The Voyage Out (20 page)

Hewet contemplated the angular young man who was neatly brushing the rims of his toe-nails into the fireplace in silence for a moment.

“I respect you, Hirst,” he remarked.

“I envy you—some things,” said Hirst. “One: your capacity for not thinking; two: people like you better than they like me. Women like you, I suppose.”

“I wonder whether that isn’t really what matters most?” said Hewet. Lying now flat on the bed he waved his hand in vague circles above him.

“Of course it is,” said Hirst. “But that’s not the difficulty. The difficulty is, isn’t it, to find an appropriate object?”

“There are no female hens in your circle?” asked Hewet.

“Not the ghost of one,” said Hirst.

Although they had known each other for three years Hirst had never yet heard the true story of Hewet’s loves. In general conversation it was taken for granted that they were many, but in private the subject was allowed to lapse. The fact that he had money enough to do no work, and that he had left Cambridge after two terms owing to a difference with the authorities, and had then travelled and drifted, made his life strange at many points where his friends’ lives were much of a piece.

“I don’t see your circles—I don’t see them,” Hewet continued. “I see a thing like a teetotum spinning in and out—knocking into things—dashing from side to side—collecting numbers—more and more and more, till the whole place is thick with them. Round and round they go—out there, over the rim—out of sight.”

His fingers showed that the waltzing teetotums had spun over the edge of the counterpane and fallen off the bed into infinity.

“Could you contemplate three weeks alone in this hotel?” asked Hirst, after a moment’s pause.

Hewet proceeded to think.

“The truth of it is that one never is alone, and one never is in company,” he concluded.

“Meaning?” said Hirst.

“Meaning? Oh, something about bubbles—auras—what d’you call ’em? You can’t see my bubble; I can’t see yours; all we see of each other is a speck, like the wick in the middle of that flame. The flame goes about with us everywhere; it’s not ourselves exactly, but what we feel; the world in short, or people mainly; all kinds of people.”

“A nice streaky bubble yours must be!” said Hirst.

“And supposing my bubble could run into some one else’s bubble——”

“And they both burst?” put in Hirst.

“Then—then—then—” pondered Hewet, as if to himself, “it would be an e—nor—mous world,” he said, stretching his arms to their full width, as though even so they could hardly clasp the billowy universe, for when he was with Hirst he always felt unusually sanguine and vague.

“I don’t think you altogether as foolish as I used to, Hewet,” said Hirst. “You don’t know what you mean but you try to say it.”

“But aren’t you enjoying yourself here?” said Hewet.

“On the whole—yes,” said Hirst. “I like observing people. I like looking at things. This country is amazingly beautiful. Did you notice how the top of the mountain turned yellow tonight? Really we must take our lunch and spend the day out. You’re getting disgustingly fat.” He pointed at the calf of Hewet’s bare leg.

“We’ll get up an expedition,” said Hewet energetically. “We’ll ask the entire hotel. We’ll hire donkeys and——”

“Oh, Lord!” said Hirst, “do shut it! I can see Miss Warrington and Miss Allan and Mrs. Elliot and the rest squatting on the stones and quacking, ‘How jolly!’ ”

“We’ll ask Venning and Perrott and Miss Murgatroyd—every one we can lay hands on,” went on Hewet. “What’s the name of the little old grasshopper with the eyeglasses? Pepper?—Pepper shall lead us.”

“Thank God, you’ll never get the donkeys,” said Hirst.

“I must make a note of that,” said Hewet, slowly dropping his feet to the floor. “Hirst escorts Miss Warrington; Pepper advances alone on a white ass; provisions equally distributed—or shall we hire a mule? The matrons—there’s Mrs. Paley, by Jove!—share a carriage.”

“That’s where you’ll go wrong,” said Hirst. “Putting virgins among matrons.”

“How long should you think that an expedition like that would take, Hirst?” asked Hewet.

“From twelve to sixteen hours I should say,” said Hirst. “The time usually occupied by a first confinement.”

“It will need considerable organisation,” said Hewet. He was now padding softly round the room, and stopped to stir the books on the table. They lay heaped one upon another.

“We shall want some poets too,” he remarked. “Not Gibbon; no; d’you happen to have
Modern Love
or
John Donne?
³
You see, I contemplate pauses when people get tired of looking at the view, and then it would be nice to read something rather difficult aloud.”

“Mrs. Paley
will
enjoy herself,” said Hirst.

“Mrs. Paley will enjoy it certainly,” said Hewet. “It’s one of the saddest things I know—the way elderly ladies cease to read poetry. And yet how appropriate this is:

I daresay Mrs. Paley is the only one of us who can really understand that.”

“We’ll ask her,” said Hirst. “Please, Hewet, if you must go to bed, draw my curtain. Few things distress me more than the moonlight.”

Hewet retreated, pressing the poems of Thomas Hardy beneath his arm, and in their beds next door to each other both the young men were soon asleep.

Between the extinction of Hewet’s candle and the rising of a dusky Spanish boy who was the first to survey the desolation of the hotel in the early morning, a few hours of silence intervened. One could almost hear a hundred people breathing deeply, and however wakeful and restless it would have been hard to escape sleep in the middle of so much sleep. Looking out of the windows, there was only darkness to be seen. All over the shadowed half of the world people lay prone, and a few flickering lights in empty streets marked the places where their cities were built. Red and yellow omnibuses were crowding each other in Piccadilly; sumptuous women were rocking at a standstill; but here in the darkness an owl flitted from tree to tree, and when the breeze lifted the branches the moon flashed as if it were a torch. Until all people should awake again the houseless animals were abroad, the tigers and the stags, and the elephants coming down in the darkness to drink at pools. The wind at night blowing over the hills and woods was purer and fresher than the wind by day, and the earth, robbed of detail, more mysterious than the earth coloured and divided by roads and fields. For six hours this profound beauty existed, and then as the east grew whiter and whiter the ground swam to the surface, the roads were revealed, the smoke rose and the people stirred, and the sun shone upon the windows of the hotel at Santa Marina until they were uncurtained, and the gong blaring all through the house gave notice of breakfast.

Directly breakfast was over, the ladies as usual circled vaguely, picking up papers and putting them down again, about the hall.

“And what are you going to do to-day?” asked Mrs. Elliot, drifting up against Miss Warrington.

Mrs. Elliot, the wife of Hughling the Oxford Don, was a short woman, whose expression was habitually plaintive. Her eyes moved from thing to thing as though they never found anything sufficiently pleasant to rest upon for any length of time.

“I’m going to try to get Aunt Emma out into the town,” said Susan. “She’s not seen a thing yet.”

“I call it so spirited of her at her age,” said Mrs. Elliot, “coming all this way from her own fireside.”

“Yes, we always tell her she’ll die on board ship,” Susan replied. “She was born on one,” she added.

“In the old days,” said Mrs. Elliot, “a great many people were. I always pity the poor woman so! We’ve got a lot to complain of!” She shook her head. Her eyes wandered about the table, and she remarked irrelevantly, “The poor little Queen of Holland! Newspaper reporters practically, one may say, at her bedroom door!”

“Were you talking of the Queen of Holland?” said the pleasant voice of Miss Allan, who was searching for the thick pages of
The Times
among a litter of thin foreign sheets.

“I always envy any one who lives in such an excessively flat country,” she remarked.

“How very strange!” said Mrs. Elliot. “I find a flat country so depressing.”

“I’m afraid you can’t be very happy here then, Miss Allan,” said Susan.

“On the contrary,” said Miss Allan, “I am exceedingly fond of mountains.” Perceiving
The Times
at some distance, she moved off to secure it.

“Well, I must find my husband,” said Mrs. Elliot, fidgeting away.

“And I must go to my aunt,” said Miss Warrington, and taking up the duties of the day they moved away.

Whether the flimsiness of foreign sheets and the coarseness of
their type is any proof of frivolity and ignorance, there is no doubt that English people scarcely consider news read there as news, any more than a programme bought from a man in the street on the occasion of a public ceremony inspires confidence in what it says. A very respectable elderly pair, having inspected the long tables of newspapers, did not think it worth their while to read more than the headlines.

“The debate on the fifteenth should have reached us by now,” Mrs. Thornbury murmured. Mr. Thornbury, who was beautifully clean and had red rubbed into his handsome worn face like traces of paint on a weather-beaten wooden figure, looked over his glasses and saw that Miss Allan had
The Times.

The couple therefore sat themselves down in armchairs and waited.

“Ah, there’s Mr. Hewet,” said Mrs. Thornbury. “Mr. Hewet,” she continued, “do come and sit by us. I was telling my husband how much you reminded me of a dear old friend of mine—Mary Umpleby. She was a most delightful woman, I assure you. She grew roses. We used to stay with her in the old days.”

“No young man likes to have it said that he resembles an elderly spinster,” said Mr. Thornbury.

“On the contrary,” said Mr. Hewet, “I always think it a compliment to remind people of some one else. But Miss Umpleby—why did she grow roses?”

“Ah, poor thing,” said Mrs. Thornbury, “that’s a long story. She had gone through dreadful sorrows. At one time I think she would have lost her senses if it hadn’t been for her garden. The soil was very much against her—a blessing in disguise; she had to be up at dawn—out in all weathers. And then there are creatures that eat roses. But she triumphed. She always did. She was a brave soul.” She sighed deeply but at the same time with resignation.

“I did not realise that I was monopolising the paper,” said Miss Allan, coming up to them.

“We were so anxious to read about the debate,” said Mrs. Thornbury, accepting it on behalf of her husband.

“One doesn’t realise how interesting a debate can be until one
has sons in the navy. My interests are equally balanced, though; I have sons in the army too; and one son who makes speeches at the Union—my baby!”

“Hirst would know him, I expect,” said Hewet.

“Mr. Hirst has such an interesting face,” said Mrs. Thornbury. “But I feel one ought to be very clever to talk to him. Well, William?” she enquired, for Mr. Thornbury grunted.

“They’re making a mess of it,” said Mr. Thornbury. He had reached the second column of the report, a spasmodic column, for the Irish members had been brawling three weeks ago at Westminster over a question of naval efficiency. After a disturbed paragraph or two, the column of print once more ran smoothly.

“You have read it?” Mrs. Thornbury asked Miss Allan.

“No, I am ashamed to say I have only read about the discoveries in Crete,” said Miss Allan.

“Oh, but I would give so much to realise the ancient world!” cried Mrs. Thornbury. “Now that we old people are alone,—we’re on our second honeymoon,—I am really going to put myself to school again. After all we are
founded
on the past, aren’t we, Mr. Hewet? My soldier son says that there is still a great deal to be learnt from Hannibal. One ought to know so much more than one does. Somehow when I read the paper, I begin with the debates first, and, before I’ve done, the door always opens—we’re a very large party at home—and so one never does think enough about the ancients and all they’ve done for us. But
you
begin at the beginning, Miss Allan.”

“When I think of the Greeks I think of them as naked black men,” said Miss Allan, “which is quite incorrect, I’m sure.”

“And you, Mr. Hirst?” said Mrs. Thornbury, perceiving that the gaunt young man was near. “I’m sure you read everything.”

“I confine myself to cricket and crime,” said Hirst. “The worst of coming from the upper classes,” he continued, “is that one’s friends are never killed in railway accidents.”

Mr. Thornbury threw down the paper, and emphatically dropped his eyeglasses. The sheets fell in the middle of the group, and were eyed by them all.

“It’s not gone well?” asked his wife solicitously.

Hewet picked up one sheet and read, “A lady was walking yesterday in the street of Westminster when she perceived a cat in the window of a deserted house. The famished animal——”

“I shall be out of it anyway,” Mr. Thornbury interrupted peevishly.

“Cats are often forgotten,” Miss Allan remarked.

“Remember, William, the Prime Minister has reserved his answer,” said Mrs. Thornbury.

“At the age of eighty, Mr. Joshua Harris of Eeles Park, Brondesbury, has had a son,” said Hirst.

“… The famished animal, which had been noticed by workmen for some days, was rescued, but—by Jove! it bit the man’s hand to pieces!”

“Wild with hunger, I suppose,” commented Miss Allan.

“You’re all neglecting the chief advantage of being abroad,” said Mr. Hughling Elliot, who had joined the group. “You might read your news in French, which is equivalent to reading no news at all.”

Mr. Elliot had a profound knowledge of Coptic,
⁵
which he concealed as far as possible, and quoted French phrases so exquisitely that it was hard to believe that he could also speak the ordinary tongue. He had an immense respect for the French.