The Complete Novels - 9 Books in One Edition. Virginia Woolf

off the dressing-table, so Helen was anxious to make things straight again after the visitors had gone. Rachel’s obvious languor and listlessness made her an easy prey, and indeed Helen had devised a kind of trap. That something had happened she now felt pretty certain; moreover, she had come to think that they had been strangers long enough; she wished to know what the girl was like, partly of course because Rachel showed no disposition to be known. So, as they turned from the rail, she said:

      “Come and talk to me instead of practising,” and led the way to the sheltered side where the deck-chairs were stretched in the sun. Rachel followed her indifferently. Her mind was absorbed by Richard; by the extreme strangeness of what had happened, and by a thousand feelings of which she had not been conscious before. She made scarcely any attempt to listen to what Helen was saying, as Helen indulged in commonplaces to begin with. While Mrs. Ambrose arranged her embroidery, sucked her silk, and threaded her needle, she lay back gazing at the horizon.

      “Did you like those people?” Helen asked her casually.

      “Yes,” she replied blankly.

      “You talked to him, didn’t you?”

      She said nothing for a minute.

      “He kissed me,” she said without any change of tone.

      Helen started, looked at her, but could not make out what she felt.

      “M-m-m’yes,” she said, after a pause. “I thought he was that kind of man.”

      “What kind of man?” said Rachel.

      “Pompous and sentimental.”

      “I like him,” said Rachel.

      “So you really didn’t mind?”

      For the first time since Helen had known her Rachel’s eyes lit up brightly.

      “I did mind,” she said vehemently. “I dreamt. I couldn’t sleep.”

      “Tell me what happened,” said Helen. She had to keep her lips from twitching as she listened to Rachel’s story. It was poured out abruptly with great seriousness and no sense of humour.

      “We talked about politics. He told me what he had done for the poor somewhere. I asked him all sorts of questions. He told me about his own life. The day before yesterday, after the storm, he came in to see me. It happened then, quite suddenly. He kissed me. I don’t know why.” As she spoke she grew flushed. “I was a good deal excited,” she continued. “But I didn’t mind till afterwards; when—” she paused, and saw the figure of the bloated little man again—“I became terrified.”

      From the look in her eyes it was evident she was again terrified. Helen was really at a loss what to say. From the little she knew of Rachel’s upbringing she supposed that she had been kept entirely ignorant as to the relations of men with women. With a shyness which she felt with women and not with men she did not like to explain simply what these are. Therefore she took the other course and belittled the whole affair.

      “Oh, well,” she said, “He was a silly creature, and if I were you, I’d think no more about it.”

      “No,” said Rachel, sitting bolt upright, “I shan’t do that. I shall think about it all day and all night until I find out exactly what it does mean.”

      “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