The Voyage Out
grass fields, and farmyards with pigs and cows, and men walking beside
carts with pitchforks—there’s nothing to compare with that here—look at
the stony red earth, and the bright blue sea, and the glaring white
houses—how tired one gets of it! And the air, without a stain or a
wrinkle. I’d give anything for a sea mist.”
Rachel, too, had been thinking of the English country: the flat land
rolling away to the sea, and the woods and the long straight roads,
where one can walk for miles without seeing any one, and the great
church towers and the curious houses clustered in the valleys, and the
birds, and the dusk, and the rain falling against the windows.
“But London, London’s the place,” Terence continued. They looked
together at the carpet, as though London itself were to be seen there
lying on the floor, with all its spires and pinnacles pricking through
the smoke.
“On the whole, what I should like best at this moment,” Terence
pondered, “would be to find myself walking down Kingsway, by those big
placards, you know, and turning into the Strand. Perhaps I might go and
look over Waterloo Bridge for a moment. Then I’d go along the Strand
past the shops with all the new books in them, and through the little
archway into the Temple. I always like the quiet after the uproar. You
hear your own footsteps suddenly quite loud. The Temple’s very
pleasant. I think I should go and see if I could find dear old
Hodgkin—the man who writes books about Van Eyck, you know. When I left
England he was very sad about his tame magpie. He suspected that a man
had poisoned it. And then Russell lives on the next staircase. I think
you’d like him. He’s a passion for Handel. Well, Rachel,” he concluded,
dismissing the vision of London, “we shall be doing that together in
six weeks’ time, and it’ll be the middle of June then—and June in
London—my God! how pleasant it all is!”
“And we’re certain to have it too,” she said. “It isn’t as if we were
expecting a great deal—only to walk about and look at things.”
“Only a thousand a year and perfect freedom,” he replied. “How many
people in London d’you think have that?”
“And now you’ve spoilt it,” she complained. “Now we’ve got to think of
the horrors.” She looked grudgingly at the novel which had once caused
her perhaps an hour’s discomfort, so that she had never opened it
again, but kept it on her table, and looked at it occasionally, as some
medieval monk kept a skull, or a crucifix to remind him of the frailty
of the body.
“Is it true, Terence,” she demanded, “that women die with bugs crawling
across their faces?”
“I think it’s very probable,” he said. “But you must admit, Rachel,
that we so seldom think of anything but ourselves that an occasional
twinge is really rather pleasant.”
Accusing him of an affection of cynicism which was just as bad as
sentimentality itself, she left her position by his side and knelt upon
the window sill, twisting the curtain tassels between her fingers. A
vague sense of dissatisfaction filled her.
“What’s so detestable in this country,” she exclaimed, “is the
blue—always blue sky and blue sea. It’s like a curtain—all the things
one wants are on the other side of that. I want to know what’s going on
behind it. I hate these divisions, don’t you, Terence? One person all
in the dark about another person. Now I liked the Dalloways,” she
continued, “and they’re gone. I shall never see them again. Just by
going on a ship we cut ourselves off entirely from the rest of the
world. I want to see England there—London there—all sorts of people—why
shouldn’t one? why should one be shut up all by oneself in a room?”
While she spoke thus half to herself and with increasing vagueness,
because her eye was caught by a ship that had just come into the bay,
she did not see that Terence had ceased to stare contentedly in front
of him, and was looking at her keenly and with dissatisfaction. She
seemed to be able to cut herself adrift from him, and to pass away to
unknown places where she had no need of him. The thought roused his
jealousy.
“I sometimes think you’re not in love with me and never will be,” he
said energetically. She started and turned round at his words.
“I don’t satisfy you in the way you satisfy me,” he continued. “There’s
something I can’t get hold of in you. You don’t want me as I want
you—you’re always wanting something else.”
He began pacing up and down the room.
“Perhaps I ask too much,” he went on. “Perhaps it isn’t really possible
to have what I want. Men and women are too different. You can’t
understand—you don’t understand—”
He came up to where she stood looking at him in silence.
It seemed to her now that what he was saying was perfectly true, and
that she wanted many more things than the love of one human being—the
sea, the sky. She turned again and looked at the distant blue, which
was so smooth and serene where the sky met the sea; she could not
possibly want only one human being.
“Or is it only this damnable engagement?” he continued. “Let’s be
married here, before we go back—or is it too great a risk? Are we sure
we want to marry each other?”
They began pacing up and down the room, but although they came very
near each other in their pacing, they took care not to touch each
other. The hopelessness of their position overcame them both. They were
impotent; they could never love each other sufficiently to overcome all
these barriers, and they could never be satisfied with less. Realising
this with intolerable keenness she stopped in front of him and
exclaimed:
“Let’s break it off, then.”
The words did more to unite them than any amount of argument. As if
they stood on the edge of a precipice they clung together. They knew
that they could not separate; painful and terrible it might be, but
they were joined for ever. They lapsed into silence, and after a time
crept together in silence. Merely to be so close soothed them, and
sitting side by side the divisions disappeared, and it seemed as if the
world were once more solid and entire, and as if, in some strange way,
they had grown larger and stronger.
It was long before they moved, and when they moved it was with great
reluctance. They stood together in front of the looking-glass, and with
a brush tried to make themselves look as if they had been feeling
nothing all the morning, neither pain nor happiness. But it chilled
them to see themselves in the glass, for instead of being vast and
indivisible they were really very small and separate, the size of the
glass leaving a large space for the reflection of other things.
CHAPTER XXIII
But no brush was able to efface completely the expression of happiness,
so that Mrs. Ambrose could not treat them when they came downstairs as
if they had spent the morning in a way that could be discussed
naturally. This being so, she joined in the world’s conspiracy to
consider them for the time incapacitated from the business of life,
struck by their intensity of feeling into enmity against life, and
almost succeeded in dismissing them from her thoughts.
She reflected that she had done all that it was necessary to do in
practical matters. She had written a great many letters, and had
obtained Willoughby’s consent. She had dwelt so often upon Mr. Hewet’s
prospects, his profession, his birth, appearance, and temperament, that
she had almost forgotten what he was really like. When she refreshed
herself by a look at him, she used to wonder again what he was like,
and then, concluding that they were happy at any rate, thought no more
about it.
She might more profitably consider what would happen in three years’
time, or what might have happened if Rachel had been left to explore
the world under her father’s guidance. The result, she was honest
enough to own, might have been better—who knows? She did not disguise
from herself that Terence had faults. She was inclined to think him too
easy and tolerant, just as he was inclined to think her perhaps a
trifle hard—no, it was rather that she was uncompromising. In some ways
she found St. John preferable; but then, of course, he would never have
suited Rachel. Her friendship with St. John was established, for
although she fluctuated between irritation and interest in a way that
did credit to the candour of her disposition, she liked his company on
the whole. He took her outside this little world of love and emotion.
He had a grasp of facts. Supposing, for instance, that England made a
sudden move towards some unknown port on the coast of Morocco, St. John
knew what was at the back of it, and to hear him engaged with her
husband in argument about finance and the balance of power, gave her an
odd sense of stability. She respected their arguments without always
listening to them, much as she respected a solid brick wall, or one of
those immense municipal buildings which, although they compose the
greater part of our cities, have been built day after day and year
after year by unknown hands. She liked to sit and listen, and even felt
a little elated when the engaged couple, after showing their profound
lack of interest, slipped from the room, and were seen pulling flowers
to pieces in the garden. It was not that she was jealous of them, but
she did undoubtedly envy them their great unknown future that lay
before them. Slipping from one such thought to another, she was at the
dining-room with fruit in her hands. Sometimes she stopped to
straighten a candle stooping with the heat, or disturbed some too rigid
arrangement of the chairs. She had reason to suspect that Chailey had
been balancing herself on the top of a ladder with a wet duster during
their absence, and the room had never been quite like itself since.
Returning from the dining-room for the third time, she perceived that
one of the arm-chairs was now occupied by St. John. He lay back in it,
with his eyes half shut, looking, as he always did, curiously buttoned
up in a neat grey suit and fenced against the exuberance of a foreign
climate which might at any moment proceed to take liberties with him.
Her eyes rested on him gently and then passed on over his head. Finally
she took the chair opposite.
“I didn’t want to come here,” he said at last, “but I was positively
driven to it. . . . Evelyn M.,” he groaned.
He sat up, and began to explain with mock solemnity how the detestable
woman was set upon marrying him.
“She pursues me about the place. This morning she appeared in the
smoking-room. All I could do was to seize my hat and fly. I didn’t want
to come, but I couldn’t stay and face another meal with her.”
“Well, we must make the best of it,” Helen replied philosophically. It
was very hot, and they were indifferent to any amount of silence, so
that they lay back in their chairs waiting for something to happen. The
bell rang for luncheon, but there was no sound of movement in the
house. Was there any news? Helen asked; anything in the papers? St.
John shook his head. O yes, he had a letter from home, a letter from
his mother, describing the suicide of the parlour-maid. She was called
Susan Jane, and she came into the kitchen one afternoon, and said that
she wanted cook to keep her money for her; she had twenty pounds in
gold. Then she went out to buy herself a hat. She came in at half-past
five and said that she had taken poison. They had only just time to get
her into bed and call a doctor before she died.
“Well?” Helen enquired.
“There’ll have to be an inquest,” said St. John.
Why had she done it? He shrugged his shoulders. Why do people kill
themselves? Why do the lower orders do any of the things they do do?
Nobody knows. They sat in silence.
“The bell’s run fifteen minutes and they’re not down,” said Helen at
length.