The Voyage Out

V >> Virginia Woolf >> The Voyage Out


Neither of them went to bed or suggested that the other should go to
bed. They sat in the drawing-room playing picquet with the door open.
St. John made up a bed upon the sofa, and when it was ready insisted
that Terence should lie upon it. They began to quarrel as to who should
lie on the sofa and who should lie upon a couple of chairs covered with
rugs. St. John forced Terence at last to lie down upon the sofa.

"Don't be a fool, Terence," he said. "You'll only get ill if you don't
sleep."

"Old fellow," he began, as Terence still refused, and stopped abruptly,
fearing sentimentality; he found that he was on the verge of tears.

He began to say what he had long been wanting to say, that he was sorry
for Terence, that he cared for him, that he cared for Rachel. Did she
know how much he cared for her--had she said anything, asked perhaps? He
was very anxious to say this, but he refrained, thinking that it was a
selfish question after all, and what was the use of bothering Terence to
talk about such things? He was already half asleep. But St. John could
not sleep at once. If only, he thought to himself, as he lay in the
darkness, something would happen--if only this strain would come to an
end. He did not mind what happened, so long as the succession of these
hard and dreary days was broken; he did not mind if she died. He felt
himself disloyal in not minding it, but it seemed to him that he had no
feelings left.

All night long there was no call or movement, except the opening and
shutting of the bedroom door once. By degrees the light returned into
the untidy room. At six the servants began to move; at seven they crept
downstairs into the kitchen; and half an hour later the day began again.

Nevertheless it was not the same as the days that had gone before,
although it would have been hard to say in what the difference
consisted. Perhaps it was that they seemed to be waiting for something.
There were certainly fewer things to be done than usual. People drifted
through the drawing-room--Mr. Flushing, Mr. and Mrs. Thornbury. They
spoke very apologetically in low tones, refusing to sit down, but
remaining for a considerable time standing up, although the only thing
they had to say was, "Is there anything we can do?" and there was
nothing they could do.

Feeling oddly detached from it all, Terence remembered how Helen had
said that whenever anything happened to you this was how people behaved.
Was she right, or was she wrong? He was too little interested to frame
an opinion of his own. He put things away in his mind, as if one of
these days he would think about them, but not now. The mist of unreality
had deepened and deepened until it had produced a feeling of numbness
all over his body. Was it his body? Were those really his own hands?

This morning also for the first time Ridley found it impossible to sit
alone in his room. He was very uncomfortable downstairs, and, as he
did not know what was going on, constantly in the way; but he would not
leave the drawing-room. Too restless to read, and having nothing to do,
he began to pace up and down reciting poetry in an undertone. Occupied
in various ways--now in undoing parcels, now in uncorking bottles, now
in writing directions, the sound of Ridley's song and the beat of his
pacing worked into the minds of Terence and St. John all the morning as
a half comprehended refrain.

They wrestled up, they wrestled down,
They wrestled sore and still:
The fiend who blinds the eyes of men,
That night he had his will.

Like stags full spent, among the bent
They dropped awhile to rest--

"Oh, it's intolerable!" Hirst exclaimed, and then checked himself, as if
it were a breach of their agreement. Again and again Terence would creep
half-way up the stairs in case he might be able to glean news of Rachel.
But the only news now was of a very fragmentary kind; she had drunk
something; she had slept a little; she seemed quieter. In the same way,
Dr. Lesage confined himself to talking about details, save once when
he volunteered the information that he had just been called in to
ascertain, by severing a vein in the wrist, that an old lady of
eighty-five was really dead. She had a horror of being buried alive.

"It is a horror," he remarked, "that we generally find in the very old,
and seldom in the young." They both expressed their interest in what he
told them; it seemed to them very strange. Another strange thing about
the day was that the luncheon was forgotten by all of them until it was
late in the afternoon, and then Mrs. Chailey waited on them, and looked
strange too, because she wore a stiff print dress, and her sleeves were
rolled up above her elbows. She seemed as oblivious of her appearance,
however, as if she had been called out of her bed by a midnight alarm
of fire, and she had forgotten, too, her reserve and her composure; she
talked to them quite familiarly as if she had nursed them and held them
naked on her knee. She assured them over and over again that it was
their duty to eat.

The afternoon, being thus shortened, passed more quickly than they
expected. Once Mrs. Flushing opened the door, but on seeing them shut it
again quickly; once Helen came down to fetch something, but she stopped
as she left the room to look at a letter addressed to her. She stood for
a moment turning it over, and the extraordinary and mournful beauty
of her attitude struck Terence in the way things struck him now--as
something to be put away in his mind and to be thought about afterwards.
They scarcely spoke, the argument between them seeming to be suspended
or forgotten.

Now that the afternoon sun had left the front of the house, Ridley paced
up and down the terrace repeating stanzas of a long poem, in a subdued
but suddenly sonorous voice. Fragments of the poem were wafted in at the
open window as he passed and repassed.

Peor and Baalim
Forsake their Temples dim,
With that twice batter'd God of Palestine
And mooned Astaroth--

The sound of these words were strangely discomforting to both the young
men, but they had to be borne. As the evening drew on and the red
light of the sunset glittered far away on the sea, the same sense of
desperation attacked both Terence and St. John at the thought that the
day was nearly over, and that another night was at hand. The appearance
of one light after another in the town beneath them produced in Hirst a
repetition of his terrible and disgusting desire to break down and sob.
Then the lamps were brought in by Chailey. She explained that Maria, in
opening a bottle, had been so foolish as to cut her arm badly, but she
had bound it up; it was unfortunate when there was so much work to be
done. Chailey herself limped because of the rheumatism in her feet, but
it appeared to her mere waste of time to take any notice of the unruly
flesh of servants. The evening went on. Dr. Lesage arrived unexpectedly,
and stayed upstairs a very long time. He came down once and drank a cup
of coffee.

"She is very ill," he said in answer to Ridley's question. All the
annoyance had by this time left his manner, he was grave and formal, but
at the same time it was full of consideration, which had not marked
it before. He went upstairs again. The three men sat together in the
drawing-room. Ridley was quite quiet now, and his attention seemed to
be thoroughly awakened. Save for little half-voluntary movements and
exclamations that were stifled at once, they waited in complete silence.
It seemed as if they were at last brought together face to face with
something definite.

It was nearly eleven o'clock when Dr. Lesage again appeared in the room.
He approached them very slowly, and did not speak at once. He looked
first at St. John and then at Terence, and said to Terence, "Mr. Hewet,
I think you should go upstairs now."

Terence rose immediately, leaving the others seated with Dr. Lesage
standing motionless between them.

Chailey was in the passage outside, repeating over and over again, "It's
wicked--it's wicked."

Terence paid her no attention; he heard what she was saying, but it
conveyed no meaning to his mind. All the way upstairs he kept saying to
himself, "This has not happened to me. It is not possible that this has
happened to me."

He looked curiously at his own hand on the banisters. The stairs were
very steep, and it seemed to take him a long time to surmount them.
Instead of feeling keenly, as he knew that he ought to feel, he felt
nothing at all. When he opened the door he saw Helen sitting by the
bedside. There were shaded lights on the table, and the room, though
it seemed to be full of a great many things, was very tidy. There was a
faint and not unpleasant smell of disinfectants. Helen rose and gave up
her chair to him in silence. As they passed each other their eyes met in
a peculiar level glance, he wondered at the extraordinary clearness of
his eyes, and at the deep calm and sadness that dwelt in them. He sat
down by the bedside, and a moment afterwards heard the door shut gently
behind her. He was alone with Rachel, and a faint reflection of the
sense of relief that they used to feel when they were left alone
possessed him. He looked at her. He expected to find some terrible
change in her, but there was none. She looked indeed very thin, and, as
far as he could see, very tired, but she was the same as she had always
been. Moreover, she saw him and knew him. She smiled at him and said,
"Hullo, Terence."

The curtain which had been drawn between them for so long vanished
immediately.

"Well, Rachel," he replied in his usual voice, upon which she opened her
eyes quite widely and smiled with her familiar smile. He kissed her and
took her hand.

"It's been wretched without you," he said.

She still looked at him and smiled, but soon a slight look of fatigue or
perplexity came into her eyes and she shut them again.

"But when we're together we're perfectly happy," he said. He continued
to hold her hand.

The light being dim, it was impossible to see any change in her face.
An immense feeling of peace came over Terence, so that he had no wish
to move or to speak. The terrible torture and unreality of the last days
were over, and he had come out now into perfect certainty and peace. His
mind began to work naturally again and with great ease. The longer he
sat there the more profoundly was he conscious of the peace invading
every corner of his soul. Once he held his breath and listened acutely;
she was still breathing; he went on thinking for some time; they seemed
to be thinking together; he seemed to be Rachel as well as himself;
and then he listened again; no, she had ceased to breathe. So much the
better--this was death. It was nothing; it was to cease to breathe.
It was happiness, it was perfect happiness. They had now what they had
always wanted to have, the union which had been impossible while they
lived. Unconscious whether he thought the words or spoke them aloud, he
said, "No two people have ever been so happy as we have been. No one has
ever loved as we have loved."

It seemed to him that their complete union and happiness filled the room
with rings eddying more and more widely. He had no wish in the world
left unfulfilled. They possessed what could never be taken from them.

He was not conscious that any one had come into the room, but later,
moments later, or hours later perhaps, he felt an arm behind him. The
arms were round him. He did not want to have arms round him, and the
mysterious whispering voices annoyed him. He laid Rachel's hand, which
was now cold, upon the counterpane, and rose from his chair, and walked
across to the window. The windows were uncurtained, and showed the moon,
and a long silver pathway upon the surface of the waves.

"Why," he said, in his ordinary tone of voice, "look at the moon.
There's a halo round the moon. We shall have rain to-morrow."

The arms, whether they were the arms of man or of woman, were round him
again; they were pushing him gently towards the door. He turned of his
own accord and walked steadily in advance of the arms, conscious of
a little amusement at the strange way in which people behaved merely
because some one was dead. He would go if they wished it, but nothing
they could do would disturb his happiness.

As he saw the passage outside the room, and the table with the cups and
the plates, it suddenly came over him that here was a world in which he
would never see Rachel again.

"Rachel! Rachel!" he shrieked, trying to rush back to her. But they
prevented him, and pushed him down the passage and into a bedroom far
from her room. Downstairs they could hear the thud of his feet on the
floor, as he struggled to break free; and twice they heard him shout,
"Rachel, Rachel!"





Chapter XXVI


For two or three hours longer the moon poured its light through the
empty air. Unbroken by clouds it fell straightly, and lay almost like
a chill white frost over the sea and the earth. During these hours the
silence was not broken, and the only movement was caused by the movement
of trees and branches which stirred slightly, and then the shadows that
lay across the white spaces of the land moved too. In this profound
silence one sound only was audible, the sound of a slight but continuous
breathing which never ceased, although it never rose and never fell. It
continued after the birds had begun to flutter from branch to branch,
and could be heard behind the first thin notes of their voices. It
continued all through the hours when the east whitened, and grew red,
and a faint blue tinged the sky, but when the sun rose it ceased, and
gave place to other sounds.

The first sounds that were heard were little inarticulate cries, the
cries, it seemed, of children or of the very poor, of people who were
very weak or in pain. But when the sun was above the horizon, the air
which had been thin and pale grew every moment richer and warmer, and
the sounds of life became bolder and more full of courage and authority.
By degrees the smoke began to ascend in wavering breaths over the
houses, and these slowly thickened, until they were as round and
straight as columns, and instead of striking upon pale white blinds, the
sun shone upon dark windows, beyond which there was depth and space.

The sun had been up for many hours, and the great dome of air was warmed
through and glittering with thin gold threads of sunlight, before any
one moved in the hotel. White and massive it stood in the early light,
half asleep with its blinds down.

At about half-past nine Miss Allan came very slowly into the hall, and
walked very slowly to the table where the morning papers were laid, but
she did not put out her hand to take one; she stood still, thinking,
with her head a little sunk upon her shoulders. She looked curiously
old, and from the way in which she stood, a little hunched together and
very massive, you could see what she would be like when she was really
old, how she would sit day after day in her chair looking placidly in
front of her. Other people began to come into the room, and to pass her,
but she did not speak to any of them or even look at them, and at last,
as if it were necessary to do something, she sat down in a chair, and
looked quietly and fixedly in front of her. She felt very old this
morning, and useless too, as if her life had been a failure, as if it
had been hard and laborious to no purpose. She did not want to go on
living, and yet she knew that she would. She was so strong that she
would live to be a very old woman. She would probably live to be eighty,
and as she was now fifty, that left thirty years more for her to
live. She turned her hands over and over in her lap and looked at them
curiously; her old hands, that had done so much work for her. There did
not seem to be much point in it all; one went on, of course one went
on. . . . She looked up to see Mrs. Thornbury standing beside her, with
lines drawn upon her forehead, and her lips parted as if she were about
to ask a question.

Miss Allan anticipated her.

"Yes," she said. "She died this morning, very early, about three
o'clock."

Mrs. Thornbury made a little exclamation, drew her lips together, and
the tears rose in her eyes. Through them she looked at the hall which
was now laid with great breadths of sunlight, and at the careless,
casual groups of people who were standing beside the solid arm-chairs
and tables. They looked to her unreal, or as people look who remain
unconscious that some great explosion is about to take place beside
them. But there was no explosion, and they went on standing by
the chairs and the tables. Mrs. Thornbury no longer saw them, but,
penetrating through them as though they were without substance, she saw
the house, the people in the house, the room, the bed in the room, and
the figure of the dead lying still in the dark beneath the sheets.
She could almost see the dead. She could almost hear the voices of the
mourners.

"They expected it?" she asked at length.

Miss Allan could only shake her head.

"I know nothing," she replied, "except what Mrs. Flushing's maid told
me. She died early this morning."

The two women looked at each other with a quiet significant gaze, and
then, feeling oddly dazed, and seeking she did not know exactly what,
Mrs. Thornbury went slowly upstairs and walked quietly along the
passages, touching the wall with her fingers as if to guide herself.
Housemaids were passing briskly from room to room, but Mrs. Thornbury
avoided them; she hardly saw them; they seemed to her to be in another
world. She did not even look up directly when Evelyn stopped her. It
was evident that Evelyn had been lately in tears, and when she looked
at Mrs. Thornbury she began to cry again. Together they drew into the
hollow of a window, and stood there in silence. Broken words formed
themselves at last among Evelyn's sobs. "It was wicked," she sobbed, "it
was cruel--they were so happy."

Mrs. Thornbury patted her on the shoulder.

"It seems hard--very hard," she said. She paused and looked out over the
slope of the hill at the Ambroses' villa; the windows were blazing in
the sun, and she thought how the soul of the dead had passed from those
windows. Something had passed from the world. It seemed to her strangely
empty.

"And yet the older one grows," she continued, her eyes regaining more
than their usual brightness, "the more certain one becomes that there is
a reason. How could one go on if there were no reason?" she asked.

She asked the question of some one, but she did not ask it of Evelyn.
Evelyn's sobs were becoming quieter. "There must be a reason," she said.
"It can't only be an accident. For it was an accident--it need never
have happened."

Mrs. Thornbury sighed deeply.

"But we must not let ourselves think of that," she added, "and let us
hope that they don't either. Whatever they had done it might have been
the same. These terrible illnesses--"

"There's no reason--I don't believe there's any reason at all!" Evelyn
broke out, pulling the blind down and letting it fly back with a little
snap.

"Why should these things happen? Why should people suffer? I honestly
believe," she went on, lowering her voice slightly, "that Rachel's in
Heaven, but Terence. . . ."

"What's the good of it all?" she demanded.

Mrs. Thornbury shook her head slightly but made no reply, and pressing
Evelyn's hand she went on down the passage. Impelled by a strong desire
to hear something, although she did not know exactly what there was to
hear, she was making her way to the Flushings' room. As she opened their
door she felt that she had interrupted some argument between husband
and wife. Mrs. Flushing was sitting with her back to the light, and Mr.
Flushing was standing near her, arguing and trying to persuade her of
something.

"Ah, here is Mrs. Thornbury," he began with some relief in his voice.
"You have heard, of course. My wife feels that she was in some way
responsible. She urged poor Miss Vinrace to come on the expedition. I'm
sure you will agree with me that it is most unreasonable to feel that.
We don't even know--in fact I think it most unlikely--that she caught
her illness there. These diseases--Besides, she was set on going. She
would have gone whether you asked her or not, Alice."

"Don't, Wilfrid," said Mrs. Flushing, neither moving nor taking her eyes
off the spot on the floor upon which they rested. "What's the use of
talking? What's the use--?" She ceased.

"I was coming to ask you," said Mrs. Thornbury, addressing Wilfrid, for
it was useless to speak to his wife. "Is there anything you think that
one could do? Has the father arrived? Could one go and see?"

The strongest wish in her being at this moment was to be able to do
something for the unhappy people--to see them--to assure them--to help
them. It was dreadful to be so far away from them. But Mr. Flushing
shook his head; he did not think that now--later perhaps one might be
able to help. Here Mrs. Flushing rose stiffly, turned her back to them,
and walked to the dressing-room opposite. As she walked, they could see
her breast slowly rise and slowly fall. But her grief was silent. She
shut the door behind her.

When she was alone by herself she clenched her fists together, and began
beating the back of a chair with them. She was like a wounded animal.
She hated death; she was furious, outraged, indignant with death, as
if it were a living creature. She refused to relinquish her friends to
death. She would not submit to dark and nothingness. She began to pace
up and down, clenching her hands, and making no attempt to stop the
quick tears which raced down her cheeks. She sat still at last, but she
did not submit. She looked stubborn and strong when she had ceased to
cry.

In the next room, meanwhile, Wilfrid was talking to Mrs. Thornbury with
greater freedom now that his wife was not sitting there.

"That's the worst of these places," he said. "People will behave as
though they were in England, and they're not. I've no doubt myself that
Miss Vinrace caught the infection up at the villa itself. She probably
ran risks a dozen times a day that might have given her the illness.
It's absurd to say she caught it with us."

If he had not been sincerely sorry for them he would have been annoyed.
"Pepper tells me," he continued, "that he left the house because he
thought them so careless. He says they never washed their vegetables
properly. Poor people! It's a fearful price to pay. But it's only what
I've seen over and over again--people seem to forget that these things
happen, and then they do happen, and they're surprised."

Mrs. Thornbury agreed with him that they had been very careless, and
that there was no reason whatever to think that she had caught the fever
on the expedition; and after talking about other things for a short
time, she left him and went sadly along the passage to her own room.
There must be some reason why such things happen, she thought to
herself, as she shut the door. Only at first it was not easy to
understand what it was. It seemed so strange--so unbelievable. Why, only
three weeks ago--only a fortnight ago, she had seen Rachel; when she
shut her eyes she could almost see her now, the quiet, shy girl who was
going to be married. She thought of all that she would have missed
had she died at Rachel's age, the children, the married life, the
unimaginable depths and miracles that seemed to her, as she looked back,
to have lain about her, day after day, and year after year. The stunned
feeling, which had been making it difficult for her to think, gradually
gave way to a feeling of the opposite nature; she thought very quickly
and very clearly, and, looking back over all her experiences, tried to
fit them into a kind of order. There was undoubtedly much suffering,
much struggling, but, on the whole, surely there was a balance of
happiness--surely order did prevail. Nor were the deaths of young people
really the saddest things in life--they were saved so much; they kept
so much. The dead--she called to mind those who had died early,
accidentally--were beautiful; she often dreamt of the dead. And in
time Terence himself would come to feel--She got up and began to wander
restlessly about the room.

For an old woman of her age she was very restless, and for one of her
clear, quick mind she was unusually perplexed. She could not settle to
anything, so that she was relieved when the door opened. She went up
to her husband, took him in her arms, and kissed him with unusual
intensity, and then as they sat down together she began to pat him and
question him as if he were a baby, an old, tired, querulous baby. She
did not tell him about Miss Vinrace's death, for that would only disturb
him, and he was put out already. She tried to discover why he was
uneasy. Politics again? What were those horrid people doing? She spent
the whole morning in discussing politics with her husband, and by
degrees she became deeply interested in what they were saying. But every
now and then what she was saying seemed to her oddly empty of meaning.