Early next morning there was a sound as of chains being drawn roughly
overhead; the steady heart of the _Euphrosyne_ slowly ceased to beat;
and Helen, poking her nose above deck, saw a stationary castle upon a
stationary hill. They had dropped anchor in the mouth of the Tagus, and
instead of cleaving new waves perpetually, the same waves kept
returning and washing against the sides of the ship.
As soon as breakfast was done, Willoughby disappeared over the vessel’s
side, carrying a brown leather case, shouting over his shoulder that
every one was to mind and behave themselves, for he would be kept in
Lisbon doing business until five o’clock that afternoon.
At about that hour he reappeared, carrying his case, professing himself
tired, bothered, hungry, thirsty, cold, and in immediate need of his
tea. Rubbing his hands, he told them the adventures of the day: how he
had come upon poor old Jackson combing his moustache before the glass
in the office, little expecting his descent, had put him through such a
morning’s work as seldom came his way; then treated him to a lunch of
champagne and ortolans; paid a call upon Mrs. Jackson, who was fatter
than ever, poor woman, but asked kindly after Rachel—and O Lord, little
Jackson had confessed to a confounded piece of weakness—well, well, no
harm was done, he supposed, but what was the use of his giving orders
if they were promptly disobeyed? He had said distinctly that he would
take no passengers on this trip. Here he began searching in his pockets
and eventually discovered a card, which he planked down on the table
before Rachel. On it she read, “Mr. and Mrs. Richard Dalloway, 23
Browne Street, Mayfair.”
“Mr. Richard Dalloway,” continued Vinrace, “seems to be a gentleman who
thinks that because he was once a member of Parliament, and his wife’s
the daughter of a peer, they can have what they like for the asking.
They got round poor little Jackson anyhow. Said they must have
passages—produced a letter from Lord Glenaway, asking me as a personal
favour—overruled any objections Jackson made (I don’t believe they came
to much), and so there’s nothing for it but to submit, I suppose.”
But it was evident that for some reason or other Willoughby was quite
pleased to submit, although he made a show of growling.
The truth was that Mr. and Mrs. Dalloway had found themselves stranded
in Lisbon. They had been travelling on the Continent for some weeks,
chiefly with a view to broadening Mr. Dalloway’s mind. Unable for a
season, by one of the accidents of political life, to serve his country
in Parliament, Mr. Dalloway was doing the best he could to serve it out
of Parliament. For that purpose the Latin countries did very well,
although the East, of course, would have done better.
“Expect to hear of me next in Petersburg or Teheran,” he had said,
turning to wave farewell from the steps of the Travellers’. But a
disease had broken out in the East, there was cholera in Russia, and he
was heard of, not so romantically, in Lisbon. They had been through
France; he had stopped at manufacturing centres where, producing
letters of introduction, he had been shown over works, and noted facts
in a pocket-book. In Spain he and Mrs. Dalloway had mounted mules, for
they wished to understand how the peasants live. Are they ripe for
rebellion, for example? Mrs. Dalloway had then insisted upon a day or
two at Madrid with the pictures. Finally they arrived in Lisbon and
spent six days which, in a journal privately issued afterwards, they
described as of “unique interest.” Richard had audiences with
ministers, and foretold a crisis at no distant date, “the foundations
of government being incurably corrupt. Yet how blame, etc.”; while
Clarissa inspected the royal stables, and took several snapshots
showing men now exiled and windows now broken. Among other things she
photographed Fielding’s grave, and let loose a small bird which some
ruffian had trapped, “because one hates to think of anything in a cage
where English people lie buried,” the diary stated. Their tour was
thoroughly unconventional, and followed no meditated plan. The foreign
correspondents of the _Times_ decided their route as much as anything
else. Mr. Dalloway wished to look at certain guns, and was of opinion
that the African coast is far more unsettled than people at home were
inclined to believe. For these reasons they wanted a slow inquisitive
kind of ship, comfortable, for they were bad sailors, but not
extravagant, which would stop for a day or two at this port and at
that, taking in coal while the Dalloways saw things for themselves.
Meanwhile they found themselves stranded in Lisbon, unable for the
moment to lay hands upon the precise vessel they wanted. They heard of
the _Euphrosyne_, but heard also that she was primarily a cargo boat,
and only took passengers by special arrangement, her business being to
carry dry goods to the Amazons, and rubber home again. “By special
arrangement,” however, were words of high encouragement to them, for
they came of a class where almost everything was specially arranged, or
could be if necessary. On this occasion all that Richard did was to
write a note to Lord Glenaway, the head of the line which bears his
title; to call on poor old Jackson; to represent to him how Mrs.
Dalloway was so-and-so, and he had been something or other else, and
what they wanted was such and such a thing. It was done. They parted
with compliments and pleasure on both sides, and here, a week later,
came the boat rowing up to the ship in the dusk with the Dalloways on
board of it; in three minutes they were standing together on the deck
of the _Euphrosyne_. Their arrival, of course, created some stir, and
it was seen by several pairs of eyes that Mrs. Dalloway was a tall
slight woman, her body wrapped in furs, her head in veils, while Mr.
Dalloway appeared to be a middle-sized man of sturdy build, dressed
like a sportsman on an autumnal moor. Many solid leather bags of a rich
brown hue soon surrounded them, in addition to which Mr. Dalloway
carried a despatch box, and his wife a dressing-case suggestive of a
diamond necklace and bottles with silver tops.
“It’s so like Whistler!” she exclaimed, with a wave towards the shore,
as she shook Rachel by the hand, and Rachel had only time to look at
the grey hills on one side of her before Willoughby introduced Mrs.
Chailey, who took the lady to her cabin.
Momentary though it seemed, nevertheless the interruption was
upsetting; every one was more or less put out by it, from Mr. Grice,
the steward, to Ridley himself. A few minutes later Rachel passed the
smoking-room, and found Helen moving arm-chairs. She was absorbed in
her arrangements, and on seeing Rachel remarked confidentially:
“If one can give men a room to themselves where they will sit, it’s all
to the good. Arm-chairs are _the_ important things—” She began wheeling
them about. “Now, does it still look like a bar at a railway station?”
She whipped a plush cover off a table. The appearance of the place was
marvellously improved.
Again, the arrival of the strangers made it obvious to Rachel, as the
hour of dinner approached, that she must change her dress; and the
ringing of the great bell found her sitting on the edge of her berth in
such a position that the little glass above the washstand reflected her
head and shoulders. In the glass she wore an expression of tense
melancholy, for she had come to the depressing conclusion, since the
arrival of the Dalloways, that her face was not the face she wanted,
and in all probability never would be.
However, punctuality had been impressed on her, and whatever face she
had, she must go in to dinner.
These few minutes had been used by Willoughby in sketching to the
Dalloways the people they were to meet, and checking them upon his
fingers.
“There’s my brother-in-law, Ambrose, the scholar (I daresay you’ve
heard his name), his wife, my old friend Pepper, a very quiet fellow,
but knows everything, I’m told. And that’s all. We’re a very small
party. I’m dropping them on the coast.”
Mrs. Dalloway, with her head a little on one side, did her best to
recollect Ambrose—was it a surname?—but failed. She was made slightly
uneasy by what she had heard. She knew that scholars married any
one—girls they met in farms on reading parties; or little suburban
women who said disagreeably, “Of course I know it’s my husband you
want; not _me_.”
But Helen came in at that point, and Mrs. Dalloway saw with relief that
though slightly eccentric in appearance, she was not untidy, held
herself well, and her voice had restraint in it, which she held to be
the sign of a lady. Mr. Pepper had not troubled to change his neat ugly
suit.
“But after all,” Clarissa thought to herself as she followed Vinrace in
to dinner, “_every one’s_ interesting really.”
When seated at the table she had some need of that assurance, chiefly
because of Ridley, who came in late, looked decidedly unkempt, and took
to his soup in profound gloom.
An imperceptible signal passed between husband and wife, meaning that
they grasped the situation and would stand by each other loyally. With
scarcely a pause Mrs. Dalloway turned to Willoughby and began:
“What I find so tiresome about the sea is that there are no flowers in
it. Imagine fields of hollyhocks and violets in mid-ocean! How divine!”
“But somewhat dangerous to navigation,” boomed Richard, in the bass,
like the bassoon to the flourish of his wife’s violin. “Why, weeds can
be bad enough, can’t they, Vinrace? I remember crossing in the
_Mauretania_ once, and saying to the Captain—Richards—did you know
him?—‘Now tell me what perils you really dread most for your ship,
Captain Richards?’ expecting him to say icebergs, or derelicts, or fog,
or something of that sort. Not a bit of it. I’ve always remembered his
answer. ‘_Sedgius aquatici_,’ he said, which I take to be a kind of
duck-weed.”
Mr. Pepper looked up sharply, and was about to put a question when
Willoughby continued:
“They’ve an awful time of it—those captains! Three thousand souls on
board!”
“Yes, indeed,” said Clarissa. She turned to Helen with an air of
profundity. “I’m convinced people are wrong when they say it’s work
that wears one; it’s responsibility. That’s why one pays one’s cook
more than one’s housemaid, I suppose.”
“According to that, one ought to pay one’s nurse double; but one
doesn’t,” said Helen.
“No; but think what a joy to have to do with babies, instead of
saucepans!” said Mrs. Dalloway, looking with more interest at Helen, a
probable mother.
“I’d much rather be a cook than a nurse,” said Helen. “Nothing would
induce me to take charge of children.”
“Mothers always exaggerate,” said Ridley. “A well-bred child is no
responsibility. I’ve travelled all over Europe with mine. You just wrap
’em up warm and put ’em in the rack.”
Helen laughed at that. Mrs. Dalloway exclaimed, looking at Ridley:
“How like a father! My husband’s just the same. And then one talks of
the equality of the sexes!”
“Does one?” said Mr. Pepper.
“Oh, some do!” cried Clarissa. “My husband had to pass an irate lady
every afternoon last session who said nothing else, I imagine.”
“She sat outside the house; it was very awkward,” said Dalloway. “At
last I plucked up courage and said to her, ‘My good creature, you’re
only in the way where you are. You’re hindering me, and you’re doing no
good to yourself.’”
“And then she caught him by the coat, and would have scratched his eyes
out—” Mrs. Dalloway put in.
“Pooh—that’s been exaggerated,” said Richard. “No, I pity them, I
confess. The discomfort of sitting on those steps must be awful.”
“Serve them right,” said Willoughby curtly.
“Oh, I’m entirely with you there,” said Dalloway. “Nobody can condemn
the utter folly and futility of such behaviour more than I do; and as
for the whole agitation, well! may I be in my grave before a woman has
the right to vote in England! That’s all I say.”
The solemnity of her husband’s assertion made Clarissa grave.
“It’s unthinkable,” she said. “Don’t tell me you’re a suffragist?” she
turned to Ridley.
“I don’t care a fig one way or t’other,” said Ambrose. “If any creature
is so deluded as to think that a vote does him or her any good, let him
have it. He’ll soon learn better.”
“You’re not a politician, I see,” she smiled.
“Goodness, no,” said Ridley.
“I’m afraid your husband won’t approve of me,” said Dalloway aside, to
Mrs. Ambrose. She suddenly recollected that he had been in Parliament.
“Don’t you ever find it rather dull?” she asked, not knowing exactly
what to say.
Richard spread his hands before him, as if inscriptions were to be read
in the palms of them.
“If you ask me whether I ever find it rather dull,” he said, “I am
bound to say yes; on the other hand, if you ask me what career do you
consider on the whole, taking the good with the bad, the most enjoyable
and enviable, not to speak of its more serious side, of all careers,
for a man, I am bound to say, ‘The Politician’s.’”
“The Bar or politics, I agree,” said Willoughby. “You get more run for
your money.”
“All one’s faculties have their play,” said Richard. “I may be treading
on dangerous ground; but what I feel about poets and artists in general
is this: on your own lines, you can’t be beaten—granted; but off your
own lines—puff—one has to make allowances. Now, I shouldn’t like to
think that any one had to make allowances for me.”
“I don’t quite agree, Richard,” said Mrs. Dalloway. “Think of Shelley.
I feel that there’s almost everything one wants in ‘Adonais.’”
“Read ‘Adonais’ by all means,” Richard conceded. “But whenever I hear
of Shelley I repeat to myself the words of Matthew Arnold, ‘What a set!
What a set!’”
This roused Ridley’s attention. “Matthew Arnold? A detestable prig!” he
snapped.
“A prig—granted,” said Richard; “but, I think a man of the world.
That’s where my point comes in. We politicians doubtless seem to you”
(he grasped somehow that Helen was the representative of the arts) “a
gross commonplace set of people; but we see both sides; we may be
clumsy, but we do our best to get a grasp of things. Now your artists
_find_ things in a mess, shrug their shoulders, turn aside to their
visions—which I grant may be very beautiful—and _leave_ things in a
mess. Now that seems to me evading one’s responsibilities. Besides, we
aren’t all born with the artistic faculty.”
“It’s dreadful,” said Mrs. Dalloway, who, while her husband spoke, had
been thinking. “When I’m with artists I feel so intensely the delights
of shutting oneself up in a little world of one’s own, with pictures
and music and everything beautiful, and then I go out into the streets
and the first child I meet with its poor, hungry, dirty little face
makes me turn round and say, ‘No, I _can’t_ shut myself up—I _won’t_
live in a world of my own. I should like to stop all the painting and
writing and music until this kind of thing exists no longer.’ Don’t you
feel,” she wound up, addressing Helen, “that life’s a perpetual
conflict?” Helen considered for a moment. “No,” she said. “I don’t
think I do.”
There was a pause, which was decidedly uncomfortable. Mrs. Dalloway
then gave a little shiver, and asked whether she might have her fur
cloak brought to her. As she adjusted the soft brown fur about her neck
a fresh topic struck her.
“I own,” she said, “that I shall never forget the _Antigone_. I saw it
at Cambridge years ago, and it’s haunted me ever since. Don’t you think
it’s quite the most modern thing you ever saw?” she asked Ridley. “It
seemed to me I’d known twenty Clytemnestras. Old Lady Ditchling for
one. I don’t know a word of Greek, but I could listen to it for ever—”
Here Mr. Pepper struck up:
πολλὰ τὰ δεινά, κοὐδὲν ἀν-
θρώπου δεινότερον πέλει.
τοῦτο καὶ πολιοῦ πέραν
πόντου χειμερίῳ νότῳ
χωρεῖ, περιβρυχίοισι
περῶν ὑπ᾽ οἴδμασι.
Mrs. Dalloway looked at him with compressed lips.
“I’d give ten years of my life to know Greek,” she said, when he had
done.
“I could teach you the alphabet in half an hour,” said Ridley, “and
you’d read Homer in a month. I should think it an honour to instruct
you.”
Helen, engaged with Mr. Dalloway and the habit, now fallen into
decline, of quoting Greek in the House of Commons, noted, in the great
commonplace book that lies open beside us as we talk, the fact that all
men, even men like Ridley, really prefer women to be fashionable.
Clarissa exclaimed that she could think of nothing more delightful. For
an instant she saw herself in her drawing-room in Browne Street with a
Plato open on her knees—Plato in the original Greek. She could not help
believing that a real scholar, if specially interested, could slip
Greek into her head with scarcely any trouble.
Ridley engaged her to come to-morrow.
“If only your ship is going to treat us kindly!” she exclaimed, drawing
Willoughby into play. For the sake of guests, and these were
distinguished, Willoughby was ready with a bow of his head to vouch for
the good behaviour even of the waves.
“I’m dreadfully bad; and my husband’s not very good,” sighed Clarissa.
“I am never sick,” Richard explained. “At least, I have only been
actually sick once,” he corrected himself. “That was crossing the
Channel. But a choppy sea, I confess, or still worse, a swell, makes me
distinctly uncomfortable. The great thing is never to miss a meal. You
look at the food, and you say, ‘I can’t’; you take a mouthful, and Lord
knows how you’re going to swallow it; but persevere, and you often
settle the attack for good. My wife’s a coward.”
They were pushing back their chairs. The ladies were hesitating at the
doorway.
“I’d better show the way,” said Helen, advancing.
Rachel followed. She had taken no part in the talk; no one had spoken
to her; but she had listened to every word that was said. She had
looked from Mrs. Dalloway to Mr. Dalloway, and from Mr. Dalloway back
again. Clarissa, indeed, was a fascinating spectacle. She wore a white
dress and a long glittering necklace. What with her clothes, and her
arch delicate face, which showed exquisitely pink beneath hair turning
grey, she was astonishingly like an eighteenth-century masterpiece—a
Reynolds or a Romney. She made Helen and the others look coarse and
slovenly beside her. Sitting lightly upright she seemed to be dealing
with the world as she chose; the enormous solid globe spun round this
way and that beneath her fingers. And her husband! Mr. Dalloway rolling
that rich deliberate voice was even more impressive. He seemed to come
from the humming oily centre of the machine where the polished rods are
sliding, and the pistons thumping; he grasped things so firmly but so
loosely; he made the others appear like old maids cheapening remnants.
Rachel followed in the wake of the matrons, as if in a trance; a
curious scent of violets came back from Mrs. Dalloway, mingling with
the soft rustling of her skirts, and the tinkling of her chains. As she
followed, Rachel thought with supreme self-abasement, taking in the
whole course of her life and the lives of all her friends, “She said we
lived in a world of our own. It’s true. We’re perfectly absurd.”
“We sit in here,” said Helen, opening the door of the saloon.
“You play?” said Mrs. Dalloway to Mrs. Ambrose, taking up the score of
_Tristan_ which lay on the table.
“My niece does,” said Helen, laying her hand on Rachel’s shoulder.
“Oh, how I envy you!” Clarissa addressed Rachel for the first time.
“D’you remember this? Isn’t it divine?” She played a bar or two with
ringed fingers upon the page.
“And then Tristan goes like this, and Isolde—oh!—it’s all too
thrilling! Have you been to Bayreuth?”
“No, I haven’t,” said Rachel.
“Then that’s still to come. I shall never forget my first _Parsifal_—a
grilling August day, and those fat old German women, come in their
stuffy high frocks, and then the dark theatre, and the music beginning,
and one couldn’t help sobbing. A kind man went and fetched me water, I
remember; and I could only cry on his shoulder! It caught me here” (she
touched her throat). “It’s like nothing else in the world! But where’s
your piano?”
“It’s in another room,” Rachel explained.
“But you will play to us?” Clarissa entreated. “I can’t imagine
anything nicer than to sit out in the moonlight and listen to
music—only that sounds too like a schoolgirl! You know,” she said,
turning to Helen, “I don’t think music’s altogether good for people—I’m
afraid not.”
“Too great a strain?” asked Helen.
“Too emotional, somehow,” said Clarissa. “One notices it at once when a
boy or girl takes up music as a profession. Sir William Broadley told
me just the same thing. Don’t you hate the kind of attitudes people go
into over Wagner—like this—” She cast her eyes to the ceiling, clasped
her hands, and assumed a look of intensity. “It really doesn’t mean
that they appreciate him; in fact, I always think it’s the other way
round. The people who really care about an art are always the least
affected. D’you know Henry Philips, the painter?” she asked.
“I have seen him,” said Helen.
“To look at, one might think he was a successful stockbroker, and not
one of the greatest painters of the age. That’s what I like.”
“There are a great many successful stockbrokers, if you like looking at
them,” said Helen.
Rachel wished vehemently that her aunt would not be so perverse.
“When you see a musician with long hair, don’t you know instinctively
that he’s bad?” Clarissa asked, turning to Rachel. “Watts and
Joachim—they looked just like you and me.”
“And how much nicer they’d have looked with curls!” said Helen. “The
question is, are you going to aim at beauty or are you not?”
“Cleanliness!” said Clarissa, “I do want a man to look clean!”
“By cleanliness you really mean well-cut clothes,” said Helen.
“There’s something one knows a gentleman by,” said Clarissa, “but one
can’t say what it is.”
“Take my husband now, does he look like a gentleman?”
The question seemed to Clarissa in extraordinarily bad taste. “One of
the things that can’t be said,” she would have put it. She could find
no answer, but a laugh.
“Well, anyhow,” she said, turning to Rachel, “I shall insist upon your
playing to me to-morrow.”
There was that in her manner that made Rachel love her.
Mrs. Dalloway hid a tiny yawn, a mere dilation of the nostrils.
“D’you know,” she said, “I’m extraordinarily sleepy. It’s the sea air.
I think I shall escape.”
A man’s voice, which she took to be that of Mr. Pepper, strident in
discussion, and advancing upon the saloon, gave her the alarm.
“Good-night—good-night!” she said. “Oh, I know my way—do pray for calm!
Good-night!”
Her yawn must have been the image of a yawn. Instead of letting her
mouth droop, dropping all her clothes in a bunch as though they
depended on one string, and stretching her limbs to the utmost end of
her berth, she merely changed her dress for a dressing-gown, with
innumerable frills, and wrapping her feet in a rug, sat down with a
writing-pad on her knee. Already this cramped little cabin was the
dressing room of a lady of quality. There were bottles containing
liquids; there were trays, boxes, brushes, pins. Evidently not an inch
of her person lacked its proper instrument. The scent which had
intoxicated Rachel pervaded the air. Thus established, Mrs. Dalloway
began to write. A pen in her hands became a thing one caressed paper
with, and she might have been stroking and tickling a kitten as she
wrote:
Picture us, my dear, afloat in the very oddest ship you can imagine.
It’s not the ship, so much as the people. One does come across queer
sorts as one travels. I must say I find it hugely amusing. There’s the
manager of the line—called Vinrace—a nice big Englishman, doesn’t say
much—you know the sort. As for the rest—they might have come trailing
out of an old number of _Punch_. They’re like people playing croquet in
the ’sixties. How long they’ve all been shut up in this ship I don’t
know—years and years I should say—but one feels as though one had
boarded a little separate world, and they’d never been on shore, or
done ordinary things in their lives. It’s what I’ve always said about
literary people—they’re far the hardest of any to get on with. The
worst of it is, these people—a man and his wife and a niece—might have
been, one feels, just like everybody else, if they hadn’t got swallowed
up by Oxford or Cambridge or some such place, and been made cranks of.
The man’s really delightful (if he’d cut his nails), and the woman has
quite a fine face, only she dresses, of course, in a potato sack, and
wears her hair like a Liberty shopgirl’s. They talk about art, and
think us such poops for dressing in the evening. However, I can’t help
that; I’d rather die than come in to dinner without changing—wouldn’t
you? It matters ever so much more than the soup. (It’s odd how things
like that _do_ matter so much more than what’s generally supposed to
matter. I’d rather have my head cut off than wear flannel next the
skin.) Then there’s a nice shy girl—poor thing—I wish one could rake
her out before it’s too late. She has quite nice eyes and hair, only,
of course, she’ll get funny too. We ought to start a society for
broadening the minds of the young—much more useful than missionaries,
Hester! Oh, I’d forgotten there’s a dreadful little thing called
Pepper. He’s just like his name. He’s indescribably insignificant, and
rather queer in his temper, poor dear. It’s like sitting down to dinner
with an ill-conditioned fox-terrier, only one can’t comb him out, and
sprinkle him with powder, as one would one’s dog. It’s a pity,
sometimes, one can’t treat people like dogs! The great comfort is that
we’re away from newspapers, so that Richard will have a real holiday
this time. Spain wasn’t a holiday. . . .
“You coward!” said Richard, almost filling the room with his sturdy
figure.
“I did my duty at dinner!” cried Clarissa.
“You’ve let yourself in for the Greek alphabet, anyhow.”
“Oh, my dear! Who _is_ Ambrose?”
“I gather that he was a Cambridge don; lives in London now, and edits
classics.”
“Did you ever see such a set of cranks? The woman asked me if I thought
her husband looked like a gentleman!”
“It was hard to keep the ball rolling at dinner, certainly,” said
Richard. “Why is it that the women, in that class, are so much queerer
than the men?”
“They’re not half bad-looking, really—only—they’re so odd!”
They both laughed, thinking of the same things, so that there was no
need to compare their impressions.
“I see I shall have quite a lot to say to Vinrace,” said Richard. “He
knows Sutton and all that set. He can tell me a good deal about the
conditions of ship-building in the North.”
“Oh, I’m glad. The men always _are_ so much better than the women.”
“One always has something to say to a man certainly,” said Richard.
“But I’ve no doubt you’ll chatter away fast enough about the babies,
Clarice.”
“Has she got children? She doesn’t look like it somehow.”
“Two. A boy and girl.”
A pang of envy shot through Mrs. Dalloway’s heart.
“We _must_ have a son, Dick,” she said.
“Good Lord, what opportunities there are now for young men!” said
Dalloway, for his talk had set him thinking. “I don’t suppose there’s
been so good an opening since the days of Pitt.”
“And it’s yours!” said Clarissa.
“To be a leader of men,” Richard soliloquised. “It’s a fine career. My
God—what a career!”
The chest slowly curved beneath his waistcoat.
“D’you know, Dick, I can’t help thinking of England,” said his wife
meditatively, leaning her head against his chest. “Being on this ship
seems to make it so much more vivid—what it really means to be English.
One thinks of all we’ve done, and our navies, and the people in India
and Africa, and how we’ve gone on century after century, sending out
boys from little country villages—and of men like you, Dick, and it
makes one feel as if one couldn’t bear _not_ to be English! Think of
the light burning over the House, Dick! When I stood on deck just now I
seemed to see it. It’s what one means by London.”
“It’s the continuity,” said Richard sententiously. A vision of English
history, King following King, Prime Minister Prime Minister, and Law
Law had come over him while his wife spoke. He ran his mind along the
line of conservative policy, which went steadily from Lord Salisbury to
Alfred, and gradually enclosed, as though it were a lasso that opened
and caught things, enormous chunks of the habitable globe.
“It’s taken a long time, but we’ve pretty nearly done it,” he said; “it
remains to consolidate.”
“And these people don’t see it!” Clarissa exclaimed.
“It takes all sorts to make a world,” said her husband. “There would
never be a government if there weren’t an opposition.”
“Dick, you’re better than I am,” said Clarissa. “You see round, where I
only see _there_.” She pressed a point on the back of his hand.
“That’s my business, as I tried to explain at dinner.”
“What I like about you, Dick,” she continued, “is that you’re always
the same, and I’m a creature of moods.”
“You’re a pretty creature, anyhow,” he said, gazing at her with deeper
eyes.
“You think so, do you? Then kiss me.”
He kissed her passionately, so that her half-written letter slid to the
ground. Picking it up, he read it without asking leave.
“Where’s your pen?” he said; and added in his little masculine hand:
R.D. _loquitur_: Clarice has omitted to tell you that she looked
exceedingly pretty at dinner, and made a conquest by which she has
bound herself to learn the Greek alphabet. I will take this occasion of
adding that we are both enjoying ourselves in these outlandish parts,
and only wish for the presence of our friends (yourself and John, to
wit) to make the trip perfectly enjoyable as it promises to be
instructive. . . .
Voices were heard at the end of the corridor. Mrs. Ambrose was speaking
low; William Pepper was remarking in his definite and rather acid
voice, “That is the type of lady with whom I find myself distinctly out
of sympathy. She—”
But neither Richard nor Clarissa profited by the verdict, for directly
it seemed likely that they would overhear, Richard crackled a sheet of
paper.
“I often wonder,” Clarissa mused in bed, over the little white volume
of Pascal which went with her everywhere, “whether it is really good
for a woman to live with a man who is morally her superior, as Richard
is mine. It makes one so dependent. I suppose I feel for him what my
mother and women of her generation felt for Christ. It just shows that
one can’t do without _something_.” She then fell into a sleep, which
was as usual extremely sound and refreshing, but visited by fantastic
dreams of great Greek letters stalking round the room, when she woke up
and laughed to herself, remembering where she was and that the Greek
letters were real people, lying asleep not many yards away. Then,
thinking of the black sea outside tossing beneath the moon, she
shuddered, and thought of her husband and the others as companions on
the voyage. The dreams were not confined to her indeed, but went from
one brain to another. They all dreamt of each other that night, as was
natural, considering how thin the partitions were between them, and how
strangely they had been lifted off the earth to sit next each other in
mid-ocean, and see every detail of each other’s faces, and hear
whatever they chanced to say.