“Then why, for goodness’ sake, did they do nothing but criticize her when she was alive?” said Helen. Very gentle their voices sounded, as if they fell through the waves of the sea.
“If I were to die tomorrow …” she began.
The broken sentences had an extraordinary beauty and detachment in Hewet’s ears, and a kind of mystery too, as though they were spoken by people in their sleep.
“No, Rachel,” Helen’s voice continued, “I’m not going to walk in the garden; it’s damp—it’s sure to be damp; besides, I see at least a dozen toads.”
“Toads? Those are stones, Helen. Come out. It’s nicer out. The flowers smell,” Rachel replied.
Hewet drew still farther back. His heart was beating very quickly. Apparently Rachel tried to pull Helen out on to the terrace, and Helen resisted. There was a certain amount of scuffling, entreating, resisting, and laughter from both of them. Then a man’s form appeared. Hewet could not hear what they were all saying. In a minute they had gone in; he could hear bolts grating then; there was dead silence, and all the lights went out.
He turned away, still crumpling and uncrumpling a handful of leaves which he had torn from the wall. An exquisite sense of pleasure and relief possessed him; it was all so solid and peaceful after the ball at the hotel, whether he was in love with them or not, and he was not in love with them; no, but it was good that they should be alive.
After standing still for a minute or two he turned and began to walk towards the gate. With the movement of his body, the excitement, the romance and the richness of life crowded into his brain. He shouted out a line of poetry, but the words escaped him, and he stumbled among lines and fragments of lines which had no meaning at all except for the beauty of the words. He shut the gate, and ran swinging from side to side down the hill, shouting any nonsense that came into his head. “Here am I,” he cried rhythmically, as his feet pounded to the left and to the right, “plunging along, like an elephant in the jungle, stripping the branches as I go (he snatched at the twigs of a bush at the roadside), roaring innumerable words, lovely words about innumerable things, running downhill and talking nonsense aloud to myself about roads and leaves and lights and women coming out into the darkness—about women—about Rachel, about Rachel.” He stopped and drew a deep breath. The night seemed immense and hospitable, and although so dark there seemed to be things moving down there in the harbour and movement out at sea. He gazed until the darkness numbed him, and then he walked on quickly, still murmuring to himself. “And I ought to be in bed, snoring and dreaming, dreaming, dreaming. Dreams and realities, dreams and realities, dreams and realities,” he repeated all the way up the avenue, scarcely knowing what he said, until he reached the front door. Here he paused for a second, and collected himself before he opened the door.
His eyes were dazed, his hands very cold, and his brain excited and yet half asleep. Inside the door everything was as he had left it except that the hall was now empty. There were the chairs turning in towards each other where people had sat talking, and the empty glasses on little tables, and the newspapers scattered on the floor. As he shut the door he felt as if he were enclosed in a square box, and instantly shrivelled up. It was all very bright and very small. He stopped for a minute by the long table to find a paper which he had meant to read, but he was still too much under the influence of the dark and the fresh air to consider carefully which paper it was or where he had seen it.
As he fumbled vaguely among the papers he saw a figure cross the tail of his eye, coming downstairs. He heard the swishing sound of skirts, and to his great surprise, Evelyn M. came up to him, laid her hand on the table as if to prevent him from taking up a paper, and said:
“You’re just the person I wanted to talk to.” Her voice was a little unpleasant and metallic, her eyes were very bright, and she kept them fixed upon him.
“To talk to me?” he repeated. “But I’m half asleep.”
“But I think you understand better than most people,” she answered, and sat down on a little chair placed beside a big leather chair so that Hewet had to sit down beside her.
“Well?” he said. He yawned openly, and lit a cigarette. He could not believe that this was really happening to him. “What is it?”
“Are you really sympathetic, or is it just a pose?” she demanded.
“It’s for you to say,” he replied. “I’m interested, I think.” He still felt numb all over and as if she was much too close to him.
“Anyone can be interested!” she cried impatiently. “Your friend Mr. Hirst’s interested, I daresay however, I do believe in you. You look as if you’d got a nice sister, somehow.” She paused, picking at some sequins on her knees, and then, as if she had made up her mind, she started off, “Anyhow, I’m going to ask your advice. D’you ever get into a state where you don’t know your own mind? That’s the state I’m in now. You see, last night at the dance Raymond Oliver—he’s the tall dark boy who looks as if he had Indian blood in him, but he says he’s not really—well, we were sitting out together, and he told me all about himself, how unhappy he is at home, and how he hates being out here. They’ve put him into some beastly mining business. He says it’s beastly—I should like it, I know, but that’s neither here nor there. And I felt awfully sorry for him, one couldn’t help being sorry for him, and when he asked me to let him kiss me, I did. I don’t see any harm in that, do you? And then this morning he said he’d thought I meant something more, and I wasn’t the sort to let anyone kiss me. And we talked and talked. I daresay I was very silly, but one can’t help liking people when one’s sorry for them. I do like him most awfully—” She paused. “So I gave him half a promise, and then, you see, there’s Alfred Perrott.”
“Oh, Perrott,” said Hewet.
“We got to know each other on that picnic the other day,” she continued. “He seemed so lonely, especially as Arthur had gone off with Susan, and one couldn’t help guessing what was in his mind. So we had quite a long talk when you were looking at the ruins, and he told me all about his life, and his struggles, and how fearfully hard it had been. D’you know, he was a boy in a grocer’s shop and took parcels to people’s houses in a basket? That interested me awfully, because I always say it doesn’t matter how you’re born if you’ve got the right stuff in you. And he told me about his sister who’s paralysed, poor girl, and one can see she’s a great trial, though he’s evidently very devoted to her. I must say I do admire people like that! I don’t expect you do because you’re so clever. Well, last night we sat out in the garden together, and I couldn’t help seeing what he wanted to say, and comforting him a little, and telling him I did care—I really do—only, then, there’s Raymond Oliver. What I want you to tell me is, can one be in love with two people at once, or can’t one?”
She became silent, and sat with her chin on her hands, looking very intent, as if she were facing a real problem which had to be discussed between them.
“I think it depends what sort of person you are,” said Hewet. He looked at her. She was small and pretty, aged perhaps twenty-eight or twenty-nine, but though dashing and sharply cut, her features expressed nothing very clearly, except a great deal of spirit and good health.
“Who are you, what are you; you see, I know nothing about you,” he continued.
“Well, I was coming to that,” said Evelyn M. She continued to rest her chin on her hands and to look intently ahead of her. “I’m the daughter of a mother and no father, if that interests you,” she said. “It’s not a very nice thing to be. It’s what often happens in the country. She was a farmer’s daughter, and he was rather a swell—the young man up at the great house. He never made things straight—never married her—though he allowed us quite a lot of money. His people wouldn’t let him. Poor father! I can’t help liking him. Mother wasn’t the sort of woman who could keep him straight, anyhow. He was killed in the war. I believe his men worshipped him. They say great big troopers broke down and cried over his body on the battlefield. I wish I’d known him
. Mother had all the life crushed out of her. The world—” She clenched her fist. “Oh, people can be horrid to a woman like that!” She turned upon Hewet.
“Well,” she said, “d’you want to know any more about me?”
“But you?” he asked, “Who looked after you?”
“I’ve looked after myself mostly,” she laughed. “I’ve had splendid friends. I do like people! That’s the trouble. What would you do if you liked two people, both of them tremendously, and you couldn’t tell which most?”
“I should go on liking them—I should wait and see. Why not?”
“But one has to make up one’s mind,” said Evelyn. “Or are you one of the people who doesn’t believe in marriages and all that? Look here—this isn’t fair, I do all the telling, and you tell nothing. Perhaps you’re the same as your friend”—she looked at him suspiciously; “perhaps you don’t like me?”
“I don’t know you,” said Hewet.
“I know when I like a person directly I see them! I knew I liked you the very first night at dinner. Oh dear,” she continued impatiently, “what a lot of bother would be saved if only people would say the things they think straight out! I’m made like that. I can’t help it.”
“But don’t you find it leads to difficulties?” Hewet asked.
“That’s men’s fault,” she answered. “They always drag it in—love, I mean.”
“And so you’ve gone on having one proposal after another,” said Hewet.
“I don’t suppose I’ve had more proposals than most women,” said Evelyn, but she spoke without conviction.
“Five, six, ten?” Hewet ventured.
Evelyn seemed to intimate that perhaps ten was the right figure, but that it really was not a high one.
“I believe you’re thinking me a heartless flirt,” she protested. “But I don’t care if you are. I don’t care what anyone thinks of me. Just because one’s interested and likes to be friends with men, and talk to them as one talks to women, one’s called a flirt.”
“But Miss Murgatroyd—”
“I wish you’d call me Evelyn,” she interrupted.
“After ten proposals do you honestly think that men are the same as women?”
“Honestly, honestly—how I hate that word! It’s always used by prigs,” cried Evelyn. “Honestly I think they ought to be. That’s what’s so disappointing. Every time one thinks it’s not going to happen, and every time it does.”
“The pursuit of Friendship,” said Hewet. “The title of a comedy.”
“You’re horrid,” she cried. “You don’t care a bit really. You might be Mr. Hirst.”
“Well,” said Hewet, “let’s consider. Let us consider—” He paused, because for the moment he could not remember what it was that they had to consider. He was far more interested in her than in her story, for as she went on speaking his numbness had disappeared, and he was conscious of a mixture of liking, pity, and distrust. “You’ve promised to marry both Oliver and Perrott?” he concluded.
“Not exactly promised,” said Evelyn. “I can’t make up my mind which I really like best. Oh how I detest modern life!” she flung off. “It must have been so much easier for the Elizabethans! I thought the other day on that mountain how I’d have liked to be one of those colonists, to cut down trees and make laws and all that, instead of fooling about with all these people who think one’s just a pretty young lady. Though I’m not. I really might do something.” She reflected in silence for a minute. Then she said:
“I’m afraid right down in my heart that Alfred Perrot won’t do. He’s not strong, is he?”
“Perhaps he couldn’t cut down a tree,” said Hewet. “Have you never cared for anybody?” he asked.
“I’ve cared for heaps of people, but not to marry them,” she said. “I suppose I’m too fastidious. All my life I’ve wanted somebody I could look up to, somebody great and big and splendid. Most men are so small.”
“What d’you mean by splendid?” Hewet asked. “People are—nothing more.”
Evelyn was puzzled.
“We don’t care for people because of their qualities,” he tried to explain. “It’s just them that we care for”—he struck a match—“just that,” he said, pointing to the flames.
“I see what you mean,” she said, “but I don’t agree. I do know why I care for people, and I think I’m hardly ever wrong. I see at once what they’ve got in them. Now I think you must be rather splendid; but not Mr. Hirst.”
Hewlet shook his head.
“He’s not nearly so unselfish, or so sympathetic, or so big, or so understanding,” Evelyn continued.
Hewet sat silent, smoking his cigarette.
“I should hate cutting down trees,” he remarked.
“I’m not trying to flirt with you, though I suppose you think I am!” Evelyn shot out. “I’d never have come to you if I’d thought you’d merely think odious things of me!” The tears came into her eyes.
“Do you never flirt?” he asked.
“Of course I don’t,” she protested. “Haven’t I told you? I want friendship; I want to care for someone greater and nobler than I am, and if they fall in love with me it isn’t my fault; I don’t want it; I positively hate it.”
Hewet could see that there was very little use in going on with the conversation, for it was obvious that Evelyn did not wish to say anything in particular, but to impress upon him an image of herself, being, for some reason which she would not reveal, unhappy, or insecure. He was very tired, and a pale waiter kept walking ostentatiously into the middle of the room and looking at them meaningly.
“They want to shut up,” he said. “My advice is that you should tell Oliver and Perrott tomorrow that you’ve made up your mind that you don’t mean to marry either of them. I’m certain you don’t. If you change your mind you can always tell them so. They’re both sensible men; they’ll understand. And then all this bother will be over.” He got up.
But Evelyn did not move. She sat looking up at him with her bright eager eyes, in the depths of which he thought he detected some disappointment, or dissatisfaction.
“Good-night,” he said.
“There are heaps of things I want to say to you still,” she said. “And I’m going to, some time. I suppose you must go to bed now?”
“Yes,” said Hewet. “I’m half asleep.” He left her still sitting by herself in the empty hall.
“Why is it that they won’t be honest?” he muttered to himself as he went upstairs. Why was it that relations between different people were so unsatisfactory, so fragmentary, so hazardous, and words so dangerous that the instinct to sympathise with another human being was an instinct to be examined carefully and probably crushed? What had Evelyn really wished to say to him? What was she feeling left alone in the empty hall? The mystery of life and the unreality even of one’s own sensations overcame him as he walked down the corridor which led to his room. It was dimly lighted, but sufficiently for him to see a figure in a bright dressing-gown pass swiftly in front of him, the figure of a woman crossing from one room to another.
CHAPTER XV
Whether too slight or too vague the ties that bind people casually meeting in a hotel at midnight, they possess one advantage at least over the bonds which unite the elderly, who have lived together once and so must live forever. Slight they may be, but vivid and genuine, merely because the power to break them is within the grasp of each, and there is no reason for continuance except a true desire that continue they shall. When two people have been married for years they seem to become unconscious of each other’s bodily presence so that they move as if alone, speak aloud things which they do not expect to be answered, and in general seem to experience all the comfort of solitude without its loneliness. The joint lives of Ridley and Helen had arrived at this stage of community, and it was often necessary for one or the other to recall with an effort whether a thing had been said or only thought, shared or dreamt in private. At four o’clock in the afternoon two or three
days later Mrs. Ambrose was standing brushing her hair, while her husband was in the dressing-room which opened out of her room, and occasionally, through the cascade of water—he was washing his face—she caught exclamations, “So it goes on year after year; I wish, I wish, I wish I could make an end of it,” to which she paid no attention.
“It’s white? Or only brown?” Thus she herself murmured, examining a hair which gleamed suspiciously among the brown. She pulled it out and laid it on the dressing-table. She was criticising her own appearance, or rather approving of it, standing a little way back from the glass and looking at her own face with superb pride and melancholy, when her husband appeared in the doorway in his shirt sleeves, his face half obscured by a towel.
“You often tell me I don’t notice things,” he remarked.
“Tell me if this is a white hair, then?” she replied. She laid the hair on his hand.
“There’s not a white hair on your head,” he exclaimed.
“Ah, Ridley, I begin to doubt,” she sighed; and bowed her head under his eyes so that he might judge, but the inspection produced only a kiss where the line of parting ran, and husband and wife then proceeded to move about the room, casually murmuring.
“What was that you were saying?” Helen remarked, after an interval of conversation which no third person could have understood.
“Rachel—you ought to keep an eye upon Rachel,” he observed significantly, and Helen, though she went on brushing her hair, looked at him. His observations were apt to be true.
“Young gentlemen don’t interest themselves in young women’s education without a motive,” he remarked.
“Oh, Hirst,” said Helen.
“Hirst and Hewet, they’re all the same to me—all covered with spots,” he replied. “He advises her to read Gibbon. Did you know that?”
Helen did not know that, but she would not allow herself inferior to her husband in powers of observation. She merely said:
“Nothing would surprise me. Even that dreadful flying man we met at the dance—even Mr. Dalloway—even—”
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