Chapter XXII
The darkness fell, but rose again, and as each day spread widely overthe earth and parted them from the strange day in the forest when theyhad been forced to tell each other what they wanted, this wish of theirswas revealed to other people, and in the process became slightly strangeto themselves. Apparently it was not anything unusual that had happened;it was that they had become engaged to marry each other. The world,which consisted for the most part of the hotel and the villa, expresseditself glad on the whole that two people should marry, and allowed themto see that they were not expected to take part in the work which has tobe done in order that the world shall go on, but might absent themselvesfor a time. They were accordingly left alone until they felt the silenceas if, playing in a vast church, the door had been shut on them. Theywere driven to walk alone, and sit alone, to visit secret places wherethe flowers had never been picked and the trees were solitary. Insolitude they could express those beautiful but too vast desires whichwere so oddly uncomfortable to the ears of other men and women--desiresfor a world, such as their own world which contained two people seemedto them to be, where people knew each other intimately and thus judgedeach other by what was good, and never quarrelled, because that waswaste of time.
They would talk of such questions among books, or out in the sun,or sitting in the shade of a tree undisturbed. They were no longerembarrassed, or half-choked with meaning which could not express itself;they were not afraid of each other, or, like travellers down a twistingriver, dazzled with sudden beauties when the corner is turned; theunexpected happened, but even the ordinary was lovable, and in manyways preferable to the ecstatic and mysterious, for it was refreshinglysolid, and called out effort, and effort under such circumstances wasnot effort but delight.
While Rachel played the piano, Terence sat near her, engaged, as faras the occasional writing of a word in pencil testified, in shapingthe world as it appeared to him now that he and Rachel were going to bemarried. It was different certainly. The book called _Silence_ would notnow be the same book that it would have been. He would then put down hispencil and stare in front of him, and wonder in what respects the worldwas different--it had, perhaps, more solidity, more coherence, moreimportance, greater depth. Why, even the earth sometimes seemed to himvery deep; not carved into hills and cities and fields, but heaped ingreat masses. He would look out of the window for ten minutes at a time;but no, he did not care for the earth swept of human beings. He likedhuman beings--he liked them, he suspected, better than Rachel did. Thereshe was, swaying enthusiastically over her music, quite forgetful ofhim,--but he liked that quality in her. He liked the impersonality whichit produced in her. At last, having written down a series of littlesentences, with notes of interrogation attached to them, he observedaloud, "'Women--'under the heading Women I've written:
"'Not really vainer than men. Lack of self-confidence at the base ofmost serious faults. Dislike of own sex traditional, or founded on fact?Every woman not so much a rake at heart, as an optimist, because theydon't think.' What do you say, Rachel?" He paused with his pencil in hishand and a sheet of paper on his knee.
Rachel said nothing. Up and up the steep spiral of a very late Beethovensonata she climbed, like a person ascending a ruined staircase,energetically at first, then more laboriously advancing her feet witheffort until she could go no higher and returned with a run to begin atthe very bottom again.
"'Again, it's the fashion now to say that women are more practical andless idealistic than men, also that they have considerable organisingability but no sense of honour'--query, what is meant by masculine term,honour?--what corresponds to it in your sex? Eh?"
Attacking her staircase once more, Rachel again neglected thisopportunity of revealing the secrets of her sex. She had, indeed,advanced so far in the pursuit of wisdom that she allowed these secretsto rest undisturbed; it seemed to be reserved for a later generation todiscuss them philosophically.
Crashing down a final chord with her left hand, she exclaimed at last,swinging round upon him:
"No, Terence, it's no good; here am I, the best musician in SouthAmerica, not to speak of Europe and Asia, and I can't play a notebecause of you in the room interrupting me every other second."
"You don't seem to realise that that's what I've been aiming at forthe last half-hour," he remarked. "I've no objection to nice simpletunes--indeed, I find them very helpful to my literary composition, butthat kind of thing is merely like an unfortunate old dog going round onits hind legs in the rain."
He began turning over the little sheets of note-paper which werescattered on the table, conveying the congratulations of their friends.
"'--all possible wishes for all possible happiness,'" he read; "correct,but not very vivid, are they?"
"They're sheer nonsense!" Rachel exclaimed. "Think of words comparedwith sounds!" she continued. "Think of novels and plays and histories--"Perched on the edge of the table, she stirred the red and yellow volumescontemptuously. She seemed to herself to be in a position where shecould despise all human learning. Terence looked at them too.
"God, Rachel, you do read trash!" he exclaimed. "And you're behindthe times too, my dear. No one dreams of reading this kind of thingnow--antiquated problem plays, harrowing descriptions of life in theeast end--oh, no, we've exploded all that. Read poetry, Rachel, poetry,poetry, poetry!"
Picking up one of the books, he began to read aloud, his intention beingto satirise the short sharp bark of the writer's English; but she paidno attention, and after an interval of meditation exclaimed:
"Does it ever seem to you, Terence, that the world is composed entirelyof vast blocks of matter, and that we're nothing but patches of light--"she looked at the soft spots of sun wavering over the carpet and up thewall--"like that?"
"No," said Terence, "I feel solid; immensely solid; the legs of my chairmight be rooted in the bowels of the earth. But at Cambridge, I canremember, there were times when one fell into ridiculous statesof semi-coma about five o'clock in the morning. Hirst does now, Iexpect--oh, no, Hirst wouldn't."
Rachel continued, "The day your note came, asking us to go on thepicnic, I was sitting where you're sitting now, thinking that; I wonderif I could think that again? I wonder if the world's changed? and if so,when it'll stop changing, and which is the real world?"
"When I first saw you," he began, "I thought you were like a creaturewho'd lived all its life among pearls and old bones. Your hands werewet, d'you remember, and you never said a word until I gave you a bit ofbread, and then you said, 'Human Beings!'"
"And I thought you--a prig," she recollected. "No; that's not quite it.There were the ants who stole the tongue, and I thought you and St. Johnwere like those ants--very big, very ugly, very energetic, with all yourvirtues on your backs. However, when I talked to you I liked you--"
"You fell in love with me," he corrected her. "You were in love with meall the time, only you didn't know it."
"No, I never fell in love with you," she asserted.
"Rachel--what a lie--didn't you sit here looking at my window--didn'tyou wander about the hotel like an owl in the sun--?"
"No," she repeated, "I never fell in love, if falling in love is whatpeople say it is, and it's the world that tells the lies and I tell thetruth. Oh, what lies--what lies!"
She crumpled together a handful of letters from Evelyn M., from Mr.Pepper, from Mrs. Thornbury and Miss Allan, and Susan Warrington. Itwas strange, considering how very different these people were, that theyused almost the same sentences when they wrote to congratulate her uponher engagement.
That any one of these people had ever felt what she felt, or could everfeel it, or had even the right to pretend for a single second that theywere capable of feeling it, appalled her much as the church servicehad done, much as the face of the hospital nurse had done; and if theydidn't feel a thing why did they go and pretend to? The simplicity andarrogance and hardness of her youth, now concentrated into a singlespark as it was by her love of him, puzzl
ed Terence; being engaged hadnot that effect on him; the world was different, but not in that way;he still wanted the things he had always wanted, and in particular hewanted the companionship of other people more than ever perhaps. He tookthe letters out of her hand, and protested:
"Of course they're absurd, Rachel; of course they say things justbecause other people say them, but even so, what a nice woman Miss Allanis; you can't deny that; and Mrs. Thornbury too; she's got too manychildren I grant you, but if half-a-dozen of them had gone to the badinstead of rising infallibly to the tops of their trees--hasn't she akind of beauty--of elemental simplicity as Flushing would say? Isn'tshe rather like a large old tree murmuring in the moonlight, or a rivergoing on and on and on? By the way, Ralph's been made governor of theCarroway Islands--the youngest governor in the service; very good, isn'tit?"
But Rachel was at present unable to conceive that the vast majority ofthe affairs of the world went on unconnected by a single thread with herown destiny.
"I won't have eleven children," she asserted; "I won't have the eyes ofan old woman. She looks at one up and down, up and down, as if one werea horse."
"We must have a son and we must have a daughter," said Terence, puttingdown the letters, "because, let alone the inestimable advantage of beingour children, they'd be so well brought up." They went on to sketch anoutline of the ideal education--how their daughter should be requiredfrom infancy to gaze at a large square of cardboard painted blue, tosuggest thoughts of infinity, for women were grown too practical;and their son--he should be taught to laugh at great men, that is, atdistinguished successful men, at men who wore ribands and rose to thetops of their trees. He should in no way resemble (Rachel added) St.John Hirst.
At this Terence professed the greatest admiration for St. John Hirst.Dwelling upon his good qualities he became seriously convinced of them;he had a mind like a torpedo, he declared, aimed at falsehood. Whereshould we all be without him and his like? Choked in weeds; Christians,bigots,--why, Rachel herself, would be a slave with a fan to sing songsto men when they felt drowsy.
"But you'll never see it!" he exclaimed; "because with all your virtuesyou don't, and you never will, care with every fibre of your beingfor the pursuit of truth! You've no respect for facts, Rachel; you'reessentially feminine." She did not trouble to deny it, nor did she thinkgood to produce the one unanswerable argument against the merits whichTerence admired. St. John Hirst said that she was in love with him; shewould never forgive that; but the argument was not one to appeal to aman.
"But I like him," she said, and she thought to herself that she alsopitied him, as one pities those unfortunate people who are outside thewarm mysterious globe full of changes and miracles in which we ourselvesmove about; she thought that it must be very dull to be St. John Hirst.
She summed up what she felt about him by saying that she would not kisshim supposing he wished it, which was not likely.
As if some apology were due to Hirst for the kiss which she thenbestowed upon him, Terence protested:
"And compared with Hirst I'm a perfect Zany."
The clock here struck twelve instead of eleven.
"We're wasting the morning--I ought to be writing my book, and you oughtto be answering these."
"We've only got twenty-one whole mornings left," said Rachel. "And myfather'll be here in a day or two."
However, she drew a pen and paper towards her and began to writelaboriously,
"My dear Evelyn--"
Terence, meanwhile, read a novel which some one else had written, aprocess which he found essential to the composition of his own. For aconsiderable time nothing was to be heard but the ticking of the clockand the fitful scratch of Rachel's pen, as she produced phrases whichbore a considerable likeness to those which she had condemned. She wasstruck by it herself, for she stopped writing and looked up; lookedat Terence deep in the arm-chair, looked at the different pieces offurniture, at her bed in the corner, at the window-pane which showed thebranches of a tree filled in with sky, heard the clock ticking, and wasamazed at the gulf which lay between all that and her sheet of paper.Would there ever be a time when the world was one and indivisible? Evenwith Terence himself--how far apart they could be, how little she knewwhat was passing in his brain now! She then finished her sentence, whichwas awkward and ugly, and stated that they were "both very happy, andgoing to be married in the autumn probably and hope to live in London,where we hope you will come and see us when we get back." Choosing"affectionately," after some further speculation, rather than sincerely,she signed the letter and was doggedly beginning on another when Terenceremarked, quoting from his book:
"Listen to this, Rachel. 'It is probable that Hugh' (he's the hero, aliterary man), 'had not realised at the time of his marriage, any morethan the young man of parts and imagination usually does realise, thenature of the gulf which separates the needs and desires of the malefrom the needs and desires of the female. . . . At first they had beenvery happy. The walking tour in Switzerland had been a time of jollycompanionship and stimulating revelations for both of them. Betty hadproved herself the ideal comrade. . . . They had shouted _Love_ _in__the_ _Valley_ to each other across the snowy slopes of the Riffelhorn'(and so on, and so on--I'll skip the descriptions). . . . 'But inLondon, after the boy's birth, all was changed. Betty was an admirablemother; but it did not take her long to find out that motherhood, asthat function is understood by the mother of the upper middle classes,did not absorb the whole of her energies. She was young and strong, withhealthy limbs and a body and brain that called urgently for exercise.. . .' (In short she began to give tea-parties.) . . . 'Coming in latefrom this singular talk with old Bob Murphy in his smoky, book-linedroom, where the two men had each unloosened his soul to the other, withthe sound of the traffic humming in his ears, and the foggy London skyslung tragically across his mind . . . he found women's hats dottedabout among his papers. Women's wraps and absurd little feminine shoesand umbrellas were in the hall. . . . Then the bills began to come in.. . . He tried to speak frankly to her. He found her lying on the greatpolar-bear skin in their bedroom, half-undressed, for they were diningwith the Greens in Wilton Crescent, the ruddy firelight making thediamonds wink and twinkle on her bare arms and in the delicious curve ofher breast--a vision of adorable femininity. He forgave her all.' (Well,this goes from bad to worse, and finally about fifty pages later, Hughtakes a week-end ticket to Swanage and 'has it out with himself on thedowns above Corfe.' . . . Here there's fifteen pages or so which we'llskip. The conclusion is . . .) 'They were different. Perhaps, in the farfuture, when generations of men had struggled and failed as he must nowstruggle and fail, woman would be, indeed, what she now made a pretenceof being--the friend and companion--not the enemy and parasite of man.'
"The end of it is, you see, Hugh went back to his wife, poor fellow. Itwas his duty, as a married man. Lord, Rachel," he concluded, "will it belike that when we're married?"
Instead of answering him she asked,
"Why don't people write about the things they do feel?"
"Ah, that's the difficulty!" he sighed, tossing the book away.
"Well, then, what will it be like when we're married? What are thethings people do feel?"
She seemed doubtful.
"Sit on the floor and let me look at you," he commanded. Resting herchin on his knee, she looked straight at him.
He examined her curiously.
"You're not beautiful," he began, "but I like your face. I like theway your hair grows down in a point, and your eyes too--they never seeanything. Your mouth's too big, and your cheeks would be better if theyhad more colour in them. But what I like about your face is that itmakes one wonder what the devil you're thinking about--it makes me wantto do that--" He clenched his fist and shook it so near her that shestarted back, "because now you look as if you'd blow my brains out.There are moments," he continued, "when, if we stood on a rock together,you'd throw me into the sea."
Hypnotised by the force of his eyes in hers, she
repeated, "If we stoodon a rock together--"
To be flung into the sea, to be washed hither and thither, and drivenabout the roots of the world--the idea was incoherently delightful. Shesprang up, and began moving about the room, bending and thrusting asidethe chairs and tables as if she were indeed striking through the waters.He watched her with pleasure; she seemed to be cleaving a passage forherself, and dealing triumphantly with the obstacles which would hindertheir passage through life.
"It does seem possible!" he exclaimed, "though I've always thought itthe most unlikely thing in the world--I shall be in love with you all mylife, and our marriage will be the most exciting thing that's ever beendone! We'll never have a moment's peace--" He caught her in his arms asshe passed him, and they fought for mastery, imagining a rock, and thesea heaving beneath them. At last she was thrown to the floor, where shelay gasping, and crying for mercy.
"I'm a mermaid! I can swim," she cried, "so the game's up." Her dresswas torn across, and peace being established, she fetched a needle andthread and began to mend the tear.
"And now," she said, "be quiet and tell me about the world; tell meabout everything that's ever happened, and I'll tell you--let me see,what can I tell you?--I'll tell you about Miss Montgomerie and the riverparty. She was left, you see, with one foot in the boat, and the otheron shore."
They had spent much time already in thus filling out for the other thecourse of their past lives, and the characters of their friends andrelations, so that very soon Terence knew not only what Rachel'saunts might be expected to say upon every occasion, but also how theirbedrooms were furnished, and what kind of bonnets they wore. He couldsustain a conversation between Mrs. Hunt and Rachel, and carry on atea-party including the Rev. William Johnson and Miss Macquoid, theChristian Scientists, with remarkable likeness to the truth. But he hadknown many more people, and was far more highly skilled in the art ofnarrative than Rachel was, whose experiences were, for the most part,of a curiously childlike and humorous kind, so that it generally fell toher lot to listen and ask questions.
He told her not only what had happened, but what he had thought andfelt, and sketched for her portraits which fascinated her of what othermen and women might be supposed to be thinking and feeling, so that shebecame very anxious to go back to England, which was full of people,where she could merely stand in the streets and look at them. Accordingto him, too, there was an order, a pattern which made life reasonable,or if that word was foolish, made it of deep interest anyhow, forsometimes it seemed possible to understand why things happened as theydid. Nor were people so solitary and uncommunicative as she believed.She should look for vanity--for vanity was a common quality--first inherself, and then in Helen, in Ridley, in St. John, they all had theirshare of it--and she would find it in ten people out of every twelve shemet; and once linked together by one such tie she would find them notseparate and formidable, but practically indistinguishable, and shewould come to love them when she found that they were like herself.
If she denied this, she must defend her belief that human beings were asvarious as the beasts at the Zoo, which had stripes and manes, andhorns and humps; and so, wrestling over the entire list of theiracquaintances, and diverging into anecdote and theory and speculation,they came to know each other. The hours passed quickly, and seemed tothem full to leaking-point. After a night's solitude they were alwaysready to begin again.
The virtues which Mrs. Ambrose had once believed to exist in free talkbetween men and women did in truth exist for both of them, although notquite in the measure she prescribed. Far more than upon the nature ofsex they dwelt upon the nature of poetry, but it was true that talkwhich had no boundaries deepened and enlarged the strangely small brightview of a girl. In return for what he could tell her she brought himsuch curiosity and sensitiveness of perception, that he was led to doubtwhether any gift bestowed by much reading and living was quite the equalof that for pleasure and pain. What would experience give her after all,except a kind of ridiculous formal balance, like that of a drilled dogin the street? He looked at her face and wondered how it would lookin twenty years' time, when the eyes had dulled, and the forehead worethose little persistent wrinkles which seem to show that the middle-agedare facing something hard which the young do not see? What would thehard thing be for them, he wondered? Then his thoughts turned to theirlife in England.
The thought of England was delightful, for together they would see theold things freshly; it would be England in June, and there would be Junenights in the country; and the nightingales singing in the lanes,into which they could steal when the room grew hot; and there would beEnglish meadows gleaming with water and set with stolid cows, and cloudsdipping low and trailing across the green hills. As he sat in the roomwith her, he wished very often to be back again in the thick of life,doing things with Rachel.
He crossed to the window and exclaimed, "Lord, how good it is to thinkof lanes, muddy lanes, with brambles and nettles, you know, and realgrass fields, and farmyards with pigs and cows, and men walking besidecarts with pitchforks--there's nothing to compare with that here--lookat the stony red earth, and the bright blue sea, and the glaring whitehouses--how tired one gets of it! And the air, without a stain or awrinkle. I'd give anything for a sea mist."
Rachel, too, had been thinking of the English country: the flat landrolling away to the sea, and the woods and the long straight roads,where one can walk for miles without seeing any one, and the greatchurch towers and the curious houses clustered in the valleys, and thebirds, and the dusk, and the rain falling against the windows.
"But London, London's the place," Terence continued. They lookedtogether at the carpet, as though London itself were to be seen therelying on the floor, with all its spires and pinnacles pricking throughthe smoke.
"On the whole, what I should like best at this moment," Terencepondered, "would be to find myself walking down Kingsway, by those bigplacards, you know, and turning into the Strand. Perhaps I might go andlook over Waterloo Bridge for a moment. Then I'd go along the Strandpast the shops with all the new books in them, and through the littlearchway into the Temple. I always like the quiet after the uproar. Youhear your own footsteps suddenly quite loud. The Temple's very pleasant.I think I should go and see if I could find dear old Hodgkin--the manwho writes books about Van Eyck, you know. When I left England he wasvery sad about his tame magpie. He suspected that a man had poisoned it.And then Russell lives on the next staircase. I think you'd like him.He's a passion for Handel. Well, Rachel," he concluded, dismissing thevision of London, "we shall be doing that together in six weeks' time,and it'll be the middle of June then--and June in London--my God! howpleasant it all is!"
"And we're certain to have it too," she said. "It isn't as if we wereexpecting a great deal--only to walk about and look at things."
"Only a thousand a year and perfect freedom," he replied. "How manypeople in London d'you think have that?"
"And now you've spoilt it," she complained. "Now we've got to think ofthe horrors." She looked grudgingly at the novel which had once causedher perhaps an hour's discomfort, so that she had never opened itagain, but kept it on her table, and looked at it occasionally, as somemedieval monk kept a skull, or a crucifix to remind him of the frailtyof the body.
"Is it true, Terence," she demanded, "that women die with bugs crawlingacross their faces?"
"I think it's very probable," he said. "But you must admit, Rachel, thatwe so seldom think of anything but ourselves that an occasional twingeis really rather pleasant."
Accusing him of an affection of cynicism which was just as bad assentimentality itself, she left her position by his side and knelt uponthe window sill, twisting the curtain tassels between her fingers. Avague sense of dissatisfaction filled her.
"What's so detestable in this country," she exclaimed, "is theblue--always blue sky and blue sea. It's like a curtain--all the thingsone wants are on the other side of that. I want to know what's going onbehind it. I hate these divisions, don't you, Te
rence? One person allin the dark about another person. Now I liked the Dalloways," shecontinued, "and they're gone. I shall never see them again. Just bygoing on a ship we cut ourselves off entirely from the rest ofthe world. I want to see England there--London there--all sorts ofpeople--why shouldn't one? why should one be shut up all by oneself in aroom?"
While she spoke thus half to herself and with increasing vagueness,because her eye was caught by a ship that had just come into the bay,she did not see that Terence had ceased to stare contentedly in front ofhim, and was looking at her keenly and with dissatisfaction. She seemedto be able to cut herself adrift from him, and to pass away to unknownplaces where she had no need of him. The thought roused his jealousy.
"I sometimes think you're not in love with me and never will be," hesaid energetically. She started and turned round at his words.
"I don't satisfy you in the way you satisfy me," he continued. "There'ssomething I can't get hold of in you. You don't want me as I wantyou--you're always wanting something else."
He began pacing up and down the room.
"Perhaps I ask too much," he went on. "Perhaps it isn't really possibleto have what I want. Men and women are too different. You can'tunderstand--you don't understand--"
He came up to where she stood looking at him in silence.
It seemed to her now that what he was saying was perfectly true, andthat she wanted many more things than the love of one human being--thesea, the sky. She turned again the looked at the distant blue, which wasso smooth and serene where the sky met the sea; she could not possiblywant only one human being.
"Or is it only this damnable engagement?" he continued. "Let's bemarried here, before we go back--or is it too great a risk? Are we surewe want to marry each other?"
They began pacing up and down the room, but although they came very neareach other in their pacing, they took care not to touch each other. Thehopelessness of their position overcame them both. They were impotent;they could never love each other sufficiently to overcome all thesebarriers, and they could never be satisfied with less. Realising thiswith intolerable keenness she stopped in front of him and exclaimed:
"Let's break it off, then."
The words did more to unite them than any amount of argument. As if theystood on the edge of a precipice they clung together. They knew thatthey could not separate; painful and terrible it might be, but theywere joined for ever. They lapsed into silence, and after a time crepttogether in silence. Merely to be so close soothed them, and sittingside by side the divisions disappeared, and it seemed as if the worldwere once more solid and entire, and as if, in some strange way, theyhad grown larger and stronger.
It was long before they moved, and when they moved it was with greatreluctance. They stood together in front of the looking-glass, andwith a brush tried to make themselves look as if they had been feelingnothing all the morning, neither pain nor happiness. But it chilledthem to see themselves in the glass, for instead of being vast andindivisible they were really very small and separate, the size of theglass leaving a large space for the reflection of other things.