“You have children—your husband was in Parliament?”
“You’ve never been to school, and you live—?”
“With my aunts at Richmond.”
“Richmond?”
“You see, my aunts like the Park. They like the quiet.”
“And you don’t! I understand!” Clarissa laughed.
“I like walking in the Park alone; but not—with the dogs,” she finished.
“No; and some people are dogs; aren’t they?” said Clarissa, as if she had guessed a secret. “But not everyone—oh no, not everyone.”
“Not everyone,” said Rachel, and stopped.
“I can quite imagine you walking alone,” said Clarissa: “and thinking—in a little world of your own. But how you will enjoy it—some day!”
“I shall enjoy walking with a man—is that what you mean?” said Rachel, regarding Mrs. Dalloway with her large enquiring eyes.
“I wasn’t thinking of a man particularly,” said Clarissa. “But you will.”
“No. I shall never marry,” Rachel determined.
“I shouldn’t be so sure of that,” said Clarissa. Her sidelong glance told Rachel that she found her attractive although she was inexplicably amused.
“Why do people marry?” Rachel asked.
“That’s what you’re going to find out,” Clarissa laughed.
Rachel followed her eyes and found that they rested for a second, on the robust figure of Richard Dalloway, who was engaged in striking a match on the sole of his boot; while Willoughby expounded something, which seemed to be of great interest to them both.
“There’s nothing like it,” she concluded. “Do tell me about the Ambroses. Or am I asking too many questions?”
“I find you easy to talk to,” said Rachel.
The short sketch of the Ambroses was, however, somewhat perfunctory, and contained little but the fact that Mr. Ambrose was her uncle.
“Your mother’s brother?”
When a name has dropped out of use, the lightest touch upon it tells. Mrs. Dalloway went on:
“Are you like your mother?”
“No; she was different,” said Rachel.
She was overcome by an intense desire to tell Mrs. Dalloway things she had never told anyone—things she had not realised herself until this moment.
“I am lonely,” she began. “I want—” She did not know what she wanted, so that she could not finish the sentence; but her lip quivered.
But it seemed that Mrs. Dalloway was able to understand without words.
“I know,” she said, actually putting one arm round Rachel’s shoulder. “When I was your age I wanted too. No one understood until I met Richard. He gave me all I wanted. He’s man and woman as well.” Her eyes rested upon Mr. Dalloway, leaning upon the rail, still talking. “Don’t think I say that because I’m his wife—I see his faults more clearly than I see anyone else’s. What one wants in the person one lives with is that they should keep one at one’s best. I often wonder what I’ve done to be so happy!” she exclaimed, and a tear slid down her cheek. She wiped it away, squeezed Rachel’s hand, and exclaimed:
“How good life is!” At that moment, standing out in the fresh breeze, with the sun upon the waves, and Mrs. Dalloway’s hand upon her arm, it seemed indeed as if life which had been unnamed before was infinitely wonderful, and too good to be true.
Here Helen passed them, and seeing Rachel arm-in-arm with a comparative stranger, looking excited, was amused, but at the same time slightly irritated. But they were immediately joined by Richard, who had enjoyed a very interesting talk with Willoughby and was in a sociable mood.
“Observe my Panama,” he said, touching the brim of his hat. “Are you aware, Miss Vinrace, how much can be done to induce fine weather by appropriate headdress? I have determined that it is a hot summer day; I warn you that nothing you can say will shake me. Therefore I am going to sit down. I advise you to follow my example.” Three chairs in a row invited them to be seated.
Leaning back, Richard surveyed the waves.
“That’s a very pretty blue,” he said. “But there’s a little too much of it. Variety is essential to a view. Thus, if you have hills you ought to have a river; if a river, hills. The best view in the world in my opinion is that from Boars Hill on a fine day—it must be a fine day, mark you—A rug?—Oh, thank you, my dear … in that case you have also the advantage of associations—the Past.”
“D’you want to talk, Dick, or shall I read aloud?”
Clarissa had fetched a book with the rugs.
“Persuasion,” announced Richard, examining the volume.
“That’s for Miss Vinrace,” said Clarissa. “She can’t bear our beloved Jane.”
“That—if I may say so—is because you have not read her,” said Richard. “She is incomparably the greatest female writer we possess.”
“She is the greatest,” he continued, “and for this reason: she does not attempt to write like a man. Every other woman does; on that account, I don’t read ’em.”
“Produce your instances, Miss Vinrace,” he went on, joining his fingertips. “I’m ready to be converted.”
He waited, while Rachel vainly tried to vindicate her sex from the slight he put upon it.
“I’m afraid he’s right,” said Clarissa. “He generally is—the wretch!”
“I brought Persuasion,” she went on, “because I thought it was a little less threadbare than the others—though, Dick, it’s no good your pretending to know Jane by heart, considering that she always sends you to sleep!”
“After the labours of legislation, I deserve sleep,” said Richard.
“You’re not to think about those guns,” said Clarissa, seeing that his eye, passing over the waves, still sought the land meditatively, “or about navies, or empires, or anything.” So saying she opened the book and began to read:
“ ‘Sir Walter Elliott, of Kellynch Hall, in Somersetshire, was a man who, for his own amusement, never took up any book but the Baronetage’—don’t you know Sir Walter?—‘There he found occupation for an idle hour, and consolation in a distressed one.’ She does write well, doesn’t she? ‘There—’ ” She read on in a light humorous voice. She was determined that Sir Walter should take her husband’s mind off the guns of Britain, and divert him in an exquisite, quaint, sprightly, and slightly ridiculous world. After a time it appeared that the sun was
