“She is the greatest,” he continued, “and for this reason: she does not attempt to write like a man. Every other woman does; on that account, I don’t read ’em.”
“Produce your instances, Miss Vinrace,” he went on, joining his finger-tips. “I’m ready to be converted.”
He waited, while Rachel vainly tried to vindicate her sex from the slight he put upon it.
“I’m afraid he’s right,” said Clarissa. “He generally is—the wretch!”
“I brought Persuasion,” she went on, “because I thought it was a little less threadbare than the others—though, Dick, it’s no good your pretending to know Jane by heart, considering that she always sends you to sleep!”
“After the labours of legislation, I deserve sleep,” said Richard.
“You’re not to think about those guns,” said Clarissa, seeing that his eye, passing over the waves, still sought the land meditatively, “or about navies, or empires, or anything.” So saying she opened the book and began to read:
“‘Sir Walter Elliott, of Kellynch Hall, in Somersetshire, was a man who, for his own amusement, never took up any book but the Baronetage’—don’t you know Sir Walter?—‘There he found occupation for an idle hour, and consolation in a distressed one.’ She does write well, doesn’t she? ‘There—’” She read on in a light humorous voice. She was determined that Sir Walter should take her husband’s mind off the guns of Britain, and divert him in an exquisite, quaint, sprightly, and slightly ridiculous world. After a time it appeared that the sun was sinking in that world, and the points becoming softer. Rachel looked up to see what caused the change. Richard’s eyelids were closing and opening; opening and closing. A loud nasal breath announced that he no longer considered appearances, that he was sound asleep.
“Triumph!” Clarissa whispered at the end of a sentence. Suddenly she raised her hand in protest. A sailor hesitated; she gave the book to Rachel, and stepped lightly to take the message—“Mr. Grice wished to know if it was convenient,” etc. She followed him. Ridley, who had prowled unheeded, started forward, stopped, and, with a gesture of disgust, strode off to his study. The sleeping politician was left in Rachel’s charge. She read a sentence, and took a look at him. In sleep he looked like a coat hanging at the end of a bed; there were all the wrinkles, and the sleeves and trousers kept their shape though no longer filled out by legs and arms. You can then best judge the age and state of the coat. She looked him all over until it seemed to her that he must protest.
He was a man of forty perhaps; and here there were lines round his eyes, and there curious clefts in his cheeks. Slightly battered he appeared, but dogged and in the prime of life.
“Sisters and a dormouse and some canaries,” Rachel murmured, never taking her eyes off him. “I wonder, I wonder” she ceased, her chin upon her hand, still looking at him. A bell chimed behind them, and Richard raised his head. Then he opened his eyes which wore for a second the queer look of a shortsighted person’s whose spectacles are lost. It took him a moment to recover from the impropriety of having snored, and possibly grunted, before a young lady. To wake and find oneself left alone with one was also slightly disconcerting.
“I suppose I’ve been dozing,” he said. “What’s happened to everyone? Clarissa?”
“Mrs. Dalloway has gone to look at Mr. Grice’s fish,” Rachel replied.
“I might have guessed,” said Richard. “It’s a common occurrence. And how have you improved the shining hour? Have you become a convert?”
“I don’t think I’ve read a line,” said Rachel.
“That’s what I always find. There are too many things to look at. I find nature very stimulating myself. My best ideas have come to me out of doors.”
“When you were walking?”
“Walking—riding—yachting—I suppose the most momentous conversations of my life took place while perambulating the great court at Trinity. I was at both universities. It was a fad of my father’s. He thought it broadening to the mind. I think I agree with him. I can remember—what an age ago it seems!—settling the basis of a future state with the present Secretary for India. We thought ourselves very wise. I’m not sure we weren’t. We were happy, Miss Vinrace, and we were young—gifts which make for wisdom.”
“Have you done what you said you’d do?” she asked.
“A searching question! I answer—Yes and No. If on the one hand I have not accomplished what I set out to accomplish—which of us does!—on the other I can fairly say this: I have not lowered my ideal.”
He looked resolutely at a sea-gull, as though his ideal flew on the wings of the bird.
“But,” said Rachel, “what is your ideal?”
“There you ask too much, Miss Vinrace,” said Richard playfully.
She could only say that she wanted to know, and Richard was sufficiently amused to answer.
“Well, how shall I reply? In one word—Unity. Unity of aim, of dominion, of progress. The dispersion of the best ideas over the greatest area.”
“The English?”
“I grant that the English seem, on the whole, whiter than most men, their records cleaner. But, good Lord, don’t run away with the idea that I don’t see the drawbacks—horrors—unmentionable things done in our very midst! I’m under no illusions. Few people, I suppose, have fewer illusions than I have. Have you ever been in a factory, Miss Vinrace!—No, I suppose not—I may say I hope not.”
As for Rachel, she had scarcely walked through a poor street, and always under the escort of father, maid, or aunts.
“I was going to say that if you’d ever seen the kind of thing that’s going on round you, you’d understand what it is that makes me and men like me politicians. You asked me a moment ago whether I’d done what I set out to do. Well, when I consider my life, there is one fact I admit that I’m proud of; owing to me some thousands of girls in Lancashire—and many thousands to come after them—can spend an hour every day in the open air which their mothers had to spend over their looms. I’m prouder of that, I own, than I should be of writing Keats and Shelley into the bargain!”
It became painful to Rachel to be one of those who write Keats and Shelley. She liked Richard Dalloway, and warmed as he warmed. He seemed to mean what he said.
“I know nothing!” she exclaimed.
“It’s far better that you should know nothing,” he said paternally, “and you wrong yourself, I’m sure. You play very nicely, I’m told, and I’ve no doubt you’ve read heaps of learned books.”
Elderly banter would no longer check her.
“You talk of unity,” she said. “You ought to make me understand.”
“I never allow my wife to talk politics,” he said seriously. “For this reason. It is impossible for human beings, constituted as they are, both to fight and to have ideals. If I have preserved mine, as I am thankful to say that in great measure I have, it is due to the fact that I have been able to come home to my wife in the evening and to find that she has spent her day in calling, music, play with the children, domestic duties—what you will; her illusions have not been destroyed. She gives me courage to go on. The strain of public life is very great,” he added.
This made him appear a battered martyr, parting every day with some of the finest gold, in the service of mankind.
“I can’t think,” Rachel exclaimed, “how any one does it!”
“Explain, Miss Vinrace,” said Richard. “This is a matter I want to clear up.”
His