The Voyage Out
Mrs. Murgatroyd looked indeed as if the life had been crushed out of
her; she knelt on a chair, gazing piteously from behind the body of a
Pomeranian dog which she clasped to her cheek, as if for protection.
“And that’s my dad,” said Evelyn, for there were two photographs in one
frame. The second photograph represented a handsome soldier with high
regular features and a heavy black moustache; his hand rested on the
hilt of his sword; there was a decided likeness between him and Evelyn.
“And it’s because of them,” said Evelyn, “that I’m going to help the
other women. You’ve heard about me, I suppose? They weren’t married,
you see; I’m not anybody in particular. I’m not a bit ashamed of it.
They loved each other anyhow, and that’s more than most people can say
of their parents.”
Rachel sat down on the bed, with the two pictures in her hands, and
compared them—the man and the woman who had, so Evelyn said, loved each
other. That fact interested her more than the campaign on behalf of
unfortunate women which Evelyn was once more beginning to describe. She
looked again from one to the other.
“What d’you think it’s like,” she asked, as Evelyn paused for a minute,
“being in love?”
“Have you never been in love?” Evelyn asked. “Oh no—one’s only got to
look at you to see that,” she added. She considered. “I really was in
love once,” she said. She fell into reflection, her eyes losing their
bright vitality and approaching something like an expression of
tenderness. “It was heavenly!—while it lasted. The worst of it is it
don’t last, not with me. That’s the bother.”
She went on to consider the difficulty with Alfred and Sinclair about
which she had pretended to ask Rachel’s advice. But she did not want
advice; she wanted intimacy. When she looked at Rachel, who was still
looking at the photographs on the bed, she could not help seeing that
Rachel was not thinking about her. What was she thinking about, then?
Evelyn was tormented by the little spark of life in her which was
always trying to work through to other people, and was always being
rebuffed. Falling silent she looked at her visitor, her shoes, her
stockings, the combs in her hair, all the details of her dress in
short, as though by seizing every detail she might get closer to the
life within.
Rachel at last put down the photographs, walked to the window and
remarked, “It’s odd. People talk as much about love as they do about
religion.”
“I wish you’d sit down and talk,” said Evelyn impatiently.
Instead Rachel opened the window, which was made in two long panes, and
looked down into the garden below.
“That’s where we got lost the first night,” she said. “It must have
been in those bushes.”
“They kill hens down there,” said Evelyn. “They cut their heads off
with a knife—disgusting! But tell me—what—”
“I’d like to explore the hotel,” Rachel interrupted. She drew her head
in and looked at Evelyn, who still sat on the floor.
“It’s just like other hotels,” said Evelyn.
That might be, although every room and passage and chair in the place
had a character of its own in Rachel’s eyes; but she could not bring
herself to stay in one place any longer. She moved slowly towards the
door.
“What is it you want?” said Evelyn. “You make me feel as if you were
always thinking of something you don’t say. . . . Do say it!”
But Rachel made no response to this invitation either. She stopped with
her fingers on the handle of the door, as if she remembered that some
sort of pronouncement was due from her.
“I suppose you’ll marry one of them,” she said, and then turned the
handle and shut the door behind her. She walked slowly down the
passage, running her hand along the wall beside her. She did not think
which way she was going, and therefore walked down a passage which only
led to a window and a balcony. She looked down at the kitchen premises,
the wrong side of the hotel life, which was cut off from the right side
by a maze of small bushes. The ground was bare, old tins were scattered
about, and the bushes wore towels and aprons upon their heads to dry.
Every now and then a waiter came out in a white apron and threw rubbish
on to a heap. Two large women in cotton dresses were sitting on a bench
with blood-smeared tin trays in front of them and yellow bodies across
their knees. They were plucking the birds, and talking as they plucked.
Suddenly a chicken came floundering, half flying, half running into the
space, pursued by a third woman whose age could hardly be under eighty.
Although wizened and unsteady on her legs she kept up the chase, egged
on by the laughter of the others; her face was expressive of furious
rage, and as she ran she swore in Spanish. Frightened by hand-clapping
here, a napkin there, the bird ran this way and that in sharp angles,
and finally fluttered straight at the old woman, who opened her scanty
grey skirts to enclose it, dropped upon it in a bundle, and then
holding it out cut its head off with an expression of vindictive energy
and triumph combined. The blood and the ugly wriggling fascinated
Rachel, so that although she knew that some one had come up behind and
was standing beside her, she did not turn round until the old woman had
settled down on the bench beside the others. Then she looked up
sharply, because of the ugliness of what she had seen. It was Miss
Allan who stood beside her.
“Not a pretty sight,” said Miss Allan, “although I daresay it’s really
more humane than our method. . . . I don’t believe you’ve ever been in
my room,” she added, and turned away as if she meant Rachel to follow
her. Rachel followed, for it seemed possible that each new person might
remove the mystery which burdened her.
The bedrooms at the hotel were all on the same pattern, save that some
were larger and some smaller; they had a floor of dark red tiles; they
had a high bed, draped in mosquito curtains; they had each a
writing-table and a dressing-table, and a couple of arm-chairs. But
directly a box was unpacked the rooms became very different, so that
Miss Allan’s room was very unlike Evelyn’s room. There were no
variously coloured hatpins on her dressing-table; no scent-bottles; no
narrow curved pairs of scissors; no great variety of shoes and boots;
no silk petticoats lying on the chairs. The room was extremely neat.
There seemed to be two pairs of everything. The writing-table, however,
was piled with manuscript, and a table was drawn out to stand by the
arm-chair on which were two separate heaps of dark library books, in
which there were many slips of paper sticking out at different degrees
of thickness. Miss Allan had asked Rachel to come in out of kindness,
thinking that she was waiting about with nothing to do. Moreover, she
liked young women, for she had taught many of them, and having received
so much hospitality from the Ambroses she was glad to be able to repay
a minute part of it. She looked about accordingly for something to show
her. The room did not provide much entertainment. She touched her
manuscript. “Age of Chaucer; Age of Elizabeth; Age of Dryden,” she
reflected; “I’m glad there aren’t many more ages. I’m still in the
middle of the eighteenth century. Won’t you sit down, Miss Vinrace? The
chair, though small, is firm. . . . Euphues. The germ of the English
novel,” she continued, glancing at another page. “Is that the kind of
thing that interests you?”
She looked at Rachel with great kindness and simplicity, as though she
would do her utmost to provide anything she wished to have. This
expression had a remarkable charm in a face otherwise much lined with
care and thought.
“Oh no, it’s music with you, isn’t it?” she continued, recollecting,
“and I generally find that they don’t go together. Sometimes of course
we have prodigies—” She was looking about her for something and now saw
a jar on the mantelpiece which she reached down and gave to Rachel. “If
you put your finger into this jar you may be able to extract a piece of
preserved ginger. Are you a prodigy?”
But the ginger was deep and could not be reached.
“Don’t bother,” she said, as Miss Allan looked about for some other
implement. “I daresay I shouldn’t like preserved ginger.”
“You’ve never tried?” enquired Miss Allan. “Then I consider that it is
your duty to try now. Why, you may add a new pleasure to life, and as
you are still young—” She wondered whether a button-hook would do. “I
make it a rule to try everything,” she said. “Don’t you think it would
be very annoying if you tasted ginger for the first time on your
death-bed, and found you never liked anything so much? I should be so
exceedingly annoyed that I think I should get well on that account
alone.”
She was now successful, and a lump of ginger emerged on the end of the
button-hook. While she went to wipe the button-hook, Rachel bit the
ginger and at once cried, “I must spit it out!”
“Are you sure you have really tasted it?” Miss Allan demanded.
For answer Rachel threw it out of the window.
“An experience anyhow,” said Miss Allan calmly. “Let me see—I have
nothing else to offer you, unless you would like to taste this.” A
small cupboard hung above her bed, and she took out of it a slim
elegant jar filled with a bright green fluid.
“Crême de Menthe,” she said. “Liqueur, you know. It looks as if I
drank, doesn’t it? As a matter of fact it goes to prove what an
exceptionally abstemious person I am. I’ve had that jar for
six-and-twenty years,” she added, looking at it with pride, as she
tipped it over, and from the height of the liquid it could be seen that
the bottle was still untouched.
“Twenty-six years?” Rachel exclaimed.
Miss Allan was gratified, for she had meant Rachel to be surprised.
“When I went to Dresden six-and-twenty years ago,” she said, “a certain
friend of mine announced her intention of making me a present. She
thought that in the event of shipwreck or accident a stimulant might be
useful. However, as I had no occasion for it, I gave it back on my
return. On the eve of any foreign journey the same bottle always makes
its appearance, with the same note; on my return in safety it is always
handed back. I consider it a kind of charm against accidents. Though I
was once detained twenty-four hours by an accident to the train in
front of me, I have never met with any accident myself. Yes,” she
continued, now addressing the bottle, “we have seen many climes and
cupboards together, have we not? I intend one of these days to have a
silver label made with an inscription. It is a gentleman, as you may
observe, and his name is Oliver. . . . I do not think I could forgive
you, Miss Vinrace, if you broke my Oliver,” she said, firmly taking the
bottle out of Rachel’s hands and replacing it in the cupboard.
Rachel was swinging the bottle by the neck. She was interested by Miss
Allan to the point of forgetting the bottle.
“Well,” she exclaimed, “I do think that odd; to have had a friend for
twenty-six years, and a bottle, and—to have made all those journeys.”
“Not at all; I call it the reverse of odd,” Miss Allan replied. “I
always consider myself the most ordinary person I know. It’s rather
distinguished to be as ordinary as I am. I forget—are you a prodigy, or
did you say you were not a prodigy?”
She smiled at Rachel very kindly. She seemed to have known and
experienced so much, as she moved cumbrously about the room, that
surely there must be balm for all anguish in her words, could one
induce her to have recourse to them. But Miss Allan, who was now
locking the cupboard door, showed no signs of breaking the reticence
which had snowed her under for years. An uncomfortable sensation kept
Rachel silent; on the one hand, she wished to whirl high and strike a
spark out of the cool pink flesh; on the other she perceived there was