The Voyage Out (28 page)

“No wonder they get sick of playing stuff like this,” she remarked, reading a bar or two; “they’re really hymn tunes, played very fast, with bits out of Wagner and Beethoven.”

“Do you play? Would you play? Anything, so long as we can dance to it!” From all sides her gift for playing the piano was insisted upon, and she had to consent. As very soon she had played the only pieces of dance music she could remember, she went on to play an air from a sonata by Mozart.

“But that’s not a dance,” said some one pausing by the piano.

“It is,” she replied, emphatically nodding her head. “Invent the steps.” Sure of her melody she marked the rhythm boldly so as to simplify the way. Helen caught the idea; seized Miss Allan by the arm, and whirled round the room, now curtseying, now spinning round, now tripping this way and that like a child skipping through a meadow.

“This is the dance for people who don’t know how to dance!” she cried. The tune changed to a minuet; St. John hopped with incredible swiftness first on his left leg, then on his right; the tune flowed melodiously; Hewet, swaying his arms and holding out the tails of his coat, swam down the room in imitation of the voluptuous dreamy dance of an Indian maiden dancing before her Rajah. The tune marched; and Miss Allan advanced with skirts extended and bowed profoundly to the engaged pair. Once their feet fell in with the rhythm they showed a complete lack of self-consciousness. From Mozart Rachel passed without stopping to old English hunting songs, carols, and hymn tunes, for, as she had observed, any good tune, with a little management, became a tune one could dance to. By degrees every person in the room was tripping and turning in pairs or alone. Mr. Pepper executed an ingenious pointed step
derived from figure-skating, for which he once held some local championship; while Mrs. Thornbury tried to recall an old country dance which she had seen danced by her father’s tenants in Dorsetshire in the old days. As for Mr. and Mrs. Elliot, they gallopaded round and round the room with such impetuosity that the other dancers shivered at their approach. Some people were heard to criticise the performance as a romp; to others it was the most enjoyable part of the evening.

“Now for the great round dance!” Hewet shouted. Instantly a gigantic circle was formed, the dancers holding hands and shouting out, “D’you ken John Peel,” as they swung faster and faster and faster, until the strain was too great, and one link of the chain—Mrs. Thornbury—gave way, and the rest went flying across the room in all directions, to land upon the floor or the chairs or in each other’s arms as seemed most convenient.

Rising from these positions, breathless and unkempt, it struck them for the first time that the electric lights pricked the air very vainly, and instinctively a great many eyes turned to the windows. Yes—there was the dawn. While they had been dancing the night had passed, and it had come. Outside, the mountains showed very pure and remote; the dew was sparkling on the grass, and the sky was flushed with blue, save for the pale yellows and pinks in the East. The dancers came crowding to the windows, pushed them open, and here and there ventured a foot upon the grass.

“How silly the poor old lights look!” said Evelyn M. in a curiously subdued tone of voice. “And ourselves; it isn’t becoming.” It was true; the untidy hair, and the green and yellow gems, which had seemed so festive half an hour ago, now looked cheap and slovenly. The complexions of the elder ladies suffered terribly, and, as if conscious that a cold eye had been turned upon them, they began to say good-night and to make their way up to bed.

Rachel, though robbed of her audience, had gone on playing to herself. From John Peel she passed to Bach, who was at this time the subject of her intense enthusiasm, and one by one some of the younger dancers came in from the garden and sat upon the deserted gilt chairs round the piano, the room being now so clear that
they turned out the lights. As they sat and listened, their nerves were quieted; the heat and soreness of their lips, the result of incessant talking and laughing, was smoothed away. They sat very still as if they saw a building with spaces and columns succeeding each other rising in the empty space. Then they began to see themselves and their lives, and the whole of human life advancing very nobly under the direction of the music. They felt themselves ennobled, and when Rachel stopped playing they desired nothing but sleep.

Susan rose. “I think this has been the happiest night of my life!” she exclaimed. “I do adore music,” she said, as she thanked Rachel. “It just seems to say all the things one can’t say oneself.” She gave a nervous little laugh and looked from one to another with great benignity, as though she would like to say something but could not find the words in which to express it. “Every one’s been so kind—so very kind,” she said. Then she too went to bed.

The party having ended in the very abrupt way in which parties do end, Helen and Rachel stood by the door with their cloaks on, looking for a carriage.

“I suppose you realise that there are no carriages left?” said St. John, who had been out to look. “You must sleep here.”

“Oh, no,” said Helen; “we shall walk.”

“May we come too?” Hewet asked. “We can’t go to bed. Imagine lying among bolsters and looking at one’s washstand on a morning like this—Is that where you live?”

They had begun to walk down the avenue, and he turned and pointed at the white and green villa on the hillside, which seemed to have its eyes shut.

“That’s not a light burning, is it?” Helen asked anxiously.

“It’s the sun,” said St. John. The upper windows had each a spot of gold on them.

“I was afraid it was my husband, still reading Greek,” she said. “All this time he’s been editing
Pindar.”

They passed through the town and turned up the steep road, which was perfectly clear, though still unbordered by shadows. Partly because they were tired, and partly because the early light
subdued them, they scarcely spoke, but breathed in the delicious fresh air, which seemed to belong to a different state of life from the air at midday. When they came to the high yellow wall, where the lane turned off from the road, Helen was for dismissing the two young men.

“You’ve come far enough,” she said. “Go back to bed.”

But they seemed unwilling to move.

“Let’s sit down a moment,” said Hewet. He spread his coat on the ground. “Let’s sit down and consider.” They sat down and looked out over the bay; it was very still, the sea was rippling faintly, and lines of green and blue were beginning to stripe it. There were no sailing boats as yet, but a steamer was anchored in the bay, looking very ghostly in the mist; it gave one unearthly cry, and then all was silent.

Rachel occupied herself in collecting one grey stone after another and building them into a little cairn; she did it very quietly and carefully.

“And so you’ve changed your view of life, Rachel?” said Helen.

Rachel added another stone and yawned. “I don’t remember,” she said, “I feel like a fish at the bottom of the sea.” She yawned again. None of these people possessed any power to frighten her out here in the dawn, and she felt perfectly familiar even with Mr. Hirst.

“My brain, on the contrary,” said Hirst, “is in a condition of abnormal activity.” He sat in his favourite position with his arms binding his legs together and his chin resting on the top of his knees. “I see through everything—absolutely everything. Life has no more mysteries for me.” He spoke with conviction, but did not appear to wish for an answer. Near though they sat, and familiar though they felt, they seemed mere shadows to each other.

“And all those people down there going to sleep,” Hewet began dreamily, “thinking such different things,—Miss Warrington, I suppose, is now on her knees; the Elliots are a little startled, it’s not often
they
get out of breath, and they want to get to sleep as quickly as possible; then there’s the poor lean young man who danced all night with Evelyn, he’s putting his flower in water and asking himself,
‘Is this love?’—and poor old Perrott, I daresay, can’t get to sleep at all, and is reading his favourite Greek book to console himself—and the others—no, Hirst,” he wound up, “I don’t find it simple at all.”

“I have a key,” said Hirst cryptically. His chin was still upon his knees and his eyes fixed in front of him.

A silence followed. Then Helen rose and bade them good-night. “But,” she said, “remember that you’ve got to come and see us.”

They waved good-night and parted, but the two young men did not go back to the hotel; they went for a walk, during which they scarcely spoke, and never mentioned the names of the two women, who were, to a considerable extent, the subject of their thoughts. They did not wish to share their impressions. They returned to the hotel in time for breakfast.

There were many rooms in the villa, but one room which possessed a character of its own because the door was always shut, and no sound of music or laughter issued from it. Every one in the house was vaguely conscious that something went on behind that door, and without in the least knowing what it was, were influenced in their own thoughts by the knowledge that if they passed it the door would be shut, and if they made a noise Mr. Ambrose inside would be disturbed. Certain acts therefore possessed merit, and others were bad, so that life became more harmonious and less disconnected than it would have been had Mr. Ambrose given up editing
Pindar
, and taken to a nomad existence, in and out of every room in the house. As it was, every one was conscious that by observing certain rules, such as punctuality and quiet, by cooking well, and performing other small duties, one ode after another was satisfactorily restored, and they themselves shared the continuity of the scholar’s life. Unfortunately, as age puts one barrier between human beings, and learning another, and sex a third, Mr. Ambrose in his study was some thousand miles distant from the nearest human being, who in this household was inevitably a woman. He sat hour after hour among white-leaved books, alone like an idol in an empty church,
still except for the passage of his hand from one side of the sheet to another, silent save for an occasional choke, which drove him to extend his pipe a moment in the air. As he worked his way further and further into the heart of the poet, his chair became more and more deeply encircled by books, which lay open on the floor, and could only be crossed by a careful process of stepping, so delicate that his visitors generally stopped and addressed him from the outskirts.

On the morning after the dance, however, Rachel came into her uncle’s room and hailed him twice, “Uncle Ridley,” before he paid her any attention.

At length he looked over his spectacles.

“Well?” he asked.

“I want a book,” she replied. “Gibbon’s
History of the Roman Empire.
May I have it?”

She watched the lines on her uncle’s face gradually rearrange themselves at her question. It had been smooth as a mask before she spoke.

“Please say that again,” said her uncle, either because he had not heard or because he had not understood.

She repeated the same words and reddened slightly as she did so.

“Gibbon! What on earth d’you want him for?” he inquired.

“Somebody advised me to read it,” Rachel stammered.

“But I don’t travel about with a miscellaneous collection of eighteenth-century historians!” her uncle exclaimed. “Gibbon! Ten big volumes at least.”

Rachel said that she was sorry to interrupt, and was turning to go.

“Stop!” cried her uncle. He put down his pipe, placed his book on one side, and rose and led her slowly round the room, holding her by the arm. “Plato,” he said, laying one finger on the first of a row of small dark books, “and Jorrocks next door, which is wrong. Sophocles, Swift. You don’t care for German commentators, I presume. French, then. You read French? You should read Balzac. Then we come to Wordsworth and Coleridge. Pope, Johnson, Addison, Wordsworth, Shelley, Keats. One thing leads to another. Why
is Marlowe
¹
here? Mrs. Chailey, I presume. But what’s the use of reading if you don’t read Greek? After all, if you read Greek, you need never read anything else, pure waste of time—pure waste of time,” thus speaking half to himself, with quick movements of his hands; they had come round again to the circle of books on the floor, and their progress was stopped.

“Well,” he demanded, “which shall it be?”

“Balzac,” said Rachel, “or have you the
Speech on the American Revolution
, Uncle Ridley?”

“The Speech on the American Revolution?”
he asked. He looked at her very keenly again. “Another young man at the dance?”

“No. That was Mr. Dalloway,” she confessed.

“Good Lord!” he flung back his head in recollection of Mr. Dalloway.

She chose for herself a volume at random, submitted it to her uncle, who, seeing that it was
La Cousine Bette,
²
bade her throw it away if she found it too horrible, and was about to leave him when he demanded whether she had enjoyed her dance?

He then wanted to know what people did at dances, seeing that he had only been to one thirty-five years ago, when nothing had seemed to him more meaningless and idiotic. Did they enjoy turning round and round to the screech of a fiddle? Did they talk, and say pretty things, and if so, why didn’t they do it under reasonable conditions? As for himself—he sighed, and pointed at the signs of industry lying all about him, which, in spite of his sigh, filled his face with such satisfaction that his niece thought good to leave. On bestowing a kiss she was allowed to go, but not until she had bound herself to learn at any rate the Greek alphabet, and to return her French novel when done with, upon which something more suitable would be found for her.

As the rooms in which people live are apt to give off something of the same shock as their faces when seen for the first time, Rachel walked very slowly downstairs, lost in wonder at her uncle, and his books, and his neglect of dances, and his queer, utterly inexplicable, but apparently satisfactory view of life, when her eye was
caught by a note with her name on it lying in the hall. The address was written in a small strong hand unknown to her, and the note which had no beginning, ran:—