea-party including the Rev. William Johnson and Miss Macquoid, the Christian Scientists, with remarkable likeness to the truth. But he had known many more people, and was far more highly skilled in the art of narrative than Rachel was, whose experiences were, for the most part, of a curiously childlike and humorous kind, so that it generally fell to her lot to listen and ask questions.

He told her not only what had happened, but what he had thought and felt, and sketched for her portraits which fascinated her of what other men and women might be supposed to be thinking and feeling, so that she became very anxious to go back to England, which was full of people, where she could merely stand in the streets and look at them. According to him, too, there was an order, a pattern which made life reasonable, or, if that word was foolish, made it of deep interest anyhow, for sometimes it seemed possible to understand why things happened as they did. Nor were people so solitary and uncommunicative as she believed. She should look for vanity - for vanity was a common quality - first in herself, and then in Helen, in Ridley, in St. John, they all had their share of it - and she would find it in ten people out of every twelve she met; and once linked together by one such tie she would find them not separate and formidable, but practically indistinguishable, and she would come to love them when she found that they were like herself. If she denied this, she must defend her belief that human beings were as various as the beasts at the Zoo, which had stripes and manes, and horns and humps; and so, wrestling over the entire list of their acquaintances, and diverging into anecdote and theory and speculation, they came to know each other. The hours pa.s.sed quickly, and seemed to them full to leaking-point. After a night's solitude they were always ready to begin again.

The virtues which Mrs. Ambrose had once believed to exist in free talk between men and women did in truth exist for both of them, although not quite in the measure she prescribed. Far more than upon the nature of s.e.x they dwelt upon the nature of poetry, but it was true that talk which had no boundaries deepened and enlarged the strangely small bright view of a girl. In return for what he could tell her she brought him such curiosity and sensitiveness of perception, that he was led to doubt whether any gift bestowed by much reading and living was quite the equal of that for pleasure and pain. What would experience give her after all, except a kind of ridiculous formal balance, like that of a drilled dog in the street? He looked at her face and wondered how it would look in twenty years' time, when the eyes had dulled, and the forehead wore those little persistent wrinkles which seem to show that the middle-aged are facing something hard which the young do not see? What would the hard thing be for them, he wondered? Then his thoughts turned to their life in England.

The thought of England was delightful, for together they would see the old things freshly; it would be England in June, and there would be June nights in the country; and the nightingales singing in the lanes, into which they could steal when the room grew hot; and there would be English meadows gleaming with water and set with stolid cows, and clouds dipping low and trailing across the green hills. As he sat in the room with her, he wished very often to be back again in the thick of life, doing things with Rachel.

He crossed to the window and exclaimed, 'Lord, how good it is to think of lanes, muddy lanes, with brambles and nettles, you know, and real gra.s.s fields, and farmyards with pigs and cows, and men walking beside carts with pitchforks - there's nothing to compare with that here - look at the stony red earth, and the bright blue sea, and the glaring white houses - how tired one gets of it! And the air, without a stain or a wrinkle. I'd give anything for a sea mist.'

Rachel, too, had been thinking of the English country: the flat land rolling away to the sea, and the woods and the long straight roads, where one can walk for miles without seeing any one, and the great church towers and the curious houses cl.u.s.tered in the valleys, and the birds, and the dusk, and the rain falling against the windows.

'But London, London's the place,' Terence continued. They looked together at the carpet, as though London itself were to be seen there lying on the floor, with all its spires and pinnacles p.r.i.c.king through the smoke.

'On the whole, what I should like best at this moment,' Terence pondered, 'would be to find myself walking down Kingsway, by those big placards, you know, and turning into the Strand. Perhaps I might go and look over Waterloo Bridge for a moment. Then I'd go along the Strand past the shops with all the new books in them, and through the little archway into the Temple.bs I always like the quiet after the uproar. You hear your own footsteps suddenly quite loud. The Temple's very pleasant. I think I should go and see if I could find dear old Hodgkin - the man who writes books about Van Eyck, you know. When I left England he was very sad about his tame magpie. He suspected that a man had poisoned it. And then Russell lives on the next staircase. I think you'd like him. He's a pa.s.sion for Handel. Well, Rachel,' he concluded, dismissing the vision of London, 'we shall be doing that together in six weeks' time, and it'll be the middle of June then, - and June in London - my G.o.d! how pleasant it all is!' I always like the quiet after the uproar. You hear your own footsteps suddenly quite loud. The Temple's very pleasant. I think I should go and see if I could find dear old Hodgkin - the man who writes books about Van Eyck, you know. When I left England he was very sad about his tame magpie. He suspected that a man had poisoned it. And then Russell lives on the next staircase. I think you'd like him. He's a pa.s.sion for Handel. Well, Rachel,' he concluded, dismissing the vision of London, 'we shall be doing that together in six weeks' time, and it'll be the middle of June then, - and June in London - my G.o.d! how pleasant it all is!'

And we're certain to have it too,' she said. 'It isn't as if we were expecting a great deal - only to walk about and look at things.'

'Only a thousand a year and perfect freedom,' he replied. 'How many people in London d'you think have that?'

And now you've spoilt it,' she complained. 'Now we've got to think of the horrors.' She looked grudgingly at the novel which had once caused her perhaps an hour's discomfort, so that she had never opened it again, but kept it on her table, and looked at it occasionally, as some medieval monk kept a skull, or a crucifix to remind him of the frailty of the body.

'Is it true, Terence,' she demanded, 'that women die with bugs crawling across their faces?'25 'I think it's very probable,' he said. 'But you must admit, Rachel, that we so seldom think of anything but ourselves that an occasional twinge is really rather pleasant.'

Accusing him of an affectation of cynicism which was just as bad as sentimentality itself, she left her position by his side and knelt upon the window sill, twisting the curtain ta.s.sels between her fingers. A vague sense of dissatisfaction filled her.

'What's so detestable in this country,' she exclaimed, 'is the blue - always blue sky and blue sea. It's like a curtain - all the things one wants are on the other side of that. I want to know what's going on behind it. I hate these divisions, don't you, Terence? One person all in the dark about another person. Now I liked the Dalloways,' she continued, 'and they're gone. I shall never see them again. Just by going on a ship we cut ourselves off entirely from the rest of the world. I want to see England there - London there - all sorts of people - why shouldn't one? why should one be shut up all by oneself in a room?'

While she spoke thus half to herself and with increasing vagueness, because her eye was caught by a ship that had just come into the bay, she did not see that Terence had ceased to stare contentedly in front of him, and was looking at her keenly and with dissatisfaction. She seemed to be able to cut herself adrift from him, and to pa.s.s away to unknown places where she had no need of him. The thought roused his jealousy.

'I sometimes think you're not in love with me and never will be,' he said energetically. She started and turned round at his words.

'I don't satisfy you in the way you satisfy me,' he continued.

'There's something I can't get hold of in you. You don't want me as I want you - you're always wanting something else.'

He began pacing up and down the room.

'Perhaps I ask too much,' he went on. 'Perhaps it isn't really possible to have what I want. Men and women are too different. You can't understand - you don't understand - - - '

He came up to where she stood looking at him in silence.

It seemed to her now that what he was saying was perfectly true, and that she wanted many more things than the love of one human being - the sea, the sky. She turned again and looked at the distant blue, which was so smooth and serene where the sky met the sea; she could not possibly want only one human being.

'Or is it only this d.a.m.nable engagement?' he continued. 'Let's be married here, before we go back - or is it too great a risk? Are we sure we want to marry each other?'

They began pacing up and down the room, but although they came very near each other in their pacing, they took care not to touch each other. The hopelessness of their position overcame them both. They were impotent; they could never love each other sufficiently to overcome all these barriers, and they could never be satisfied with less. Realising this with intolerable keenness she stopped in front of him and exclaimed: 'Let's break it off, then.'

The words did more to unite them than any amount of argument. As if they stood on the edge of a precipice they clung together. They knew that they could not separate; painful and terrible it might be, but they were joined for ever. They lapsed into silence, and after a time crept together in silence. Merely to be so close soothed them, and sitting side by side the divisions disappeared, and it seemed as if the world were once more solid and entire, and as if, in some strange way, they had grown larger and stronger.

It was long before they moved, and when they moved it was with great reluctance. They stood together in front of the looking-gla.s.s, and with a brush tried to make themselves look as if they had been feeling nothing all the morning, neither pain nor happiness. But it chilled them to see themselves in the gla.s.s, for instead of being vast and indivisible they were really very small and separate, the size of the gla.s.s leaving a large s.p.a.ce for the reflection of other things.

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 munic.i.p.al 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 present moment wandering from drawing-room to 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 b.u.t.toned 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 pa.s.sed on over his head. Finally she took the chair opposite.

'I didn't want to come here,' he said at last, 'but I was positively driven to it . . . Evelyn M.,' he groaned.

He sat up, and began to explain with mock solemnity how the detestable woman was set upon marrying him.

'She pursues me about the place. This morning she appeared in the smoking-room. All I could do was to seize my hat and fly. I didn't want to come, but I couldn't stay 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? n.o.body 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 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.' 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 a.s.sured 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, for something I saw in the pa.s.sage, 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 pa.s.sed 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.'

'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?'bt After a pause Hirst remarked that the worst infamy had still to be told. He addressed himself to Helen.

'They've hoofed out the prost.i.tute. One night while we were away that old numbskull Thornbury was doddering about the pa.s.sages very late. (n.o.body seems to have asked him what he he was up to.) He saw the Signora Lola Mendoza, as she calls herself, cross the pa.s.sage 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 inquiry. Something's got to be done, don't you agree?' was up to.) He saw the Signora Lola Mendoza, as she calls herself, cross the pa.s.sage 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 inquiry. Something's got to be done, don't you agree?'

Hewet remarked that there could be no doubt as to the lady's profession.