Chapter II
Uncomfortable as the night, with its rocking movement, and salt smells,may have been, and in one case undoubtedly was, for Mr. Pepper hadinsufficient clothes upon his bed, the breakfast next morning wore akind of beauty. The voyage had begun, and had begun happily with a softblue sky, and a calm sea. The sense of untapped resources, things to sayas yet unsaid, made the hour significant, so that in future years theentire journey perhaps would be represented by this one scene, with thesound of sirens hooting in the river the night before, somehow mixingin.
The table was cheerful with apples and bread and eggs. Helen handedWilloughby the butter, and as she did so cast her eye on him andreflected, "And she married you, and she was happy, I suppose."
She went off on a familiar train of thought, leading on to all kindsof well-known reflections, from the old wonder, why Theresa had marriedWilloughby?
"Of course, one sees all that," she thought, meaning that one sees thathe is big and burly, and has a great booming voice, and a fist and awill of his own; "but--" here she slipped into a fine analysis of himwhich is best represented by one word, "sentimental," by which she meantthat he was never simple and honest about his feelings. For example, heseldom spoke of the dead, but kept anniversaries with singular pomp.She suspected him of nameless atrocities with regard to his daughter, asindeed she had always suspected him of bullying his wife. Naturally shefell to comparing her own fortunes with the fortunes of her friend, forWilloughby's wife had been perhaps the one woman Helen called friend,and this comparison often made the staple of their talk. Ridley was ascholar, and Willoughby was a man of business. Ridley was bringing outthe third volume of Pindar when Willoughby was launching his first ship.They built a new factory the very year the commentary on Aristotle--wasit?--appeared at the University Press. "And Rachel," she looked ather, meaning, no doubt, to decide the argument, which was otherwise tooevenly balanced, by declaring that Rachel was not comparable to herown children. "She really might be six years old," was all she said,however, this judgment referring to the smooth unmarked outline of thegirl's face, and not condemning her otherwise, for if Rachel were everto think, feel, laugh, or express herself, instead of dropping milkfrom a height as though to see what kind of drops it made, she might beinteresting though never exactly pretty. She was like her mother, as theimage in a pool on a still summer's day is like the vivid flushed facethat hangs over it.
Meanwhile Helen herself was under examination, though not from either ofher victims. Mr. Pepper considered her; and his meditations, carriedon while he cut his toast into bars and neatly buttered them, took himthrough a considerable stretch of autobiography. One of his penetratingglances assured him that he was right last night in judging that Helenwas beautiful. Blandly he passed her the jam. She was talking nonsense,but not worse nonsense than people usually do talk at breakfast, thecerebral circulation, as he knew to his cost, being apt to give troubleat that hour. He went on saying "No" to her, on principle, for he neveryielded to a woman on account of her sex. And here, dropping his eyesto his plate, he became autobiographical. He had not married himself forthe sufficient reason that he had never met a woman who commanded hisrespect. Condemned to pass the susceptible years of youth in a railwaystation in Bombay, he had seen only coloured women, military women,official women; and his ideal was a woman who could read Greek, if notPersian, was irreproachably fair in the face, and able to understand thesmall things he let fall while undressing. As it was he had contractedhabits of which he was not in the least ashamed. Certain odd minutesevery day went to learning things by heart; he never took a ticketwithout noting the number; he devoted January to Petronius, February toCatullus, March to the Etruscan vases perhaps; anyhow he had done goodwork in India, and there was nothing to regret in his life except thefundamental defects which no wise man regrets, when the present is stillhis. So concluding he looked up suddenly and smiled. Rachel caught hiseye.
"And now you've chewed something thirty-seven times, I suppose?" shethought, but said politely aloud, "Are your legs troubling you to-day,Mr. Pepper?"
"My shoulder blades?" he asked, shifting them painfully. "Beauty has noeffect upon uric acid that I'm aware of," he sighed, contemplating theround pane opposite, through which the sky and sea showed blue. At thesame time he took a little parchment volume from his pocket and laid iton the table. As it was clear that he invited comment, Helen asked himthe name of it. She got the name; but she got also a disquisition uponthe proper method of making roads. Beginning with the Greeks, whohad, he said, many difficulties to contend with, he continued with theRomans, passed to England and the right method, which speedily becamethe wrong method, and wound up with such a fury of denunciationdirected against the road-makers of the present day in general, and theroad-makers of Richmond Park in particular, where Mr. Pepper had thehabit of cycling every morning before breakfast, that the spoons fairlyjingled against the coffee cups, and the insides of at least four rollsmounted in a heap beside Mr. Pepper's plate.
"Pebbles!" he concluded, viciously dropping another bread pellet uponthe heap. "The roads of England are mended with pebbles! 'With the firstheavy rainfall,' I've told 'em, 'your road will be a swamp.' Again andagain my words have proved true. But d'you suppose they listen to mewhen I tell 'em so, when I point out the consequences, the consequencesto the public purse, when I recommend 'em to read Coryphaeus? No, Mrs.Ambrose, you will form no just opinion of the stupidity of mankind untilyou have sat upon a Borough Council!" The little man fixed her with aglance of ferocious energy.
"I have had servants," said Mrs. Ambrose, concentrating her gaze. "Atthis moment I have a nurse. She's a good woman as they go, but she'sdetermined to make my children pray. So far, owing to great care onmy part, they think of God as a kind of walrus; but now that my back'sturned--Ridley," she demanded, swinging round upon her husband, "whatshall we do if we find them saying the Lord's Prayer when we get homeagain?"
Ridley made the sound which is represented by "Tush." But Willoughby,whose discomfort as he listened was manifested by a slight movementrocking of his body, said awkwardly, "Oh, surely, Helen, a littlereligion hurts nobody."
"I would rather my children told lies," she replied, and whileWilloughby was reflecting that his sister-in-law was even more eccentricthan he remembered, pushed her chair back and swept upstairs. In asecond they heard her calling back, "Oh, look! We're out at sea!"
They followed her on to the deck. All the smoke and the houses haddisappeared, and the ship was out in a wide space of sea very fresh andclear though pale in the early light. They had left London sitting onits mud. A very thin line of shadow tapered on the horizon, scarcelythick enough to stand the burden of Paris, which nevertheless restedupon it. They were free of roads, free of mankind, and the sameexhilaration at their freedom ran through them all. The ship was makingher way steadily through small waves which slapped her and then fizzledlike effervescing water, leaving a little border of bubbles and foam oneither side. The colourless October sky above was thinly clouded as ifby the trail of wood-fire smoke, and the air was wonderfully salt andbrisk. Indeed it was too cold to stand still. Mrs. Ambrose drew her armwithin her husband's, and as they moved off it could be seen from theway in which her sloping cheek turned up to his that she had somethingprivate to communicate. They went a few paces and Rachel saw them kiss.
Down she looked into the depth of the sea. While it was slightlydisturbed on the surface by the passage of the _Euphrosyne_, beneath itwas green and dim, and it grew dimmer and dimmer until the sand at thebottom was only a pale blur. One could scarcely see the black ribs ofwrecked ships, or the spiral towers made by the burrowings of greateels, or the smooth green-sided monsters who came by flickering this wayand that.
--"And, Rachel, if any one wants me, I'm busy till one," said herfather, enforcing his words as he often did, when he spoke to hisdaughter, by a smart blow upon the shoulder.
"Until one," he repeated. "And you'll find yourself some employment, eh?Scales, French, a little
German, eh? There's Mr. Pepper who knows moreabout separable verbs than any man in Europe, eh?" and he went offlaughing. Rachel laughed, too, as indeed she had laughed ever since shecould remember, without thinking it funny, but because she admired herfather.
But just as she was turning with a view perhaps to finding someemployment, she was intercepted by a woman who was so broad and so thickthat to be intercepted by her was inevitable. The discreet tentative wayin which she moved, together with her sober black dress, showed thatshe belonged to the lower orders; nevertheless she took up a rock-likeposition, looking about her to see that no gentry were near before shedelivered her message, which had reference to the state of the sheets,and was of the utmost gravity.
"How ever we're to get through this voyage, Miss Rachel, I really can'ttell," she began with a shake of her head. "There's only just sheetsenough to go round, and the master's has a rotten place you couldput your fingers through. And the counterpanes. Did you notice thecounterpanes? I thought to myself a poor person would have been ashamedof them. The one I gave Mr. Pepper was hardly fit to cover a dog. . . .No, Miss Rachel, they could _not_ be mended; they're only fit for dustsheets. Why, if one sewed one's finger to the bone, one would have one'swork undone the next time they went to the laundry."
Her voice in its indignation wavered as if tears were near.
There was nothing for it but to descend and inspect a large pile oflinen heaped upon a table. Mrs. Chailey handled the sheets as if sheknew each by name, character, and constitution. Some had yellow stains,others had places where the threads made long ladders; but to theordinary eye they looked much as sheets usually do look, very chill,white, cold, and irreproachably clean.
Suddenly Mrs. Chailey, turning from the subject of sheets, dismissingthem entirely, clenched her fists on the top of them, and proclaimed,"And you couldn't ask a living creature to sit where I sit!"
Mrs. Chailey was expected to sit in a cabin which was large enough,but too near the boilers, so that after five minutes she could hear herheart "go," she complained, putting her hand above it, which was a stateof things that Mrs. Vinrace, Rachel's mother, would never have dreamtof inflicting--Mrs. Vinrace, who knew every sheet in her house, andexpected of every one the best they could do, but no more.
It was the easiest thing in the world to grant another room, and theproblem of sheets simultaneously and miraculously solved itself, thespots and ladders not being past cure after all, but--
"Lies! Lies! Lies!" exclaimed the mistress indignantly, as she ran up onto the deck. "What's the use of telling me lies?"
In her anger that a woman of fifty should behave like a child and comecringing to a girl because she wanted to sit where she had not leave tosit, she did not think of the particular case, and, unpacking her music,soon forgot all about the old woman and her sheets.
Mrs. Chailey folded her sheets, but her expression testified to flatnesswithin. The world no longer cared about her, and a ship was not a home.When the lamps were lit yesterday, and the sailors went tumbling aboveher head, she had cried; she would cry this evening; she would cryto-morrow. It was not home. Meanwhile she arranged her ornaments in theroom which she had won too easily. They were strange ornaments tobring on a sea voyage--china pugs, tea-sets in miniature, cups stampedfloridly with the arms of the city of Bristol, hair-pin boxes crustedwith shamrock, antelopes' heads in coloured plaster, together with amultitude of tiny photographs, representing downright workmen in theirSunday best, and women holding white babies. But there was one portraitin a gilt frame, for which a nail was needed, and before she sought itMrs. Chailey put on her spectacles and read what was written on a slipof paper at the back:
"This picture of her mistress is given to Emma Chailey by WilloughbyVinrace in gratitude for thirty years of devoted service."
Tears obliterated the words and the head of the nail.
"So long as I can do something for your family," she was saying, as shehammered at it, when a voice called melodiously in the passage:
"Mrs. Chailey! Mrs. Chailey!"
Chailey instantly tidied her dress, composed her face, and opened thedoor.
"I'm in a fix," said Mrs. Ambrose, who was flushed and out of breath."You know what gentlemen are. The chairs too high--the tables toolow--there's six inches between the floor and the door. What I want'sa hammer, an old quilt, and have you such a thing as a kitchen table?Anyhow, between us"--she now flung open the door of her husband'ssitting room, and revealed Ridley pacing up and down, his forehead allwrinkled, and the collar of his coat turned up.
"It's as though they'd taken pains to torment me!" he cried, stoppingdead. "Did I come on this voyage in order to catch rheumatism andpneumonia? Really one might have credited Vinrace with more sense.My dear," Helen was on her knees under a table, "you are only makingyourself untidy, and we had much better recognise the fact that we arecondemned to six weeks of unspeakable misery. To come at all was theheight of folly, but now that we are here I suppose that I can faceit like a man. My diseases of course will be increased--I feel alreadyworse than I did yesterday, but we've only ourselves to thank, and thechildren happily--"
"Move! Move! Move!" cried Helen, chasing him from corner to corner witha chair as though he were an errant hen. "Out of the way, Ridley, and inhalf an hour you'll find it ready."
She turned him out of the room, and they could hear him groaning andswearing as he went along the passage.
"I daresay he isn't very strong," said Mrs. Chailey, looking at Mrs.Ambrose compassionately, as she helped to shift and carry.
"It's books," sighed Helen, lifting an armful of sad volumes from thefloor to the shelf. "Greek from morning to night. If ever Miss Rachelmarries, Chailey, pray that she may marry a man who doesn't know hisABC."
The preliminary discomforts and harshnesses, which generally make thefirst days of a sea voyage so cheerless and trying to the temper, beingsomehow lived through, the succeeding days passed pleasantly enough.October was well advanced, but steadily burning with a warmth that madethe early months of the summer appear very young and capricious. Greattracts of the earth lay now beneath the autumn sun, and the whole ofEngland, from the bald moors to the Cornish rocks, was lit up from dawnto sunset, and showed in stretches of yellow, green, and purple. Underthat illumination even the roofs of the great towns glittered. Inthousands of small gardens, millions of dark-red flowers were blooming,until the old ladies who had tended them so carefully came down thepaths with their scissors, snipped through their juicy stalks, and laidthem upon cold stone ledges in the village church. Innumerable partiesof picnickers coming home at sunset cried, "Was there ever such a dayas this?" "It's you," the young men whispered; "Oh, it's you," the youngwomen replied. All old people and many sick people were drawn, were itonly for a foot or two, into the open air, and prognosticated pleasantthings about the course of the world. As for the confidences andexpressions of love that were heard not only in cornfields but inlamplit rooms, where the windows opened on the garden, and men withcigars kissed women with grey hairs, they were not to be counted. Somesaid that the sky was an emblem of the life to come. Long-tailed birdsclattered and screamed, and crossed from wood to wood, with golden eyesin their plumage.
But while all this went on by land, very few people thought about thesea. They took it for granted that the sea was calm; and there was noneed, as there is in many houses when the creeper taps on the bedroomwindows, for the couples to murmur before they kiss, "Think of the shipsto-night," or "Thank Heaven, I'm not the man in the lighthouse!" For allthey imagined, the ships when they vanished on the sky-line dissolved,like snow in water. The grown-up view, indeed, was not much clearer thanthe view of the little creatures in bathing drawers who were trottingin to the foam all along the coasts of England, and scooping up bucketsfull of water. They saw white sails or tufts of smoke pass across thehorizon, and if you had said that these were waterspouts, or the petalsof white sea flowers, they would have agreed.
The people in ships, however, took an equally singular
view of England.Not only did it appear to them to be an island, and a very small island,but it was a shrinking island in which people were imprisoned. Onefigured them first swarming about like aimless ants, and almost pressingeach other over the edge; and then, as the ship withdrew, one figuredthem making a vain clamour, which, being unheard, either ceased, or roseinto a brawl. Finally, when the ship was out of sight of land, it becameplain that the people of England were completely mute. The diseaseattacked other parts of the earth; Europe shrank, Asia shrank, Africaand America shrank, until it seemed doubtful whether the ship would everrun against any of those wrinkled little rocks again. But, on the otherhand, an immense dignity had descended upon her; she was an inhabitantof the great world, which has so few inhabitants, travelling all dayacross an empty universe, with veils drawn before her and behind. Shewas more lonely than the caravan crossing the desert; she was infinitelymore mysterious, moving by her own power and sustained by her ownresources. The sea might give her death or some unexampled joy, and nonewould know of it. She was a bride going forth to her husband, a virginunknown of men; in her vigor and purity she might be likened to allbeautiful things, for as a ship she had a life of her own.
Indeed if they had not been blessed in their weather, one blue day beingbowled up after another, smooth, round, and flawless. Mrs. Ambrose wouldhave found it very dull. As it was, she had her embroidery frame setup on deck, with a little table by her side on which lay open a blackvolume of philosophy. She chose a thread from the vari-coloured tanglethat lay in her lap, and sewed red into the bark of a tree, or yellowinto the river torrent. She was working at a great design of a tropicalriver running through a tropical forest, where spotted deer wouldeventually browse upon masses of fruit, bananas, oranges, and giantpomegranates, while a troop of naked natives whirled darts into the air.Between the stitches she looked to one side and read a sentence aboutthe Reality of Matter, or the Nature of Good. Round her men in bluejerseys knelt and scrubbed the boards, or leant over the rails andwhistled, and not far off Mr. Pepper sat cutting up roots with apenknife. The rest were occupied in other parts of the ship: Ridley athis Greek--he had never found quarters more to his liking; Willoughby athis documents, for he used a voyage to work of arrears of business; andRachel--Helen, between her sentences of philosophy, wondered sometimeswhat Rachel _did_ do with herself? She meant vaguely to go and see. Theyhad scarcely spoken two words to each other since that first evening;they were polite when they met, but there had been no confidence of anykind. Rachel seemed to get on very well with her father--much better,Helen thought, than she ought to--and was as ready to let Helen alone asHelen was to let her alone.
At that moment Rachel was sitting in her room doing absolutely nothing.When the ship was full this apartment bore some magnificent title andwas the resort of elderly sea-sick ladies who left the deck to theiryoungsters. 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 playingvery difficult music, reading a little German, or a little English whenthe mood took her, and doing--as at this moment--absolutely nothing.
The way she had been educated, joined to a fine natural indolence, wasof course partly the reason of it, for she had been educated as themajority of well-to-do girls in the last part of the nineteenth centurywere educated. Kindly doctors and gentle old professors had taught herthe rudiments of about ten different branches of knowledge, but theywould as soon have forced her to go through one piece of drudgerythoroughly as they would have told her that her hands were dirty. Theone hour or the two hours weekly passed very pleasantly, partly owingto the other pupils, partly to the fact that the window looked uponthe back of a shop, where figures appeared against the red windows inwinter, partly to the accidents that are bound to happen when more thantwo people are in the same room together. But there was no subject inthe world which she knew accurately. Her mind was in the state of anintelligent man's in the beginning of the reign of Queen Elizabeth;she would believe practically anything she was told, invent reasons foranything she said. The shape of the earth, the history of the world,how trains worked, or money was invested, what laws were in force, whichpeople wanted what, and why they wanted it, the most elementary idea ofa system in modern life--none of this had been imparted to her by any ofher professors or mistresses. But this system of education had one greatadvantage. It did not teach anything, but it put no obstacle in the wayof any real talent that the pupil might chance to have. Rachel, beingmusical, was allowed to learn nothing but music; she became a fanaticabout music. All the energies that might have gone into languages,science, or literature, that might have made her friends, or shown herthe world, poured straight into music. Finding her teachers inadequate,she had practically taught herself. At the age of twenty-four she knewas much about music as most people do when they are thirty; and couldplay as well as nature allowed her to, which, as became daily moreobvious, was a really generous allowance. If this one definite giftwas surrounded by dreams and ideas of the most extravagant and foolishdescription, no one was any the wiser.
Her education being thus ordinary, her circumstances were no more out ofthe common. She was an only child and had never been bullied and laughedat by brothers and sisters. Her mother having died when she was eleven,two aunts, the sisters of her father, brought her up, and they livedfor the sake of the air in a comfortable house in Richmond. She wasof course brought up with excessive care, which as a child was for herhealth; as a girl and a young woman was for what it seems almost crudeto call her morals. Until quite lately she had been completely ignorantthat for women such things existed. She groped for knowledge in oldbooks, and found it in repulsive chunks, but she did not naturally carefor books and thus never troubled her head about the censorship whichwas exercised first by her aunts, later by her father. Friends mighthave told her things, but she had few of her own age,--Richmond beingan awkward place to reach,--and, as it happened, the only girl she knewwell was a religious zealot, who in the fervour of intimacy talked aboutGod, and the best ways of taking up one's cross, a topic only fitfullyinteresting to one whose mind reached other stages at other times.
But lying in her chair, with one hand behind her head, the othergrasping the knob on the arm, she was clearly following her thoughtsintently. Her education left her abundant time for thinking. Her eyeswere fixed so steadily upon a ball on the rail of the ship that shewould have been startled and annoyed if anything had chanced to obscureit 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 hadbored her, so that one sentence chancing to say something about thesmell of broom in his garden, she had thereupon seen the little hall atRichmond laden with flowers on the day of her mother's funeral, smellingso strong that now any flower-scent brought back the sickly horriblesensation 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; itreminds 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 heraunts, their views, and the way they lived. Indeed this was a subjectthat lasted her hundreds of morning walks round Richmond Park, andblotted out the trees and the people and the deer. Why did they do thethings 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 thatmorning to take up the character of a servant, "And, of course, athalf-past ten in the morning one expects to find the housemaid brushingthe stairs." How odd! How unspeakably odd
! But she could not explain toherself why suddenly as her aunt spoke the whole system in which theylived had appeared before her eyes as something quite unfamiliar andinexplicable, and themselves as chairs or umbrellas dropped abouthere and there without any reason. She could only say with her slightstammer, "Are you f-f-fond of Aunt Eleanor, Aunt Lucy?" to which heraunt replied, with her nervous hen-like twitter of a laugh, "My dearchild, 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 caresone doesn't think 'how,' Rachel," which was aimed at the niece who hadnever yet "come" to her aunts as cordially as they wished.
"But you know I care for you, don't you, dear, because you're yourmother's daughter, if for no other reason, and there _are_ plenty ofother reasons"--and she leant over and kissed her with some emotion, andthe argument was spilt irretrievably about the place like a bucket ofmilk.
By these means Rachel reached that stage in thinking, if thinking it canbe called, when the eyes are intent upon a ball or a knob and the lipscease to move. Her efforts to come to an understanding had only hurther aunt's feelings, and the conclusion must be that it is better notto try. To feel anything strongly was to create an abyss between oneselfand others who feel strongly perhaps but differently. It was far betterto play the piano and forget all the rest. The conclusion was verywelcome. 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 beautifuloften as people upon the stage are beautiful. It appeared that nobodyever said a thing they meant, or ever talked of a feeling they felt, butthat 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 wentround and round quite satisfactorily to other people, without oftentroubling to think about it, except as something superficially strange.Absorbed by her music she accepted her lot very complacently, blazinginto indignation perhaps once a fortnight, and subsiding as she subsidednow. Inextricably mixed in dreamy confusion, her mind seemed to enterinto communion, to be delightfully expanded and combined with the spiritof the whitish boards on deck, with the spirit of the sea, with thespirit of Beethoven Op. 112, even with the spirit of poor William Cowperthere at Olney. Like a ball of thistledown it kissed the sea, rose,kissed it again, and thus rising and kissing passed finally out ofsight. The rising and falling of the ball of thistledown was representedby the sudden droop forward of her own head, and when it passed out ofsight she was asleep.
Ten minutes later Mrs. Ambrose opened the door and looked at her. It didnot surprise her to find that this was the way in which Rachel passedher mornings. She glanced round the room at the piano, at the books,at the general mess. In the first place she considered Rachelaesthetically; lying unprotected she looked somehow like a victimdropped 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, turnednoiselessly away and went, lest the sleeper should waken, and thereshould be the awkwardness of speech between them.