The next few months passed away, as many years can pass away,without definite events, and yet, if suddenly disturbed, it wouldbe seen that such months or years had a character unlike others.
The three months which had passed had brought them to the beginningof March. The climate had kept its promise, and the changeof season from winter to spring had made very little difference,so that Helen, who was sitting in the drawing-room with a pen inher hand, could keep the windows open though a great fire of logsburnt on one side of her. Below, the sea was still blue and theroofs still brown and white, though the day was fading rapidly.
It was dusk in the room, which, large and empty at all times,now appeared larger and emptier than usual. Her own figure, as shesat writing with a pad on her knee, shared the general effect of sizeand lack of detail, for the flames which ran along the branches,suddenly devouring1 little green tufts, burnt intermittently2 and sentirregular illuminations across her face and the plaster walls.
There were no pictures on the walls but here and there boughsladen with heavy-petalled flowers spread widely against them.
Of the books fallen on the bare floor and heaped upon the large table,it was only possible in this light to trace the outline.
Mrs. Ambrose was writing a very long letter. Beginning "Dear Bernard,"it went on to describe what had been happening in the Villa3 SanGervasio during the past three months, as, for instance, that theyhad had the British Consul4 to dinner, and had been taken over a Spanishman-of-war, and had seen a great many processions and religious festivals,which were so beautiful that Mrs. Ambrose couldn't conceive why,if people must have a religion, they didn't all become Roman Catholics.
They had made several expeditions though none of any length. It wasworth coming if only for the sake of the flowering trees which grewwild quite near the house, and the amazing colours of sea and earth.
The earth, instead of being brown, was red, purple, green. "You won'tbelieve me," she added, "there is no colour like it in England."She adopted, indeed, a condescending5 tone towards that poor island,which was now advancing chilly6 crocuses and nipped violets in nooks,in copses, in cosy7 corners, tended by rosy8 old gardeners in mufflers,who were always touching9 their hats and bobbing obsequiously10.
She went on to deride11 the islanders themselves. Rumours12 of London allin a ferment13 over a General Election had reached them even out here.
"It seems incredible," she went on, "that people should care whetherAsquith is in or Austen Chamberlin out, and while you scream yourselveshoarse about politics you let the only people who are trying forsomething good starve or simply laugh at them. When have you everencouraged a living artist? Or bought his best work? Why are youall so ugly and so servile? Here the servants are human beings.
They talk to one as if they were equals. As far as I can tell thereare no aristocrats14."Perhaps it was the mention of aristocrats that reminded her ofRichard Dalloway and Rachel, for she ran on with the same penfulto describe her niece.
"It's an odd fate that has put me in charge of a girl," she wrote,"considering that I have never got on well with women, or had muchto do with them. However, I must retract15 some of the things that Ihave said against them. If they were properly educated I don't seewhy they shouldn't be much the same as men--as satisfactory I mean;though, of course, very different. The question is, how shouldone educate them. The present method seems to me abominable16.
This girl, though twenty-four, had never heard that men desired women,and, until I explained it, did not know how children were born.
Her ignorance upon other matters as important" (here Mrs. Ambrose'sletter may not be quoted) . . ."was complete. It seems to me notmerely foolish but criminal to bring people up like that. Let alonethe suffering to them, it explains why women are what they are--the wonder is they're no worse. I have taken it upon myselfto enlighten her, and now, though still a good deal prejudiced andliable to exaggerate, she is more or less a reasonable human being.
Keeping them ignorant, of course, defeats its own object, and whenthey begin to understand they take it all much too seriously.
My brother-in-law really deserved a catastrophe--which he won't get.
I now pray for a young man to come to my help; some one, I mean,who would talk to her openly, and prove how absurd most of her ideasabout life are. Unluckily such men seem almost as rare as the women.
The English colony certainly doesn't provide one; artists, merchants,cultivated people--they are stupid, conventional, and flirtatious17.
. . ." She ceased, and with her pen in her hand sat looking intothe fire, making the logs into caves and mountains, for it had growntoo dark to go on writing. Moreover, the house began to stir asthe hour of dinner approached; she could hear the plates being chinkedin the dining-room next door, and Chailey instructing the Spanishgirl where to put things down in vigorous English. The bell rang;she rose, met Ridley and Rachel outside, and they all went into dinner.
Three months had made but little difference in the appearance eitherof Ridley or Rachel; yet a keen observer might have thought that the girlwas more definite and self-confident in her manner than before.
Her skin was brown, her eyes certainly brighter, and she attendedto what was said as though she might be going to contradict it.
The meal began with the comfortable silence of people who are quiteat their ease together. Then Ridley, leaning on his elbow and lookingout of the window, observed that it was a lovely night.
"Yes," said Helen. She added, "The season's begun," looking atthe lights beneath them. She asked Maria in Spanish whether the hotelwas not filling up with visitors. Maria informed her with pridethat there would come a time when it was positively18 difficultto buy eggs--the shopkeepers would not mind what prices they asked;they would get them, at any rate, from the English.
"That's an English steamer in the bay," said Rachel, looking ata triangle of lights below. "She came in early this morning.""Then we may hope for some letters and send ours back," said Helen.
For some reason the mention of letters always made Ridley groan,and the rest of the meal passed in a brisk argument between husbandand wife as to whether he was or was not wholly ignored by the entirecivilised world.
"Considering the last batch," said Helen, "you deserve beating.
You were asked to lecture, you were offered a degree, and some sillywoman praised not only your books but your beauty--she said he was whatShelley would have been if Shelley had lived to fifty-five and growna beard. Really, Ridley, I think you're the vainest man I know,"she ended, rising from the table, "which I may tell you is sayinga good deal."Finding her letter lying before the fire she added a few lines to it,and then announced that she was going to take the letters now--Ridley must bring his--and Rachel?
"I hope you've written to your Aunts? It's high time."The women put on cloaks and hats, and after inviting19 Ridley to comewith them, which he emphatically refused to do, exclaiming thatRachel he expected to be a fool, but Helen surely knew better,they turned to go. He stood over the fire gazing into the depthsof the looking-glass, and compressing his face into the likenessof a commander surveying a field of battle, or a martyr20 watchingthe flames lick his toes, rather than that of a secluded21 Professor.
Helen laid hold of his beard.
"Am I a fool?" she said.
"Let me go, Helen.""Am I a fool?" she repeated.
"Vile woman!" he exclaimed, and kissed her.
"We'll leave you to your vanities," she called back as they wentout of the door.
It was a beautiful evening, still light enough to see a long waydown the road, though the stars were coming out. The pillar-boxwas let into a high yellow wall where the lane met the road,and having dropped the letters into it, Helen was for turning back.
"No, no," said Rachel, taking her by the wrist. "We're goingto see life. You promised.""Seeing life" was the phrase they used for their habit of strollingthrough the town after dark. The social life of Santa Marinawas carried on almost entirely22 by lamp-light, which the warmth ofthe nights and the scents23 culled24 from flowers made pleasant enough.
The young women, with their hair magnificently swept in coils,a red flower behind the ear, sat on the doorsteps, or issued outon to balconies, while the young men ranged up and down beneath,shouting up a greeting from time to time and stopping here and thereto enter into amorous25 talk. At the open windows merchants couldbe seen making up the day's account, and older women lifting jarsfrom shelf to shelf. The streets were full of people, men for themost part, who interchanged their views of the world as they walked,or gathered round the wine-tables at the street corner, where an oldcripple was twanging his guitar strings26, while a poor girl criedher passionate27 song in the gutter28. The two Englishwomen excitedsome friendly curiosity, but no one molested29 them.
Helen sauntered on, observing the different people in their shabbyclothes, who seemed so careless and so natural, with satisfaction.
"Just think of the Mall to-night!" she exclaimed at length.
"It's the fifteenth of March. Perhaps there's a Court."She thought of the crowd waiting in the cold spring air to seethe30 grand carriages go by. "It's very cold, if it's not raining,"she said. "First there are men selling picture postcards; then thereare wretched little shop-girls with round bandboxes; then thereare bank clerks in tail coats; and then--any number of dressmakers.
People from South Kensington drive up in a hired fly; officials havea pair of bays; earls, on the other hand, are allowed one footmanto stand up behind; dukes have two, royal dukes--so I was told--have three; the king, I suppose, can have as many as he likes.
And the people believe in it!"Out here it seemed as though the people of England must beshaped in the body like the kings and queens, knights31 and pawnsof the chessboard, so strange were their differences, so markedand so implicitly32 believed in.
They had to part in order to circumvent33 a crowd.
"They believe in God," said Rachel as they regained34 each other.
She meant that the people in the crowd believed in Him; for sheremembered the crosses with bleeding plaster figures that stoodwhere foot-paths joined, and the inexplicable35 mystery of a servicein a Roman Catholic church.
"We shall never understand!" she sighed.
They had walked some way and it was now night, but they could seea large iron gate a little way farther down the road on their left.
"Do you mean to go right up to the hotel?" Helen asked.
Rachel gave the gate a push; it swung open, and, seeing no oneabout and judging that nothing was private in this country,they walked straight on. An avenue of trees ran along the road,which was completely straight. The trees suddenly came to an end;the road turned a corner, and they found themselves confronted bya large square building. They had come out upon the broad terracewhich ran round the hotel and were only a few feet distant fromthe windows. A row of long windows opened almost to the ground.
They were all of them uncurtained, and all brilliantly lighted,so that they could see everything inside. Each window revealeda different section of the life of the hotel. They drew into oneof the broad columns of shadow which separated the windows andgazed in. They found themselves just outside the dining-room. Itwas being swept; a waiter was eating a bunch of grapes with his legacross the corner of a table. Next door was the kitchen, where theywere washing up; white cooks were dipping their arms into cauldrons,while the waiters made their meal voraciously36 off broken meats,sopping up the gravy37 with bits of crumb38. Moving on, they became lostin a plantation39 of bushes, and then suddenly found themselves outsidethe drawing-room, where the ladies and gentlemen, having dined well,lay back in deep arm-chairs, occasionally speaking or turning overthe pages of magazines. A thin woman was flourishing up and downthe piano.
"What is a dahabeeyah, Charles?" the distinct voice of a widow,seated in an arm-chair by the window, asked her son.
It was the end of the piece, and his answer was lost in the generalclearing of throats and tapping of knees.
"They're all old in this room," Rachel whispered.
Creeping on, they found that the next window revealed two menin shirt-sleeves playing billiards40 with two young ladies.
"He pinched my arm!" the plump young woman cried, as she missedher stroke.
"Now you two--no ragging," the young man with the red facereproved them, who was marking.
"Take care or we shall be seen," whispered Helen, plucking Rachelby the arm. Incautiously her head had risen to the middle of the window.
Turning the corner they came to the largest room in the hotel,which was supplied with four windows, and was called the Lounge,although it was really a hall. Hung with armour41 and native embroideries,furnished with divans42 and screens, which shut off convenient corners,the room was less formal than the others, and was evidently the hauntof youth. Signor Rodriguez, whom they knew to be the managerof the hotel, stood quite near them in the doorway43 surveyingthe scene--the gentlemen lounging in chairs, the couples leaningover coffee-cups, the game of cards in the centre under profuseclusters of electric light. He was congratulating himself uponthe enterprise which had turned the refectory, a cold stone roomwith pots on trestles, into the most comfortable room in the house.
The hotel was very full, and proved his wisdom in decreeingthat no hotel can flourish without a lounge.
The people were scattered44 about in couples or parties of four,and either they were actually better acquainted, or the informalroom made their manners easier. Through the open window camean uneven45 humming sound like that which rises from a flock of sheeppent within hurdles46 at dusk. The card-party occupied the centreof the foreground.
Helen and Rachel watched them play for some minutes without being ableto distinguish a word. Helen was observing one of the men intently.
He was a lean, somewhat cadaverous man of about her own age,whose profile was turned to them, and he was the partnerof a highly-coloured girl, obviously English by birth.
Suddenly, in the strange way in which some words detach themselvesfrom the rest, they heard him say quite distinctly:--"All you want is practice, Miss Warrington; courage and practice--one's no good without the other.""Hughling Elliot! Of course!" Helen exclaimed. She duckedher head immediately, for at the sound of his name he looked up.
The game went on for a few minutes, and was then broken up bythe approach of a wheeled chair, containing a voluminous old ladywho paused by the table and said:--"Better luck to-night, Susan?""All the luck's on our side," said a young man who until now had kepthis back turned to the window. He appeared to be rather stout,and had a thick crop of hair.
"Luck, Mr. Hewet?" said his partner, a middle-aged47 lady with spectacles.
"I assure you, Mrs. Paley, our success is due solely48 to our brilliant play.""Unless I go to bed early I get practically no sleep at all,"Mrs. Paley was heard to explain, as if to justify49 her seizure50 of Susan,who got up and proceeded to wheel the chair to the door.
"They'll get some one else to take my place," she said cheerfully.
But she was wrong. No attempt was made to find another player,and after the young man had built three stories of a card-house,which fell down, the players strolled off in different directions.
Mr. Hewet turned his full face towards the window. They couldsee that he had large eyes obscured by glasses; his complexionwas rosy, his lips clean-shaven; and, seen among ordinary people,it appeared to be an interesting face. He came straight towards them,but his eyes were fixed51 not upon the eavesdroppers but upon a spotwhere the curtain hung in folds.
"Asleep?" he said.
Helen and Rachel started to think that some one had been sitting nearto them unobserved all the time. There were legs in the shadow.
A melancholy52 voice issued from above them.
"Two women," it said.
A scuffling was heard on the gravel53. The women had fled. They didnot stop running until they felt certain that no eye could penetratethe darkness and the hotel was only a square shadow in the distance,with red holes regularly cut in it.
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devouring
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| 吞没( devour的现在分词 )； 耗尽； 津津有味地看； 狼吞虎咽地吃光 | |
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intermittently
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| adv.间歇地；断断续续 | |
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villa
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| n.别墅，城郊小屋 | |
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consul
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| n.领事；执政官 | |
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condescending
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| adj.谦逊的,故意屈尊的 | |
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chilly
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| adj.凉快的，寒冷的 | |
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cosy
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| adj.温暖而舒适的，安逸的 | |
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rosy
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| adj.美好的，乐观的，玫瑰色的 | |
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touching
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| adj.动人的，使人感伤的 | |
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obsequiously
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deride
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| v.嘲弄，愚弄 | |
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rumours
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| n.传闻( rumour的名词复数 )；风闻；谣言；谣传 | |
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ferment
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| vt.使发酵；n./vt.（使）激动，（使）动乱 | |
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aristocrats
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| n.贵族( aristocrat的名词复数 ) | |
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retract
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| vt.缩回，撤回收回，取消 | |
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abominable
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| adj.可厌的，令人憎恶的 | |
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flirtatious
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| adj.爱调情的，调情的，卖俏的 | |
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positively
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| adv.明确地，断然，坚决地；实在，确实 | |
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inviting
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| adj.诱人的，引人注目的 | |
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martyr
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| n.烈士，殉难者；vt.杀害，折磨，牺牲 | |
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secluded
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| adj.与世隔绝的；隐退的；偏僻的v.使隔开，使隐退( seclude的过去式和过去分词) | |
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entirely
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| ad.全部地，完整地；完全地，彻底地 | |
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scents
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| n.香水( scent的名词复数 )；气味；（动物的）臭迹；（尤指狗的）嗅觉 | |
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culled
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| v.挑选，剔除( cull的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
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amorous
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| adj.多情的；有关爱情的 | |
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strings
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| n.弦 | |
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passionate
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| adj.热情的，热烈的，激昂的，易动情的，易怒的，性情暴躁的 | |
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gutter
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| n.沟，街沟，水槽，檐槽，贫民窟 | |
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molested
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| v.骚扰( molest的过去式和过去分词 )；干扰；调戏；猥亵 | |
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seethe
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| vi.拥挤，云集；发怒，激动，骚动 | |
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knights
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| 骑士； （中古时代的）武士( knight的名词复数 )； 骑士； 爵士； （国际象棋中）马 | |
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implicitly
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| adv. 含蓄地, 暗中地, 毫不保留地 | |
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circumvent
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| vt.环绕，包围；对…用计取胜，智胜 | |
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regained
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| 复得( regain的过去式和过去分词 )； 赢回； 重回； 复至某地 | |
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inexplicable
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| adj.无法解释的，难理解的 | |
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voraciously
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| adv.贪婪地 | |
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gravy
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| n.肉汁；轻易得来的钱，外快 | |
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crumb
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| n.饼屑，面包屑，小量 | |
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plantation
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| n.种植园，大农场 | |
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billiards
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| n.台球 | |
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armour
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| （=armor）n.盔甲；装甲部队 | |
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divans
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| n.（可作床用的）矮沙发( divan的名词复数 )；（波斯或其他东方诗人的）诗集 | |
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doorway
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| n.门口，(喻)入门；门路，途径 | |
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44
scattered
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| adj.分散的，稀疏的；散步的；疏疏落落的 | |
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uneven
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| adj.不平坦的，不规则的，不均匀的 | |
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hurdles
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| n.障碍( hurdle的名词复数 )；跳栏；（供人或马跳跃的）栏架；跨栏赛 | |
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middle-aged
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| adj.中年的 | |
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solely
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| adv.仅仅，唯一地 | |
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justify
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| vt.证明…正当(或有理)，为…辩护 | |
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50
seizure
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| n.没收；占有；抵押 | |
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fixed
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| adj.固定的，不变的，准备好的；(计算机)固定的 | |
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52
melancholy
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| n.忧郁，愁思；adj.令人感伤（沮丧）的，忧郁的 | |
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gravel
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| n.砂跞；砂砾层；结石 | |
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