The Voyage Out Virginia Woolf (the chimp paradox .txt) 📖

You are the most distinguished man in England, aren’t you?” she asked shyly.

“One of the three,” he corrected.

Helen whirling past here tossed a fan into Rachel’s lap.

“She is very beautiful,” Hirst remarked.

They were again silent. Rachel was wondering whether he thought her also nice-looking; St. John was considering the immense difficulty of talking to girls who had no experience of life. Rachel had obviously never thought or felt or seen anything, and she might be intelligent or she might be just like all the rest. But Hewet’s taunt rankled in his mind⁠—“you don’t know how to get on with women,” and he was determined to profit by this opportunity. Her evening-clothes bestowed on her just that degree of unreality and distinction which made it romantic to speak to her, and stirred a desire to talk, which irritated him because he did not know how to begin. He glanced at her, and she seemed to him very remote and inexplicable, very young and chaste. He drew a sigh, and began.

“About books now. What have you read? Just Shakespeare and the Bible?”

“I haven’t read many classics,” Rachel stated. She was slightly annoyed by his jaunty and rather unnatural manner, while his masculine acquirements induced her to take a very modest view of her own power.

“D’you mean to tell me you’ve reached the age of twenty-four without reading Gibbon?” he demanded.

“Yes, I have,” she answered.

“Mon Dieu!” he exclaimed, throwing out his hands. “You must begin tomorrow. I shall send you my copy. What I want to know is⁠—” he looked at her critically. “You see, the problem is, can one really talk to you? Have you got a mind, or are you like the rest of your sex? You seem to me absurdly young compared with men of your age.”

Rachel looked at him but said nothing.

“About Gibbon,” he continued. “D’you think you’ll be able to appreciate him? He’s the test, of course. It’s awfully difficult to tell about women,” he continued, “how much, I mean, is due to lack of training, and how much is native incapacity. I don’t see myself why you shouldn’t understand⁠—only I suppose you’ve led an absurd life until now⁠—you’ve just walked in a crocodile, I suppose, with your hair down your back.”

The music was again beginning. Hirst’s eye wandered about the room in search of Mrs. Ambrose. With the best will in the world he was conscious that they were not getting on well together.

“I’d like awfully to lend you books,” he said, buttoning his gloves, and rising from his seat. “We shall meet again. I’m going to leave you now.”

He got up and left her.

Rachel looked round. She felt herself surrounded, like a child at a party, by the faces of strangers all hostile to her, with hooked noses and sneering, indifferent eyes. She was by a window, she pushed it open with a jerk. She stepped out into the garden. Her eyes swam with tears of rage.

“Damn that man!” she exclaimed, having acquired some of Helen’s words. “Damn his insolence!”

She stood in the middle of the pale square of light which the window she had opened threw upon the grass. The forms of great black trees rose massively in front of her. She stood still, looking at them, shivering slightly with anger and excitement. She heard the trampling and swinging of the dancers behind her, and the rhythmic sway of the waltz music.

“There are trees,” she said aloud. Would the trees make up for St. John Hirst? She would be a Persian princess far from civilisation, riding her horse upon the mountains alone, and making her women sing to her in the evening, far from all this, from the strife and men and women⁠—a form came out of the shadow; a little red light burnt high up in its blackness.

“Miss Vinrace, is it?” said Hewet, peering at her. “You were dancing with Hirst?”

“He’s made me furious!” she cried vehemently. “No one’s any right to be insolent!”

“Insolent?” Hewet repeated, taking his cigar from his mouth in surprise. “Hirst⁠—insolent?”

“It’s insolent to⁠—” said Rachel, and stopped. She did not know exactly why she had been made so angry. With a great effort she pulled herself together.

“Oh, well,” she added, the vision of Helen and her mockery before her, “I dare say I’m a fool.” She made as though she were going back into the ballroom, but Hewet stopped her.

“Please explain to me,” he said. “I feel sure Hirst didn’t mean to hurt you.”

When Rachel tried to explain, she found it very difficult. She could not say that she found the vision of herself walking in a crocodile with her hair down her back peculiarly unjust and horrible, nor could she explain why Hirst’s assumption of the superiority of his nature and experience had seemed to her not only galling but terrible⁠—as if a gate had clanged in her face. Pacing up and down the terrace beside Hewet she said bitterly:

“It’s no good; we should live separate; we cannot understand each other; we only bring out what’s worst.”

Hewet brushed aside her generalisation as to the natures of the two sexes, for such generalisations bored him and seemed to him generally untrue. But, knowing Hirst, he guessed fairly accurately what had happened, and, though secretly much amused, was determined that Rachel should not store the incident away in her mind to take its place in the view she had of life.

“Now you’ll hate him,” he said, “which is wrong. Poor old Hirst⁠—he can’t help his method. And really, Miss Vinrace, he was doing his best; he was paying you a compliment⁠—he was trying⁠—he was trying⁠—” he could not finish for the laughter that overcame him.

Rachel veered round suddenly and laughed out too. She saw that there was something ridiculous about Hirst, and perhaps about herself.

“It’s his way of making friends, I suppose,” she laughed. “Well⁠—I shall do my part. I shall begin⁠—‘Ugly in body, repulsive in mind as you are, Mr. Hirst⁠—’ ”

“Hear, hear!” cried Hewet. “That’s the way to treat him. You see, Miss Vinrace,