The Voyage Out
the piano. The pieces were generally bound in coloured covers, with
pictures on them of romantic scenes—gondoliers astride on the crescent
of the moon, nuns peering through the bars of a convent window, or
young women with their hair down pointing a gun at the stars. She
remembered that the general effect of the music to which they had
danced so gaily was one of passionate regret for dead love and the
innocent years of youth; dreadful sorrows had always separated the
dancers from their past happiness.
“No wonder they get sick of playing stuff like this,” she remarked
reading a bar or two; “they’re really hymn tunes, played very fast,
with bits out of Wagner and Beethoven.”
“Do you play? Would you play? Anything, so long as we can dance to it!”
From all sides her gift for playing the piano was insisted upon, and
she had to consent. As very soon she had played the only pieces of
dance music she could remember, she went on to play an air from a
sonata by Mozart.
“But that’s not a dance,” said some one pausing by the piano.
“It is,” she replied, emphatically nodding her head. “Invent the
steps.” Sure of her melody she marked the rhythm boldly so as to
simplify the way. Helen caught the idea; seized Miss Allan by the arm,
and whirled round the room, now curtseying, now spinning round, now
tripping this way and that like a child skipping through a meadow.
“This is the dance for people who don’t know how to dance!” she cried.
The tune changed to a minuet; St. John hopped with incredible swiftness
first on his left leg, then on his right; the tune flowed melodiously;
Hewet, swaying his arms and holding out the tails of his coat, swam
down the room in imitation of the voluptuous dreamy dance of an Indian
maiden dancing before her Rajah. The tune marched; and Miss Allen
advanced with skirts extended and bowed profoundly to the engaged pair.
Once their feet fell in with the rhythm they showed a complete lack of
self-consciousness. From Mozart Rachel passed without stopping to old
English hunting songs, carols, and hymn tunes, for, as she had
observed, any good tune, with a little management, became a tune one
could dance to. By degrees every person in the room was tripping and
turning in pairs or alone. Mr. Pepper executed an ingenious pointed
step derived from figure-skating, for which he once held some local
championship; while Mrs. Thornbury tried to recall an old country dance
which she had seen danced by her father’s tenants in Dorsetshire in the
old days. As for Mr. and Mrs. Elliot, they gallopaded round and round
the room with such impetuosity that the other dancers shivered at their
approach. Some people were heard to criticise the performance as a
romp; to others it was the most enjoyable part of the evening.
“Now for the great round dance!” Hewet shouted. Instantly a gigantic
circle was formed, the dancers holding hands and shouting out, “D’you
ken John Peel,” as they swung faster and faster and faster, until the
strain was too great, and one link of the chain—Mrs. Thornbury—gave
way, and the rest went flying across the room in all directions, to
land upon the floor or the chairs or in each other’s arms as seemed
most convenient.
Rising from these positions, breathless and unkempt, it struck them for
the first time that the electric lights pricked the air very vainly,
and instinctively a great many eyes turned to the windows. Yes—there
was the dawn. While they had been dancing the night had passed, and it
had come. Outside, the mountains showed very pure and remote; the dew
was sparkling on the grass, and the sky was flushed with blue, save for
the pale yellows and pinks in the East. The dancers came crowding to
the windows, pushed them open, and here and there ventured a foot upon
the grass.
“How silly the poor old lights look!” said Evelyn M. in a curiously
subdued tone of voice. “And ourselves; it isn’t becoming.” It was true;
the untidy hair, and the green and yellow gems, which had seemed so
festive half an hour ago, now looked cheap and slovenly. The
complexions of the elder ladies suffered terribly, and, as if conscious
that a cold eye had been turned upon them, they began to say good-night
and to make their way up to bed.
Rachel, though robbed of her audience, had gone on playing to herself.
From John Peel she passed to Bach, who was at this time the subject of
her intense enthusiasm, and one by one some of the younger dancers came
in from the garden and sat upon the deserted gilt chairs round the
piano, the room being now so clear that they turned out the lights. As
they sat and listened, their nerves were quieted; the heat and soreness
of their lips, the result of incessant talking and laughing, was
smoothed away. They sat very still as if they saw a building with
spaces and columns succeeding each other rising in the empty space.
Then they began to see themselves and their lives, and the whole of
human life advancing very nobly under the direction of the music. They
felt themselves ennobled, and when Rachel stopped playing they desired
nothing but sleep.
Susan rose. “I think this has been the happiest night of my life!” she
exclaimed. “I do adore music,” she said, as she thanked Rachel. “It
just seems to say all the things one can’t say oneself.” She gave a
nervous little laugh and looked from one to another with great
benignity, as though she would like to say something but could not find
the words in which to express it. “Every one’s been so kind—so very
kind,” she said. Then she too went to bed.
The party having ended in the very abrupt way in which parties do end,
Helen and Rachel stood by the door with their cloaks on, looking for a
carriage.
“I suppose you realise that there are no carriages left?” said St.
John, who had been out to look. “You must sleep here.”
“Oh, no,” said Helen; “we shall walk.”
“May we come too?” Hewet asked. “We can’t go to bed. Imagine lying
among bolsters and looking at one’s washstand on a morning like this—Is
that where you live?” They had begun to walk down the avenue, and he
turned and pointed at the white and green villa on the hillside, which
seemed to have its eyes shut.
“That’s not a light burning, is it?” Helen asked anxiously.
“It’s the sun,” said St. John. The upper windows had each a spot of
gold on them.
“I was afraid it was my husband, still reading Greek,” she said. “All
this time he’s been editing _Pindar_.”
They passed through the town and turned up the steep road, which was
perfectly clear, though still unbordered by shadows. Partly because
they were tired, and partly because the early light subdued them, they
scarcely spoke, but breathed in the delicious fresh air, which seemed
to belong to a different state of life from the air at midday. When
they came to the high yellow wall, where the lane turned off from the
road, Helen was for dismissing the two young men.
“You’ve come far enough,” she said. “Go back to bed.”
But they seemed unwilling to move.
“Let’s sit down a moment,” said Hewet. He spread his coat on the
ground. “Let’s sit down and consider.” They sat down and looked out
over the bay; it was very still, the sea was rippling faintly, and
lines of green and blue were beginning to stripe it. There were no
sailing boats as yet, but a steamer was anchored in the bay, looking
very ghostly in the mist; it gave one unearthly cry, and then all was
silent.
Rachel occupied herself in collecting one grey stone after another and
building them into a little cairn; she did it very quietly and
carefully.
“And so you’ve changed your view of life, Rachel?” said Helen.
Rachel added another stone and yawned. “I don’t remember,” she said, “I
feel like a fish at the bottom of the sea.” She yawned again. None of
these people possessed any power to frighten her out here in the dawn,
and she felt perfectly familiar even with Mr. Hirst.
“My brain, on the contrary,” said Hirst, “is in a condition of abnormal
activity.” He sat in his favourite position with his arms binding his
legs together and his chin resting on the top of his knees. “I see
through everything—absolutely everything. Life has no more mysteries
for me.” He spoke with conviction, but did not appear to wish for an
answer. Near though they sat, and familiar though they felt, they
seemed mere shadows to each other.
“And all those people down there going to sleep,” Hewet began dreamily,
“thinking such different things,—Miss Warrington, I suppose, is now on
her knees; the Elliots are a little startled, it’s not often _they_ get
out of breath, and they want to get to sleep as quickly as possible;
then there’s the poor lean young man who danced all night with Evelyn;
he’s putting his flower in water and asking himself, ‘Is this
love?’—and poor old Perrott, I daresay, can’t get to sleep at all, and
is reading his favourite Greek book to console himself—and the
others—no, Hirst,” he wound up, “I don’t find it simple at all.”
“I have a key,” said Hirst cryptically. His chin was still upon his
knees and his eyes fixed in front of him.
A silence followed. Then Helen rose and bade them good-night. “But,”
she said, “remember that you’ve got to come and see us.”
They waved good-night and parted, but the two young men did not go back
to the hotel; they went for a walk, during which they scarcely spoke,
and never mentioned the names of the two women, who were, to a
considerable extent, the subject of their thoughts. They did not wish
to share their impressions. They returned to the hotel in time for
breakfast.
CHAPTER XIII
There were many rooms in the villa, but one room which possessed a
character of its own because the door was always shut, and no sound of
music or laughter issued from it. Every one in the house was vaguely
conscious that something went on behind that door, and without in the
least knowing what it was, were influenced in their own thoughts by the
knowledge that if the passed it the door would be shut, and if they
made a noise Mr. Ambrose inside would be disturbed. Certain acts
therefore possessed merit, and others were bad, so that life became
more harmonious and less disconnected than it would have been had Mr.
Ambrose given up editing _Pindar_, and taken to a nomad existence, in
and out of every room in the house. As it was, every one was conscious
that by observing certain rules, such as punctuality and quiet, by
cooking well, and performing other small duties, one ode after another
was satisfactorily restored to the world, and they shared the
continuity of the scholar’s life. Unfortunately, as age puts one
barrier between human beings, and learning another, and sex a third,
Mr. Ambrose in his study was some thousand miles distant from the
nearest human being, who in this household was inevitably a woman. He
sat hour after hour among white-leaved books, alone like an idol in an
empty church, still except for the passage of his hand from one side of
the sheet to another, silent save for an occasional choke, which drove
him to extend his pipe a moment in the air. As he worked his way
further and further into the heart of the poet, his chair became more
and more deeply encircled by books, which lay open on the floor, and
could only be crossed by a careful process of stepping, so delicate
that his visitors generally stopped and addressed him from the
outskirts.
On the morning after the dance, however, Rachel came into her uncle’s
room and hailed him twice, “Uncle Ridley,” before he paid her any
attention.
At length he looked over his spectacles.
“Well?” he asked.
“I want a book,” she replied. “Gibbon’s _History of the Roman Empire_.
May I have it?”
She watched the lines on her uncle’s face gradually rearrange
themselves at her question. It had been smooth as a mask before she
spoke.