The Voyage Out, Virginia Woolf [best ereader under 100 txt] 📗

“I believe in the bed, in the photographs, in the pot, in the balcony, in the sun, in Mrs. Flushing,” she remarked, still speaking recklessly, with something at the back of her mind forcing her to say the things that one usually does not say. “But I don’t believe in God, I don’t believe in Mr. Bax, I don’t believe in the hospital nurse. I don’t believe⁠—” She took up a photograph and, looking at it, did not finish her sentence.

“That’s my mother,” said Evelyn, who remained sitting on the floor binding her knees together with her arms, and watching Rachel curiously.

Rachel considered the portrait. “Well, I don’t much believe in her,” she remarked after a time in a low tone of voice.

Mrs. Murgatroyd looked indeed as if the life had been crushed out of her; she knelt on a chair, gazing piteously from behind the body of a Pomeranian dog which she clasped to her cheek, as if for protection.

“And that’s my dad,” said Evelyn, for there were two photographs in one frame. The second photograph represented a handsome soldier with high regular features and a heavy black moustache; his hand rested on the hilt of his sword; there was a decided likeness between him and Evelyn.

“And it’s because of them,” said Evelyn, “that I’m going to help the other women. You’ve heard about me, I suppose? They weren’t married, you see; I’m not anybody in particular. I’m not a bit ashamed of it. They loved each other anyhow, and that’s more than most people can say of their parents.”

Rachel sat down on the bed, with the two pictures in her hands, and compared them⁠—the man and the woman who had, so Evelyn said, loved each other. That fact interested her more than the campaign on behalf of unfortunate women which Evelyn was once more beginning to describe. She looked again from one to the other.

“What d’you think it’s like,” she asked, as Evelyn paused for a minute, “being in love?”

“Have you never been in love?” Evelyn asked. “Oh no⁠—one’s only got to look at you to see that,” she added. She considered. “I really was in love once,” she said. She fell into reflection, her eyes losing their bright vitality and approaching something like an expression of tenderness. “It was heavenly!⁠—while it lasted. The worst of it is it don’t last, not with me. That’s the bother.”

She went on to consider the difficulty with Alfred and Sinclair about which she had pretended to ask Rachel’s advice. But she did not want advice; she wanted intimacy. When she looked at Rachel, who was still looking at the photographs on the bed, she could not help seeing that Rachel was not thinking about her. What was she thinking about, then? Evelyn was tormented by the little spark of life in her which was always trying to work through to other people, and was always being rebuffed. Falling silent she looked at her visitor, her shoes, her stockings, the combs in her hair, all the details of her dress in short, as though by seizing every detail she might get closer to the life within.

Rachel at last put down the photographs, walked to the window and remarked, “It’s odd. People talk as much about love as they do about religion.”

“I wish you’d sit down and talk,” said Evelyn impatiently.

Instead Rachel opened the window, which was made in two long panes, and looked down into the garden below.

“That’s where we got lost the first night,” she said. “It must have been in those bushes.”

“They kill hens down there,” said Evelyn. “They cut their heads off with a knife⁠—disgusting! But tell me⁠—what⁠—”

“I’d like to explore the hotel,” Rachel interrupted. She drew her head in and looked at Evelyn, who still sat on the floor.

“It’s just like other hotels,” said Evelyn.

That might be, although every room and passage and chair in the place had a character of its own in Rachel’s eyes; but she could not bring herself to stay in one place any longer. She moved slowly towards the door.

“What is it you want?” said Evelyn. “You make me feel as if you were always thinking of something you don’t say.⁠ ⁠… Do say it!”

But Rachel made no response to this invitation either. She stopped with her fingers on the handle of the door, as if she remembered that some sort of pronouncement was due from her.

“I suppose you’ll marry one of them,” she said, and then turned the handle and shut the door behind her. She walked slowly down the passage, running her hand along the wall beside her. She did not think which way she was going, and therefore walked down a passage which only led to a window and a balcony. She looked down at the kitchen premises, the wrong side of the hotel life, which was cut off from the right side by a maze of small bushes. The ground was bare, old tins were scattered about, and the bushes wore towels and aprons upon their heads to dry. Every now and then a waiter came out in a white apron and threw rubbish on to a heap. Two large women in cotton dresses were sitting on a bench with blood-smeared tin trays in front of them and yellow bodies across their knees. They were plucking the birds, and talking as they plucked. Suddenly a chicken came floundering, half flying, half running into the space, pursued by a third woman whose age could hardly be under eighty. Although wizened and unsteady on her legs she kept up the chase, egged on by the laughter of the others; her face was expressive of furious rage, and as she ran she swore in Spanish. Frightened by hand-clapping here, a napkin there, the bird ran this way and that in sharp angles, and finally fluttered straight at the old woman, who opened her scanty grey skirts to enclose it, dropped upon it in a bundle, and then holding it out cut its head off with