The Voyage Out

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From their faces it seemed that for the most part they made no effort
at all, and, recumbent as it were, accepted the ideas the words gave
as representing goodness, in the same way, no doubt, as one of those
industrious needlewomen had accepted the bright ugly pattern on her mat
as beauty.

Whatever the reason might be, for the first time in her life, instead
of slipping at once into some curious pleasant cloud of emotion, too
familiar to be considered, Rachel listened critically to what was being
said. By the time they had swung in an irregular way from prayer to
psalm, from psalm to history, from history to poetry, and Mr. Bax was
giving out his text, she was in a state of acute discomfort. Such was
the discomfort she felt when forced to sit through an unsatisfactory
piece of music badly played. Tantalised, enraged by the clumsy
insensitiveness of the conductor, who put the stress on the wrong
places, and annoyed by the vast flock of the audience tamely praising
and acquiescing without knowing or caring, so she was not tantalized and
enraged, only here, with eyes half-shut and lips pursed together, the
atmosphere of forced solemnity increased her anger. All round her were
people pretending to feel what they did not feel, while somewhere above
her floated the idea which they could none of them grasp, which they
pretended to grasp, always escaping out of reach, a beautiful idea,
an idea like a butterfly. One after another, vast and hard and cold,
appeared to her the churches all over the world where this blundering
effort and misunderstanding were perpetually going on, great buildings,
filled with innumerable men and women, not seeing clearly, who
finally gave up the effort to see, and relapsed tamely into praise and
acquiescence, half-shutting their eyes and pursing up their lips. The
thought had the same sort of physical discomfort as is caused by a film
of mist always coming between the eyes and the printed page. She did her
best to brush away the film and to conceive something to be worshipped
as the service went on, but failed, always misled by the voice of Mr.
Bax saying things which misrepresented the idea, and by the patter of
baaing inexpressive human voices falling round her like damp leaves. The
effort was tiring and dispiriting. She ceased to listen, and fixed her
eyes on the face of a woman near her, a hospital nurse, whose expression
of devout attention seemed to prove that she was at any rate receiving
satisfaction. But looking at her carefully she came to the conclusion
that the hospital nurse was only slavishly acquiescent, and that the
look of satisfaction was produced by no splendid conception of God
within her. How indeed, could she conceive anything far outside her own
experience, a woman with a commonplace face like hers, a little round
red face, upon which trivial duties and trivial spites had drawn lines,
whose weak blue eyes saw without intensity or individuality, whose
features were blurred, insensitive, and callous? She was adoring
something shallow and smug, clinging to it, so the obstinate mouth
witnessed, with the assiduity of a limpet; nothing would tear her from
her demure belief in her own virtue and the virtues of her religion. She
was a limpet, with the sensitive side of her stuck to a rock, for ever
dead to the rush of fresh and beautiful things past her. The face
of this single worshipper became printed on Rachel's mind with an
impression of keen horror, and she had it suddenly revealed to her what
Helen meant and St. John meant when they proclaimed their hatred of
Christianity. With the violence that now marked her feelings, she
rejected all that she had implicitly believed.

Meanwhile Mr. Bax was half-way through the second lesson. She looked at
him. He was a man of the world with supple lips and an agreeable manner,
he was indeed a man of much kindliness and simplicity, though by no
means clever, but she was not in the mood to give any one credit for
such qualities, and examined him as though he were an epitome of all the
vices of his service.

Right at the back of the chapel Mrs. Flushing, Hirst, and Hewet sat in
a row in a very different frame of mind. Hewet was staring at the roof
with his legs stuck out in front of him, for as he had never tried to
make the service fit any feeling or idea of his, he was able to enjoy
the beauty of the language without hindrance. His mind was occupied
first with accidental things, such as the women's hair in front of
him, the light on the faces, then with the words which seemed to him
magnificent, and then more vaguely with the characters of the other
worshippers. But when he suddenly perceived Rachel, all these thoughts
were driven out of his head, and he thought only of her. The psalms,
the prayers, the Litany, and the sermon were all reduced to one chanting
sound which paused, and then renewed itself, a little higher or a little
lower. He stared alternately at Rachel and at the ceiling, but his
expression was now produced not by what he saw but by something in his
mind. He was almost as painfully disturbed by his thoughts as she was by
hers.

Early in the service Mrs. Flushing had discovered that she had taken up
a Bible instead of a prayer-book, and, as she was sitting next to Hirst,
she stole a glance over his shoulder. He was reading steadily in the
thin pale-blue volume. Unable to understand, she peered closer, upon
which Hirst politely laid the book before her, pointing to the first
line of a Greek poem and then to the translation opposite.

"What's that?" she whispered inquisitively.

"Sappho," he replied. "The one Swinburne did--the best thing that's ever
been written."

Mrs. Flushing could not resist such an opportunity. She gulped down the
Ode to Aphrodite during the Litany, keeping herself with difficulty from
asking when Sappho lived, and what else she wrote worth reading, and
contriving to come in punctually at the end with "the forgiveness of
sins, the Resurrection of the body, and the life everlastin'. Amen."

Meanwhile Hirst took out an envelope and began scribbling on the back of
it. When Mr. Bax mounted the pulpit he shut up Sappho with his envelope
between the pages, settled his spectacles, and fixed his gaze intently
upon the clergyman. Standing in the pulpit he looked very large and fat;
the light coming through the greenish unstained window-glass made his
face appear smooth and white like a very large egg.

He looked round at all the faces looking mildly up at him, although
some of them were the faces of men and women old enough to be his
grandparents, and gave out his text with weighty significance. The
argument of the sermon was that visitors to this beautiful land,
although they were on a holiday, owed a duty to the natives. It did not,
in truth, differ very much from a leading article upon topics of general
interest in the weekly newspapers. It rambled with a kind of amiable
verbosity from one heading to another, suggesting that all human beings
are very much the same under their skins, illustrating this by the
resemblance of the games which little Spanish boys play to the games
little boys in London streets play, observing that very small things do
influence people, particularly natives; in fact, a very dear friend of
Mr. Bax's had told him that the success of our rule in India, that vast
country, largely depended upon the strict code of politeness which the
English adopted towards the natives, which led to the remark that small
things were not necessarily small, and that somehow to the virtue of
sympathy, which was a virtue never more needed than to-day, when we
lived in a time of experiment and upheaval--witness the aeroplane and
wireless telegraph, and there were other problems which hardly presented
themselves to our fathers, but which no man who called himself a man
could leave unsettled. Here Mr. Bax became more definitely clerical, if
it were possible, he seemed to speak with a certain innocent craftiness,
as he pointed out that all this laid a special duty upon earnest
Christians. What men were inclined to say now was, "Oh, that
fellow--he's a parson." What we want them to say is, "He's a good
fellow"--in other words, "He is my brother." He exhorted them to keep
in touch with men of the modern type; they must sympathise with their
multifarious interests in order to keep before their eyes that whatever
discoveries were made there was one discovery which could not be
superseded, which was indeed as much of a necessity to the most
successful and most brilliant of them all as it had been to their
fathers. The humblest could help; the least important things had an
influence (here his manner became definitely priestly and his remarks
seemed to be directed to women, for indeed Mr. Bax's congregations were
mainly composed of women, and he was used to assigning them their duties
in his innocent clerical campaigns). Leaving more definite instruction,
he passed on, and his theme broadened into a peroration for which
he drew a long breath and stood very upright,--"As a drop of water,
detached, alone, separate from others, falling from the cloud and
entering the great ocean, alters, so scientists tell us, not only the
immediate spot in the ocean where it falls, but all the myriad drops
which together compose the great universe of waters, and by this means
alters the configuration of the globe and the lives of millions of sea
creatures, and finally the lives of the men and women who seek their
living upon the shores--as all this is within the compass of a single
drop of water, such as any rain shower sends in millions to lose
themselves in the earth, to lose themselves we say, but we know very
well that the fruits of the earth could not flourish without them--so
is a marvel comparable to this within the reach of each one of us, who
dropping a little word or a little deed into the great universe alters
it; yea, it is a solemn thought, _alters_ it, for good or for evil, not
for one instant, or in one vicinity, but throughout the entire race,
and for all eternity." Whipping round as though to avoid applause, he
continued with the same breath, but in a different tone of voice,--"And
now to God the Father . . ."

He gave his blessing, and then, while the solemn chords again issued
from the harmonium behind the curtain, the different people began
scraping and fumbling and moving very awkwardly and consciously towards
the door. Half-way upstairs, at a point where the light and sounds of
the upper world conflicted with the dimness and the dying hymn-tune of
the under, Rachel felt a hand drop upon her shoulder.

"Miss Vinrace," Mrs. Flushing whispered peremptorily, "stay to luncheon.
It's such a dismal day. They don't even give one beef for luncheon.
Please stay."

Here they came out into the hall, where once more the little band was
greeted with curious respectful glances by the people who had not gone
to church, although their clothing made it clear that they approved of
Sunday to the very verge of going to church. Rachel felt unable to stand
any more of this particular atmosphere, and was about to say she must
go back, when Terence passed them, drawn along in talk with Evelyn M.
Rachel thereupon contented herself with saying that the people looked
very respectable, which negative remark Mrs. Flushing interpreted to
mean that she would stay.

"English people abroad!" she returned with a vivid flash of malice.
"Ain't they awful! But we won't stay here," she continued, plucking at
Rachel's arm. "Come up to my room."

She bore her past Hewet and Evelyn and the Thornburys and the Elliots.
Hewet stepped forward.

"Luncheon--" he began.

"Miss Vinrace has promised to lunch with me," said Mrs. Flushing, and
began to pound energetically up the staircase, as though the middle
classes of England were in pursuit. She did not stop until she had
slammed her bedroom door behind them.

"Well, what did you think of it?" she demanded, panting slightly.

All the disgust and horror which Rachel had been accumulating burst
forth beyond her control.

"I thought it the most loathsome exhibition I'd ever seen!" she broke
out. "How can they--how dare they--what do you mean by it--Mr. Bax,
hospital nurses, old men, prostitutes, disgusting--"

She hit off the points she remembered as fast as she could, but she was
too indignant to stop to analyse her feelings. Mrs. Flushing watched her
with keen gusto as she stood ejaculating with emphatic movements of her
head and hands in the middle of the room.

"Go on, go on, do go on," she laughed, clapping her hands. "It's
delightful to hear you!"

"But why do you go?" Rachel demanded.

"I've been every Sunday of my life ever since I can remember," Mrs.
Flushing chuckled, as though that were a reason by itself.

Rachel turned abruptly to the window. She did not know what it was that
had put her into such a passion; the sight of Terence in the hall had
confused her thoughts, leaving her merely indignant. She looked straight
at their own villa, half-way up the side of the mountain. The most
familiar view seen framed through glass has a certain unfamiliar
distinction, and she grew calm as she gazed. Then she remembered that
she was in the presence of some one she did not know well, and she
turned and looked at Mrs. Flushing. Mrs. Flushing was still sitting
on the edge of the bed, looking up, with her lips parted, so that her
strong white teeth showed in two rows.

"Tell me," she said, "which d'you like best, Mr. Hewet or Mr. Hirst?"

"Mr. Hewet," Rachel replied, but her voice did not sound natural.

"Which is the one who reads Greek in church?" Mrs. Flushing demanded.

It might have been either of them and while Mrs. Flushing proceeded
to describe them both, and to say that both frightened her, but one
frightened her more than the other, Rachel looked for a chair. The room,
of course, was one of the largest and most luxurious in the hotel. There
were a great many arm-chairs and settees covered in brown holland, but
each of these was occupied by a large square piece of yellow cardboard,
and all the pieces of cardboard were dotted or lined with spots or
dashes of bright oil paint.

"But you're not to look at those," said Mrs. Flushing as she saw
Rachel's eye wander. She jumped up, and turned as many as she could,
face downwards, upon the floor. Rachel, however, managed to possess
herself of one of them, and, with the vanity of an artist, Mrs. Flushing
demanded anxiously, "Well, well?"

"It's a hill," Rachel replied. There could be no doubt that Mrs.
Flushing had represented the vigorous and abrupt fling of the earth up
into the air; you could almost see the clods flying as it whirled.

Rachel passed from one to another. They were all marked by something of
the jerk and decision of their maker; they were all perfectly untrained
onslaughts of the brush upon some half-realised idea suggested by hill
or tree; and they were all in some way characteristic of Mrs. Flushing.

"I see things movin'," Mrs. Flushing explained. "So"--she swept her hand
through a yard of the air. She then took up one of the cardboards which
Rachel had laid aside, seated herself on a stool, and began to flourish
a stump of charcoal. While she occupied herself in strokes which seemed
to serve her as speech serves others, Rachel, who was very restless,
looked about her.

"Open the wardrobe," said Mrs. Flushing after a pause, speaking
indistinctly because of a paint-brush in her mouth, "and look at the
things."

As Rachel hesitated, Mrs. Flushing came forward, still with a
paint-brush in her mouth, flung open the wings of her wardrobe, and
tossed a quantity of shawls, stuffs, cloaks, embroideries, on to the
bed. Rachel began to finger them. Mrs. Flushing came up once more, and
dropped a quantity of beads, brooches, earrings, bracelets, tassels, and
combs among the draperies. Then she went back to her stool and began to
paint in silence. The stuffs were coloured and dark and pale; they made
a curious swarm of lines and colours upon the counterpane, with
the reddish lumps of stone and peacocks' feathers and clear pale
tortoise-shell combs lying among them.

"The women wore them hundreds of years ago, they wear 'em still," Mrs.
Flushing remarked. "My husband rides about and finds 'em; they don't
know what they're worth, so we get 'em cheap. And we shall sell 'em to
smart women in London," she chuckled, as though the thought of these
ladies and their absurd appearance amused her. After painting for
some minutes, she suddenly laid down her brush and fixed her eyes upon
Rachel.

"I tell you what I want to do," she said. "I want to go up there and see
things for myself. It's silly stayin' here with a pack of old maids as
though we were at the seaside in England. I want to go up the river and
see the natives in their camps. It's only a matter of ten days under
canvas. My husband's done it. One would lie out under the trees at night
and be towed down the river by day, and if we saw anythin' nice we'd
shout out and tell 'em to stop." She rose and began piercing the bed
again and again with a long golden pin, as she watched to see what
effect her suggestion had upon Rachel.

"We must make up a party," she went on. "Ten people could hire a launch.
Now you'll come, and Mrs. Ambrose'll come, and will Mr. Hirst and
t'other gentleman come? Where's a pencil?"

She became more and more determined and excited as she evolved her plan.
She sat on the edge of the bed and wrote down a list of surnames, which
she invariably spelt wrong. Rachel was enthusiastic, for indeed the idea
was immeasurably delightful to her. She had always had a great desire to
see the river, and the name of Terence threw a lustre over the prospect,
which made it almost too good to come true. She did what she could to
help Mrs. Flushing by suggesting names, helping her to spell them, and
counting up the days of the week upon her fingers. As Mrs. Flushing
wanted to know all she could tell her about the birth and pursuits of
every person she suggested, and threw in wild stories of her own as to
the temperaments and habits of artists, and people of the same name who
used to come to Chillingley in the old days, but were doubtless not the
same, though they too were very clever men interested in Egyptology, the
business took some time.

At last Mrs. Flushing sought her diary for help, the method of reckoning
dates on the fingers proving unsatisfactory. She opened and shut every
drawer in her writing-table, and then cried furiously, "Yarmouth!
Yarmouth! Drat the woman! She's always out of the way when she's
wanted!"

At this moment the luncheon gong began to work itself into its midday
frenzy. Mrs. Flushing rang her bell violently. The door was opened by a
handsome maid who was almost as upright as her mistress.

"Oh, Yarmouth," said Mrs. Flushing, "just find my diary and see where
ten days from now would bring us to, and ask the hall porter how many
men 'ud be wanted to row eight people up the river for a week, and
what it 'ud cost, and put it on a slip of paper and leave it on my
dressing-table. Now--" she pointed at the door with a superb forefinger
so that Rachel had to lead the way.

"Oh, and Yarmouth," Mrs. Flushing called back over her shoulder. "Put
those things away and hang 'em in their right places, there's a good
girl, or it fusses Mr. Flushin'."

To all of which Yarmouth merely replied, "Yes, ma'am."

As they entered the long dining-room it was obvious that the day was
still Sunday, although the mood was slightly abating. The Flushings'
table was set by the side in the window, so that Mrs. Flushing could
scrutinise each figure as it entered, and her curiosity seemed to be
intense.

"Old Mrs. Paley," she whispered as the wheeled chair slowly made its way
through the door, Arthur pushing behind. "Thornburys" came next. "That
nice woman," she nudged Rachel to look at Miss Allan. "What's her name?"
The painted lady who always came in late, tripping into the room with
a prepared smile as though she came out upon a stage, might well
have quailed before Mrs. Flushing's stare, which expressed her steely
hostility to the whole tribe of painted ladies. Next came the two young
men whom Mrs. Flushing called collectively the Hirsts. They sat down
opposite, across the gangway.

Mr. Flushing treated his wife with a mixture of admiration and
indulgence, making up by the suavity and fluency of his speech for the
abruptness of hers. While she darted and ejaculated he gave Rachel a
sketch of the history of South American art. He would deal with one
of his wife's exclamations, and then return as smoothly as ever to his
theme. He knew very well how to make a luncheon pass agreeably, without
being dull or intimate. He had formed the opinion, so he told Rachel,
that wonderful treasures lay hid in the depths of the land; the things
Rachel had seen were merely trifles picked up in the course of one short
journey. He thought there might be giant gods hewn out of stone in the
mountain-side; and colossal figures standing by themselves in the middle
of vast green pasture lands, where none but natives had ever trod.
Before the dawn of European art he believed that the primitive huntsmen
and priests had built temples of massive stone slabs, had formed out of
the dark rocks and the great cedar trees majestic figures of gods and
of beasts, and symbols of the great forces, water, air, and forest among
which they lived. There might be prehistoric towns, like those in Greece
and Asia, standing in open places among the trees, filled with the works
of this early race. Nobody had been there; scarcely anything was known.
Thus talking and displaying the most picturesque of his theories,
Rachel's attention was fixed upon him.

She did not see that Hewet kept looking at her across the gangway,
between the figures of waiters hurrying past with plates. He was
inattentive, and Hirst was finding him also very cross and disagreeable.
They had touched upon all the usual topics--upon politics and
literature, gossip and Christianity. They had quarrelled over the
service, which was every bit as fine as Sappho, according to Hewet;
so that Hirst's paganism was mere ostentation. Why go to church, he
demanded, merely in order to read Sappho? Hirst observed that he had
listened to every word of the sermon, as he could prove if Hewet would
like a repetition of it; and he went to church in order to realise the
nature of his Creator, which he had done very vividly that morning,
thanks to Mr. Bax, who had inspired him to write three of the most
superb lines in English literature, an invocation to the Deity.

"I wrote 'em on the back of the envelope of my aunt's last letter," he
said, and pulled it from between the pages of Sappho.

"Well, let's hear them," said Hewet, slightly mollified by the prospect
of a literary discussion.

"My dear Hewet, do you wish us both to be flung out of the hotel by
an enraged mob of Thornburys and Elliots?" Hirst enquired. "The merest
whisper would be sufficient to incriminate me for ever. God!" he broke
out, "what's the use of attempting to write when the world's peopled by
such damned fools? Seriously, Hewet, I advise you to give up literature.
What's the good of it? There's your audience."

He nodded his head at the tables where a very miscellaneous collection
of Europeans were now engaged in eating, in some cases in gnawing, the
stringy foreign fowls. Hewet looked, and grew more out of temper than
ever. Hirst looked too. His eyes fell upon Rachel, and he bowed to her.

"I rather think Rachel's in love with me," he remarked, as his eyes
returned to his plate. "That's the worst of friendships with young
women--they tend to fall in love with one."

To that Hewet made no answer whatever, and sat singularly still. Hirst
did not seem to mind getting no answer, for he returned to Mr. Bax
again, quoting the peroration about the drop of water; and when Hewet
scarcely replied to these remarks either, he merely pursed his lips,
chose a fig, and relapsed quite contentedly into his own thoughts, of
which he always had a very large supply. When luncheon was over they
separated, taking their cups of coffee to different parts of the hall.

From his chair beneath the palm-tree Hewet saw Rachel come out of the
dining-room with the Flushings; he saw them look round for chairs, and
choose three in a corner where they could go on talking in private. Mr.
Flushing was now in the full tide of his discourse. He produced a sheet
of paper upon which he made drawings as he went on with his talk. He saw
Rachel lean over and look, pointing to this and that with her finger.
Hewet unkindly compared Mr. Flushing, who was extremely well dressed for
a hot climate, and rather elaborate in his manner, to a very persuasive
shop-keeper. Meanwhile, as he sat looking at them, he was entangled in
the Thornburys and Miss Allan, who, after hovering about for a minute
or two, settled in chairs round him, holding their cups in their hands.
They wanted to know whether he could tell them anything about Mr. Bax.
Mr. Thornbury as usual sat saying nothing, looking vaguely ahead of him,
occasionally raising his eye-glasses, as if to put them on, but always
thinking better of it at the last moment, and letting them fall again.
After some discussion, the ladies put it beyond a doubt that Mr. Bax was
not the son of Mr. William Bax. There was a pause. Then Mrs. Thornbury
remarked that she was still in the habit of saying Queen instead of
King in the National Anthem. There was another pause. Then Miss Allan
observed reflectively that going to church abroad always made her feel
as if she had been to a sailor's funeral.