The Voyage Out
the atmosphere of forced solemnity increased her anger. All round her
were people pretending to feel what they did not feel, while somewhere
above her floated the idea which they could none of them grasp, which
they pretended to grasp, always escaping out of reach, a beautiful
idea, an idea like a butterfly. One after another, vast and hard and
cold, appeared to her the churches all over the world where this
blundering effort and misunderstanding were perpetually going on, great
buildings, filled with innumerable men and women, not seeing clearly,
who finally gave up the effort to see, and relapsed tamely into praise
and acquiescence, half-shutting their eyes and pursing up their lips.
The thought had the same sort of physical discomfort as is caused by a
film of mist always coming between the eyes and the printed page. She
did her best to brush away the film and to conceive something to be
worshipped as the service went on, but failed, always misled by the
voice of Mr. Bax saying things which misrepresented the idea, and by
the patter of baaing inexpressive human voices falling round her like
damp leaves. The effort was tiring and dispiriting. She ceased to
listen, and fixed her eyes on the face of a woman near her, a hospital
nurse, whose expression of devout attention seemed to prove that she
was at any rate receiving satisfaction. But looking at her carefully
she came to the conclusion that the hospital nurse was only slavishly
acquiescent, and that the look of satisfaction was produced by no
splendid conception of God within her. How, indeed, could she conceive
anything far outside her own experience, a woman with a commonplace
face like hers, a little round red face, upon which trivial duties and
trivial spites had drawn lines, whose weak blue eyes saw without
intensity or individuality, whose features were blurred, insensitive,
and callous? She was adoring something shallow and smug, clinging to
it, so the obstinate mouth witnessed, with the assiduity of a limpet;
nothing would tear her from her demure belief in her own virtue and the
virtues of her religion. She was a limpet, with the sensitive side of
her stuck to a rock, for ever dead to the rush of fresh and beautiful
things past her. The face of this single worshipper became printed on
Rachel’s mind with an impression of keen horror, and she had it
suddenly revealed to her what Helen meant and St. John meant when they
proclaimed their hatred of Christianity. With the violence that now
marked her feelings, she rejected all that she had implicitly believed.
Meanwhile Mr. Bax was half-way through the second lesson. She looked at
him. He was a man of the world with supple lips and an agreeable
manner, he was indeed a man of much kindliness and simplicity, though
by no means clever, but she was not in the mood to give any one credit
for such qualities, and examined him as though he were an epitome of
all the vices of his service.
Right at the back of the chapel Mrs. Flushing, Hirst, and Hewet sat in
a row in a very different frame of mind. Hewet was staring at the roof
with his legs stuck out in front of him, for as he had never tried to
make the service fit any feeling or idea of his, he was able to enjoy
the beauty of the language without hindrance. His mind was occupied
first with accidental things, such as the women’s hair in front of him,
the light on the faces, then with the words which seemed to him
magnificent, and then more vaguely with the characters of the other
worshippers. But when he suddenly perceived Rachel, all these thoughts
were driven out of his head, and he thought only of her. The psalms,
the prayers, the Litany, and the sermon were all reduced to one
chanting sound which paused, and then renewed itself, a little higher
or a little lower. He stared alternately at Rachel and at the ceiling,
but his expression was now produced not by what he saw but by something
in his mind. He was almost as painfully disturbed by his thoughts as
she was by hers.
Early in the service Mrs. Flushing had discovered that she had taken up
a Bible instead of a prayer-book, and, as she was sitting next to
Hirst, she stole a glance over his shoulder. He was reading steadily in
the thin pale-blue volume. Unable to understand, she peered closer,
upon which Hirst politely laid the book before her, pointing to the
first line of a Greek poem and then to the translation opposite.
“What’s that?” she whispered inquisitively.
“Sappho,” he replied. “The one Swinburne did—the best thing that’s ever
been written.”
Mrs. Flushing could not resist such an opportunity. She gulped down the
Ode to Aphrodite during the Litany, keeping herself with difficulty
from asking when Sappho lived, and what else she wrote worth reading,
and contriving to come in punctually at the end with “the forgiveness
of sins, the Resurrection of the body, and the life everlastin’. Amen.”
Meanwhile Hirst took out an envelope and began scribbling on the back
of it. When Mr. Bax mounted the pulpit he shut up Sappho with his
envelope between the pages, settled his spectacles, and fixed his gaze
intently upon the clergyman. Standing in the pulpit he looked very
large and fat; the light coming through the greenish unstained
window-glass made his face appear smooth and white like a very large
egg.
He looked round at all the faces looking mildly up at him, although
some of them were the faces of men and women old enough to be his
grandparents, and gave out his text with weighty significance. The
argument of the sermon was that visitors to this beautiful land,
although they were on a holiday, owed a duty to the natives. It did
not, in truth, differ very much from a leading article upon topics of
general interest in the weekly newspapers. It rambled with a kind of
amiable verbosity from one heading to another, suggesting that all
human beings are very much the same under their skins, illustrating
this by the resemblance of the games which little Spanish boys play to
the games little boys in London streets play, observing that very small
things do influence people, particularly natives; in fact, a very dear
friend of Mr. Bax’s had told him that the success of our rule in India,
that vast country, largely depended upon the strict code of politeness
which the English adopted towards the natives, which led to the remark
that small things were not necessarily small, and that somehow to the
virtue of sympathy, which was a virtue never more needed than to-day,
when we lived in a time of experiment and upheaval—witness the
aeroplane and wireless telegraph, and there were other problems which
hardly presented themselves to our fathers, but which no man who called
himself a man could leave unsettled. Here Mr. Bax became more
definitely clerical, if it were possible, he seemed to speak with a
certain innocent craftiness, as he pointed out that all this laid a
special duty upon earnest Christians. What men were inclined to say now
was, “Oh, that fellow—he’s a parson.” What we want them to say is,
“He’s a good fellow”—in other words, “He is my brother.” He exhorted
them to keep in touch with men of the modern type; they must sympathise
with their multifarious interests in order to keep before their eyes
that whatever discoveries were made there was one discovery which could
not be superseded, which was indeed as much of a necessity to the most
successful and most brilliant of them all as it had been to their
fathers. The humblest could help; the least important things had an
influence (here his manner became definitely priestly and his remarks
seemed to be directed to women, for indeed Mr. Bax’s congregations were
mainly composed of women, and he was used to assigning them their
duties in his innocent clerical campaigns). Leaving more definite
instruction, he passed on, and his theme broadened into a peroration
for which he drew a long breath and stood very upright,—“As a drop of
water, detached, alone, separate from others, falling from the cloud
and entering the great ocean, alters, so scientists tell us, not only
the immediate spot in the ocean where it falls, but all the myriad
drops which together compose the great universe of waters, and by this
means alters the configuration of the globe and the lives of millions
of sea creatures, and finally the lives of the men and women who seek
their living upon the shores—as all this is within the compass of a
single drop of water, such as any rain shower sends in millions to lose
themselves in the earth, to lose themselves we say, but we know very
well that the fruits of the earth could not flourish without them—so is
a marvel comparable to this within the reach of each one of us, who
dropping a little word or a little deed into the great universe alters
it; yea, it is a solemn thought, _alters_ it, for good or for evil, not
for one instant, or in one vicinity, but throughout the entire race,
and for all eternity.” Whipping round as though to avoid applause, he
continued with the same breath, but in a different tone of voice,—“And
now to God the Father . . .”
He gave his blessing, and then, while the solemn chords again issued
from the harmonium behind the curtain, the different people began
scraping and fumbling and moving very awkwardly and consciously towards
the door. Half-way upstairs, at a point where the light and sounds of
the upper world conflicted with the dimness and the dying hymn-tune of
the under, Rachel felt a hand drop upon her shoulder.
“Miss Vinrace,” Mrs. Flushing whispered peremptorily, “stay to
luncheon. It’s such a dismal day. They don’t even give one beef for
luncheon. Please stay.”
Here they came out into the hall, where once more the little band was
greeted with curious respectful glances by the people who had not gone
to church, although their clothing made it clear that they approved of
Sunday to the very verge of going to church. Rachel felt unable to
stand any more of this particular atmosphere, and was about to say she
must go back, when Terence passed them, drawn along in talk with Evelyn
M. Rachel thereupon contented herself with saying that the people
looked very respectable, which negative remark Mrs. Flushing
interpreted to mean that she would stay.
“English people abroad!” she returned with a vivid flash of malice.
“Ain’t they awful! But we won’t stay here,” she continued, plucking at
Rachel’s arm. “Come up to my room.”
She bore her past Hewet and Evelyn and the Thornburys and the Elliots.
Hewet stepped forward.
“Luncheon—” he began.
“Miss Vinrace has promised to lunch with me,” said Mrs. Flushing, and
began to pound energetically up the staircase, as though the middle
classes of England were in pursuit. She did not stop until she had
slammed her bedroom door behind them.
“Well, what did you think of it?” she demanded, panting slightly.
All the disgust and horror which Rachel had been accumulating burst
forth beyond her control.
“I thought it the most loathsome exhibition I’d ever seen!” she broke
out. “How can they—how dare they—what do you mean by it—Mr. Bax,
hospital nurses, old men, prostitutes, disgusting—”
She hit off the points she remembered as fast as she could, but she was
too indignant to stop to analyse her feelings. Mrs. Flushing watched
her with keen gusto as she stood ejaculating with emphatic movements of
her head and hands in the middle of the room.
“Go on, go on, do go on,” she laughed, clapping her hands. “It’s
delightful to hear you!”
“But why do you go?” Rachel demanded.
“I’ve been every Sunday of my life ever since I can remember,” Mrs.
Flushing chuckled, as though that were a reason by itself.
Rachel turned abruptly to the window. She did not know what it was that
had put her into such a passion; the sight of Terence in the hall had