The Voyage Out

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"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 is 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?" asked 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 to-night? 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 would 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_? 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 speak as one who plumbs
Life's dim profound,
One who at length can sound
Clear views and certain.

But--after love what comes?
A scene that lours,
A few sad vacant hours,
And then, the Curtain.

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 women 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 scarce consider news read there as news, any more than a
programme bought from a man in the street 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 arm-chairs 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 streets 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, 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.

"Coming?" he asked the two young men. "We ought to start before it's
really hot."

"I beg of you not to walk in the heat, Hugh," his wife pleaded, giving
him an angular parcel enclosing half a chicken and some raisins.

"Hewet will be our barometer," said Mr. Elliot. "He will melt before I
shall." Indeed, if so much as a drop had melted off his spare ribs, the
bones would have lain bare. The ladies were left alone now, surrounding
_The_ _Times_ which lay upon the floor. Miss Allan looked at her
father's watch.

"Ten minutes to eleven," she observed.

"Work?" asked Mrs. Thornbury.

"Work," replied Miss Allan.

"What a fine creature she is!" murmured Mrs. Thornbury, as the square
figure in its manly coat withdrew.

"And I'm sure she has a hard life," sighed Mrs. Elliot.

"Oh, it _is_ a hard life," said Mrs. Thornbury. "Unmarried
women--earning their livings--it's the hardest life of all."

"Yet she seems pretty cheerful," said Mrs. Elliot.

"It must be very interesting," said Mrs. Thornbury. "I envy her her
knowledge."

"But that isn't what women want," said Mrs. Elliot.

"I'm afraid it's all a great many can hope to have," sighed Mrs.
Thornbury. "I believe that there are more of us than ever now. Sir
Harley Lethbridge was telling me only the other day how difficult it is
to find boys for the navy--partly because of their teeth, it is true.
And I have heard young women talk quite openly of--"

"Dreadful, dreadful!" exclaimed Mrs. Elliot. "The crown, as one may call
it, of a woman's life. I, who know what it is to be childless--" she
sighed and ceased.

"But we must not be hard," said Mrs. Thornbury. "The conditions are so
much changed since I was a young woman."

"Surely _maternity_ does not change," said Mrs. Elliot.

"In some ways we can learn a great deal from the young," said Mrs.
Thornbury. "I learn so much from my own daughters."

"I believe that Hughling really doesn't mind," said Mrs. Elliot. "But
then he has his work."

"Women without children can do so much for the children of others,"
observed Mrs. Thornbury gently.

"I sketch a great deal," said Mrs. Elliot, "but that isn't really an
occupation. It's so disconcerting to find girls just beginning doing
better than one does oneself! And nature's difficult--very difficult!"

"Are there not institutions--clubs--that you could help?" asked Mrs.
Thornbury.

"They are so exhausting," said Mrs. Elliot. "I look strong, because of
my colour; but I'm not; the youngest of eleven never is."

"If the mother is careful before," said Mrs. Thornbury judicially,
"there is no reason why the size of the family should make any
difference. And there is no training like the training that brothers and
sisters give each other. I am sure of that. I have seen it with my own
children. My eldest boy Ralph, for instance--"

But Mrs. Elliot was inattentive to the elder lady's experience, and her
eyes wandered about the hall.

"My mother had two miscarriages, I know," she said suddenly. "The first
because she met one of those great dancing bears--they shouldn't be
allowed; the other--it was a horrid story--our cook had a child and
there was a dinner party. So I put my dyspepsia down to that."

"And a miscarriage is so much worse than a confinement," Mrs. Thornbury
murmured absentmindedly, adjusting her spectacles and picking up _The_
_Times_. Mrs. Elliot rose and fluttered away.

When she had heard what one of the million voices speaking in the paper
had to say, and noticed that a cousin of hers had married a clergyman at
Minehead--ignoring the drunken women, the golden animals of Crete,
the movements of battalions, the dinners, the reforms, the fires, the
indignant, the learned and benevolent, Mrs. Thornbury went upstairs to
write a letter for the mail.

The paper lay directly beneath the clock, the two together seeming to
represent stability in a changing world. Mr. Perrott passed through;
Mr. Venning poised for a second on the edge of a table. Mrs. Paley was
wheeled past. Susan followed. Mr. Venning strolled after her. Portuguese
military families, their clothes suggesting late rising in untidy
bedrooms, trailed across, attended by confidential nurses carrying noisy
children. As midday drew on, and the sun beat straight upon the roof,
an eddy of great flies droned in a circle; iced drinks were served under
the palms; the long blinds were pulled down with a shriek, turning all
the light yellow. The clock now had a silent hall to tick in, and an
audience of four or five somnolent merchants. By degrees white figures
with shady hats came in at the door, admitting a wedge of the hot summer
day, and shutting it out again. After resting in the dimness for a
minute, they went upstairs. Simultaneously, the clock wheezed one, and
the gong sounded, beginning softly, working itself into a frenzy, and
ceasing. There was a pause. Then all those who had gone upstairs came
down; cripples came, planting both feet on the same step lest they
should slip; prim little girls came, holding the nurse's finger; fat old
men came still buttoning waistcoats. The gong had been sounded in the
garden, and by degrees recumbent figures rose and strolled in to eat,
since the time had come for them to feed again. There were pools and
bars of shade in the garden even at midday, where two or three visitors
could lie working or talking at their ease.

Owing to the heat of the day, luncheon was generally a silent meal, when
people observed their neighbors and took stock of any new faces there
might be, hazarding guesses as to who they were and what they did. Mrs.
Paley, although well over seventy and crippled in the legs, enjoyed her
food and the peculiarities of her fellow-beings. She was seated at a
small table with Susan.

"I shouldn't like to say what _she_ is!" she chuckled, surveying a tall
woman dressed conspicuously in white, with paint in the hollows of her
cheeks, who was always late, and always attended by a shabby female
follower, at which remark Susan blushed, and wondered why her aunt said
such things.

Lunch went on methodically, until each of the seven courses was left in
fragments and the fruit was merely a toy, to be peeled and sliced as
a child destroys a daisy, petal by petal. The food served as an
extinguisher upon any faint flame of the human spirit that might survive
the midday heat, but Susan sat in her room afterwards, turning over and
over the delightful fact that Mr. Venning had come to her in the garden,
and had sat there quite half an hour while she read aloud to her aunt.
Men and women sought different corners where they could lie unobserved,
and from two to four it might be said without exaggeration that the
hotel was inhabited by bodies without souls. Disastrous would have been
the result if a fire or a death had suddenly demanded something heroic
of human nature, but tragedies come in the hungry hours. Towards four
o'clock the human spirit again began to lick the body, as a flame licks
a black promontory of coal. Mrs. Paley felt it unseemly to open her
toothless jaw so widely, though there was no one near, and Mrs. Elliot
surveyed her found flushed face anxiously in the looking-glass.

Half an hour later, having removed the traces of sleep, they met each
other in the hall, and Mrs. Paley observed that she was going to have
her tea.

"You like your tea too, don't you?" she said, and invited Mrs. Elliot,
whose husband was still out, to join her at a special table which she
had placed for her under a tree.

"A little silver goes a long way in this country," she chuckled.

She sent Susan back to fetch another cup.

"They have such excellent biscuits here," she said, contemplating a
plateful. "Not sweet biscuits, which I don't like--dry biscuits . . .
Have you been sketching?"

"Oh, I've done two or three little daubs," said Mrs. Elliot, speaking
rather louder than usual. "But it's so difficult after Oxfordshire,
where there are so many trees. The light's so strong here. Some people
admire it, I know, but I find it very fatiguing."

"I really don't need cooking, Susan," said Mrs. Paley, when her niece
returned. "I must trouble you to move me." Everything had to be moved.
Finally the old lady was placed so that the light wavered over her,
as though she were a fish in a net. Susan poured out tea, and was just
remarking that they were having hot weather in Wiltshire too, when Mr.
Venning asked whether he might join them.

"It's so nice to find a young man who doesn't despise tea," said Mrs.
Paley, regaining her good humour. "One of my nephews the other day asked
for a glass of sherry--at five o'clock! I told him he could get it at
the public house round the corner, but not in my drawing room."

"I'd rather go without lunch than tea," said Mr. Venning. "That's not
strictly true. I want both."

Mr. Venning was a dark young man, about thirty-two years of age, very
slapdash and confident in his manner, although at this moment obviously
a little excited. His friend Mr. Perrott was a barrister, and as Mr.
Perrott refused to go anywhere without Mr. Venning it was necessary,
when Mr. Perrott came to Santa Marina about a Company, for Mr. Venning
to come too. He was a barrister also, but he loathed a profession which
kept him indoors over books, and directly his widowed mother died he was
going, so he confided to Susan, to take up flying seriously, and become
partner in a large business for making aeroplanes. The talk rambled on.
It dealt, of course, with the beauties and singularities of the place,
the streets, the people, and the quantities of unowned yellow dogs.

"Don't you think it dreadfully cruel the way they treat dogs in this
country?" asked Mrs. Paley.

"I'd have 'em all shot," said Mr. Venning.

"Oh, but the darling puppies," said Susan.

"Jolly little chaps," said Mr. Venning. "Look here, you've got nothing
to eat." A great wedge of cake was handed Susan on the point of a
trembling knife. Her hand trembled too as she took it.

"I have such a dear dog at home," said Mrs. Elliot.

"My parrot can't stand dogs," said Mrs. Paley, with the air of one
making a confidence. "I always suspect that he (or she) was teased by a
dog when I was abroad."

"You didn't get far this morning, Miss Warrington," said Mr. Venning.

"It was hot," she answered. Their conversation became private, owing
to Mrs. Paley's deafness and the long sad history which Mrs. Elliot had
embarked upon of a wire-haired terrier, white with just one black spot,
belonging to an uncle of hers, which had committed suicide. "Animals do
commit suicide," she sighed, as if she asserted a painful fact.

"Couldn't we explore the town this evening?" Mr. Venning suggested.

"My aunt--" Susan began.

"You deserve a holiday," he said. "You're always doing things for other
people."

"But that's my life," she said, under cover of refilling the teapot.

"That's no one's life," he returned, "no young person's. You'll come?"

"I should like to come," she murmured.

At this moment Mrs. Elliot looked up and exclaimed, "Oh, Hugh! He's
bringing some one," she added.

"He would like some tea," said Mrs. Paley. "Susan, run and get some
cups--there are the two young men."

"We're thirsting for tea," said Mr. Elliot. "You know Mr. Ambrose,
Hilda? We met on the hill."

"He dragged me in," said Ridley, "or I should have been ashamed. I'm
dusty and dirty and disagreeable." He pointed to his boots which were
white with dust, while a dejected flower drooping in his buttonhole,
like an exhausted animal over a gate, added to the effect of length and
untidiness. He was introduced to the others. Mr. Hewet and Mr. Hirst
brought chairs, and tea began again, Susan pouring cascades of water
from pot to pot, always cheerfully, and with the competence of long use.

"My wife's brother," Ridley explained to Hilda, whom he failed to
remember, "has a house here, which he has lent us. I was sitting on a
rock thinking of nothing at all when Elliot started up like a fairy in a
pantomime."

"Our chicken got into the salt," Hewet said dolefully to Susan. "Nor is
it true that bananas include moisture as well as sustenance."