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

as though she would like to say something but could not find the words in which to express it. “Every one’s been so kind—so very kind,” she said. Then she too went to bed.

      The party having ended in the very abrupt way in which parties do end, Helen and Rachel stood by the door with their cloaks on, looking for a carriage.

      “I suppose you realise that there are no carriages left?” said St. John, who had been out to look. “You must sleep here.”

      “Oh, no,” said Helen; “we shall walk.”

      “May we come too?” Hewet asked. “We can’t go to bed. Imagine lying among bolsters and looking at one’s washstand on a morning like this—Is that where you live?” They had begun to walk down the avenue, and he turned and pointed at the white and green villa on the hillside, which seemed to have its eyes shut.

      “That’s not a light burning, is it?” Helen asked anxiously.

      “It’s the sun,” said St. John. The upper windows had each a spot of gold on them.

      “I was afraid it was my husband, still reading Greek,” she said. “All this time he’s been editing Pindar.”

      They passed through the town and turned up the steep road, which was perfectly clear, though still unbordered by shadows. Partly because they were tired, and partly because the early light subdued them, they scarcely spoke, but breathed in the delicious fresh air, which seemed to belong to a different state of life from the air at midday. When they came to the high yellow wall, where the lane turned off from the road, Helen was for dismissing the two young men.

      “You’ve come far enough,” she said. “Go back to bed.”

      But they seemed unwilling to move.

      “Let’s sit down a moment,” said Hewet. He spread his coat on the ground. “Let’s sit down and consider.” They sat down and looked out over the bay; it was very still, the sea was rippling faintly, and lines of green and blue were beginning to stripe it. There were no sailing boats as yet, but a steamer was anchored in the bay, looking very ghostly in the mist; it gave one unearthly cry, and then all was silent.

      Rachel occupied herself in collecting one grey stone after another and building them into a little cairn; she did it very quietly and carefully.

      “And so you’ve changed your view of life, Rachel?” said Helen.

      Rachel added another stone and yawned. “I don’t remember,” she said, “I feel like a fish at the bottom of the sea.” She yawned again. None of these people possessed any power to frighten her out here in the dawn, and she felt perfectly familiar even with Mr. Hirst.

      “My brain, on the contrary,” said Hirst, “is in a condition of abnormal activity.” He sat in his favourite position with his arms binding his legs together and his chin resting on the top of his knees. “I see through everything—absolutely everything. Life has no more mysteries for me.” He spoke with conviction, but did not appear to wish for an answer. Near though they sat, and familiar though they felt, they seemed mere shadows to each other.

      “And all those people down there going to sleep,” Hewet began dreamily, “thinking such different things,—Miss Warrington, I suppose, is now on her knees; the Elliots are a little startled, it’s not often they get out of breath, and they want to get to sleep as quickly as possible; then there’s the poor lean young man who danced all night with Evelyn; he’s putting his flower in water and asking himself, ‘Is this love?’—and poor old Perrott, I daresay, can’t get to sleep at all, and is reading his favourite Greek book to console himself—and the others—no, Hirst,” he wound up, “I don’t find it simple at all.”

      “I have a key,” said Hirst cryptically. His chin was still upon his knees and his eyes fixed in front of him.

      A silence followed. Then Helen rose and bade them good-night. “But,” she said, “remember that you’ve got to come and see us.”

      They waved good-night and parted, but the two young men did not go back to the hotel; they went for a walk, during which they scarcely spoke, and never mentioned the names of the two women, who were, to a considerable extent, the subject of their thoughts. They did not wish to share their impressions. They returned to the hotel in time for breakfast.

Chapter XIII

      There were many rooms in the villa, but one room which possessed a character of its own because the door was always shut, and no sound of music or laughter issued from it. Every one in the house was vaguely conscious that something went on behind that door, and without in the least knowing what it was, were influenced in their own thoughts by the knowledge that if the passed it the door would be shut, and if they made a noise Mr. Ambrose inside would be disturbed. Certain acts therefore possessed merit, and others were bad, so that life became more harmonious and less disconnected than it would have been had Mr. Ambrose given up editing Pindar, and taken to a nomad existence, in and out of every room in the house. As it was, every one was conscious that by observing certain rules, such as punctuality and quiet, by cooking well, and performing other small duties, one ode after another was satisfactorily restored to the world, and they shared the continuity of the scholar’s life. Unfortunately, as age puts one barrier between human beings, and learning another, and sex a third, Mr. Ambrose in his study was some thousand miles distant from the nearest human being, who in this household was inevitably a woman. He sat hour after hour among white-leaved books, alone like an idol in an empty church, still except for 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 pipe a moment in the air. As he worked his way further and further into the heart of the poet, his chair became more and more deeply encircled by books, which lay open on the floor, and could only be crossed by a careful process of stepping, so delicate that his visitors generally stopped and addressed him from the outskirts.

      On the morning after the dance, however, Rachel came into her uncle’s room and hailed him twice, “Uncle Ridley,” before he paid her any attention.

      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 themselves at her question. It had been smooth as a mask before she spoke.

      “Please say that again,” said her uncle, either because he had not heard or 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 of eighteenth-century historians!” her uncle exclaimed. “Gibbon! Ten big volumes 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 one side, and rose and led her slowly round the room, holding her by the arm. “Plato,” he said, laying one finger on the first of a row of small dark books, “and Jorrocks next door, which is wrong. Sophocles, Swift. You don’t care for German commentators, I presume. French, then. You read French? You should read Balzac. Then we come to Wordsworth and Coleridge, Pope, Johnson, Addison, Wordsworth, Shelley, Keats. One thing leads to another. Why is Marlowe here? Mrs. Chailey, I presume. But what’s the use of reading if you don’t read Greek? After all, if you read Greek, you need never read anything else, pure waste of time—pure waste of time,” thus speaking half to himself, with quick movements of his hands; they had come round again to the circle of books on the floor, and their progress was stopped.

      “Well,” he demanded, “which shall it be?”

      “Balzac,”