The Voyage Out
darkness—about women—about Rachel, about Rachel.” He stopped and drew a
deep breath. The night seemed immense and hospitable, and although so
dark there seemed to be things moving down there in the harbour and
movement out at sea. He gazed until the darkness numbed him, and then
he walked on quickly, still murmuring to himself. “And I ought to be in
bed, snoring and dreaming, dreaming, dreaming. Dreams and realities,
dreams and realities, dreams and realities,” he repeated all the way up
the avenue, scarcely knowing what he said, until he reached the front
door. Here he paused for a second, and collected himself before he
opened the door.
His eyes were dazed, his hands very cold, and his brain excited and yet
half asleep. Inside the door everything was as he had left it except
that the hall was now empty. There were the chairs turning in towards
each other where people had sat talking, and the empty glasses on
little tables, and the newspapers scattered on the floor. As he shut
the door he felt as if he were enclosed in a square box, and instantly
shrivelled up. It was all very bright and very small. He stopped for a
minute by the long table to find a paper which he had meant to read,
but he was still too much under the influence of the dark and the fresh
air to consider carefully which paper it was or where he had seen it.
As he fumbled vaguely among the papers he saw a figure cross the tail
of his eye, coming downstairs. He heard the swishing sound of skirts,
and to his great surprise, Evelyn M. came up to him, laid her hand on
the table as if to prevent him from taking up a paper, and said:
“You’re just the person I wanted to talk to.” Her voice was a little
unpleasant and metallic, her eyes were very bright, and she kept them
fixed upon him.
“To talk to me?” he repeated. “But I’m half asleep.”
“But I think you understand better than most people,” she answered, and
sat down on a little chair placed beside a big leather chair so that
Hewet had to sit down beside her.
“Well?” he said. He yawned openly, and lit a cigarette. He could not
believe that this was really happening to him. “What is it?”
“Are you really sympathetic, or is it just a pose?” she demanded.
“It’s for you to say,” he replied. “I’m interested, I think.” He still
felt numb all over and as if she was much too close to him.
“Any one can be interested!” she cried impatiently. “Your friend Mr.
Hirst’s interested, I daresay however, I do believe in you. You look as
if you’d got a nice sister, somehow.” She paused, picking at some
sequins on her knees, and then, as if she had made up her mind, she
started off, “Anyhow, I’m going to ask your advice. D’you ever get into
a state where you don’t know your own mind? That’s the state I’m in
now. You see, last night at the dance Raymond Oliver,—he’s the tall
dark boy who looks as if he had Indian blood in him, but he says he’s
not really,—well, we were sitting out together, and he told me all
about himself, how unhappy he is at home, and how he hates being out
here. They’ve put him into some beastly mining business. He says it’s
beastly—I should like it, I know, but that’s neither here nor there.
And I felt awfully sorry for him, one couldn’t help being sorry for
him, and when he asked me to let him kiss me, I did. I don’t see any
harm in that, do you? And then this morning he said he’d thought I
meant something more, and I wasn’t the sort to let any one kiss me. And
we talked and talked. I daresay I was very silly, but one can’t help
liking people when one’s sorry for them. I do like him most awfully—”
She paused. “So I gave him half a promise, and then, you see, there’s
Alfred Perrott.”
“Oh, Perrott,” said Hewet.
“We got to know each other on that picnic the other day,” she
continued. “He seemed so lonely, especially as Arthur had gone off with
Susan, and one couldn’t help guessing what was in his mind. So we had
quite a long talk when you were looking at the ruins, and he told me
all about his life, and his struggles, and how fearfully hard it had
been. D’you know, he was a boy in a grocer’s shop and took parcels to
people’s houses in a basket? That interested me awfully, because I
always say it doesn’t matter how you’re born if you’ve got the right
stuff in you. And he told me about his sister who’s paralysed, poor
girl, and one can see she’s a great trial, though he’s evidently very
devoted to her. I must say I do admire people like that! I don’t expect
you do because you’re so clever. Well, last night we sat out in the
garden together, and I couldn’t help seeing what he wanted to say, and
comforting him a little, and telling him I did care—I really do—only,
then, there’s Raymond Oliver. What I want you to tell me is, can one be
in love with two people at once, or can’t one?”
She became silent, and sat with her chin on her hands, looking very
intent, as if she were facing a real problem which had to be discussed
between them.
“I think it depends what sort of person you are,” said Hewet. He looked
at her. She was small and pretty, aged perhaps twenty-eight or
twenty-nine, but though dashing and sharply cut, her features expressed
nothing very clearly, except a great deal of spirit and good health.
“Who are you, what are you; you see, I know nothing about you,” he
continued.
“Well, I was coming to that,” said Evelyn M. She continued to rest her
chin on her hands and to look intently ahead of her. “I’m the daughter
of a mother and no father, if that interests you,” she said. “It’s not
a very nice thing to be. It’s what often happens in the country. She
was a farmer’s daughter, and he was rather a swell—the young man up at
the great house. He never made things straight—never married her—though
he allowed us quite a lot of money. His people wouldn’t let him. Poor
father! I can’t help liking him. Mother wasn’t the sort of woman who
could keep him straight, anyhow. He was killed in the war. I believe
his men worshipped him. They say great big troopers broke down and
cried over his body on the battlefield. I wish I’d known him. Mother
had all the life crushed out of her. The world—” She clenched her fist.
“Oh, people can be horrid to a woman like that!” She turned upon Hewet.
“Well,” she said, “d’you want to know any more about me?”
“But you?” he asked, “Who looked after you?”
“I’ve looked after myself mostly,” she laughed. “I’ve had splendid
friends. I do like people! That’s the trouble. What would you do if you
liked two people, both of them tremendously, and you couldn’t tell
which most?”
“I should go on liking them—I should wait and see. Why not?”
“But one has to make up one’s mind,” said Evelyn. “Or are you one of
the people who doesn’t believe in marriages and all that? Look
here—this isn’t fair, I do all the telling, and you tell nothing.
Perhaps you’re the same as your friend”—she looked at him suspiciously;
“perhaps you don’t like me?”
“I don’t know you,” said Hewet.
“I know when I like a person directly I see them! I knew I liked you
the very first night at dinner. Oh dear,” she continued impatiently,
“what a lot of bother would be saved if only people would say the
things they think straight out! I’m made like that. I can’t help it.”
“But don’t you find it leads to difficulties?” Hewet asked.
“That’s men’s fault,” she answered. “They always drag it in—love, I
mean.”
“And so you’ve gone on having one proposal after another,” said Hewet.
“I don’t suppose I’ve had more proposals than most women,” said Evelyn,
but she spoke without conviction.
“Five, six, ten?” Hewet ventured.
Evelyn seemed to intimate that perhaps ten was the right figure, but
that it really was not a high one.
“I believe you’re thinking me a heartless flirt,” she protested. “But I
don’t care if you are. I don’t care what any one thinks of me. Just
because one’s interested and likes to be friends with men, and talk to
them as one talks to women, one’s called a flirt.”
“But Miss Murgatroyd—”
“I wish you’d call me Evelyn,” she interrupted.
“After ten proposals do you honestly think that men are the same as
women?”
“Honestly, honestly,—how I hate that word! It’s always used by prigs,”
cried Evelyn. “Honestly I think they ought to be. That’s what’s so
disappointing. Every time one thinks it’s not going to happen, and
every time it does.”
“The pursuit of Friendship,” said Hewet. “The title of a comedy.”
“You’re horrid,” she cried. “You don’t care a bit really. You might be
Mr. Hirst.”
“Well,” said Hewet, “let’s consider. Let us consider—” He paused,
because for the moment he could not remember what it was that they had
to consider. He was far more interested in her than in her story, for
as she went on speaking his numbness had disappeared, and he was
conscious of a mixture of liking, pity, and distrust. “You’ve promised
to marry both Oliver and Perrott?” he concluded.
“Not exactly promised,” said Evelyn. “I can’t make up my mind which I
really like best. Oh how I detest modern life!” she flung off. “It must
have been so much easier for the Elizabethans! I thought the other day
on that mountain how I’d have liked to be one of those colonists, to
cut down trees and make laws and all that, instead of fooling about
with all these people who think one’s just a pretty young lady. Though
I’m not. I really might _do_ something.” She reflected in silence for a
minute. Then she said:
“I’m afraid right down in my heart that Alfred Perrot _won’t_ do. He’s
not strong, is he?”
“Perhaps he couldn’t cut down a tree,” said Hewet. “Have you never
cared for anybody?” he asked.
“I’ve cared for heaps of people, but not to marry them,” she said. “I
suppose I’m too fastidious. All my life I’ve wanted somebody I could
look up to, somebody great and big and splendid. Most men are so
small.”
“What d’you mean by splendid?” Hewet asked. “People are—nothing more.”
Evelyn was puzzled.
“We don’t care for people because of their qualities,” he tried to
explain. “It’s just them that we care for,”—he struck a match—“just
that,” he said, pointing to the flames.
“I see what you mean,” she said, “but I don’t agree. I do know why I
care for people, and I think I’m hardly ever wrong. I see at once what
they’ve got in them. Now I think you must be rather splendid; but not
Mr. Hirst.”
Hewlet shook his head.
“He’s not nearly so unselfish, or so sympathetic, or so big, or so
understanding,” Evelyn continued.
Hewet sat silent, smoking his cigarette.
“I should hate cutting down trees,” he remarked.
“I’m not trying to flirt with you, though I suppose you think I am!”
Evelyn shot out. “I’d never have come to you if I’d thought you’d
merely think odious things of me!” The tears came into her eyes.
“Do you never flirt?” he asked.
“Of course I don’t,” she protested. “Haven’t I told you? I want
friendship; I want to care for some one greater and nobler than I am,
and if they fall in love with me it isn’t my fault; I don’t want it; I
positively hate it.”
Hewet could see that there was very little use in going on with the
conversation, for it was obvious that Evelyn did not wish to say
anything in particular, but to impress upon him an image of herself,
being, for some reason which she would not reveal, unhappy, or
insecure. He was very tired, and a pale waiter kept walking
ostentatiously into the middle of the room and looking at them
meaningly.
“They want to shut up,” he said. “My advice is that you should tell
Oliver and Perrott to-morrow that you’ve made up your mind that you
don’t mean to marry either of them. I’m certain you don’t. If you
change your mind you can always tell them so. They’re both sensible
men; they’ll understand. And then all this bother will be over.” He got
up.
But Evelyn did not move. She sat looking up at him with her bright