“I don’t think so,” she said. “It’s the way of saying things, isn’t it, not the things?”
“True,” said Richard. “Perfectly true.” He paused. “When I look back over my life—I’m forty-two—what are the great facts that stand out? What were the revelations, if I may call them so? The misery of the poor and—” (he hesitated and pitched over) “love!”
Upon that word he lowered his voice; it was a word that seemed to unveil the skies for Rachel.
“It’s an odd thing to say to a young lady,” he continued. “But have you any idea what—what I mean by that? No, of course not. I don’t use the word in a conventional sense. I use it as young men use it. Girls are kept very ignorant, aren’t they? Perhaps it’s wise—perhaps—You don’t know?”
He spoke as if he had lost consciousness of what he was saying.
“No; I don’t,” she said, scarcely speaking above her breath.
“Warships, Dick! Over there! Look!” Clarissa, released from Mr. Grice, appreciative of all his seaweeds, skimmed towards them, gesticulating.
She had sighted two sinister grey vessels, low in the water, and bald as bone, one closely following the other with the look of eyeless beasts seeking their prey. Consciousness returned to Richard instantly.
“By George!” he exclaimed, and stood shielding his eyes.
“Ours, Dick?” said Clarissa.
“The Mediterranean Fleet,” he answered.
“The Euphrosyne was slowly dipping her flag. Richard raised his hat. Convulsively Clarissa squeezed Rachel’s hand.
“Aren’t you glad to be English!” she said.
The warships drew past, casting a curious effect of discipline and sadness upon the waters, and it was not until they were again invisible that people spoke to each other naturally. At lunch the talk was all of valour and death, and the magnificent qualities of British admirals. Clarissa quoted one poet, Willoughby quoted another. Life on board a man-of-war was splendid, so they agreed, and sailors, whenever one met them, were quite especially nice and simple.
This being so, no one liked it when Helen remarked that it seemed to her as wrong to keep sailors as to keep a Zoo, and that as for dying on a battle-field, surely it was time we ceased to praise courage—“or to write bad poetry about it,” snarled Pepper.
But Helen was really wondering why Rachel, sitting silent, looked so queer and flushed.
CHAPTER V
She was not able to follow up her observations, however, or to come to any conclusion, for by one of those accidents which are liable to happen at sea, the whole course of their lives was now put out of order.
Even at tea the floor rose beneath their feet and pitched too low again, and at dinner the ship seemed to groan and strain as though a lash were descending. She who had been a broad-backed dray-horse, upon whose hind-quarters pierrots might waltz, became a colt in a field. The plates slanted away from the knives, and Mrs. Dalloway’s face blanched for a second as she helped herself and saw the potatoes roll this way and that. Willoughby, of course, extolled the virtues of his ship, and quoted what had been said of her by experts and distinguished passengers, for he loved his own possessions. Still, dinner was uneasy, and directly the ladies were alone Clarissa owned that she would be better off in bed, and went, smiling bravely.
Next morning the storm was on them, and no politeness could ignore it. Mrs. Dalloway stayed in her room. Richard faced three meals, eating valiantly at each; but at the third, certain glazed asparagus swimming in oil finally conquered him.
“That beats me,” he said, and withdrew.
“Now we are alone once more,” remarked William Pepper, looking round the table; but no one was ready to engage him in talk, and the meal ended in silence.
On the following day they met—but as flying leaves meet in the air. Sick they were not; but the wind propelled them hastily into rooms, violently downstairs. They passed each other gasping on deck; they shouted across tables. They wore fur coats; and Helen was never seen without a bandanna on her head. For comfort they retreated to their cabins, where with tightly wedged feet they let the ship bounce and tumble. Their sensations were the sensations of potatoes in a sack on a galloping horse. The world outside was merely a violent grey tumult. For two days they had a perfect rest from their old emotions. Rachel had just enough consciousness to suppose herself a donkey on the summit of a moor in a hail-storm, with its coat blown into furrows; then she became a wizened tree, perpetually driven back by the salt Atlantic gale.
Helen, on the other hand, staggered to Mrs. Dalloway’s door, knocked, could not be heard for the slamming of doors and the battering of wind, and entered.
There were basins, of course. Mrs. Dalloway lay half-raised on a pillow, and did not open her eyes. Then she murmured, “Oh, Dick, is that you?”
Helen shouted—for she was thrown against the washstand—“How are you?”
Clarissa opened one eye. It gave her an incredibly dissipated appearance. “Awful!” she gasped. Her lips were white inside.
Planting her feet wide, Helen contrived to pour champagne into a tumbler with a tooth-brush in it.
“Champagne,” she said.
“There’s a tooth-brush in it,” murmured Clarissa, and smiled; it might have been the contortion of one weeping. She drank.
“Disgusting,” she whispered, indicating the basins. Relics of humour still played over her face like moonshine.
“Want more?” Helen shouted. Speech was again beyond Clarissa’s reach. The wind laid the ship shivering on her side. Pale agonies crossed Mrs. Dalloway in waves. When the curtains flapped, grey lights puffed across her. Between the spasms of the storm, Helen made the curtain fast, shook the pillows, stretched the bed-clothes, and smoothed the hot nostrils and forehead with cold scent.
“You are good!” Clarissa gasped. “Horrid mess!”
She was trying to apologise for white underclothes fallen and scattered on the floor. For one second she opened a single eye, and saw that the room was tidy.
“That’s nice,” she gasped.
Helen left her; far, far away she knew that she felt a kind of liking for Mrs. Dalloway. She could not help respecting her spirit and her desire, even in the throes of sickness, for a tidy bedroom. Her petticoats, however, rose above her knees.
Quite suddenly the storm relaxed its grasp. It happened at tea; the expected paroxysm of the blast gave out just as it reached its climax and dwindled away, and the ship instead of taking the usual plunge went steadily. The monotonous order of plunging and rising, roaring and relaxing, was interfered with, and every one at table looked up and felt something loosen within them. The strain was slackened and human feelings began to peep again, as they do when daylight shows at the end of a tunnel.
“Try a turn with me,” Ridley called across to Rachel.
“Foolish!” cried Helen, but they went stumbling up the ladder. Choked by the wind their spirits rose with a rush, for on the skirts of all the grey tumult was a misty spot of gold. Instantly the world dropped into shape; they were no longer atoms flying in the void, but people riding a triumphant ship on the back of the sea. Wind and space were banished; the world floated like an apple in a tub, and the mind of man, which had been unmoored also, once more attached itself to the old beliefs.
Having scrambled twice round the ship and received many sound cuffs from the wind, they saw a sailor’s face positively shine golden. They looked, and beheld a complete yellow circle of sun; next minute it was traversed by sailing stands of cloud, and then completely hidden. By breakfast the next morning, however, the sky was swept clean, the waves, although steep, were blue, and after their view of the strange under-world, inhabited by phantoms,