The Virginia Woolf Megapack. Virginia Woolf

      “Don’t you ever read?” Helen asked tentatively.

      “Cowper’s Letters—that kind of thing. Father gets them for me or my Aunts.”

      Helen could hardly restrain herself from saying out loud what she thought of a man who brought up his daughter so that at the age of twenty-four she scarcely knew that men desired women and was terrified by a kiss. She had good reason to fear that Rachel had made herself incredibly ridiculous.

      “You don’t know many men?” she asked.

      “Mr. Pepper,” said Rachel ironically.

      “So no one’s ever wanted to marry you?”

      “No,” she answered ingenuously.

      Helen reflected that as, from what she had said, Rachel certainly would think these things out, it might be as well to help her.

      “You oughtn’t to be frightened,” she said. “It’s the most natural thing in the world. Men will want to kiss you, just as they’ll want to marry you. The pity is to get things out of proportion. It’s like noticing the noises people make when they eat, or men spitting; or, in short, any small thing that gets on one’s nerves.”

      Rachel seemed to be inattentive to these remarks.

      “Tell me,” she said suddenly, “what are those women in Piccadilly?”

      “In Picadilly? They are prostituted,” said Helen.

      “It is terrifying—it is disgusting,” Rachel asserted, as if she included Helen in the hatred.

      “It is,” said Helen. “But—”

      “I did like him,” Rachel mused, as if speaking to herself. “I wanted to talk to him; I wanted to know what he’d done. The women in Lancashire—”

      It seemed to her as she recalled their talk that there was something lovable about Richard, good in their attempted friendship, and strangely piteous in the way they had parted.

      The softening of her mood was apparent to Helen.

      “You see,” she said, “you must take things as they are; and if you want friendship with men you must run risks. Personally,” she continued, breaking into a smile, “I think it’s worth it; I don’t mind being kissed; I’m rather jealous, I believe, that Mr. Dalloway kissed you and didn’t kiss me. Though,” she added, “he bored me considerably.”

      But Rachel did not return the smile or dismiss the whole affair, as Helen meant her to. Her mind was working very quickly, inconsistently and painfully. Helen’s words hewed down great blocks which had stood there always, and the light which came in was cold. After sitting for a time with fixed eyes, she burst out:

      “So that’s why I can’t walk alone!”

      By this new light she saw her life for the first time a creeping hedged-in thing, driven cautiously between high walls, here turned aside, there plunged in darkness, made dull and crippled for ever—her life that was the only chance she had—a thousand words and actions became plain to her.

      “Because men are brutes! I hate men!” she exclaimed.

      “I thought you said you liked him?” said Helen.

      “I liked him, and I liked being kissed,” she answered, as if that only added more difficulties to her problem.

      Helen was surprised to see how genuine both shock and problem were, but she could think of no way of easing the difficulty except by going on talking. She wanted to make her niece talk, and so to understand why this rather dull, kindly, plausible politician had made so deep an impression on her, for surely at the age of twenty-four this was not natural.

      “And did you like Mrs. Dalloway too?” she asked.

      As she spoke she saw Rachel redden; for she remembered silly things she had said, and also, it occurred to her that she treated this exquisite woman rather badly, for Mrs. Dalloway had said that she loved her husband.

      “She was quite nice, but a thimble-pated creature,” Helen continued. “I never heard such nonsense! Chitter-chatter-chitter-chatter—fish and the Greek alphabet—never listened to a word any one said—chock-full of idiotic theories about the way to bring up children—I’d far rather talk to him any day. He was pompous, but he did at least understand what was said to him.”

      The glamour insensibly faded a little both from Richard and Clarissa. They had not been so wonderful after all, then, in the eyes of a mature person.

      “It’s very difficult to know what people are like,” Rachel remarked, and Helen saw with pleasure that she spoke more naturally. “I suppose I was taken in.”

      There was little doubt about that according to Helen, but she restrained herself and said aloud:

      “One has to make experiments.”

      “And they were nice,” said Rachel. “They were extraordinarily interesting.” She tried to recall the image of the world as a live thing that Richard had given her, with drains like nerves, and bad houses like patches of diseased skin. She recalled his watch-words—Unity—Imagination, and saw again the bubbles meeting in her teacup as he spoke of sisters and canaries, boyhood and his father, her small world becoming wonderfully enlarged.

      “But all people don’t seem to you equally interesting, do they?” asked Mrs. Ambrose.

      Rachel explained that most people had hitherto been symbols; but that when they talked to one they ceased to be symbols, and became—“I could listen to them for ever!” she exclaimed. She then jumped up, disappeared downstairs for a minute, and came back with a fat red book.

      “Who’s Who,” she said, laying it upon Helen’s knee and turning the pages. “It gives short lives of people—for instance: ‘Sir Roland Beal; born 1852; parents from Moffatt; educated at Rugby; passed first into R.E.; married 1878 the daughter of T. Fishwick; served in the Bechuanaland Expedition 1884-85 (honourably mentioned). Clubs: United Service, Naval and Military. Recreations: an enthusiastic curler.’”

      Sitting on the deck at Helen’s feet she went on turning the pages and reading biographies of bankers, writers, clergymen, sailors, surgeons, judges, professors, statesmen, editors, philanthropists, merchants, and actresses; what clubs they belonged to, where they lived, what games they played, and how many acres they owned.

      She became absorbed in the book.

      Helen meanwhile stitched at her embroidery and thought over the things they had said. Her conclusion was that she would very much like to show her niece, if it were possible, how to live, or as she put it, how to be a reasonable person. She thought that there must be something wrong in this confusion between politics and kissing politicians, and that an elder person ought to be able to help.

      “I quite agree,” she said, “that people are very interesting; only—” Rachel, putting her finger between the pages, looked up enquiringly.

      “Only I think you ought to discriminate,” she ended. “It’s a pity to be intimate with people who are—well, rather second-rate, like the Dalloways, and to find it out later.”

      “But how does one know?” Rachel asked.

      “I really can’t tell you,” replied Helen candidly, after a moment’s thought. “You’ll have to find out for yourself. But try and—Why don’t you call me Helen?” she added. “‘Aunt’s’ a horrid name. I never liked my Aunts.”

      “I should like to call you Helen,” Rachel answered.

      “D’you think me very unsympathetic?”

      Rachel reviewed the points which Helen had certainly failed to understand; they arose chiefly from the difference of nearly twenty years in age between them, which made Mrs. Ambrose appear too humorous and cool in a matter of such moment.

      “No,” she said. “Some things you