The Voyage Out
hippopotamuses, some to canary birds, some to swine, some to parrots,
and some to loathsome reptiles curled round the half-decayed bodies of
sheep. The intermittent sounds—now a cough, now a horrible wheezing or
throat-clearing, now a little patter of conversation—were just, he
declared, what you hear if you stand in the lion-house when the bones
are being mauled. But these comparisons did not rouse Hewet, who, after
a careless glance round the room, fixed his eyes upon a thicket of
native spears which were so ingeniously arranged as to run their points
at you whichever way you approached them. He was clearly oblivious of
his surroundings; whereupon Hirst, perceiving that Hewet’s mind was a
complete blank, fixed his attention more closely upon his
fellow-creatures. He was too far from them, however, to hear what they
were saying, but it pleased him to construct little theories about them
from their gestures and appearance.
Mrs. Thornbury had received a great many letters. She was completely
engrossed in them. When she had finished a page she handed it to her
husband, or gave him the sense of what she was reading in a series of
short quotations linked together by a sound at the back of her throat.
“Evie writes that George has gone to Glasgow. ‘He finds Mr. Chadbourne
so nice to work with, and we hope to spend Christmas together, but I
should not like to move Betty and Alfred any great distance (no, quite
right), though it is difficult to imagine cold weather in this heat. .
. . Eleanor and Roger drove over in the new trap. . . . Eleanor
certainly looked more like herself than I’ve seen her since the winter.
She has put Baby on three bottles now, which I’m sure is wise (I’m sure
it is too), and so gets better nights. . . . My hair still falls out. I
find it on the pillow! But I am cheered by hearing from Tottie Hall
Green. . . . Muriel is in Torquay enjoying herself greatly at dances.
She _is_ going to show her black pug after all.’ . . . A line from
Herbert—so busy, poor fellow! Ah! Margaret says, ‘Poor old Mrs.
Fairbank died on the eighth, quite suddenly in the conservatory, only a
maid in the house, who hadn’t the presence of mind to lift her up,
which they think might have saved her, but the doctor says it might
have come at any moment, and one can only feel thankful that it was in
the house and not in the street (I should think so!). The pigeons have
increased terribly, just as the rabbits did five years ago . . .’”
While she read her husband kept nodding his head very slightly, but
very steadily in sign of approval.
Near by, Miss Allan was reading her letters too. They were not
altogether pleasant, as could be seen from the slight rigidity which
came over her large fine face as she finished reading them and replaced
them neatly in their envelopes. The lines of care and responsibility on
her face made her resemble an elderly man rather than a woman. The
letters brought her news of the failure of last year’s fruit crop in
New Zealand, which was a serious matter, for Hubert, her only brother,
made his living on a fruit farm, and if it failed again, of course, he
would throw up his place, come back to England, and what were they to
do with him this time? The journey out here, which meant the loss of a
term’s work, became an extravagance and not the just and wonderful
holiday due to her after fifteen years of punctual lecturing and
correcting essays upon English literature. Emily, her sister, who was a
teacher also, wrote: “We ought to be prepared, though I have no doubt
Hubert will be more reasonable this time.” And then went on in her
sensible way to say that she was enjoying a very jolly time in the
Lakes. “They are looking exceedingly pretty just now. I have seldom
seen the trees so forward at this time of year. We have taken our lunch
out several days. Old Alice is as young as ever, and asks after every
one affectionately. The days pass very quickly, and term will soon be
here. Political prospects _not_ good, I think privately, but do not
like to damp Ellen’s enthusiasm. Lloyd George has taken the Bill up,
but so have many before now, and we are where we are; but trust to find
myself mistaken. Anyhow, we have our work cut out for us. . . . Surely
Meredith lacks the _human_ note one likes in W. W.?” she concluded, and
went on to discuss some questions of English literature which Miss
Allan had raised in her last letter.
At a little distance from Miss Allan, on a seat shaded and made
semi-private by a thick clump of palm trees, Arthur and Susan were
reading each other’s letters. The big slashing manuscripts of
hockey-playing young women in Wiltshire lay on Arthur’s knee, while
Susan deciphered tight little legal hands which rarely filled more than
a page, and always conveyed the same impression of jocular and breezy
goodwill.
“I do hope Mr. Hutchinson will like me, Arthur,” she said, looking up.
“Who’s your loving Flo?” asked Arthur.
“Flo Graves—the girl I told you about, who was engaged to that dreadful
Mr. Vincent,” said Susan. “Is Mr. Hutchinson married?” she asked.
Already her mind was busy with benevolent plans for her friends, or
rather with one magnificent plan—which was simple too—they were all to
get married—at once—directly she got back. Marriage, marriage that was
the right thing, the only thing, the solution required by every one she
knew, and a great part of her meditations was spent in tracing every
instance of discomfort, loneliness, ill-health, unsatisfied ambition,
restlessness, eccentricity, taking things up and dropping them again,
public speaking, and philanthropic activity on the part of men and
particularly on the part of women to the fact that they wanted to
marry, were trying to marry, and had not succeeded in getting married.
If, as she was bound to own, these symptoms sometimes persisted after
marriage, she could only ascribe them to the unhappy law of nature
which decreed that there was only one Arthur Venning, and only one
Susan who could marry him. Her theory, of course, had the merit of
being fully supported by her own case. She had been vaguely
uncomfortable at home for two or three years now, and a voyage like
this with her selfish old aunt, who paid her fare but treated her as
servant and companion in one, was typical of the kind of thing people
expected of her. Directly she became engaged, Mrs. Paley behaved with
instinctive respect, positively protested when Susan as usual knelt
down to lace her shoes, and appeared really grateful for an hour of
Susan’s company where she had been used to exact two or three as her
right. She therefore foresaw a life of far greater comfort than she had
been used to, and the change had already produced a great increase of
warmth in her feelings towards other people.
It was close on twenty years now since Mrs. Paley had been able to lace
her own shoes or even to see them, the disappearance of her feet having
coincided more or less accurately with the death of her husband, a man
of business, soon after which event Mrs. Paley began to grow stout. She
was a selfish, independent old woman, possessed of a considerable
income, which she spent upon the upkeep of a house that needed seven
servants and a charwoman in Lancaster Gate, and another with a garden
and carriage-horses in Surrey. Susan’s engagement relieved her of the
one great anxiety of her life—that her son Christopher should “entangle
himself” with his cousin. Now that this familiar source of interest was
removed, she felt a little low and inclined to see more in Susan than
she used to. She had decided to give her a very handsome wedding
present, a cheque for two hundred, two hundred and fifty, or possibly,
conceivably—it depended upon the under-gardener and Huths’ bill for
doing up the drawing-room—three hundred pounds sterling.
She was thinking of this very question, revolving the figures, as she
sat in her wheeled chair with a table spread with cards by her side.
The Patience had somehow got into a muddle, and she did not like to
call for Susan to help her, as Susan seemed to be busy with Arthur.
“She’s every right to expect a handsome present from me, of course,”
she thought, looking vaguely at the leopard on its hind legs, “and I’ve
no doubt she does! Money goes a long way with every one. The young are
very selfish. If I were to die, nobody would miss me but Dakyns, and
she’ll be consoled by the will! However, I’ve got no reason to
complain. . . . I can still enjoy myself. I’m not a burden to any-one.
. . . I like a great many things a good deal, in spite of my legs.”
Being slightly depressed, however, she went on to think of the only
people she had known who had not seemed to her at all selfish or fond
of money, who had seemed to her somehow rather finer than the general
run; people she willingly acknowledged, who were finer than she was.
There were only two of them. One was her brother, who had been drowned
before her eyes, the other was a girl, her greatest friend, who had
died in giving birth to her first child. These things had happened some
fifty years ago.
“They ought not to have died,” she thought. “However, they did—and we
selfish old creatures go on.” The tears came to her eyes; she felt a
genuine regret for them, a kind of respect for their youth and beauty,
and a kind of shame for herself; but the tears did not fall; and she
opened one of those innumerable novels which she used to pronounce good
or bad, or pretty middling, or really wonderful. “I can’t think how
people come to imagine such things,” she would say, taking off her
spectacles and looking up with the old faded eyes, that were becoming
ringed with white.
Just behind the stuffed leopard Mr. Elliot was playing chess with Mr.
Pepper. He was being defeated, naturally, for Mr. Pepper scarcely took
his eyes off the board, and Mr. Elliot kept leaning back in his chair
and throwing out remarks to a gentleman who had only arrived the night
before, a tall handsome man, with a head resembling the head of an
intellectual ram. After a few remarks of a general nature had passed,
they were discovering that they knew some of the same people, as indeed
had been obvious from their appearance directly they saw each other.
“Ah yes, old Truefit,” said Mr. Elliot. “He has a son at Oxford. I’ve
often stayed with them. It’s a lovely old Jacobean house. Some
exquisite Greuzes—one or two Dutch pictures which the old boy kept in
the cellars. Then there were stacks upon stacks of prints. Oh, the dirt
in that house! He was a miser, you know. The boy married a daughter of
Lord Pinwells. I know them too. The collecting mania tends to run in
families. This chap collects buckles—men’s shoe-buckles they must be,
in use between the years 1580 and 1660; the dates mayn’t be right, but
fact’s as I say. Your true collector always has some unaccountable fad
of that kind. On other points he’s as level-headed as a breeder of
shorthorns, which is what he happens to be. Then the Pinwells, as you
probably know, have their share of eccentricity too. Lady Maud, for
instance—” he was interrupted here by the necessity of considering his
move,—“Lady Maud has a horror of cats and clergymen, and people with
big front teeth. I’ve heard her shout across a table, ‘Keep your mouth
shut, Miss Smith; they’re as yellow as carrots!’ across a table, mind
you. To me she’s always been civility itself. She dabbles in
literature, likes to collect a few of us in her drawing-room, but
mention a clergyman, a bishop even, nay, the Archbishop himself, and
she gobbles like a turkey-cock. I’ve been told it’s a family
feud—something to do with an ancestor in the reign of Charles the
First. Yes,” he continued, suffering check after check, “I always like
to know something of the grandmothers of our fashionable young men. In