The Voyage Out
engaged, but instead of being in the least romantic or exciting, that
was as dull as everything else; it annoyed him, too, to think that they
were in love. He drew close to Helen and began to tell her how
uncomfortable his night had been, lying on the deck, sometimes too hot,
sometimes too cold, and the stars so bright that he couldn’t get to
sleep. He had lain awake all night thinking, and when it was light
enough to see, he had written twenty lines of his poem on God, and the
awful thing was that he’d practically proved the fact that God did not
exist. He did not see that he was teasing her, and he went on to wonder
what would happen if God did exist—“an old gentleman in a beard and a
long blue dressing gown, extremely testy and disagreeable as he’s bound
to be? Can you suggest a rhyme? God, rod, sod—all used; any others?”
Although he spoke much as usual, Helen could have seen, had she looked,
that he was also impatient and disturbed. But she was not called upon
to answer, for Mr. Flushing now exclaimed “There!” They looked at the
hut on the bank, a desolate place with a large rent in the roof, and
the ground round it yellow, scarred with fires and scattered with rusty
open tins.
“Did they find his dead body there?” Mrs. Flushing exclaimed, leaning
forward in her eagerness to see the spot where the explorer had died.
“They found his body and his skins and a notebook,” her husband
replied. But the boat had soon carried them on and left the place
behind.
It was so hot that they scarcely moved, except now to change a foot,
or, again, to strike a match. Their eyes, concentrated upon the bank,
were full of the same green reflections, and their lips were slightly
pressed together as though the sights they were passing gave rise to
thoughts, save that Hirst’s lips moved intermittently as half
consciously he sought rhymes for God. Whatever the thoughts of the
others, no one said anything for a considerable space. They had grown
so accustomed to the wall of trees on either side that they looked up
with a start when the light suddenly widened out and the trees came to
an end.
“It almost reminds one of an English park,” said Mr. Flushing.
Indeed no change could have been greater. On both banks of the river
lay an open lawn-like space, grass covered and planted, for the
gentleness and order of the place suggested human care, with graceful
trees on the top of little mounds. As far as they could gaze, this lawn
rose and sank with the undulating motion of an old English park. The
change of scene naturally suggested a change of position, grateful to
most of them. They rose and leant over the rail.
“It might be Arundel or Windsor,” Mr. Flushing continued, “if you cut
down that bush with the yellow flowers; and, by Jove, look!”
Rows of brown backs paused for a moment and then leapt with a motion as
if they were springing over waves out of sight. For a moment no one of
them could believe that they had really seen live animals in the open—a
herd of wild deer, and the sight aroused a childlike excitement in
them, dissipating their gloom.
“I’ve never in my life seen anything bigger than a hare!” Hirst
exclaimed with genuine excitement. “What an ass I was not to bring my
Kodak!”
Soon afterwards the launch came gradually to a standstill, and the
captain explained to Mr. Flushing that it would be pleasant for the
passengers if they now went for a stroll on shore; if they chose to
return within an hour, he would take them on to the village; if they
chose to walk—it was only a mile or two farther on—he would meet them
at the landing-place.
The matter being settled, they were once more put on shore: the
sailors, producing raisins and tobacco, leant upon the rail and watched
the six English, whose coats and dresses looked so strange upon the
green, wander off. A joke that was by no means proper set them all
laughing, and then they turned round and lay at their ease upon the
deck.
Directly they landed, Terence and Rachel drew together slightly in
advance of the others.
“Thank God!” Terence exclaimed, drawing a long breath. “At last we’re
alone.”
“And if we keep ahead we can talk,” said Rachel.
Nevertheless, although their position some yards in advance of the
others made it possible for them to say anything they chose, they were
both silent.
“You love me?” Terence asked at length, breaking the silence painfully.
To speak or to be silent was equally an effort, for when they were
silent they were keenly conscious of each other’s presence, and yet
words were either too trivial or too large.
She murmured inarticulately, ending, “And you?”
“Yes, yes,” he replied; but there were so many things to be said, and
now that they were alone it seemed necessary to bring themselves still
more near, and to surmount a barrier which had grown up since they had
last spoken. It was difficult, frightening even, oddly embarrassing. At
one moment he was clear-sighted, and, at the next, confused.
“Now I’m going to begin at the beginning,” he said resolutely. “I’m
going to tell you what I ought to have told you before. In the first
place, I’ve never been in love with other women, but I’ve had other
women. Then I’ve great faults. I’m very lazy, I’m moody—” He persisted,
in spite of her exclamation, “You’ve got to know the worst of me. I’m
lustful. I’m overcome by a sense of futility—incompetence. I ought
never to have asked you to marry me, I expect. I’m a bit of a snob; I’m
ambitious—”
“Oh, our faults!” she cried. “What do they matter?” Then she demanded,
“Am I in love—is this being in love—are we to marry each other?”
Overcome by the charm of her voice and her presence, he exclaimed, “Oh,
you’re free, Rachel. To you, time will make no difference, or marriage
or—”
The voices of the others behind them kept floating, now farther, now
nearer, and Mrs. Flushing’s laugh rose clearly by itself.
“Marriage?” Rachel repeated.
The shouts were renewed behind, warning them that they were bearing too
far to the left. Improving their course, he continued, “Yes, marriage.”
The feeling that they could not be united until she knew all about him
made him again endeavour to explain.
“All that’s been bad in me, the things I’ve put up with—the second
best—”
She murmured, considered her own life, but could not describe how it
looked to her now.
“And the loneliness!” he continued. A vision of walking with her
through the streets of London came before his eyes. “We will go for
walks together,” he said. The simplicity of the idea relieved them, and
for the first time they laughed. They would have liked had they dared
to take each other by the hand, but the consciousness of eyes fixed on
them from behind had not yet deserted them.
“Books, people, sights—Mrs. Nutt, Greeley, Hutchinson,” Hewet murmured.
With every word the mist which had enveloped them, making them seem
unreal to each other, since the previous afternoon melted a little
further, and their contact became more and more natural. Up through the
sultry southern landscape they saw the world they knew appear clearer
and more vividly than it had ever appeared before. As upon that
occasion at the hotel when she had sat in the window, the world once
more arranged itself beneath her gaze very vividly and in its true
proportions. She glanced curiously at Terence from time to time,
observing his grey coat and his purple tie; observing the man with whom
she was to spend the rest of her life.
After one of these glances she murmured, “Yes, I’m in love. There’s no
doubt; I’m in love with you.”
Nevertheless, they remained uncomfortably apart; drawn so close
together, as she spoke, that there seemed no division between them, and
the next moment separate and far away again. Feeling this painfully,
she exclaimed, “It will be a fight.”
But as she looked at him she perceived from the shape of his eyes, the
lines about his mouth, and other peculiarities that he pleased her, and
she added:
“Where I want to fight, you have compassion. You’re finer than I am;
you’re much finer.”
He returned her glance and smiled, perceiving, much as she had done,
the very small individual things about her which made her delightful to
him. She was his for ever. This barrier being surmounted, innumerable
delights lay before them both.
“I’m not finer,” he answered. “I’m only older, lazier; a man, not a
woman.”
“A man,” she repeated, and a curious sense of possession coming over
her, it struck her that she might now touch him; she put out her hand
and lightly touched his cheek. His fingers followed where hers had
been, and the touch of his hand upon his face brought back the
overpowering sense of unreality. This body of his was unreal; the whole
world was unreal.
“What’s happened?” he began. “Why did I ask you to marry me? How did it
happen?”
“Did you ask me to marry you?” she wondered. They faded far away from
each other, and neither of them could remember what had been said.
“We sat upon the ground,” he recollected.
“We sat upon the ground,” she confirmed him. The recollection of
sitting upon the ground, such as it was, seemed to unite them again,
and they walked on in silence, their minds sometimes working with
difficulty and sometimes ceasing to work, their eyes alone perceiving
the things round them. Now he would attempt again to tell her his
faults, and why he loved her; and she would describe what she had felt
at this time or at that time, and together they would interpret her
feeling. So beautiful was the sound of their voices that by degrees
they scarcely listened to the words they framed. Long silences came
between their words, which were no longer silences of struggle and
confusion but refreshing silences, in which trivial thoughts moved
easily. They began to speak naturally of ordinary things, of the
flowers and the trees, how they grew there so red, like garden flowers
at home, and there bent and crooked like the arm of a twisted old man.
Very gently and quietly, almost as if it were the blood singing in her
veins, or the water of the stream running over stones, Rachel became
conscious of a new feeling within her. She wondered for a moment what
it was, and then said to herself, with a little surprise at recognising
in her own person so famous a thing:
“This is happiness, I suppose.” And aloud to Terence she spoke, “This
is happiness.”
On the heels of her words he answered, “This is happiness,” upon which
they guessed that the feeling had sprung in both of them the same time.
They began therefore to describe how this felt and that felt, how like
it was and yet how different; for they were very different.
Voices crying behind them never reached through the waters in which
they were now sunk. The repetition of Hewet’s name in short, dissevered
syllables was to them the crack of a dry branch or the laughter of a
bird. The grasses and breezes sounding and murmuring all round them,
they never noticed that the swishing of the grasses grew louder and
louder, and did not cease with the lapse of the breeze. A hand dropped
abrupt as iron on Rachel’s shoulder; it might have been a bolt from
heaven. She fell beneath it, and the grass whipped across her eyes and
filled her mouth and ears. Through the waving stems she saw a figure,
large and shapeless against the sky. Helen was upon her. Rolled this
way and that, now seeing only forests of green, and now the high blue
heaven; she was speechless and almost without sense. At last she lay
still, all the grasses shaken round her and before her by her panting.
Over her loomed two great heads, the heads of a man and woman, of
Terence and Helen.
Both were flushed, both laughing, and the lips were moving; they came
together and kissed in the air above her. Broken fragments of speech