Chapter XIII
There were many rooms in the villa, but one room which possessed acharacter of its own because the door was always shut, and no sound ofmusic or laughter issued from it. Every one in the house was vaguelyconscious that something went on behind that door, and without in theleast knowing what it was, were influenced in their own thoughts by theknowledge that if the passed it the door would be shut, and if they madea noise Mr. Ambrose inside would be disturbed. Certain acts thereforepossessed merit, and others were bad, so that life became moreharmonious and less disconnected than it would have been had Mr. Ambrosegiven up editing _Pindar_, and taken to a nomad existence, in and outof every room in the house. As it was, every one was conscious that byobserving certain rules, such as punctuality and quiet, by cookingwell, and performing other small duties, one ode after another wassatisfactorily restored to the world, and they shared the continuity ofthe scholar's life. Unfortunately, as age puts one barrier between humanbeings, and learning another, and sex a third, Mr. Ambrose in his studywas some thousand miles distant from the nearest human being, who inthis household was inevitably a woman. He sat hour after hour amongwhite-leaved books, alone like an idol in an empty church, still exceptfor the passage of his hand from one side of the sheet to another,silent save for an occasional choke, which drove him to extend his pipea moment in the air. As he worked his way further and further into theheart of the poet, his chair became more and more deeply encircledby books, which lay open on the floor, and could only be crossed by acareful process of stepping, so delicate that his visitors generallystopped and addressed him from the outskirts.
On the morning after the dance, however, Rachel came into her uncle'sroom and hailed him twice, "Uncle Ridley," before he paid her anyattention.
At length he looked over his spectacles.
"Well?" he asked.
"I want a book," she replied. "Gibbon's _History_ _of_ _the_ _Roman__Empire_. May I have it?"
She watched the lines on her uncle's face gradually rearrange themselvesat her question. It had been smooth as a mask before she spoke.
"Please say that again," said her uncle, either because he had not heardor because he had not understood.
She repeated the same words and reddened slightly as she did so.
"Gibbon! What on earth d'you want him for?" he enquired.
"Somebody advised me to read it," Rachel stammered.
"But I don't travel about with a miscellaneous collection ofeighteenth-century historians!" her uncle exclaimed. "Gibbon! Ten bigvolumes at least."
Rachel said that she was sorry to interrupt, and was turning to go.
"Stop!" cried her uncle. He put down his pipe, placed his book on oneside, and rose and led her slowly round the room, holding her by thearm. "Plato," he said, laying one finger on the first of a row of smalldark books, "and Jorrocks next door, which is wrong. Sophocles, Swift.You don't care for German commentators, I presume. French, then. Youread French? You should read Balzac. Then we come to Wordsworth andColeridge, Pope, Johnson, Addison, Wordsworth, Shelley, Keats. One thingleads to another. Why is Marlowe here? Mrs. Chailey, I presume. Butwhat's the use of reading if you don't read Greek? After all, if youread Greek, you need never read anything else, pure waste of time--purewaste of time," thus speaking half to himself, with quick movementsof his hands; they had come round again to the circle of books on thefloor, and their progress was stopped.
"Well," he demanded, "which shall it be?"
"Balzac," said Rachel, "or have you the _Speech_ _on_ _the_ _American__Revolution_, Uncle Ridley?"
"_The_ _Speech_ _on_ _the_ _American_ _Revolution_?" he asked. He lookedat her very keenly again. "Another young man at the dance?"
"No. That was Mr. Dalloway," she confessed.
"Good Lord!" he flung back his head in recollection of Mr. Dalloway.
She chose for herself a volume at random, submitted it to her uncle,who, seeing that it was _La_ _Cousine_ _bette_, bade her throw itaway if she found it too horrible, and was about to leave him when hedemanded whether she had enjoyed her dance?
He then wanted to know what people did at dances, seeing that he hadonly been to one thirty-five years ago, when nothing had seemed to himmore meaningless and idiotic. Did they enjoy turning round and round tothe screech of a fiddle? Did they talk, and say pretty things, andif so, why didn't they do it, under reasonable conditions? As forhimself--he sighed and pointed at the signs of industry lying all abouthim, which, in spite of his sigh, filled his face with such satisfactionthat his niece thought good to leave. On bestowing a kiss she wasallowed to go, but not until she had bound herself to learn at any ratethe Greek alphabet, and to return her French novel when done with, uponwhich something more suitable would be found for her.
As the rooms in which people live are apt to give off something of thesame shock as their faces when seen for the first time, Rachel walkedvery slowly downstairs, lost in wonder at her uncle, and his books,and his neglect of dances, and his queer, utterly inexplicable, butapparently satisfactory view of life, when her eye was caught by a notewith her name on it lying in the hall. The address was written in asmall strong hand unknown to her, and the note, which had no beginning,ran:--
I send the first volume of Gibbon as I promised. Personally I findlittle to be said for the moderns, but I'm going to send you Wedekindwhen I've done him. Donne? Have you read Webster and all that set? Ienvy you reading them for the first time. Completely exhausted afterlast night. And you?
The flourish of initials which she took to be St. J. A. H., wound upthe letter. She was very much flattered that Mr. Hirst should haveremembered her, and fulfilled his promise so quickly.
There was still an hour to luncheon, and with Gibbon in one hand, andBalzac in the other she strolled out of the gate and down the littlepath of beaten mud between the olive trees on the slope of the hill. Itwas too hot for climbing hills, but along the valley there were treesand a grass path running by the river bed. In this land where thepopulation was centred in the towns it was possible to lose sight ofcivilisation in a very short time, passing only an occasional farmhouse,where the women were handling red roots in the courtyard; or a littleboy lying on his elbows on the hillside surrounded by a flock of blackstrong-smelling goats. Save for a thread of water at the bottom, theriver was merely a deep channel of dry yellow stones. On the bank grewthose trees which Helen had said it was worth the voyage out merelyto see. April had burst their buds, and they bore large blossoms amongtheir glossy green leaves with petals of a thick wax-like substancecoloured an exquisite cream or pink or deep crimson. But filled with oneof those unreasonable exultations which start generally from an unknowncause, and sweep whole countries and skies into their embrace, shewalked without seeing. The night was encroaching upon the day. Her earshummed with the tunes she had played the night before; she sang, andthe singing made her walk faster and faster. She did not see distinctlywhere she was going, the trees and the landscape appearing only asmasses of green and blue, with an occasional space of differentlycoloured sky. Faces of people she had seen last night came before her;she heard their voices; she stopped singing, and began saying thingsover again or saying things differently, or inventing things that mighthave been said. The constraint of being among strangers in a long silkdress made it unusually exciting to stride thus alone. Hewet, Hirst, Mr.Venning, Miss Allan, the music, the light, the dark trees in thegarden, the dawn,--as she walked they went surging round in her head,a tumultuous background from which the present moment, with itsopportunity of doing exactly as she liked, sprung more wonderfully vivideven than the night before.
So she might have walked until she had lost all knowledge of her way,had it not been for the interruption of a tree, which, although it didnot grow across her path, stopped her as effectively as if the brancheshad struck her in the face. It was an ordinary tree, but to her itappeared so strange that it might have been the only tree in the world.Dark was the trunk in the middle, and the branches sprang here andthere, leavi
ng jagged intervals of light between them as distinctly asif it had but that second risen from the ground. Having seen a sightthat would last her for a lifetime, and for a lifetime would preservethat second, the tree once more sank into the ordinary ranks of trees,and she was able to seat herself in its shade and to pick the redflowers with the thin green leaves which were growing beneath it. Shelaid them side by side, flower to flower and stalk to stalk, caressingthem for walking alone. Flowers and even pebbles in the earth had theirown life and disposition, and brought back the feelings of a child towhom they were companions. Looking up, her eye was caught by the line ofthe mountains flying out energetically across the sky like the lash ofa curling whip. She looked at the pale distant sky, and the high bareplaces on the mountain-tops lying exposed to the sun. When she satdown she had dropped her books on to the earth at her feet, and now shelooked down on them lying there, so square in the grass, a tall stembending over and tickling the smooth brown cover of Gibbon, while themottled blue Balzac lay naked in the sun. With a feeling that to openand read would certainly be a surprising experience, she turned thehistorian's page and read that--
His generals, in the early part of his reign, attempted the reductionof Aethiopia and Arabia Felix. They marched near a thousand miles tothe south of the tropic; but the heat of the climate soon repelledthe invaders and protected the unwarlike natives of those sequesteredregions. . . . The northern countries of Europe scarcely deserved theexpense and labour of conquest. The forests and morasses of Germany werefilled with a hardy race of barbarians, who despised life when it wasseparated from freedom.
Never had any words been so vivid and so beautiful--ArabiaFelix--Aethiopia. But those were not more noble than the others, hardybarbarians, forests, and morasses. They seemed to drive roads back tothe very beginning of the world, on either side of which the populationsof all times and countries stood in avenues, and by passing down themall knowledge would be hers, and the book of the world turned back tothe very first page. Such was her excitement at the possibilities ofknowledge now opening before her that she ceased to read, and a breezeturning the page, the covers of Gibbon gently ruffled and closedtogether. She then rose again and walked on. Slowly her mind became lessconfused and sought the origins of her exaltation, which were twofoldand could be limited by an effort to the persons of Mr. Hirst and Mr.Hewet. Any clear analysis of them was impossible owing to the haze ofwonder in which they were enveloped. She could not reason about them asabout people whose feelings went by the same rule as her own did, andher mind dwelt on them with a kind of physical pleasure such as iscaused by the contemplation of bright things hanging in the sun. Fromthem all life seemed to radiate; the very words of books were steepedin radiance. She then became haunted by a suspicion which she was soreluctant to face that she welcomed a trip and stumble over the grassbecause thus her attention was dispersed, but in a second it hadcollected itself again. Unconsciously she had been walking faster andfaster, her body trying to outrun her mind; but she was now on thesummit of a little hillock of earth which rose above the river anddisplayed the valley. She was no longer able to juggle with severalideas, but must deal with the most persistent, and a kind of melancholyreplaced her excitement. She sank down on to the earth clasping herknees together, and looking blankly in front of her. For some time sheobserved a great yellow butterfly, which was opening and closing itswings very slowly on a little flat stone.
"What is it to be in love?" she demanded, after a long silence; eachword as it came into being seemed to shove itself out into an unknownsea. Hypnotised by the wings of the butterfly, and awed by the discoveryof a terrible possibility in life, she sat for some time longer. Whenthe butterfly flew away, she rose, and with her two books beneath herarm returned home again, much as a soldier prepared for battle.
The Voyage Out Page 13