The Voyage Out Virginia Woolf (the chimp paradox .txt) đ
- Author: Virginia Woolf
Book online «The Voyage Out Virginia Woolf (the chimp paradox .txt) đ». Author Virginia Woolf
âI heard from Aunt Bessie not long ago,â Helen stated. âShe is afraid that you will spoil your arms if you insist upon so much practising.â
âThe muscles of the forearmâ âand then one wonât marry?â
âShe didnât put it quite like that,â replied Mrs. Ambrose.
âOh, noâ âof course she wouldnât,â said Rachel with a sigh.
Helen looked at her. Her face was weak rather than decided, saved from insipidity by the large enquiring eyes; denied beauty, now that she was sheltered indoors, by the lack of colour and definite outline. Moreover, a hesitation in speaking, or rather a tendency to use the wrong words, made her seem more than normally incompetent for her years. Mrs. Ambrose, who had been speaking much at random, now reflected that she certainly did not look forward to the intimacy of three or four weeks on board ship which was threatened. Women of her own age usually boring her, she supposed that girls would be worse. She glanced at Rachel again. Yes! how clear it was that she would be vacillating, emotional, and when you said something to her it would make no more lasting impression than the stroke of a stick upon water. There was nothing to take hold of in girlsâ ânothing hard, permanent, satisfactory. Did Willoughby say three weeks, or did he say four? She tried to remember.
At this point, however, the door opened and a tall burly man entered the room, came forward and shook Helenâs hand with an emotional kind of heartiness, Willoughby himself, Rachelâs father, Helenâs brother-in-law. As a great deal of flesh would have been needed to make a fat man of him, his frame being so large, he was not fat; his face was a large framework too, looking, by the smallness of the features and the glow in the hollow of the cheek, more fitted to withstand assaults of the weather than to express sentiments and emotions, or to respond to them in others.
âIt is a great pleasure that you have come,â he said, âfor both of us.â
Rachel murmured in obedience to her fatherâs glance.
âWeâll do our best to make you comfortable. And Ridley. We think it an honour to have charge of him. Pepperâll have someone to contradict himâ âwhich I darenât do. You find this child grown, donât you? A young woman, eh?â
Still holding Helenâs hand he drew his arm round Rachelâs shoulder, thus making them come uncomfortably close, but Helen forbore to look.
âYou think she does us credit?â he asked.
âOh yes,â said Helen.
âBecause we expect great things of her,â he continued, squeezing his daughterâs arm and releasing her. âBut about you now.â They sat down side by side on the little sofa. âDid you leave the children well? Theyâll be ready for school, I suppose. Do they take after you or Ambrose? Theyâve got good heads on their shoulders, Iâll be bound?â
At this Helen immediately brightened more than she had yet done, and explained that her son was six and her daughter ten. Everybody said that her boy was like her and her girl like Ridley. As for brains, they were quick brats, she thought, and modestly she ventured on a little story about her sonâ âhow left alone for a minute he had taken the pat of butter in his fingers, run across the room with it, and put it on the fireâ âmerely for the fun of the thing, a feeling which she could understand.
âAnd you had to show the young rascal that these tricks wouldnât do, eh?â
âA child of six? I donât think they matter.â
âIâm an old-fashioned father.â
âNonsense, Willoughby; Rachel knows better.â
Much as Willoughby would doubtless have liked his daughter to praise him she did not; her eyes were unreflecting as water, her fingers still toying with the fossilised fish, her mind absent. The elder people went on to speak of arrangements that could be made for Ridleyâs comfortâ âa table placed where he couldnât help looking at the sea, far from boilers, at the same time sheltered from the view of people passing. Unless he made this a holiday, when his books were all packed, he would have no holiday whatever; for out at Santa Marina Helen knew, by experience, that he would work all day; his boxes, she said, were packed with books.
âLeave it to meâ âleave it to me!â said Willoughby, obviously intending to do much more than she asked of him. But Ridley and Mr. Pepper were heard fumbling at the door.
âHow are you, Vinrace?â said Ridley, extending a limp hand as he came in, as though the meeting were melancholy to both, but on the whole more so to him.
Willoughby preserved his heartiness, tempered by respect. For the moment nothing was said.
âWe looked in and saw you laughing,â Helen remarked. âMr. Pepper had just told a very good story.â
âPish. None of the stories were good,â said her husband peevishly.
âStill a severe judge, Ridley?â enquired Mr. Vinrace.
âWe bored you so that you left,â said Ridley, speaking directly to his wife.
As this was quite true Helen did not attempt to deny it, and her next remark, âBut didnât they improve after weâd gone?â was unfortunate, for her husband answered with a droop of his shoulders, âIf possible they got worse.â
The situation was now one of considerable discomfort for everyone concerned, as was proved by a long interval of constraint and silence. Mr. Pepper, indeed, created a diversion of a kind by leaping on to his seat, both feet tucked under him, with the action of a spinster who detects a mouse, as the draught struck at his ankles. Drawn up there, sucking at his cigar, with his arms encircling his knees, he looked like the image of Buddha, and from this elevation began a discourse, addressed to nobody, for nobody had called for it, upon the unplumbed depths of ocean. He professed himself surprised to learn that although Mr. Vinrace possessed ten ships, regularly plying between London and Buenos Aires, not one of them was bidden to investigate the great white monsters of the lower waters.
âNo, no,â laughed Willoughby, âthe
Comments (0)