Uncomfortable as the night, with its rocking movement,and salt smells, may have been, and in one case undoubtedly was,for Mr. Pepper had insufficient clothes upon his bed, the breakfastnext morning wore a kind of beauty. The voyage had begun,and had begun happily with a soft blue sky, and a calm sea.

　　The sense of untapped resources, things to say as yet unsaid,made the hour significant, so that in future years the entire journeyperhaps would be represented by this one scene, with the soundof sirens hooting in the river the night before, somehow mixing in.

　　The table was cheerful with apples and bread and eggs. Helen handedWilloughby the butter, and as she did so cast her eye on himand reflected, "And she married you, and she was happy, I suppose."She went off on a familiar train of thought, leading on to allkinds of well-known reflections, from the old wonder, why Theresahad married Willoughby?

　　"Of course, one sees all that," she thought, meaning that one seesthat he is big and burly, and has a great booming voice, and a fistand a will of his own; "but--" here she slipped into a fine analysisof him which is best represented by one word, "sentimental," by whichshe meant that he was never simple and honest about his feelings.

　　For example, he seldom spoke of the dead, but kept anniversarieswith singular pomp. She suspected him of nameless atrocitieswith regard to his daughter, as indeed she had always suspectedhim of bullying his wife. Naturally she fell to comparing herown fortunes with the fortunes of her friend, for Willoughby'swife had been perhaps the one woman Helen called friend, and thiscomparison often made the staple of their talk. Ridley was a scholar,and Willoughby was a man of business. Ridley was bringing out the thirdvolume of Pindar when Willoughby was launching his first ship.

　　They built a new factory the very year the commentary on Aristotle--was it?--appeared at the University Press. "And Rachel," she lookedat her, meaning, no doubt, to decide the argument, which wasotherwise too evenly balanced, by declaring that Rachel was notcomparable to her own children. "She really might be six years old,"was all she said, however, this judgment referring to the smoothunmarked outline of the girl's face, and not condemning her otherwise,for if Rachel were ever to think, feel, laugh, or express herself,instead of dropping milk from a height as though to see what kind ofdrops it made, she might be interesting though never exactly pretty.

　　She was like her mother, as the image in a pool on a still summer'sday is like the vivid flushed face that hangs over it.

　　Meanwhile Helen herself was under examination, though not from eitherof her victims. Mr. Pepper considered her; and his meditations,carried on while he cut his toast into bars and neatly buttered them,took him through a considerable stretch of autobiography. One ofhis penetrating glances assured him that he was right last nightin judging that Helen was beautiful. Blandly he passed her the jam.

　　She was talking nonsense, but not worse nonsense than people usuallydo talk at breakfast, the cerebral circulation, as he knew to his cost,being apt to give trouble at that hour. He went on saying "No" to her,on principle, for he never yielded to a woman on account of her sex.

　　And here, dropping his eyes to his plate, he became autobiographical.

　　He had not married himself for the sufficient reason that he hadnever met a woman who commanded his respect. Condemned to passthe susceptible years of youth in a railway station in Bombay,he had seen only coloured women, military women, official women;and his ideal was a woman who could read Greek, if not Persian,was irreproachably fair in the face, and able to understandthe small things he let fall while undressing. As it was hehad contracted habits of which he was not in the least ashamed.

　　Certain odd minutes every day went to learning things by heart;he never took a ticket without noting the number; he devotedJanuary to Petronius, February to Catullus, March to the Etruscanvases perhaps; anyhow he had done good work in India, and therewas nothing to regret in his life except the fundamental defectswhich no wise man regrets, when the present is still his.

　　So concluding he looked up suddenly and smiled. Rachel caughthis eye.

　　"And now you've chewed something thirty-seven times, I suppose?"she thought, but said politely aloud, "Are your legs troubling youto-day, Mr. Pepper?""My shoulder blades?" he asked, shifting them painfully.

　　"Beauty has no effect upon uric acid that I'm aware of," he sighed,contemplating the round pane opposite, through which the sky and seashowed blue. At the same time he took a little parchment volumefrom his pocket and laid it on the table. As it was clear that heinvited comment, Helen asked him the name of it. She got the name;but she got also a disquisition upon the proper method of making roads.

　　Beginning with the Greeks, who had, he said, many difficultiesto contend with, he continued with the Romans, passed to Englandand the right method, which speedily became the wrong method,and wound up with such a fury of denunciation directed againstthe road-makers of the present day in general, and the road-makersof Richmond Park in particular, where Mr. Pepper had the habitof cycling every morning before breakfast, that the spoons fairlyjingled against the coffee cups, and the insides of at least fourrolls mounted in a heap beside Mr. Pepper's plate.

　　"Pebbles!" he concluded, viciously dropping another bread pelletupon the heap. "The roads of England are mended with pebbles!

　　'With the first heavy rainfall,' I've told 'em, 'your roadwill be a swamp.' Again and again my words have proved true.

　　But d'you suppose they listen to me when I tell 'em so, when Ipoint out the consequences, the consequences to the public purse,when I recommend 'em to read Coryphaeus? No, Mrs. Ambrose, you willform no just opinion of the stupidity of mankind until you have satupon a Borough Council!" The little man fixed her with a glanceof ferocious energy.

　　"I have had servants," said Mrs. Ambrose, concentrating her gaze.

　　"At this moment I have a nurse. She's a good woman as they go,but she's determined to make my children pray. So far, owing togreat care on my part, they think of God as a kind of walrus;but now that my back's turned--Ridley," she demanded, swinging roundupon her husband, "what shall we do if we find them saying the Lord'sPrayer when we get home again?"Ridley made the sound which is represented by "Tush." But Willoughby,whose discomfort as he listened was manifested by a slight movementrocking of his body, said awkwardly, "Oh, surely, Helen, a littlereligion hurts nobody.""I would rather my children told lies," she replied, and whileWilloughby was reflecting that his sister-in-law was even more eccentricthan he remembered, pushed her chair back and swept upstairs.

　　In a second they heard her calling back, "Oh, look! We're out at sea!"They followed her on to the deck. All the smoke and the houseshad disappeared, and the ship was out in a wide space of sea veryfresh and clear though pale in the early light. They had leftLondon sitting on its mud. A very thin line of shadow tapered onthe horizon, scarcely thick enough to stand the burden of Paris,which nevertheless rested upon it. They were free of roads,free of mankind, and the same exhilaration at their freedom ranthrough them all. The ship was making her way steadily through smallwaves which slapped her and then fizzled like effervescing water,leaving a little border of bubbles and foam on either side.

　　The colourless October sky above was thinly clouded as if by the trailof wood-fire smoke, and the air was wonderfully salt and brisk.

　　Indeed it was too cold to stand still. Mrs. Ambrose drew her armwithin her husband's, and as they moved off it could be seen fromthe way in which her sloping cheek turned up to his that she hadsomething private to communicate. They went a few paces and Rachelsaw them kiss.

　　Down she looked into the depth of the sea. While it was slightlydisturbed on the surface by the passage of the _Euphrosyne_,beneath it was green and dim, and it grew dimmer and dimmer untilthe sand at the bottom was only a pale blur. One could scarcelysee the black ribs of wrecked ships, or the spiral towers madeby the burrowings of great eels, or the smooth green-sided monsterswho came by flickering this way and that.

　　--"And, Rachel, if any one wants me, I'm busy till one," said her father,enforcing his words as he often did, when he spoke to his daughter,by a smart blow upon the shoulder.

　　"Until one," he repeated. "And you'll find yourself some employment,eh? Scales, French, a little German, eh? There's Mr. Pepper who knowsmore about separable verbs than any man in Europe, eh?" and he wentoff laughing. Rachel laughed, too, as indeed she had laughed ever since shecould remember, without thinking it funny, but because she admired her father.

　　But just as she was turning with a view perhaps to findingsome employment, she was intercepted by a woman who was so broadand so thick that to be intercepted by her was inevitable.

　　The discreet tentative way in which she moved, together with hersober black dress, showed that she belonged to the lower orders;nevertheless she took up a rock-like position, looking about her to seethat no gentry were near before she delivered her message, which hadreference to the state of the sheets, and was of the utmost gravity.

　　"How ever we're to get through this voyage, Miss Rachel, I reallycan't tell," she began with a shake of her head. "There's onlyjust sheets enough to go round, and the master's has a rotten placeyou could put your fingers through. And the counterpanes. Did younotice the counterpanes? I thought to myself a poor person wouldhave been ashamed of them. The one I gave Mr. Pepper was hardly fitto cover a dog. . . . No, Miss Rachel, they could _not_ be mended;they're only fit for dust sheets. Why, if one sewed one's fingerto the bone, one would have one's work undone the next time theywent to the laundry."Her voice in its indignation wavered as if tears were near.

　　There was nothing for it but to descend and inspect a large pileof linen heaped upon a table. Mrs. Chailey handled the sheetsas if she knew each by name, character, and constitution. Some hadyellow stains, others had places where the threads made long ladders;but to the ordinary eye they looked much as sheets usually do look,very chill, white, cold, and irreproachably clean.

　　Suddenly Mrs. Chailey, turning from the subject of sheets,dismissing them entirely, clenched her fists on the top of them,and proclaimed, "And you couldn't ask a living creature to sitwhere I sit!"Mrs. Chailey was expected to sit in a cabin which was large enough,but too near the boilers, so that after five minutes she couldhear her heart "go," she complained, putting her hand above it,which was a state of things that Mrs. Vinrace, Rachel's mother,would never have dreamt of inflicting--Mrs. Vinrace, who knew everysheet in her house, and expected of every one the best they could do,but no more.

　　It was the easiest thing in the world to grant another room,and the problem of sheets simultaneously and miraculously solved itself,the spots and ladders not being past cure after all, but--"Lies! Lies! Lies!" exclaimed the mistress indignantly, as sheran up on to the deck. "What's the use of telling me lies?"In her anger that a woman of fifty should behave like a childand come cringing to a girl because she wanted to sit where shehad not leave to sit, she did not think of the particular case, and,unpacking her music, soon forgot all about the old woman and her sheets.

　　Mrs. Chailey folded her sheets, but her expression testified toflatness within. The world no longer cared about her, and a shipwas not a home. When the lamps were lit yesterday, and the sailorswent tumbling above her head, she had cried; she would crythis evening; she would cry to-morrow. It was not home. Meanwhile shearranged her ornaments in the room which she had won too easily.

　　They were strange ornaments to bring on a sea voyage--china pugs,tea-sets in miniature, cups stamped floridly with the arms of the cityof Bristol, hair-pin boxes crusted with shamrock, antelopes' heads incoloured plaster, together with a multitude of tiny photographs,representing downright workmen in their Sunday best, and womenholding white babies. But there was one portrait in a gilt frame,for which a nail was needed, and before she sought it Mrs. Chaileyput on her spectacles and read what was written on a slip of paperat the back:

　　"This picture of her mistress is given to Emma Chailey by WilloughbyVinrace in gratitude for thirty years of devoted service."Tears obliterated the words and the head of the nail.

　　"So long as I can do something for your family," she was saying,as she hammered at it, when a voice called melodiously in the passage:

　　"Mrs. Chailey! Mrs. Chailey!"Chailey instantly tidied her dress, composed her face, and openedthe door.

　　"I'm in a fix," said Mrs. Ambrose, who was flushed and out of breath.

　　"You know what gentlemen are. The chairs too high--the tablestoo low--there's six inches between the floor and the door.

　　What I want's a hammer, an old quilt, and have you such a thingas a kitchen table? Anyhow, between us"--she now flung open the doorof her husband's sitting room, and revealed Ridley pacing up and down,his forehead all wrinkled, and the collar of his coat turned up.

　　"It's as though they'd taken pains to torment me!" he cried,stopping dead. "Did I come on this voyage in order to catchrheumatism and pneumonia? Really one might have credited Vinracewith more sense. My dear," Helen was on her knees under a table,"you are only making yourself untidy, and we had much better recognisethe fact that we are condemned to six weeks of unspeakable misery.

　　To come at all was the height of folly, but now that we are here Isuppose that I can face it like a man. My diseases of course willbe increased--I feel already worse than I did yesterday, but we'veonly ourselves to thank, and the children happily--""Move! Move! Move!" cried Helen, chasing him from cornerto corner with a chair as though he were an errant hen.

　　"Out of the way, Ridley, and in half an hour you'll find it ready."She turned him out of the room, and they could hear him groaningand swearing as he went along the passage.

　　"I daresay he isn't very strong," said Mrs. Chailey, looking atMrs. Ambrose compassionately, as she helped to shift and carry.

　　"It's books," sighed Helen, lifting an armful of sad volumesfrom the floor to the shelf. "Greek from morning to night.

　　If ever Miss Rachel marries, Chailey, pray that she may marry a manwho doesn't know his ABC."The preliminary discomforts and harshnesses, which generally makethe first days of a sea voyage so cheerless and trying to the temper,being somehow lived through, the succeeding days passed pleasantly enough.

　　October was well advanced, but steadily burning with a warmth that madethe early months of the summer appear very young and capricious.

　　Great tracts of the earth lay now beneath the autumn sun, and the wholeof England, from the bald moors to the Cornish rocks, was lit up fromdawn to sunset, and showed in stretches of yellow, green, and purple.

　　Under that illumination even the roofs of the great towns glittered.

　　In thousands of small gardens, millions of dark-red flowers were blooming,until the old ladies who had tended them so carefully came downthe paths with their scissors, snipped through their juicy stalks,and laid them upon cold stone ledges in the village church.

　　Innumerable parties of picnickers coming home at sunset cried,"Was there ever such a day as this?" "It's you," the young men whispered;"Oh, it's you," the young women replied. All old people and many sickpeople were drawn, were it only for a foot or two, into the open air,and prognosticated pleasant things about the course of the world.

　　As for the confidences and expressions of love that were heard notonly in cornfields but in lamplit rooms, where the windows openedon the garden, and men with cigars kissed women with grey hairs,they were not to be counted. Some said that the sky was an emblemof the life to come. Long-tailed birds clattered and screamed,and crossed from wood to wood, with golden eyes in their plumage.

　　But while all this went on by land, very few people thoughtabout the sea. They took it for granted that the sea was calm;and there was no need, as there is in many houses when the creepertaps on the bedroom windows, for the couples to murmur beforethey kiss, "Think of the ships to-night," or "Thank Heaven,I'm not the man in the lighthouse!" For all they imagined, the shipswhen they vanished on the sky-line dissolved, like snow in water.

　　The grown-up view, indeed, was not much clearer than the viewof the little creatures in bathing drawers who were trotting in tothe foam all along the coasts of England, and scooping up bucketsfull of water. They saw white sails or tufts of smoke pass acrossthe horizon, and if you had said that these were waterspouts,or the petals of white sea flowers, they would have agreed.

　　The people in ships, however, took an equally singular view of England.

　　Not only did it appear to them to be an island, and a very small island,but it was a shrinking island in which people were imprisoned.

　　One figured them first swarming about like aimless ants, and almostpressing each other over the edge; and then, as the ship withdrew,one figured them making a vain clamour, which, being unheard,either ceased, or rose into a brawl. Finally, when the ship wasout of sight of land, it became plain that the people of Englandwere completely mute. The disease attacked other parts of the earth;Europe shrank, Asia shrank, Africa and America shrank, until it seemeddoubtful whether the ship would ever run against any of those wrinkledlittle rocks again. But, on the other hand, an immense dignity haddescended upon her; she was an inhabitant of the great world, which hasso few inhabitants, travelling all day across an empty universe,with veils drawn before her and behind. She was more lonely thanthe caravan crossing the desert; she was infinitely more mysterious,moving by her own power and sustained by her own resources. The seamight give her death or some unexampled joy, and none would know of it.

　　She was a bride going forth to her husband, a virgin unknown of men;in her vigor and purity she might be likened to all beautiful things,for as a ship she had a life of her own.

　　Indeed if they had not been blessed in their weather, one blueday being bowled up after another, smooth, round, and flawless.

　　Mrs. Ambrose would have found it very dull. As it was, she had herembroidery frame set up on deck, with a little table by her sideon which lay open a black volume of philosophy. She chose a threadfrom the vari-coloured tangle that lay in her lap, and sewedred into the bark of a tree, or yellow into the river torrent.

　　She was working at a great design of a tropical river runningthrough a tropical forest, where spotted deer would eventually browseupon masses of fruit, bananas, oranges, and giant pomegranates,while a troop of naked natives whirled darts into the air.

　　Between the stitches she looked to one side and read a sentenceabout the Reality of Matter, or the Nature of Good. Round her menin blue jerseys knelt and scrubbed the boards, or leant over the railsand whistled, and not far off Mr. Pepper sat cutting up roots witha penknife. The rest were occupied in other parts of the ship:

　　Ridley at his Greek--he had never found quarters more to his liking;Willoughby at his documents, for he used a voyage to work of arrearsof business; and Rachel--Helen, between her sentences of philosophy,wondered sometimes what Rachel _did_ do with herself? She meantvaguely to go and see. They had scarcely spoken two words to eachother since that first evening; they were polite when they met,but there had been no confidence of any kind. Rachel seemed to geton very well with her father--much better, Helen thought, than sheought to--and was as ready to let Helen alone as Helen was to lether alone.

　　At that moment Rachel was sitting in her room doing absolutely nothing.

　　When the ship was full this apartment bore some magnificent titleand was the resort of elderly sea-sick ladies who left the deckto their youngsters. By virtue of the piano, and a mess of bookson the floor, Rachel considered it her room, and there she would sitfor hours playing very difficult music, reading a little German,or a little English when the mood took her, and doing--as at this moment--absolutely nothing.

　　The way she had been educated, joined to a fine natural indolence,was of course partly the reason of it, for she had been educatedas the majority of well-to-do girls in the last part of the nineteenthcentury were educated. Kindly doctors and gentle old professors hadtaught her the rudiments of about ten different branches of knowledge,but they would as soon have forced her to go through one piece of drudgerythoroughly as they would have told her that her hands were dirty.

　　The one hour or the two hours weekly passed very pleasantly,partly owing to the other pupils, partly to the fact that the windowlooked upon the back of a shop, where figures appeared againstthe red windows in winter, partly to the accidents that are boundto happen when more than two people are in the same room together.

　　But there was no subject in the world which she knew accurately.

　　Her mind was in the state of an intelligent man's in the beginningof the reign of Queen Elizabeth; she would believe practicallyanything she was told, invent reasons for anything she said.

　　The shape of the earth, the history of the world, how trains worked,or money was invested, what laws were in force, which people wanted what,and why they wanted it, the most elementary idea of a system inmodern life--none of this had been imparted to her by any of herprofessors or mistresses. But this system of education had onegreat advantage. It did not teach anything, but it put no obstaclein the way of any real talent that the pupil might chance to have.

　　Rachel, being musical, was allowed to learn nothing but music;she became a fanatic about music. All the energies that might havegone into languages, science, or literature, that might have madeher friends, or shown her the world, poured straight into music.

　　Finding her teachers inadequate, she had practically taught herself.

　　At the age of twenty-four she knew as much about music as mostpeople do when they are thirty; and could play as well as natureallowed her to, which, as became daily more obvious, was a reallygenerous allowance. If this one definite gift was surrounded bydreams and ideas of the most extravagant and foolish description,no one was any the wiser.

　　Her education being thus ordinary, her circumstances were no more outof the common. She was an only child and had never been bullied andlaughed at by brothers and sisters. Her mother having died when shewas eleven, two aunts, the sisters of her father, brought her up,and they lived for the sake of the air in a comfortable housein Richmond. She was of course brought up with excessive care,which as a child was for her health; as a girl and a youngwoman was for what it seems almost crude to call her morals.

　　Until quite lately she had been completely ignorant that for womensuch things existed. She groped for knowledge in old books,and found it in repulsive chunks, but she did not naturally carefor books and thus never troubled her head about the censorshipwhich was exercised first by her aunts, later by her father.

　　Friends might have told her things, but she had few of her own age,--Richmond being an awkward place to reach,--and, as it happened,the only girl she knew well was a religious zealot, who in the fervourof intimacy talked about God, and the best ways of taking upone's cross, a topic only fitfully interesting to one whose mindreached other stages at other times.

　　But lying in her chair, with one hand behind her head, the othergrasping the knob on the arm, she was clearly following herthoughts intently. Her education left her abundant time for thinking.

　　Her eyes were fixed so steadily upon a ball on the rail of the shipthat she would have been startled and annoyed if anything had chancedto obscure it for a second. She had begun her meditations witha shout of laughter, caused by the following translation from _Tristan_:

　　In shrinking trepidationHis shame he seems to hideWhile to the king his relationHe brings the corpse-like Bride.

　　Seems it so senseless what I say?

　　She cried that it did, and threw down the book. Next she hadpicked up _Cowper's_ _Letters_, the classic prescribed by herfather which had bored her, so that one sentence chancing tosay something about the smell of broom in his garden, she hadthereupon seen the little hall at Richmond laden with flowerson the day of her mother's funeral, smelling so strong that nowany flower-scent brought back the sickly horrible sensation;and so from one scene she passed, half-hearing, half-seeing,to another. She saw her Aunt Lucy arranging flowers in the drawing-room.

　　"Aunt Lucy," she volunteered, "I don't like the smell of broom;it reminds me of funerals.""Nonsense, Rachel," Aunt Lucy replied; "don't say such foolishthings, dear. I always think it a particularly cheerful plant."Lying in the hot sun her mind was fixed upon the characters of her aunts,their views, and the way they lived. Indeed this was a subjectthat lasted her hundreds of morning walks round Richmond Park,and blotted out the trees and the people and the deer. Why didthey do the things they did, and what did they feel, and what wasit all about? Again she heard Aunt Lucy talking to Aunt Eleanor.

　　She had been that morning to take up the character of a servant,"And, of course, at half-past ten in the morning one expects to findthe housemaid brushing the stairs." How odd! How unspeakably odd!

　　But she could not explain to herself why suddenly as her aunt spokethe whole system in which they lived had appeared before her eyesas something quite unfamiliar and inexplicable, and themselves aschairs or umbrellas dropped about here and there without any reason.

　　She could only say with her slight stammer, "Are you f-f-fond ofAunt Eleanor, Aunt Lucy?" to which her aunt replied, with her nervoushen-like twitter of a laugh, "My dear child, what questions youdo ask!""How fond? Very fond!" Rachel pursued.

　　"I can't say I've ever thought 'how,'" said Miss Vinrace.

　　"If one cares one doesn't think 'how,' Rachel," which was aimedat the niece who had never yet "come" to her aunts as cordiallyas they wished.

　　"But you know I care for you, don't you, dear, because you'reyour mother's daughter, if for no other reason, and there_are_ plenty of other reasons"--and she leant over and kissedher with some emotion, and the argument was spilt irretrievablyabout the place like a bucket of milk.

　　By these means Rachel reached that stage in thinking, if thinkingit can be called, when the eyes are intent upon a ball or a knoband the lips cease to move. Her efforts to come to an understandinghad only hurt her aunt's feelings, and the conclusion must be that itis better not to try. To feel anything strongly was to create an abyssbetween oneself and others who feel strongly perhaps but differently.

　　It was far better to play the piano and forget all the rest.

　　The conclusion was very welcome. Let these odd men and women--her aunts, the Hunts, Ridley, Helen, Mr. Pepper, and the rest--be symbols,--featureless but dignified, symbols of age, of youth,of motherhood, of learning, and beautiful often as people upon the stageare beautiful. It appeared that nobody ever said a thing they meant,or ever talked of a feeling they felt, but that was what music was for.

　　Reality dwelling in what one saw and felt, but did not talk about,one could accept a system in which things went round and roundquite satisfactorily to other people, without often troublingto think about it, except as something superficially strange.

　　Absorbed by her music she accepted her lot very complacently,blazing into indignation perhaps once a fortnight, and subsidingas she subsided now. Inextricably mixed in dreamy confusion,her mind seemed to enter into communion, to be delightfully expandedand combined with the spirit of the whitish boards on deck,with the spirit of the sea, with the spirit of Beethoven Op.

　　112, even with the spirit of poor William Cowper there at Olney.

　　Like a ball of thistledown it kissed the sea, rose, kissed it again,and thus rising and kissing passed finally out of sight. The risingand falling of the ball of thistledown was represented by the suddendroop forward of her own head, and when it passed out of sight shewas asleep.

　　Ten minutes later Mrs. Ambrose opened the door and looked at her.

　　It did not surprise her to find that this was the way in which Rachelpassed her mornings. She glanced round the room at the piano,at the books, at the general mess. In the first place she consideredRachel aesthetically; lying unprotected she looked somehow like a victimdropped from the claws of a bird of prey, but considered as a woman,a young woman of twenty-four, the sight gave rise to reflections.

　　Mrs. Ambrose stood thinking for at least two minutes. She then smiled,turned noiselessly away and went, lest the sleeper should waken,and there should be the awkwardness of speech between them.