The Voyage Out
soul. Have you any aunts?”
“I live with them,” said Rachel.
“And I wonder what they’re doing now?” Hewet enquired.
“They are probably buying wool,” Rachel determined. She tried to
describe them. “They are small, rather pale women,” she began, “very
clean. We live in Richmond. They have an old dog, too, who will only
eat the marrow out of bones. . . . They are always going to church.
They tidy their drawers a good deal.” But here she was overcome by the
difficulty of describing people.
“It’s impossible to believe that it’s all going on still!” she
exclaimed.
The sun was behind them and two long shadows suddenly lay upon the
ground in front of them, one waving because it was made by a skirt, and
the other stationary, because thrown by a pair of legs in trousers.
“You look very comfortable!” said Helen’s voice above them.
“Hirst,” said Hewet, pointing at the scissorlike shadow; he then rolled
round to look up at them.
“There’s room for us all here,” he said.
When Hirst had seated himself comfortably, he said:
“Did you congratulate the young couple?”
It appeared that, coming to the same spot a few minutes after Hewet and
Rachel, Helen and Hirst had seen precisely the same thing.
“No, we didn’t congratulate them,” said Hewet. “They seemed very
happy.”
“Well,” said Hirst, pursing up his lips, “so long as I needn’t marry
either of them—”
“We were very much moved,” said Hewet.
“I thought you would be,” said Hirst. “Which was it, Monk? The thought
of the immortal passions, or the thought of new-born males to keep the
Roman Catholics out? I assure you,” he said to Helen, “he’s capable of
being moved by either.”
Rachel was a good deal stung by his banter, which she felt to be
directed equally against them both, but she could think of no repartee.
“Nothing moves Hirst,” Hewet laughed; he did not seem to be stung at
all. “Unless it were a transfinite number falling in love with a finite
one—I suppose such things do happen, even in mathematics.”
“On the contrary,” said Hirst with a touch of annoyance, “I consider
myself a person of very strong passions.” It was clear from the way he
spoke that he meant it seriously; he spoke of course for the benefit of
the ladies.
“By the way, Hirst,” said Hewet, after a pause, “I have a terrible
confession to make. Your book—the poems of Wordsworth, which if you
remember I took off your table just as we were starting, and certainly
put in my pocket here—”
“Is lost,” Hirst finished for him.
“I consider that there is still a chance,” Hewet urged, slapping
himself to right and left, “that I never did take it after all.”
“No,” said Hirst. “It is here.” He pointed to his breast.
“Thank God,” Hewet exclaimed. “I need no longer feel as though I’d
murdered a child!”
“I should think you were always losing things,” Helen remarked, looking
at him meditatively.
“I don’t lose things,” said Hewet. “I mislay them. That was the reason
why Hirst refused to share a cabin with me on the voyage out.”
“You came out together?” Helen enquired.
“I propose that each member of this party now gives a short
biographical sketch of himself or herself,” said Hirst, sitting
upright. “Miss Vinrace, you come first; begin.”
Rachel stated that she was twenty-four years of age, the daughter of a
ship-owner, that she had never been properly educated; played the
piano, had no brothers or sisters, and lived at Richmond with aunts,
her mother being dead.
“Next,” said Hirst, having taken in these facts; he pointed at Hewet.
“I am the son of an English gentleman. I am twenty-seven,” Hewet began.
“My father was a fox-hunting squire. He died when I was ten in the
hunting field. I can remember his body coming home, on a shutter I
suppose, just as I was going down to tea, and noticing that there was
jam for tea, and wondering whether I should be allowed—”
“Yes; but keep to the facts,” Hirst put in.
“I was educated at Winchester and Cambridge, which I had to leave after
a time. I have done a good many things since—”
“Profession?”
“None—at least—”
“Tastes?”
“Literary. I’m writing a novel.”
“Brothers and sisters?”
“Three sisters, no brother, and a mother.”
“Is that all we’re to hear about you?” said Helen. She stated that she
was very old—forty last October, and her father had been a solicitor in
the city who had gone bankrupt, for which reason she had never had much
education—they lived in one place after another—but an elder brother
used to lend her books.
“If I were to tell you everything—” she stopped and smiled. “It would
take too long,” she concluded. “I married when I was thirty, and I have
two children. My husband is a scholar. And now—it’s your turn,” she
nodded at Hirst.
“You’ve left out a great deal,” he reproved her. “My name is St. John
Alaric Hirst,” he began in a jaunty tone of voice. “I’m twenty-four
years old. I’m the son of the Reverend Sidney Hirst, vicar of Great
Wappyng in Norfolk. Oh, I got scholarships
everywhere—Westminster—King’s. I’m now a fellow of King’s. Don’t it
sound dreary? Parents both alive (alas). Two brothers and one sister.
I’m a very distinguished young man,” he added.
“One of the three, or is it five, most distinguished men in England,”
Hewet remarked.
“Quite correct,” said Hirst.
“That’s all very interesting,” said Helen after a pause. “But of course
we’ve left out the only questions that matter. For instance, are we
Christians?”
“I am not,” “I am not,” both the young men replied.
“I am,” Rachel stated.
“You believe in a personal God?” Hirst demanded, turning round and
fixing her with his eyeglasses.
“I believe—I believe,” Rachel stammered, “I believe there are things we
don’t know about, and the world might change in a minute and anything
appear.”
At this Helen laughed outright. “Nonsense,” she said. “You’re not a
Christian. You’ve never thought what you are.—And there are lots of
other questions,” she continued, “though perhaps we can’t ask them
yet.” Although they had talked so freely they were all uncomfortably
conscious that they really knew nothing about each other.
“The important questions,” Hewet pondered, “the really interesting
ones. I doubt that one ever does ask them.”
Rachel, who was slow to accept the fact that only a very few things can
be said even by people who know each other well, insisted on knowing
what he meant.
“Whether we’ve ever been in love?” she enquired. “Is that the kind of
question you mean?”
Again Helen laughed at her, benignantly strewing her with handfuls of
the long tasselled grass, for she was so brave and so foolish.
“Oh, Rachel,” she cried. “It’s like having a puppy in the house having
you with one—a puppy that brings one’s underclothes down into the
hall.”
But again the sunny earth in front of them was crossed by fantastic
wavering figures, the shadows of men and women.
“There they are!” exclaimed Mrs. Elliot. There was a touch of
peevishness in her voice. “And we’ve had _such_ a hunt to find you. Do
you know what the time is?”
Mrs. Elliot and Mr. and Mrs. Thornbury now confronted them; Mrs. Elliot
was holding out her watch, and playfully tapping it upon the face.
Hewet was recalled to the fact that this was a party for which he was
responsible, and he immediately led them back to the watch-tower, where
they were to have tea before starting home again. A bright crimson
scarf fluttered from the top of the wall, which Mr. Perrott and Evelyn
were tying to a stone as the others came up. The heat had changed just
so far that instead of sitting in the shadow they sat in the sun, which
was still hot enough to paint their faces red and yellow, and to colour
great sections of the earth beneath them.
“There’s nothing half so nice as tea!” said Mrs. Thornbury, taking her
cup.
“Nothing,” said Helen. “Can’t you remember as a child chopping up hay—”
she spoke much more quickly than usual, and kept her eye fixed upon
Mrs. Thornbury, “and pretending it was tea, and getting scolded by the
nurses—why I can’t imagine, except that nurses are such brutes, won’t
allow pepper instead of salt though there’s no earthly harm in it.
Weren’t your nurses just the same?”
During this speech Susan came into the group, and sat down by Helen’s
side. A few minutes later Mr. Venning strolled up from the opposite
direction. He was a little flushed, and in the mood to answer
hilariously whatever was said to him.
“What have you been doing to that old chap’s grave?” he asked, pointing
to the red flag which floated from the top of the stones.
“We have tried to make him forget his misfortune in having died three
hundred years ago,” said Mr. Perrott.
“It would be awful—to be dead!” ejaculated Evelyn M.
“To be dead?” said Hewet. “I don’t think it would be awful. It’s quite
easy to imagine. When you go to bed to-night fold your hands so—breathe
slower and slower—” He lay back with his hands clasped upon his breast,
and his eyes shut, “Now,” he murmured in an even monotonous voice, “I
shall never, never, never move again.” His body, lying flat among them,
did for a moment suggest death.
“This is a horrible exhibition, Mr. Hewet!” cried Mrs. Thornbury.
“More cake for us!” said Arthur.
“I assure you there’s nothing horrible about it,” said Hewet, sitting
up and laying hands upon the cake.
“It’s so natural,” he repeated. “People with children should make them
do that exercise every night. . . . Not that I look forward to being
dead.”
“And when you allude to a grave,” said Mr. Thornbury, who spoke almost
for the first time, “have you any authority for calling that ruin a
grave? I am quite with you in refusing to accept the common
interpretation which declares it to be the remains of an Elizabethan
watch-tower—any more than I believe that the circular mounds or barrows
which we find on the top of our English downs were camps. The
antiquaries call everything a camp. I am always asking them, Well then,
where do you think our ancestors kept their cattle? Half the camps in
England are merely the ancient pound or barton as we call it in my part
of the world. The argument that no one would keep his cattle in such
exposed and inaccessible spots has no weight at all, if you reflect
that in those days a man’s cattle were his capital, his stock-in-trade,
his daughter’s dowries. Without cattle he was a serf, another man’s
man. . . .” His eyes slowly lost their intensity, and he muttered a few
concluding words under his breath, looking curiously old and forlorn.
Hughling Elliot, who might have been expected to engage the old
gentleman in argument, was absent at the moment. He now came up holding
out a large square of cotton upon which a fine design was printed in
pleasant bright colours that made his hand look pale.
“A bargain,” he announced, laying it down on the cloth. “I’ve just
bought it from the big man with the ear-rings. Fine, isn’t it? It
wouldn’t suit every one, of course, but it’s just the thing—isn’t it,
Hilda?—for Mrs. Raymond Parry.”
“Mrs. Raymond Parry!” cried Helen and Mrs. Thornbury at the same
moment.
They looked at each other as though a mist hitherto obscuring their
faces had been blown away.
“Ah—you have been to those wonderful parties too?” Mrs. Elliot asked
with interest.
Mrs. Parry’s drawing-room, though thousands of miles away, behind a
vast curve of water on a tiny piece of earth, came before their eyes.
They who had had no solidity or anchorage before seemed to be attached
to it somehow, and at once grown more substantial. Perhaps they had
been in the drawing-room at the same moment; perhaps they had passed
each other on the stairs; at any rate they knew some of the same
people. They looked one another up and down with new interest. But they
could do no more than look at each other, for there was no time to