The Voyage Out

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At that moment Rachel was sitting in her room doing absolutely nothing.
When the ship was full this apartment bore some magnificent title and
was the resort of elderly sea-sick ladies who left the deck to their
youngsters. By virtue of the piano, and a mess of books on the floor,
Rachel considered it her room, and there she would sit for hours playing
very difficult music, reading a little German, or a little English when
the mood took her, and doing--as at this moment--absolutely nothing.

The way she had been educated, joined to a fine natural indolence, was
of course partly the reason of it, for she had been educated as the
majority of well-to-do girls in the last part of the nineteenth century
were educated. Kindly doctors and gentle old professors had taught her
the rudiments of about ten different branches of knowledge, but they
would as soon have forced her to go through one piece of drudgery
thoroughly as they would have told her that her hands were dirty. The
one hour or the two hours weekly passed very pleasantly, partly owing
to the other pupils, partly to the fact that the window looked upon
the back of a shop, where figures appeared against the red windows in
winter, partly to the accidents that are bound to happen when more than
two people are in the same room together. But there was no subject in
the world which she knew accurately. Her mind was in the state of an
intelligent man's in the beginning of the reign of Queen Elizabeth;
she would believe practically anything she was told, invent reasons for
anything she said. The shape of the earth, the history of the world,
how trains worked, or money was invested, what laws were in force, which
people wanted what, and why they wanted it, the most elementary idea of
a system in modern life--none of this had been imparted to her by any of
her professors or mistresses. But this system of education had one great
advantage. It did not teach anything, but it put no obstacle in the way
of any real talent that the pupil might chance to have. Rachel, being
musical, was allowed to learn nothing but music; she became a fanatic
about music. All the energies that might have gone into languages,
science, or literature, that might have made her friends, or shown her
the world, poured straight into music. Finding her teachers inadequate,
she had practically taught herself. At the age of twenty-four she knew
as much about music as most people do when they are thirty; and could
play as well as nature allowed her to, which, as became daily more
obvious, was a really generous allowance. If this one definite gift
was surrounded by dreams and ideas of the most extravagant and foolish
description, no one was any the wiser.

Her education being thus ordinary, her circumstances were no more out of
the common. She was an only child and had never been bullied and laughed
at by brothers and sisters. Her mother having died when she was eleven,
two aunts, the sisters of her father, brought her up, and they lived
for the sake of the air in a comfortable house in Richmond. She was
of course brought up with excessive care, which as a child was for her
health; as a girl and a young woman was for what it seems almost crude
to call her morals. Until quite lately she had been completely ignorant
that for women such things existed. She groped for knowledge in old
books, and found it in repulsive chunks, but she did not naturally care
for books and thus never troubled her head about the censorship which
was exercised first by her aunts, later by her father. Friends might
have told her things, but she had few of her own age,--Richmond being
an awkward place to reach,--and, as it happened, the only girl she knew
well was a religious zealot, who in the fervour of intimacy talked about
God, and the best ways of taking up one's cross, a topic only fitfully
interesting to one whose mind reached other stages at other times.

But lying in her chair, with one hand behind her head, the other
grasping the knob on the arm, she was clearly following her thoughts
intently. Her education left her abundant time for thinking. Her eyes
were fixed so steadily upon a ball on the rail of the ship that she
would have been startled and annoyed if anything had chanced to obscure
it for a second. She had begun her meditations with a shout of laughter,
caused by the following translation from _Tristan_:

In shrinking trepidation
His shame he seems to hide
While to the king his relation
He brings the corpse-like Bride.
Seems it so senseless what I say?

She cried that it did, and threw down the book. Next she had picked up
_Cowper's_ _Letters_, the classic prescribed by her father which had
bored her, so that one sentence chancing to say something about the
smell of broom in his garden, she had thereupon seen the little hall at
Richmond laden with flowers on the day of her mother's funeral, smelling
so strong that now any flower-scent brought back the sickly horrible
sensation; and so from one scene she passed, half-hearing, half-seeing,
to another. She saw her Aunt Lucy arranging flowers in the drawing-room.

"Aunt Lucy," she volunteered, "I don't like the smell of broom; it
reminds me of funerals."

"Nonsense, Rachel," Aunt Lucy replied; "don't say such foolish things,
dear. I always think it a particularly cheerful plant."

Lying in the hot sun her mind was fixed upon the characters of her
aunts, their views, and the way they lived. Indeed this was a subject
that lasted her hundreds of morning walks round Richmond Park, and
blotted out the trees and the people and the deer. Why did they do the
things they did, and what did they feel, and what was it all about?
Again she heard Aunt Lucy talking to Aunt Eleanor. She had been that
morning to take up the character of a servant, "And, of course, at
half-past ten in the morning one expects to find the housemaid brushing
the stairs." How odd! How unspeakably odd! But she could not explain to
herself why suddenly as her aunt spoke the whole system in which they
lived had appeared before her eyes as something quite unfamiliar and
inexplicable, and themselves as chairs or umbrellas dropped about
here and there without any reason. She could only say with her slight
stammer, "Are you f-f-fond of Aunt Eleanor, Aunt Lucy?" to which her
aunt replied, with her nervous hen-like twitter of a laugh, "My dear
child, what questions you do ask!"

"How fond? Very fond!" Rachel pursued.

"I can't say I've ever thought 'how,'" said Miss Vinrace. "If one cares
one doesn't think 'how,' Rachel," which was aimed at the niece who had
never yet "come" to her aunts as cordially as they wished.

"But you know I care for you, don't you, dear, because you're your
mother's daughter, if for no other reason, and there _are_ plenty of
other reasons"--and she leant over and kissed her with some emotion, and
the argument was spilt irretrievably about the place like a bucket of
milk.

By these means Rachel reached that stage in thinking, if thinking it can
be called, when the eyes are intent upon a ball or a knob and the lips
cease to move. Her efforts to come to an understanding had only hurt
her aunt's feelings, and the conclusion must be that it is better not
to try. To feel anything strongly was to create an abyss between oneself
and others who feel strongly perhaps but differently. It was far better
to play the piano and forget all the rest. The conclusion was very
welcome. Let these odd men and women--her aunts, the Hunts, Ridley,
Helen, Mr. Pepper, and the rest--be symbols,--featureless but dignified,
symbols of age, of youth, of motherhood, of learning, and beautiful
often as people upon the stage are beautiful. It appeared that nobody
ever said a thing they meant, or ever talked of a feeling they felt, but
that was what music was for. Reality dwelling in what one saw and felt,
but did not talk about, one could accept a system in which things went
round and round quite satisfactorily to other people, without often
troubling to think about it, except as something superficially strange.
Absorbed by her music she accepted her lot very complacently, blazing
into indignation perhaps once a fortnight, and subsiding as she subsided
now. Inextricably mixed in dreamy confusion, her mind seemed to enter
into communion, to be delightfully expanded and combined with the spirit
of the whitish boards on deck, with the spirit of the sea, with the
spirit of Beethoven Op. 112, even with the spirit of poor William Cowper
there at Olney. Like a ball of thistledown it kissed the sea, rose,
kissed it again, and thus rising and kissing passed finally out of
sight. The rising and falling of the ball of thistledown was represented
by the sudden droop forward of her own head, and when it passed out of
sight she was asleep.

Ten minutes later Mrs. Ambrose opened the door and looked at her. It did
not surprise her to find that this was the way in which Rachel passed
her mornings. She glanced round the room at the piano, at the books,
at the general mess. In the first place she considered Rachel
aesthetically; lying unprotected she looked somehow like a victim
dropped from the claws of a bird of prey, but considered as a woman,
a young woman of twenty-four, the sight gave rise to reflections. Mrs.
Ambrose stood thinking for at least two minutes. She then smiled, turned
noiselessly away and went, lest the sleeper should waken, and there
should be the awkwardness of speech between them.





Chapter III


Early next morning there was a sound as of chains being drawn roughly
overhead; the steady heart of the _Euphrosyne_ slowly ceased to beat;
and Helen, poking her nose above deck, saw a stationary castle upon a
stationary hill. They had dropped anchor in the mouth of the Tagus, and
instead of cleaving new waves perpetually, the same waves kept returning
and washing against the sides of the ship.

As soon as breakfast was done, Willoughby disappeared over the vessel's
side, carrying a brown leather case, shouting over his shoulder that
every one was to mind and behave themselves, for he would be kept in
Lisbon doing business until five o'clock that afternoon.

At about that hour he reappeared, carrying his case, professing himself
tired, bothered, hungry, thirsty, cold, and in immediate need of his
tea. Rubbing his hands, he told them the adventures of the day: how he
had come upon poor old Jackson combing his moustache before the glass
in the office, little expecting his descent, had put him through such
a morning's work as seldom came his way; then treated him to a lunch of
champagne and ortolans; paid a call upon Mrs. Jackson, who was fatter
than ever, poor woman, but asked kindly after Rachel--and O Lord, little
Jackson had confessed to a confounded piece of weakness--well, well, no
harm was done, he supposed, but what was the use of his giving orders if
they were promptly disobeyed? He had said distinctly that he would take
no passengers on this trip. Here he began searching in his pockets and
eventually discovered a card, which he planked down on the table before
Rachel. On it she read, "Mr. and Mrs. Richard Dalloway, 23 Browne
Street, Mayfair."

"Mr. Richard Dalloway," continued Vinrace, "seems to be a gentleman who
thinks that because he was once a member of Parliament, and his wife's
the daughter of a peer, they can have what they like for the asking.
They got round poor little Jackson anyhow. Said they must have
passages--produced a letter from Lord Glenaway, asking me as a personal
favour--overruled any objections Jackson made (I don't believe they came
to much), and so there's nothing for it but to submit, I suppose."

But it was evident that for some reason or other Willoughby was quite
pleased to submit, although he made a show of growling.

The truth was that Mr. and Mrs. Dalloway had found themselves stranded
in Lisbon. They had been travelling on the Continent for some weeks,
chiefly with a view to broadening Mr. Dalloway's mind. Unable for a
season, by one of the accidents of political life, to serve his country
in Parliament, Mr. Dalloway was doing the best he could to serve it
out of Parliament. For that purpose the Latin countries did very well,
although the East, of course, would have done better.

"Expect to hear of me next in Petersburg or Teheran," he had said,
turning to wave farewell from the steps of the Travellers'. But a
disease had broken out in the East, there was cholera in Russia, and
he was heard of, not so romantically, in Lisbon. They had been through
France; he had stopped at manufacturing centres where, producing letters
of introduction, he had been shown over works, and noted facts in a
pocket-book. In Spain he and Mrs. Dalloway had mounted mules, for they
wished to understand how the peasants live. Are they ripe for rebellion,
for example? Mrs. Dalloway had then insisted upon a day or two at Madrid
with the pictures. Finally they arrived in Lisbon and spent six days
which, in a journal privately issued afterwards, they described as of
"unique interest." Richard had audiences with ministers, and foretold
a crisis at no distant date, "the foundations of government being
incurably corrupt. Yet how blame, etc."; while Clarissa inspected the
royal stables, and took several snapshots showing men now exiled and
windows now broken. Among other things she photographed Fielding's
grave, and let loose a small bird which some ruffian had trapped,
"because one hates to think of anything in a cage where English people
lie buried," the diary stated. Their tour was thoroughly unconventional,
and followed no meditated plan. The foreign correspondents of the
_Times_ decided their route as much as anything else. Mr. Dalloway
wished to look at certain guns, and was of opinion that the African
coast is far more unsettled than people at home were inclined to
believe. For these reasons they wanted a slow inquisitive kind of ship,
comfortable, for they were bad sailors, but not extravagant, which would
stop for a day or two at this port and at that, taking in coal while
the Dalloways saw things for themselves. Meanwhile they found themselves
stranded in Lisbon, unable for the moment to lay hands upon the precise
vessel they wanted. They heard of the _Euphrosyne_, but heard also that
she was primarily a cargo boat, and only took passengers by special
arrangement, her business being to carry dry goods to the Amazons, and
rubber home again. "By special arrangement," however, were words of high
encouragement to them, for they came of a class where almost everything
was specially arranged, or could be if necessary. On this occasion all
that Richard did was to write a note to Lord Glenaway, the head of the
line which bears his title; to call on poor old Jackson; to represent to
him how Mrs. Dalloway was so-and-so, and he had been something or other
else, and what they wanted was such and such a thing. It was done. They
parted with compliments and pleasure on both sides, and here, a
week later, came the boat rowing up to the ship in the dusk with the
Dalloways on board of it; in three minutes they were standing together
on the deck of the _Euphrosyne_. Their arrival, of course, created some
stir, and it was seen by several pairs of eyes that Mrs. Dalloway was
a tall slight woman, her body wrapped in furs, her head in veils, while
Mr. Dalloway appeared to be a middle-sized man of sturdy build, dressed
like a sportsman on an autumnal moor. Many solid leather bags of a
rich brown hue soon surrounded them, in addition to which Mr. Dalloway
carried a despatch box, and his wife a dressing-case suggestive of a
diamond necklace and bottles with silver tops.

"It's so like Whistler!" she exclaimed, with a wave towards the shore,
as she shook Rachel by the hand, and Rachel had only time to look at the
grey hills on one side of her before Willoughby introduced Mrs. Chailey,
who took the lady to her cabin.

Momentary though it seemed, nevertheless the interruption was upsetting;
every one was more or less put out by it, from Mr. Grice, the steward,
to Ridley himself. A few minutes later Rachel passed the smoking-room,
and found Helen moving arm-chairs. She was absorbed in her arrangements,
and on seeing Rachel remarked confidentially:

"If one can give men a room to themselves where they will sit, it's all
to the good. Arm-chairs are _the_ important things--" She began wheeling
them about. "Now, does it still look like a bar at a railway station?"

She whipped a plush cover off a table. The appearance of the place was
marvellously improved.

Again, the arrival of the strangers made it obvious to Rachel, as the
hour of dinner approached, that she must change her dress; and the
ringing of the great bell found her sitting on the edge of her berth in
such a position that the little glass above the washstand reflected
her head and shoulders. In the glass she wore an expression of tense
melancholy, for she had come to the depressing conclusion, since the
arrival of the Dalloways, that her face was not the face she wanted, and
in all probability never would be.

However, punctuality had been impressed on her, and whatever face she
had, she must go in to dinner.

These few minutes had been used by Willoughby in sketching to the
Dalloways the people they were to meet, and checking them upon his
fingers.

"There's my brother-in-law, Ambrose, the scholar (I daresay you've heard
his name), his wife, my old friend Pepper, a very quiet fellow, but
knows everything, I'm told. And that's all. We're a very small party.
I'm dropping them on the coast."

Mrs. Dalloway, with her head a little on one side, did her best to
recollect Ambrose--was it a surname?--but failed. She was made slightly
uneasy by what she had heard. She knew that scholars married any
one--girls they met in farms on reading parties; or little suburban
women who said disagreeably, "Of course I know it's my husband you want;
not _me_."

But Helen came in at that point, and Mrs. Dalloway saw with relief
that though slightly eccentric in appearance, she was not untidy, held
herself well, and her voice had restraint in it, which she held to be
the sign of a lady. Mr. Pepper had not troubled to change his neat ugly
suit.

"But after all," Clarissa thought to herself as she followed Vinrace in
to dinner, "_every_ _one's_ interesting really."

When seated at the table she had some need of that assurance, chiefly
because of Ridley, who came in late, looked decidedly unkempt, and took
to his soup in profound gloom.

An imperceptible signal passed between husband and wife, meaning that
they grasped the situation and would stand by each other loyally. With
scarcely a pause Mrs. Dalloway turned to Willoughby and began:

"What I find so tiresome about the sea is that there are no flowers in
it. Imagine fields of hollyhocks and violets in mid-ocean! How divine!"

"But somewhat dangerous to navigation," boomed Richard, in the bass,
like the bassoon to the flourish of his wife's violin. "Why, weeds
can be bad enough, can't they, Vinrace? I remember crossing in the
_Mauretania_ once, and saying to the Captain--Richards--did you know
him?--'Now tell me what perils you really dread most for your ship,
Captain Richards?' expecting him to say icebergs, or derelicts, or fog,
or something of that sort. Not a bit of it. I've always remembered his
answer. '_Sedgius_ _aquatici_,' he said, which I take to be a kind of
duck-weed."

Mr. Pepper looked up sharply, and was about to put a question when
Willoughby continued:

"They've an awful time of it--those captains! Three thousand souls on
board!"

"Yes, indeed," said Clarissa. She turned to Helen with an air of
profundity. "I'm convinced people are wrong when they say it's work that
wears one; it's responsibility. That's why one pays one's cook more than
one's housemaid, I suppose."

"According to that, one ought to pay one's nurse double; but one
doesn't," said Helen.

"No; but think what a joy to have to do with babies, instead of
saucepans!" said Mrs. Dalloway, looking with more interest at Helen, a
probable mother.

"I'd much rather be a cook than a nurse," said Helen. "Nothing would
induce me to take charge of children."

"Mothers always exaggerate," said Ridley. "A well-bred child is no
responsibility. I've travelled all over Europe with mine. You just wrap
'em up warm and put 'em in the rack."

Helen laughed at that. Mrs. Dalloway exclaimed, looking at Ridley:

"How like a father! My husband's just the same. And then one talks of
the equality of the sexes!"

"Does one?" said Mr. Pepper.

"Oh, some do!" cried Clarissa. "My husband had to pass an irate lady
every afternoon last session who said nothing else, I imagine."

"She sat outside the house; it was very awkward," said Dalloway. "At
last I plucked up courage and said to her, 'My good creature, you're
only in the way where you are. You're hindering me, and you're doing no
good to yourself.'"

"And then she caught him by the coat, and would have scratched his eyes
out--" Mrs. Dalloway put in.

"Pooh--that's been exaggerated," said Richard. "No, I pity them, I
confess. The discomfort of sitting on those steps must be awful."

"Serve them right," said Willoughby curtly.

"Oh, I'm entirely with you there," said Dalloway. "Nobody can condemn
the utter folly and futility of such behaviour more than I do; and as
for the whole agitation, well! may I be in my grave before a woman has
the right to vote in England! That's all I say."

The solemnity of her husband's assertion made Clarissa grave.

"It's unthinkable," she said. "Don't tell me you're a suffragist?" she
turned to Ridley.

"I don't care a fig one way or t'other," said Ambrose. "If any creature
is so deluded as to think that a vote does him or her any good, let him
have it. He'll soon learn better."

"You're not a politician, I see," she smiled.

"Goodness, no," said Ridley.

"I'm afraid your husband won't approve of me," said Dalloway aside, to
Mrs. Ambrose. She suddenly recollected that he had been in Parliament.

"Don't you ever find it rather dull?" she asked, not knowing exactly
what to say.

Richard spread his hands before him, as if inscriptions were to be read
in the palms of them.

"If you ask me whether I ever find it rather dull," he said, "I am bound
to say yes; on the other hand, if you ask me what career do you consider
on the whole, taking the good with the bad, the most enjoyable and
enviable, not to speak of its more serious side, of all careers, for a
man, I am bound to say, 'The Politician's.'"

"The Bar or politics, I agree," said Willoughby. "You get more run for
your money."

"All one's faculties have their play," said Richard. "I may be treading
on dangerous ground; but what I feel about poets and artists in general
is this: on your own lines, you can't be beaten--granted; but off your
own lines--puff--one has to make allowances. Now, I shouldn't like to
think that any one had to make allowances for me."

"I don't quite agree, Richard," said Mrs. Dalloway. "Think of Shelley. I
feel that there's almost everything one wants in 'Adonais.'"

"Read 'Adonais' by all means," Richard conceded. "But whenever I hear
of Shelley I repeat to myself the words of Matthew Arnold, 'What a set!
What a set!'"

This roused Ridley's attention. "Matthew Arnold? A detestable prig!" he
snapped.

"A prig--granted," said Richard; "but, I think a man of the world.
That's where my point comes in. We politicians doubtless seem to you"
(he grasped somehow that Helen was the representative of the arts)
"a gross commonplace set of people; but we see both sides; we may be
clumsy, but we do our best to get a grasp of things. Now your artists
_find_ things in a mess, shrug their shoulders, turn aside to their
visions--which I grant may be very beautiful--and _leave_ things in a
mess. Now that seems to me evading one's responsibilities. Besides, we
aren't all born with the artistic faculty."

"It's dreadful," said Mrs. Dalloway, who, while her husband spoke, had
been thinking. "When I'm with artists I feel so intensely the delights
of shutting oneself up in a little world of one's own, with pictures and
music and everything beautiful, and then I go out into the streets and
the first child I meet with its poor, hungry, dirty little face makes me
turn round and say, 'No, I _can't_ shut myself up--I _won't_ live in a
world of my own. I should like to stop all the painting and writing and
music until this kind of thing exists no longer.' Don't you feel," she
wound up, addressing Helen, "that life's a perpetual conflict?" Helen
considered for a moment. "No," she said. "I don't think I do."

There was a pause, which was decidedly uncomfortable. Mrs. Dalloway then
gave a little shiver, and asked whether she might have her fur cloak
brought to her. As she adjusted the soft brown fur about her neck a
fresh topic struck her.

"I own," she said, "that I shall never forget the _Antigone_. I saw it
at Cambridge years ago, and it's haunted me ever since. Don't you think
it's quite the most modern thing you ever saw?" she asked Ridley. "It
seemed to me I'd known twenty Clytemnestras. Old Lady Ditchling for one.
I don't know a word of Greek, but I could listen to it for ever--"