They reached the hotel rather early in the afternoon, so that most
people were still lying down, or sitting speechless in their bedrooms,
and Mrs. Thornbury, although she had asked them to tea, was nowhere to
be seen. They sat down, therefore, in the shady hall, which was almost
empty, and full of the light swishing sounds of air going to and fro in
a large empty space. Yes, this arm-chair was the same arm-chair in
which Rachel had sat that afternoon when Evelyn came up, and this was
the magazine she had been looking at, and this the very picture, a
picture of New York by lamplight. How odd it seemed—nothing had
changed.
By degrees a certain number of people began to come down the stairs and
to pass through the hall, and in this dim light their figures possessed
a sort of grace and beauty, although they were all unknown people.
Sometimes they went straight through and out into the garden by the
swing door, sometimes they stopped for a few minutes and bent over the
tables and began turning over the newspapers. Terence and Rachel sat
watching them through their half-closed eyelids—the Johnsons, the
Parkers, the Baileys, the Simmons’, the Lees, the Morleys, the
Campbells, the Gardiners. Some were dressed in white flannels and were
carrying racquets under their arms, some were short, some tall, some
were only children, and some perhaps were servants, but they all had
their standing, their reason for following each other through the hall,
their money, their position, whatever it might be. Terence soon gave up
looking at them, for he was tired; and, closing his eyes, he fell half
asleep in his chair. Rachel watched the people for some time longer;
she was fascinated by the certainty and the grace of their movements,
and by the inevitable way in which they seemed to follow each other,
and loiter and pass on and disappear. But after a time her thoughts
wandered, and she began to think of the dance, which had been held in
this room, only then the room itself looked quite different. Glancing
round, she could hardly believe that it was the same room. It had
looked so bare and so bright and formal on that night when they came
into it out of the darkness; it had been filled, too, with little red,
excited faces, always moving, and people so brightly dressed and so
animated that they did not seem in the least like real people, nor did
you feel that you could talk to them. And now the room was dim and
quiet, and beautiful silent people passed through it, to whom you could
go and say anything you liked. She felt herself amazingly secure as she
sat in her arm-chair, and able to review not only the night of the
dance, but the entire past, tenderly and humorously, as if she had been
turning in a fog for a long time, and could now see exactly where she
had turned. For the methods by which she had reached her present
position, seemed to her very strange, and the strangest thing about
them was that she had not known where they were leading her. That was
the strange thing, that one did not know where one was going, or what
one wanted, and followed blindly, suffering so much in secret, always
unprepared and amazed and knowing nothing; but one thing led to another
and by degrees something had formed itself out of nothing, and so one
reached at last this calm, this quiet, this certainty, and it was this
process that people called living. Perhaps, then, every one really knew
as she knew now where they were going; and things formed themselves
into a pattern not only for her, but for them, and in that pattern lay
satisfaction and meaning. When she looked back she could see that a
meaning of some kind was apparent in the lives of her aunts, and in the
brief visit of the Dalloways whom she would never see again, and in the
life of her father.
The sound of Terence, breathing deep in his slumber, confirmed her in
her calm. She was not sleepy although she did not see anything very
distinctly, but although the figures passing through the hall became
vaguer and vaguer, she believed that they all knew exactly where they
were going, and the sense of their certainty filled her with comfort.
For the moment she was as detached and disinterested as if she had no
longer any lot in life, and she thought that she could now accept
anything that came to her without being perplexed by the form in which
it appeared. What was there to frighten or to perplex in the prospect
of life? Why should this insight ever again desert her? The world was
in truth so large, so hospitable, and after all it was so simple.
“Love,” St. John had said, “that seems to explain it all.” Yes, but it
was not the love of man for woman, of Terence for Rachel. Although they
sat so close together, they had ceased to be little separate bodies;
they had ceased to struggle and desire one another. There seemed to be
peace between them. It might be love, but it was not the love of man
for woman.
Through her half-closed eyelids she watched Terence lying back in his
chair, and she smiled as she saw how big his mouth was, and his chin so
small, and his nose curved like a switchback with a knob at the end.
Naturally, looking like that he was lazy, and ambitious, and full of
moods and faults. She remembered their quarrels, and in particular how
they had been quarreling about Helen that very afternoon, and she
thought how often they would quarrel in the thirty, or forty, or fifty
years in which they would be living in the same house together,
catching trains together, and getting annoyed because they were so
different. But all this was superficial, and had nothing to do with the
life that went on beneath the eyes and the mouth and the chin, for that
life was independent of her, and independent of everything else. So
too, although she was going to marry him and to live with him for
thirty, or forty, or fifty years, and to quarrel, and to be so close to
him, she was independent of him; she was independent of everything
else. Nevertheless, as St. John said, it was love that made her
understand this, for she had never felt this independence, this calm,
and this certainty until she fell in love with him, and perhaps this
too was love. She wanted nothing else.
For perhaps two minutes Miss Allan had been standing at a little
distance looking at the couple lying back so peacefully in their
arm-chairs. She could not make up her mind whether to disturb them or
not, and then, seeming to recollect something, she came across the
hall. The sound of her approach woke Terence, who sat up and rubbed his
eyes. He heard Miss Allan talking to Rachel.
“Well,” she was saying, “this is very nice. It is very nice indeed.
Getting engaged seems to be quite the fashion. It cannot often happen
that two couples who have never seen each other before meet in the same
hotel and decide to get married.” Then she paused and smiled, and
seemed to have nothing more to say, so that Terence rose and asked her
whether it was true that she had finished her book. Some one had said
that she had really finished it. Her face lit up; she turned to him
with a livelier expression than usual.
“Yes, I think I can fairly say I have finished it,” she said. “That is,
omitting Swinburne—Beowulf to Browning—I rather like the two B’s
myself. Beowulf to Browning,” she repeated, “I think that is the kind
of title which might catch one’s eye on a railway book-stall.”
She was indeed very proud that she had finished her book, for no one
knew what an amount of determination had gone to the making of it. Also
she thought that it was a good piece of work, and, considering what
anxiety she had been in about her brother while she wrote it, she could
not resist telling them a little more about it.
“I must confess,” she continued, “that if I had known how many classics
there are in English literature, and how verbose the best of them
contrive to be, I should never have undertaken the work. They only
allow one seventy thousand words, you see.”
“Only seventy thousand words!” Terence exclaimed.
“Yes, and one has to say something about everybody,” Miss Allan added.
“That is what I find so difficult, saying something different about
everybody.” Then she thought that she had said enough about herself,
and she asked whether they had come down to join the tennis tournament.
“The young people are very keen about it. It begins again in half an
hour.”
Her gaze rested benevolently upon them both, and, after a momentary
pause, she remarked, looking at Rachel as if she had remembered
something that would serve to keep her distinct from other people.
“You’re the remarkable person who doesn’t like ginger.” But the
kindness of the smile in her rather worn and courageous face made them
feel that although she would scarcely remember them as individuals, she
had laid upon them the burden of the new generation.
“And in that I quite agree with her,” said a voice behind; Mrs.
Thornbury had overheard the last few words about not liking ginger.
“It’s associated in my mind with a horrid old aunt of ours (poor thing,
she suffered dreadfully, so it isn’t fair to call her horrid) who used
to give it to us when we were small, and we never had the courage to
tell her we didn’t like it. We just had to put it out in the
shrubbery—she had a big house near Bath.”
They began moving slowly across the hall, when they were stopped by the
impact of Evelyn, who dashed into them, as though in running downstairs
to catch them her legs had got beyond her control.
“Well,” she exclaimed, with her usual enthusiasm, seizing Rachel by the
arm, “I call this splendid! I guessed it was going to happen from the
very beginning! I saw you two were made for each other. Now you’ve just
got to tell me all about it—when’s it to be, where are you going to
live—are you both tremendously happy?”
But the attention of the group was diverted to Mrs. Elliot, who was
passing them with her eager but uncertain movement, carrying in her
hands a plate and an empty hot-water bottle. She would have passed
them, but Mrs. Thornbury went up and stopped her.
“Thank you, Hughling’s better,” she replied, in answer to Mrs.
Thornbury’s enquiry, “but he’s not an easy patient. He wants to know
what his temperature is, and if I tell him he gets anxious, and if I
don’t tell him he suspects. You know what men are when they’re ill! And
of course there are none of the proper appliances, and, though he seems
very willing and anxious to help” (here she lowered her voice
mysteriously), “one can’t feel that Dr. Rodriguez is the same as a
proper doctor. If you would come and see him, Mr. Hewet,” she added, “I
know it would cheer him up—lying there in bed all day—and the flies—But
I must go and find Angelo—the food here—of course, with an invalid, one
wants things particularly nice.” And she hurried past them in search of
the head waiter. The worry of nursing her husband had fixed a plaintive
frown upon her forehead; she was pale and looked unhappy and more than
usually inefficient, and her eyes wandered more vaguely than ever from
point to point.
“Poor thing!” Mrs. Thornbury exclaimed. She told them that for some
days Hughling Elliot had been ill, and the only doctor available was
the brother of the proprietor, or so the proprietor said, whose right
to the title of doctor was not above suspicion.
“I know how wretched it is to be ill in a hotel,” Mrs. Thornbury
remarked, once more leading the way with Rachel to the garden. “I spent
six weeks on my honeymoon in having typhoid at Venice,” she continued.
“But even so, I look back upon them as some of the happiest weeks in my
life. Ah, yes,” she said, taking Rachel’s arm, “you think yourself
happy now, but it’s nothing to the happiness that comes afterwards. And
I assure you I could find it in my heart to envy you young people!
You’ve a much better time than we had, I may tell you. When I look back
upon it, I can hardly believe how things have changed. When we were
engaged I wasn’t allowed to go for walks with William alone—some one
had always to be in the room with us—I really believe I had to show my
parents all his letters!—though they were very fond of him too. Indeed,
I may say they looked upon him as their own son. It amuses me,” she
continued, “to think how strict they were to us, when I see how they
spoil their grand-children!”
The table was laid under the tree again, and taking her place before
the teacups, Mrs. Thornbury beckoned and nodded until she had collected
quite a number of people, Susan and Arthur and Mr. Pepper, who were
strolling about, waiting for the tournament to begin. A murmuring tree,
a river brimming in the moonlight, Terence’s words came back to Rachel
as she sat drinking the tea and listening to the words which flowed on
so lightly, so kindly, and with such silvery smoothness. This long life
and all these children had left her very smooth; they seemed to have
rubbed away the marks of individuality, and to have left only what was
old and maternal.
“And the things you young people are going to see!” Mrs. Thornbury
continued. She included them all in her forecast, she included them all
in her maternity, although the party comprised William Pepper and Miss
Allan, both of whom might have been supposed to have seen a fair share
of the panorama. “When I see how the world has changed in my lifetime,”
she went on, “I can set no limit to what may happen in the next fifty
years. Ah, no, Mr. Pepper, I don’t agree with you in the least,” she
laughed, interrupting his gloomy remark about things going steadily
from bad to worse. “I know I ought to feel that, but I don’t, I’m
afraid. They’re going to be much better people than we were. Surely
everything goes to prove that. All round me I see women, young women,
women with household cares of every sort, going out and doing things
that we should not have thought it possible to do.”
Mr. Pepper thought her sentimental and irrational like all old women,
but her manner of treating him as if he were a cross old baby baffled
him and charmed him, and he could only reply to her with a curious
grimace which was more a smile than a frown.
“And they remain women,” Mrs. Thornbury added. “They give a great deal
to their children.”
As she said this she smiled slightly in the direction of Susan and
Rachel. They did not like to be included in the same lot, but they both
smiled a little self-consciously, and Arthur and Terence glanced at
each other too. She made them feel that they were all in the same boat
together, and they looked at the women they were going to marry and
compared them. It was inexplicable how any one could wish to marry
Rachel, incredible that any one should be ready to spend his life with
Susan; but singular though the other’s taste must be, they bore each
other no ill-will on account of it; indeed, they liked each other
rather the better for the eccentricity of their choice.
“I really must congratulate you,” Susan remarked, as she leant across
the table for the jam.
There seemed to be no foundation for St. John’s gossip about Arthur and
Susan. Sunburnt and vigorous they sat side by side, with their racquets
across their knees, not saying much but smiling slightly all the time.
Through the thin white clothes which they wore, it was possible to see
the lines of their bodies and legs, the beautiful curves of their
muscles, his leanness and her flesh, and it was natural to think of the
firm-fleshed sturdy children that would be theirs. Their faces had too
little shape in them to be beautiful, but they had clear eyes and an
appearance of great health and power of endurance, for it seemed as if
the blood would never cease to run in his veins, or to lie deeply and
calmly in her cheeks. Their eyes at the present moment were brighter
than usual, and wore the peculiar expression of pleasure and
self-confidence which is seen in the eyes of athletes, for they had
been playing tennis, and they were both first-rate at the game.
Evelyn had not spoken, but she had been looking from Susan to Rachel.
Well—they had both made up their minds very easily, they had done in a
very few weeks what it sometimes seemed to her that she would never be
able to do. Although they were so different, she thought that she could
see in each the same look of satisfaction and completion, the same
calmness of manner, and the same slowness of movement. It was that
slowness, that confidence, that content which she hated, she thought to
herself. They moved so slowly because they were not single but double,
and Susan was attached to Arthur, and Rachel to Terence, and for the
sake of this one man they had renounced all other men, and movement,
and the real things of life. Love was all very well, and those snug
domestic houses, with the kitchen below and the nursery above, which
were so secluded and self-contained, like little islands in the
torrents of the world; but the real things were surely the things that
happened, the causes, the wars, the ideals, which happened in the great
world outside, and went so independently of these women, turning so
quietly and beautifully towards the men. She looked at them sharply. Of
course they were happy and content, but there must be better things
than that. Surely one could get nearer to life, one could get more out
of life, one could enjoy more and feel more than they would ever do.
Rachel in particular looked so young—what could she know of life? She
became restless, and getting up, crossed over to sit beside Rachel. She
reminded her that she had promised to join her club.
“The bother is,” she went on, “that I mayn’t be able to start work
seriously till October. I’ve just had a letter from a friend of mine
whose brother is in business in Moscow. They want me to stay with them,
and as they’re in the thick of all the conspiracies and anarchists,
I’ve a good mind to stop on my way home. It sounds too thrilling.” She
wanted to make Rachel see how thrilling it was. “My friend knows a girl
of fifteen who’s been sent to Siberia for life merely because they
caught her addressing a letter to an anarchist. And the letter wasn’t
from her, either. I’d give all I have in the world to help on a
revolution against the Russian government, and it’s bound to come.”
She looked from Rachel to Terence. They were both a little touched by
the sight of her remembering how lately they had been listening to evil
words about her, and Terence asked her what her scheme was, and she
explained that she was going to found a club—a club for doing things,
really doing them. She became very animated, as she talked on and on,
for she professed herself certain that if once twenty people—no, ten
would be enough if they were keen—set about doing things instead of
talking about doing them, they could abolish almost every evil that
exists. It was brains that were needed. If only people with brains—of
course they would want a room, a nice room, in Bloomsbury preferably,
where they could meet once a week. . . .
As she talked Terence could see the traces of fading youth in her face,
the lines that were being drawn by talk and excitement round her mouth
and eyes, but he did not pity her; looking into those bright, rather
hard, and very courageous eyes, he saw that she did not pity herself,
or feel any desire to exchange her own life for the more refined and
orderly lives of people like himself and St. John, although, as the
years went by, the fight would become harder and harder. Perhaps,
though, she would settle down; perhaps, after all, she would marry
Perrott. While his mind was half occupied with what she was saying, he
thought of her probable destiny, the light clouds of tobacco smoke
serving to obscure his face from her eyes.
Terence smoked and Arthur smoked and Evelyn smoked, so that the air was
full of the mist and fragrance of good tobacco. In the intervals when
no one spoke, they heard far off the low murmur of the sea, as the
waves quietly broke and spread the beach with a film of water, and
withdrew to break again. The cool green light fell through the leaves
of the tree, and there were soft crescents and diamonds of sunshine
upon the plates and the tablecloth. Mrs. Thornbury, after watching them
all for a time in silence, began to ask Rachel kindly questions—When
did they all go back? Oh, they expected her father. She must want to
see her father—there would be a great deal to tell him, and (she looked
sympathetically at Terence) he would be so happy, she felt sure. Years
ago, she continued, it might have been ten or twenty years ago, she
remembered meeting Mr. Vinrace at a party, and, being so much struck by
his face, which was so unlike the ordinary face one sees at a party,
that she had asked who he was, and she was told that it was Mr.
Vinrace, and she had always remembered the name,—an uncommon name,—and
he had a lady with him, a very sweet-looking woman, but it was one of
those dreadful London crushes, where you don’t talk,—you only look at
each other,—and although she had shaken hands with Mr. Vinrace, she
didn’t think they had said anything. She sighed very slightly,
remembering the past.
Then she turned to Mr. Pepper, who had become very dependent on her, so
that he always chose a seat near her, and attended to what she was
saying, although he did not often make any remark of his own.
“You who know everything, Mr. Pepper,” she said, “tell us how did those
wonderful French ladies manage their salons? Did we ever do anything of
the same kind in England, or do you think that there is some reason why
we cannot do it in England?”
Mr. Pepper was pleased to explain very accurately why there has never
been an English salon. There were three reasons, and they were very
good ones, he said. As for himself, when he went to a party, as one was
sometimes obliged to, from a wish not to give offence—his niece, for
example, had been married the other day—he walked into the middle of
the room, said “Ha! ha!” as loud as ever he could, considered that he
had done his duty, and walked away again. Mrs. Thornbury protested. She
was going to give a party directly she got back, and they were all to
be invited, and she should set people to watch Mr. Pepper, and if she
heard that he had been caught saying “Ha! ha!” she would—she would do
something very dreadful indeed to him. Arthur Venning suggested that
what she must do was to rig up something in the nature of a surprise—a
portrait, for example, of a nice old lady in a lace cap, concealing a
bath of cold water, which at a signal could be sprung on Pepper’s head;
or they’d have a chair which shot him twenty feet high directly he sat
on it.
Susan laughed. She had done her tea; she was feeling very well
contented, partly because she had been playing tennis brilliantly, and
then every one was so nice; she was beginning to find it so much easier
to talk, and to hold her own even with quite clever people, for somehow
clever people did not frighten her any more. Even Mr. Hirst, whom she
had disliked when she first met him, really wasn’t disagreeable; and,
poor man, he always looked so ill; perhaps he was in love; perhaps he
had been in love with Rachel—she really shouldn’t wonder; or perhaps it
was Evelyn—she was of course very attractive to men. Leaning forward,
she went on with the conversation. She said that she thought that the
reason why parties were so dull was mainly because gentlemen will not
dress: even in London, she stated, it struck her very much how people
don’t think it necessary to dress in the evening, and of course if they
don’t dress in London they won’t dress in the country. It was really
quite a treat at Christmas-time when there were the Hunt balls, and the
gentlemen wore nice red coats, but Arthur didn’t care for dancing, so
she supposed that they wouldn’t go even to the ball in their little
country town. She didn’t think that people who were fond of one sport
often care for another, although her father was an exception. But then
he was an exception in every way—such a gardener, and he knew all about
birds and animals, and of course he was simply adored by all the old
women in the village, and at the same time what he really liked best
was a book. You always knew where to find him if he were wanted; he
would be in his study with a book. Very likely it would be an old, old
book, some fusty old thing that no one else would dream of reading. She
used to tell him that he would have made a first-rate old bookworm if
only he hadn’t had a family of six to support, and six children, she
added, charmingly confident of universal sympathy, didn’t leave one
much time for being a bookworm.
Still talking about her father, of whom she was very proud, she rose,
for Arthur upon looking at his watch found that it was time they went
back again to the tennis court. The others did not move.
“They’re very happy!” said Mrs. Thornbury, looking benignantly after
them. Rachel agreed; they seemed to be so certain of themselves; they
seemed to know exactly what they wanted.
“D’you think they _are_ happy?” Evelyn murmured to Terence in an
undertone, and she hoped that he would say that he did not think them
happy; but, instead, he said that they must go too—go home, for they
were always being late for meals, and Mrs. Ambrose, who was very stern
and particular, didn’t like that. Evelyn laid hold of Rachel’s skirt
and protested. Why should they go? It was still early, and she had so
many things to say to them. “No,” said Terence, “we must go, because we
walk so slowly. We stop and look at things, and we talk.”
“What d’you talk about?” Evelyn enquired, upon which he laughed and
said that they talked about everything.
Mrs. Thornbury went with them to the gate, trailing very slowly and
gracefully across the grass and the gravel, and talking all the time
about flowers and birds. She told them that she had taken up the study
of botany since her daughter married, and it was wonderful what a
number of flowers there were which she had never seen, although she had
lived in the country all her life and she was now seventy-two. It was a
good thing to have some occupation which was quite independent of other
people, she said, when one got old. But the odd thing was that one
never felt old. She always felt that she was twenty-five, not a day
more or a day less, but, of course, one couldn’t expect other people to
agree to that.
“It must be very wonderful to be twenty-five, and not merely to imagine
that you’re twenty-five,” she said, looking from one to the other with
her smooth, bright glance. “It must be very wonderful, very wonderful
indeed.” She stood talking to them at the gate for a long time; she
seemed reluctant that they should go.