Virginia Woolf - The Complete Novels of Virginia Woolf

But when the sun went down and the steamer turned and began to steam back towards civilisation, again her fears were calmed. In the semi-darkness the chairs on deck and the people sitting in them were angular shapes, the mouth being indicated by a tiny burning spot, and the arm by the same spot moving up or down as the cigar or cigarette was lifted to and from the lips. Words crossed the darkness, but, not knowing where they fell, seemed to lack energy and substance. Deep sights proceeded regularly, although with some attempt at suppression, from the large white mound which represented the person of Mrs. Flushing. The day had been long and very hot, and now that all the colours were blotted out the cool night air seemed to press soft fingers upon the eyelids, sealing them down. Some philosophical remark directed, apparently, at St. John Hirst missed its aim, and hung so long suspended in the air until it was engulfed by a yawn, that it was considered dead, and this gave the signal for stirring of legs and murmurs about sleep. The white mound moved, finally lengthened itself and disappeared, and after a few turns and paces St. John and Mr. Flushing withdrew, leaving the three chairs still occupied by three silent bodies. The light which came from a lamp high on the mast and a sky pale with stars left them with shapes but without features; but even in this darkness the withdrawal of the others made them feel each other very near, for they were all thinking of the same thing. For some time no one spoke, then Helen said with a sigh, “So you’re both very happy?”

As if washed by the air her voice sounded more spiritual and softer than usual. Voices at a little distance answered her, “Yes.”

Through the darkness she was looking at them both, and trying to distinguish him. What was there for her to say? Rachel had passed beyond her guardianship. A voice might reach her ears, but never again would it carry as far as it had carried twenty-four hours ago. Nevertheless, speech seemed to be due from her before she went to bed. She wished to speak, but she felt strangely old and depressed.

“D’you realise what you’re doing?” she demanded. “She’s young, you’re both young; and marriage—” Here she ceased. They begged her, however, to continue, with such earnestness in their voices, as if they only craved advice, that she was led to add:

“Marriage! well, it’s not easy.”

“That’s what we want to know,” they answered, and she guessed that now they were looking at each other.

“It depends on both of you,” she stated. Her face was turned towards Terence, and although he could hardly see her, he believed that her words really covered a genuine desire to know more about him. He raised himself from his semi-recumbent position and proceeded to tell her what she wanted to know. He spoke as lightly as he could in order to take away her depression.

“I’m twenty-seven, and I’ve about seven hundred a year,” he began. “My temper is good on the whole, and health excellent, though Hirst detects a gouty tendency. Well, then, I think I’m very intelligent.” He paused as if for confirmation.

Helen agreed.

“Though, unfortunately, rather lazy. I intend to allow Rachel to be a fool if she wants to, and—Do you find me on the whole satisfactory in other respects?” he asked shyly.

“Yes, I like what I know of you,” Helen replied.

“But then—one knows so little.”

“We shall live in London,” he continued, “and—” With one voice they suddenly enquired whether she did not think them the happiest people that she had ever known.

“Hush,” she checked them, “Mrs. Flushing, remember. She’s behind us.”

Then they fell silent, and Terence and Rachel felt instinctively that their happiness had made her sad, and, while they were anxious to go on talking about themselves, they did not like to.

“We’ve talked too much about ourselves,” Terence said. “Tell us—”

“Yes, tell us—” Rachel echoed. They were both in the mood to believe that every one was capable of saying something very profound.

“What can I tell you?” Helen reflected, speaking more to herself in a rambling style than as a prophetess delivering a message. She forced herself to speak.

“After all, though I scold Rachel, I’m not much wiser myself. I’m older, of course, I’m half-way through, and you’re just beginning. It’s puzzling—sometimes, I think, disappointing; the great things aren’t as great, perhaps, as one expects—but it’s interesting—Oh, yes, you’re certain to find it interesting—And so it goes on,” they became conscious here of the procession of dark trees into which, as far as they could see, Helen was now looking, “and there are pleasures where one doesn’t expect them (you must write to your father), and you’ll be very happy, I’ve no doubt. But I must go to bed, and if you are sensible you will follow in ten minutes, and so,” she rose and stood before them, almost featureless and very large, “Good-night.” She passed behind the curtain.

After sitting in silence for the greater part of the ten minutes she allowed them, they rose and hung over the rail. Beneath them the smooth black water slipped away very fast and silently. The spark of a cigarette vanished behind them. “A beautiful voice,” Terence murmured.

Rachel assented. Helen had a beautiful voice.

After a silence she asked, looking up into the sky, “Are we on the deck of a steamer on a river in South America? Am I Rachel, are you Terence?”

The great black world lay round them. As they were drawn smoothly along it seemed possessed of immense thickness and endurance. They could discern pointed tree-tops and blunt rounded tree-tops. Raising their eyes above the trees, they fixed them on the stars and the pale border of sky above the trees. The little points of frosty light infinitely far away drew their eyes and held them fixed, so that it seemed as if they stayed a long time and fell a great distance when once more they realised their hands grasping the rail and their separate bodies standing side by side.

“You’d forgotten completely about me,” Terence reproached her, taking her arm and beginning to pace the deck, “and I never forget you.”

“Oh, no,” she whispered, she had not forgotten, only the stars—the night—the dark—

“You’re like a bird half asleep in its nest, Rachel. You’re asleep. You’re talking in your sleep.”

Half asleep, and murmuring broken words, they stood in the angle made by the bow of the boat. It slipped on down the river. Now a bell struck on the bridge, and they heard the lapping of water as it rippled away on either side, and once a bird startled in its sleep creaked, flew on to the next tree, and was silent again. The darkness poured down profusely, and left them with scarcely any feeling of life, except that they were standing there together in the darkness.

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The darkness fell, but rose again, and as each day spread widely over the earth and parted them from the strange day in the forest when they had been forced to tell each other what they wanted, this wish of theirs was revealed to other people, and in the process became slightly strange to themselves. Apparently it was not anything unusual that had happened; it was that they had become engaged to marry each other. The world, which consisted for the most part of the hotel and the villa, expressed itself glad on the whole that two people should marry, and allowed them to see that they were not expected to take part in the work which has to be done in order that the world shall go on, but might absent themselves for a time. They were accordingly left alone until they felt the silence as if, playing in a vast church, the door had been shut on them. They were driven to walk alone, and sit alone, to visit secret places where the flowers had never been picked and the trees were solitary. In solitude they could express those beautiful but too vast desires which were so oddly uncomfortable to the ears of other men and women—desires for a world, such as their own world which contained two people seemed to them to be, where people knew each other intimately and thus judged each other by what was good, and never quarrelled, because that was waste of time.