The Voyage Out
nothing to be done but to drift past each other in silence.
“I’m not a prodigy. I find it very difficult to say what I mean—” she
observed at length.
“It’s a matter of temperament, I believe,” Miss Allan helped her.
“There are some people who have no difficulty; for myself I find there
are a great many things I simply cannot say. But then I consider myself
very slow. One of my colleagues now, knows whether she likes you or
not—let me see, how does she do it?—by the way you say good-morning at
breakfast. It is sometimes a matter of years before I can make up my
mind. But most young people seem to find it easy?”
“Oh no,” said Rachel. “It’s hard!”
Miss Allan looked at Rachel quietly, saying nothing; she suspected that
there were difficulties of some kind. Then she put her hand to the back
of her head, and discovered that one of the grey coils of hair had come
loose.
“I must ask you to be so kind as to excuse me,” she said, rising, “if I
do my hair. I have never yet found a satisfactory type of hairpin. I
must change my dress, too, for the matter of that; and I should be
particularly glad of your assistance, because there is a tiresome set
of hooks which I _can_ fasten for myself, but it takes from ten to
fifteen minutes; whereas with your help—”
She slipped off her coat and skirt and blouse, and stood doing her hair
before the glass, a massive homely figure, her petticoat being so short
that she stood on a pair of thick slate-grey legs.
“People say youth is pleasant; I myself find middle age far
pleasanter,” she remarked, removing hair pins and combs, and taking up
her brush. When it fell loose her hair only came down to her neck.
“When one was young,” she continued, “things could seem so very serious
if one was made that way. . . . And now my dress.”
In a wonderfully short space of time her hair had been reformed in its
usual loops. The upper half of her body now became dark green with
black stripes on it; the skirt, however, needed hooking at various
angles, and Rachel had to kneel on the floor, fitting the eyes to the
hooks.
“Our Miss Johnson used to find life very unsatisfactory, I remember,”
Miss Allan continued. She turned her back to the light. “And then she
took to breeding guinea-pigs for their spots, and became absorbed in
that. I have just heard that the yellow guinea-pig has had a black
baby. We had a bet of sixpence on about it. She will be very
triumphant.”
The skirt was fastened. She looked at herself in the glass with the
curious stiffening of her face generally caused by looking in the
glass.
“Am I in a fit state to encounter my fellow-beings?” she asked. “I
forget which way it is—but they find black animals very rarely have
coloured babies—it may be the other way round. I have had it so often
explained to me that it is very stupid of me to have forgotten again.”
She moved about the room acquiring small objects with quiet force, and
fixing them about her—a locket, a watch and chain, a heavy gold
bracelet, and the parti-coloured button of a suffrage society. Finally,
completely equipped for Sunday tea, she stood before Rachel, and smiled
at her kindly. She was not an impulsive woman, and her life had
schooled her to restrain her tongue. At the same time, she was
possessed of an amount of good-will towards others, and in particular
towards the young, which often made her regret that speech was so
difficult.
“Shall we descend?” she said.
She put one hand upon Rachel’s shoulder, and stooping, picked up a pair
of walking-shoes with the other, and placed them neatly side by side
outside her door. As they walked down the passage they passed many
pairs of boots and shoes, some black and some brown, all side by side,
and all different, even to the way in which they lay together.
“I always think that people are so like their boots,” said Miss Allan.
“That is Mrs. Paley’s—” but as she spoke the door opened, and Mrs.
Paley rolled out in her chair, equipped also for tea.
She greeted Miss Allan and Rachel.
“I was just saying that people are so like their boots,” said Miss
Allan. Mrs. Paley did not hear. She repeated it more loudly still. Mrs.
Paley did not hear. She repeated it a third time. Mrs. Paley heard, but
she did not understand. She was apparently about to repeat it for the
fourth time, when Rachel suddenly said something inarticulate, and
disappeared down the corridor. This misunderstanding, which involved a
complete block in the passage, seemed to her unbearable. She walked
quickly and blindly in the opposite direction, and found herself at the
end of a _cul de sac_. There was a window, and a table and a chair in
the window, and upon the table stood a rusty inkstand, an ashtray, an
old copy of a French newspaper, and a pen with a broken nib. Rachel sat
down, as if to study the French newspaper, but a tear fell on the
blurred French print, raising a soft blot. She lifted her head sharply,
exclaiming aloud, “It’s intolerable!” Looking out of the window with
eyes that would have seen nothing even had they not been dazed by
tears, she indulged herself at last in violent abuse of the entire day.
It had been miserable from start to finish; first, the service in the
chapel; then luncheon; then Evelyn; then Miss Allan; then old Mrs.
Paley blocking up the passage. All day long she had been tantalized and
put off. She had now reached one of those eminences, the result of some
crisis, from which the world is finally displayed in its true
proportions. She disliked the look of it immensely—churches,
politicians, misfits, and huge impostures—men like Mr. Dalloway, men
like Mr. Bax, Evelyn and her chatter, Mrs. Paley blocking up the
passage. Meanwhile the steady beat of her own pulse represented the hot
current of feeling that ran down beneath; beating, struggling,
fretting. For the time, her own body was the source of all the life in
the world, which tried to burst forth here—there—and was repressed now
by Mr. Bax, now by Evelyn, now by the imposition of ponderous
stupidity, the weight of the entire world. Thus tormented, she would
twist her hands together, for all things were wrong, all people stupid.
Vaguely seeing that there were people down in the garden beneath she
represented them as aimless masses of matter, floating hither and
thither, without aim except to impede her. What were they doing, those
other people in the world?
“Nobody knows,” she said. The force of her rage was beginning to spend
itself, and the vision of the world which had been so vivid became dim.
“It’s a dream,” she murmured. She considered the rusty inkstand, the
pen, the ash-tray, and the old French newspaper. These small and
worthless objects seemed to her to represent human lives.
“We’re asleep and dreaming,” she repeated. But the possibility which
now suggested itself that one of the shapes might be the shape of
Terence roused her from her melancholy lethargy. She became as restless
as she had been before she sat down. She was no longer able to see the
world as a town laid out beneath her. It was covered instead by a haze
of feverish red mist. She had returned to the state in which she had
been all day. Thinking was no escape. Physical movement was the only
refuge, in and out of rooms, in and out of people’s minds, seeking she
knew not what. Therefore she rose, pushed back the table, and went
downstairs. She went out of the hall door, and, turning the corner of
the hotel, found herself among the people whom she had seen from the
window. But owing to the broad sunshine after shaded passages, and to
the substance of living people after dreams, the group appeared with
startling intensity, as though the dusty surface had been peeled off
everything, leaving only the reality and the instant. It had the look
of a vision printed on the dark at night. White and grey and purple
figures were scattered on the green, round wicker tables, in the middle
the flame of the tea-urn made the air waver like a faulty sheet of
glass, a massive green tree stood over them as if it were a moving
force held at rest. As she approached, she could hear Evelyn’s voice
repeating monotonously, “Here then—here—good doggie, come here”; for a
moment nothing seemed to happen; it all stood still, and then she
realised that one of the figures was Helen Ambrose; and the dust again
began to settle.
The group indeed had come together in a miscellaneous way; one
tea-table joining to another tea-table, and deck-chairs serving to
connect two groups. But even at a distance it could be seen that Mrs.
Flushing, upright and imperious, dominated the party. She was talking
vehemently to Helen across the table.
“Ten days under canvas,” she was saying. “No comforts. If you want
comforts, don’t come. But I may tell you, if you don’t come you’ll
regret it all your life. You say yes?”
At this moment Mrs. Flushing caught sight of Rachel.
“Ah, there’s your niece. She’s promised. You’re coming, aren’t you?”
Having adopted the plan, she pursued it with the energy of a child.
Rachel took her part with eagerness.
“Of course I’m coming. So are you, Helen. And Mr. Pepper too.” As she
sat she realised that she was surrounded by people she knew, but that
Terence was not among them. From various angles people began saying
what they thought of the proposed expedition. According to some it
would be hot, but the nights would be cold; according to others, the
difficulties would lie rather in getting a boat, and in speaking the
language. Mrs. Flushing disposed of all objections, whether due to man
or due to nature, by announcing that her husband would settle all that.
Meanwhile Mr. Flushing quietly explained to Helen that the expedition
was really a simple matter; it took five days at the outside; and the
place—a native village—was certainly well worth seeing before she
returned to England. Helen murmured ambiguously, and did not commit
herself to one answer rather than to another.
The tea-party, however, included too many different kinds of people for
general conversation to flourish; and from Rachel’s point of view
possessed the great advantage that it was quite unnecessary for her to
talk. Over there Susan and Arthur were explaining to Mrs. Paley that an
expedition had been proposed; and Mrs. Paley having grasped the fact,
gave the advice of an old traveller that they should take nice canned
vegetables, fur cloaks, and insect powder. She leant over to Mrs.
Flushing and whispered something which from the twinkle in her eyes
probably had reference to bugs. Then Helen was reciting “Toll for the
Brave” to St. John Hirst, in order apparently to win a sixpence which
lay upon the table; while Mr. Hughling Elliot imposed silence upon his
section of the audience by his fascinating anecdote of Lord Curzon and
the undergraduate’s bicycle. Mrs. Thornbury was trying to remember the
name of a man who might have been another Garibaldi, and had written a
book which they ought to read; and Mr. Thornbury recollected that he
had a pair of binoculars at anybody’s service. Miss Allan meanwhile
murmured with the curious intimacy which a spinster often achieves with
dogs, to the fox-terrier which Evelyn had at last induced to come over
to them. Little particles of dust or blossom fell on the plates now and
then when the branches sighed above. Rachel seemed to see and hear a
little of everything, much as a river feels the twigs that fall into it
and sees the sky above, but her eyes were too vague for Evelyn’s
liking. She came across, and sat on the ground at Rachel’s feet.
“Well?” she asked suddenly. “What are you thinking about?”
“Miss Warrington,” Rachel replied rashly, because she had to say
something. She did indeed see Susan murmuring to Mrs. Elliot, while
Arthur stared at her with complete confidence in his own love. Both