Public Domain Tales: Mrs. Dalloway is the one-hundred-and-eighty-fourth book in the Public Domain Tales series.
Mrs. Dalloway said she would buy the flowers herself.
For Lucy had her work cut out for her. The doors would be taken offtheir hinges; Rumpelmayer’s men were coming. And then, thought ClarissaDalloway, what a morning--fresh as if issued to children on a beach.
What a lark! What a plunge! For so it had always seemed to her, when,with a little squeak of the hinges, which she could hear now, she hadburst open the French windows and plunged at Bourton into the open air.How fresh, how calm, stiller than this of course, the air was in theearly morning; like the flap of a wave; the kiss of a wave; chill andsharp and yet (for a girl of eighteen as she then was) solemn, feelingas she did, standing there at the open window, that something awful wasabout to happen; looking at the flowers, at the trees with the smokewinding off them and the rooks rising, falling; standing and lookinguntil Peter Walsh said, “Musing among the vegetables?”--was thatit?--“I prefer men to cauliflowers”--was that it? He must have said itat breakfast one morning when she had gone out on to the terrace--PeterWalsh. He would be back from India one of these days, June or July, sheforgot which, for his letters were awfully dull; it was his sayings oneremembered; his eyes, his pocket-knife, his smile, his grumpiness and,when millions of things had utterly vanished--how strange it was!--afew sayings like this about cabbages.
She stiffened a little on the kerb, waiting for Durtnall’s van topass. A charming woman, Scrope Purvis thought her (knowing her as onedoes know people who live next door to one in Westminster); a touch ofthe bird about her, of the jay, blue-green, light, vivacious, thoughshe was over fifty, and grown very white since her illness. There sheperched, never seeing him, waiting to cross, very upright.
For having lived in Westminster--how many years now? over twenty,--onefeels even in the midst of the traffic, or waking at night, Clarissawas positive, a particular hush, or solemnity; an indescribablepause; a suspense (but that might be her heart, affected, they said,by influenza) before Big Ben strikes. There! Out it boomed. Firsta warning, musical; then the hour, irrevocable. The leaden circlesdissolved in the air. Such fools we are, she thought, crossing VictoriaStreet. For Heaven only knows why one loves it so, how one sees it so,making it up, building it round one, tumbling it, creating it everymoment afresh; but the veriest frumps, the most dejected of miseriessitting on doorsteps (drink their downfall) do the same; can’t be dealtwith, she felt positive, by Acts of Parliament for that very reason:they love life. In people’s eyes, in the swing, tramp, and trudge; inthe bellow and the uproar; the carriages, motor cars, omnibuses, vans,sandwich men shuffling and swinging; brass bands; barrel organs; in thetriumph and the jingle and the strange high singing of some aeroplaneoverhead was what she loved; life; London; this moment of June.
For it was the middle of June. The War was over, except for some onelike Mrs. Foxcroft at the Embassy last night eating her heart outbecause that nice boy was killed and now the old Manor House must goto a cousin; or Lady Bexborough who opened a bazaar, they said, withthe telegram in her hand, John, her favourite, killed; but it wasover; thank Heaven--over. It was June. The King and Queen were atthe Palace. And everywhere, though it was still so early, there wasa beating, a stirring of galloping ponies, tapping of cricket bats;Lords, Ascot, Ranelagh and all the rest of it; wrapped in the soft meshof the grey-blue morning air, which, as the day wore on, would unwindthem, and set down on their lawns and pitches the bouncing ponies,whose forefeet just struck the ground and up they sprung, the whirlingyoung men, and laughing girls in their transparent muslins who, evennow, after dancing all night, were taking their absurd woolly dogs fora run; and even now, at this hour, discreet old dowagers were shootingout in their motor cars on errands of mystery; and the shopkeeperswere fidgeting in their windows with their paste and diamonds, theirlovely old sea-green brooches in eighteenth-century settings totempt Americans (but one must economise, not buy things rashly forElizabeth), and she, too, loving it as she did with an absurd andfaithful passion, being part of it, since her people were courtiersonce in the time of the Georges, she, too, was going that very night tokindle and illuminate; to give her party. But how strange, on enteringthe Park, the silence; the mist; the hum; the slow-swimming happyducks; the pouched birds waddling; and who should be coming along withhis back against the Government buildings, most appropriately, carryinga despatch box stamped with the Royal Arms, who but Hugh Whitbread; herold friend Hugh--the admirable Hugh!
“Good-morning to you, Clarissa!” said Hugh, rather extravagantly, forthey had known each other as children. “Where are you off to?”
“I love walking in London,” said Mrs. Dalloway. “Really it’s betterthan walking in the country.”
They had just come up--unfortunately--to see doctors. Other peoplecame to see pictures; go to the opera; take their daughters out; theWhitbreads came “to see doctors.” Times without number Clarissa hadvisited Evelyn Whitbread in a nursing home. Was Evelyn ill again?Evelyn was a good deal out of sorts, said Hugh, intimating by a kindof pout or swell of his very well-covered, manly, extremely handsome,perfectly upholstered body (he was almost too well dressed always,but presumably had to be, with his little job at Court) that his wifehad some internal ailment, nothing serious, which, as an old friend,Clarissa Dalloway would quite understand without requiring him tospecify. Ah yes, she did of course; what a nuisance; and felt verysisterly and oddly conscious at the same time of her hat. Not theright hat for the early morning, was that it? For Hugh always madeher feel, as he bustled on, raising his hat rather extravagantly andassuring her that she might be a girl of eighteen, and of course hewas coming to her party to-night, Evelyn absolutely insisted, only alittle late he might be after the party at the Palace to which he hadto take one of Jim’s boys,--she always felt a little skimpy besideHugh; schoolgirlish; but attached to him, partly from having knownhim always, but she did think him a good sort in his own way, thoughRichard was nearly driven mad by him, and as for Peter Walsh, he hadnever to this day forgiven her for liking him.
She could remember scene after scene at Bourton--Peter furious;Hugh not, of course, his match in any way, but still not a positiveimbecile as Peter made out; not a mere barber’s block. When his oldmother wanted him to give up shooting or to take her to Bath he didit, without a word; he was really unselfish, and as for saying, asPeter did, that he had no heart, no brain, nothing but the mannersand breeding of an English gentleman, that was only her dear Peter athis worst; and he could be intolerable; he could be impossible; butadorable to walk with on a morning like this.
(June had drawn out every leaf on the trees. The mothers of Pimlicogave suck to their young. Messages were passing from the Fleet to theAdmiralty. Arlington Street and Piccadilly seemed to chafe the very airin the Park and lift its leaves hotly, brilliantly, on waves of thatdivine vitality which Clarissa loved. To dance, to ride, she had adoredall that.)
For they might be parted for hundreds of years, she and Peter; shenever wrote a letter and his were dry sticks; but suddenly it wouldcome over her, If he were with me now what would he say?--somedays, some sights bringing him back to her calmly, without theold bitterness; which perhaps was the reward of having cared forpeople; they came back in the middle of St. James’s Park on a finemorning--indeed they did. But Peter--however beautiful the day mightbe, and the trees and the grass, and the little girl in pink--Peternever saw a thing of all that. He would put on his spectacles, ifshe told him to; he would look. It was the state of the world thatinterested him; Wagner, Pope’s poetry, people’s characters eternally,and the defects of her own soul. How he scolded her! How they argued!She would marry a Prime Minister and stand at the top of a staircase;the perfect hostess he called her (she had cried over it in herbedroom), she had the makings of the perfect hostess, he said.
So she would still find herself arguing in St. James’s Park, stillmaking out that she had been right--and she had too--not to marry him.For in marriage a little licence, a little independence there must bebetween people living together day in day out in the same house; whichRichard gave her, and she him. (Where was he this morning for instance?Some committee, she never asked what.) But with Peter everything hadto be shared; everything gone into. And it was intolerable, and whenit came to that scene in the little garden by the fountain, she had tobreak with him or they would have been destroyed, both of them ruined,she was convinced; though she had borne about with her for years likean arrow sticking in her heart the grief, the anguish; and then thehorror of the moment when some one told her at a concert that he hadmarried a woman met on the boat going to India! Never should she forgetall that! Cold, heartless, a prude, he called her. Never could sheunderstand how he cared. But those Indian women did presumably--silly,pretty, flimsy nincompoops. And she wasted her pity. For he was quitehappy, he assured her--perfectly happy, though he had never done athing that they talked of; his whole life had been a failure. It madeher angry still.
She had reached the Park gates. She stood for a moment, looking at theomnibuses in Piccadilly.
She would not say of any one in the world now that they were this orwere that. She felt very young; at the same time unspeakably aged. Shesliced like a knife through everything; at the same time was outside,looking on. She had a perpetual sense, as she watched the taxi cabs, ofbeing out, out, far out to sea and alone; she always had the feelingthat it was very, very dangerous to live even one day. Not that shethought herself clever, or much out of the ordinary. How she had gotthrough life on the few twigs of knowledge Fräulein Daniels gave themshe could not think. She knew nothing; no language, no history; shescarcely read a book now, except memoirs in bed; and yet to her it wasabsolutely absorbing; all this; the cabs passing; and she would not sayof Peter, she would not say of herself, I am this, I am that.
Her only gift was knowing people almost by instinct, she thought,walking on. If you put her in a room with some one, up went her backlike a cat’s; or she purred. Devonshire House, Bath House, the housewith the china co*ckatoo, she had seen them all lit up once; andremembered Sylvia, Fred, Sally Seton--such hosts of people; and dancingall night; and the waggons plodding past to market; and driving homeacross the Park. She remembered once throwing a shilling into theSerpentine. But every one remembered; what she loved was this, here,now, in front of her; the fat lady in the cab. Did it matter then, sheasked herself, walking towards Bond Street, did it matter that she mustinevitably cease completely; all this must go on without her; did sheresent it; or did it not become consoling to believe that death endedabsolutely? but that somehow in the streets of London, on the ebb andflow of things, here, there, she survived, Peter survived, lived ineach other, she being part, she was positive, of the trees at home;of the house there, ugly, rambling all to bits and pieces as it was;part of people she had never met; being laid out like a mist betweenthe people she knew best, who lifted her on their branches as she hadseen the trees lift the mist, but it spread ever so far, her life,herself. But what was she dreaming as she looked into Hatchards’ shopwindow? What was she trying to recover? What image of white dawn in thecountry, as she read in the book spread open:
Fear no more the heat o’ the sunNor the furious winter’s rages.
This late age of the world’s experience had bred in them all, all menand women, a well of tears. Tears and sorrows; courage and endurance; aperfectly upright and stoical bearing. Think, for example, of the womanshe admired most, Lady Bexborough, opening the bazaar.
There were Jorrocks’ _Jaunts and Jollities_; there were _Soapy Sponge_and Mrs. Asquith’s _Memoirs_ and _Big Game Shooting in Nigeria_, allspread open. Ever so many books there were; but none that seemedexactly right to take to Evelyn Whitbread in her nursing home. Nothingthat would serve to amuse her and make that indescribably dried-uplittle woman look, as Clarissa came in, just for a moment cordial;before they settled down for the usual interminable talk of women’sailments. How much she wanted it--that people should look pleasedas she came in, Clarissa thought and turned and walked back towardsBond Street, annoyed, because it was silly to have other reasons fordoing things. Much rather would she have been one of those people likeRichard who did things for themselves, whereas, she thought, waitingto cross, half the time she did things not simply, not for themselves;but to make people think this or that; perfect idiocy she knew (andnow the policeman held up his hand) for no one was ever for a secondtaken in. Oh if she could have had her life over again! she thought,stepping on to the pavement, could have looked even differently!
She would have been, in the first place, dark like Lady Bexborough,with a skin of crumpled leather and beautiful eyes. She would havebeen, like Lady Bexborough, slow and stately; rather large; interestedin politics like a man; with a country house; very dignified, verysincere. Instead of which she had a narrow pea-stick figure; aridiculous little face, beaked like a bird’s. That she held herselfwell was true; and had nice hands and feet; and dressed well,considering that she spent little. But often now this body she wore(she stopped to look at a Dutch picture), this body, with all itscapacities, seemed nothing--nothing at all. She had the oddest sense ofbeing herself invisible; unseen; unknown; there being no more marrying,no more having of children now, but only this astonishing and rathersolemn progress with the rest of them, up Bond Street, this being Mrs.Dalloway; not even Clarissa any more; this being Mrs. Richard Dalloway.
Bond Street fascinated her; Bond Street early in the morning in theseason; its flags flying; its shops; no splash; no glitter; one rollof tweed in the shop where her father had bought his suits for fiftyyears; a few pearls; salmon on an iceblock.
“That is all,” she said, looking at the fishmonger’s. “That is all,”she repeated, pausing for a moment at the window of a glove shop where,before the War, you could buy almost perfect gloves. And her old UncleWilliam used to say a lady is known by her shoes and her gloves. He hadturned on his bed one morning in the middle of the War. He had said, “Ihave had enough.” Gloves and shoes; she had a passion for gloves; buther own daughter, her Elizabeth, cared not a straw for either of them.
Not a straw, she thought, going on up Bond Street to a shop where theykept flowers for her when she gave a party. Elizabeth really cared forher dog most of all. The whole house this morning smelt of tar. Still,better poor Grizzle than Miss Kilman; better distemper and tar and allthe rest of it than sitting mewed in a stuffy bedroom with a prayerbook! Better anything, she was inclined to say. But it might be onlya phase, as Richard said, such as all girls go through. It might befalling in love. But why with Miss Kilman? who had been badly treatedof course; one must make allowances for that, and Richard said she wasvery able, had a really historical mind. Anyhow they were inseparable,and Elizabeth, her own daughter, went to Communion; and how shedressed, how she treated people who came to lunch she did not care abit, it being her experience that the religious ecstasy made peoplecallous (so did causes); dulled their feelings, for Miss Kilman woulddo anything for the Russians, starved herself for the Austrians, butin private inflicted positive torture, so insensitive was she, dressedin a green mackintosh coat. Year in year out she wore that coat; sheperspired; she was never in the room five minutes without making youfeel her superiority, your inferiority; how poor she was; how rich youwere; how she lived in a slum without a cushion or a bed or a rug orwhatever it might be, all her soul rusted with that grievance stickingin it, her dismissal from school during the War--poor embitteredunfortunate creature! For it was not her one hated but the idea of her,which undoubtedly had gathered in to itself a great deal that was notMiss Kilman; had become one of those spectres with which one battles inthe night; one of those spectres who stand astride us and suck up halfour life-blood, dominators and tyrants; for no doubt with another throwof the dice, had the black been uppermost and not the white, she wouldhave loved Miss Kilman! But not in this world. No.
It rasped her, though, to have stirring about in her this brutalmonster! to hear twigs cracking and feel hooves planted down in thedepths of that leaf-encumbered forest, the soul; never to be contentquite, or quite secure, for at any moment the brute would be stirring,this hatred, which, especially since her illness, had power to makeher feel scraped, hurt in her spine; gave her physical pain, and madeall pleasure in beauty, in friendship, in being well, in being lovedand making her home delightful rock, quiver, and bend as if indeedthere were a monster grubbing at the roots, as if the whole panoply ofcontent were nothing but self love! this hatred!
Nonsense, nonsense! she cried to herself, pushing through the swingdoors of Mulberry’s the florists.
She advanced, light, tall, very upright, to be greeted at once bybutton-faced Miss Pym, whose hands were always bright red, as if theyhad been stood in cold water with the flowers.
There were flowers: delphiniums, sweet peas, bunches of lilac; andcarnations, masses of carnations. There were roses; there were irises.Ah yes--so she breathed in the earthy garden sweet smell as she stoodtalking to Miss Pym who owed her help, and thought her kind, forkind she had been years ago; very kind, but she looked older, thisyear, turning her head from side to side among the irises and rosesand nodding tufts of lilac with her eyes half closed, snuffing in,after the street uproar, the delicious scent, the exquisite coolness.And then, opening her eyes, how fresh like frilled linen clean froma laundry laid in wicker trays the roses looked; and dark and primthe red carnations, holding their heads up; and all the sweet peasspreading in their bowls, tinged violet, snow white, pale--as if itwere the evening and girls in muslin frocks came out to pick sweet peasand roses after the superb summer’s day, with its almost blue-blacksky, its delphiniums, its carnations, its arum lilies was over; andit was the moment between six and seven when every flower--roses,carnations, irises, lilac--glows; white, violet, red, deep orange;every flower seems to burn by itself, softly, purely in the misty beds;and how she loved the grey-white moths spinning in and out, over thecherry pie, over the evening primroses!
And as she began to go with Miss Pym from jar to jar, choosing,nonsense, nonsense, she said to herself, more and more gently, as ifthis beauty, this scent, this colour, and Miss Pym liking her, trustingher, were a wave which she let flow over her and surmount that hatred,that monster, surmount it all; and it lifted her up and up when--oh! apistol shot in the street outside!
“Dear, those motor cars,” said Miss Pym, going to the window to look,and coming back and smiling apologetically with her hands full of sweetpeas, as if those motor cars, those tyres of motor cars, were all _her_fault.
* * * * *
The violent explosion which made Mrs. Dalloway jump and Miss Pym goto the window and apologise came from a motor car which had drawn tothe side of the pavement precisely opposite Mulberry’s shop window.Passers-by who, of course, stopped and stared, had just time to see aface of the very greatest importance against the dove-grey upholstery,before a male hand drew the blind and there was nothing to be seenexcept a square of dove grey.
Yet rumours were at once in circulation from the middle of Bond Streetto Oxford Street on one side, to Atkinson’s scent shop on the other,passing invisibly, inaudibly, like a cloud, swift, veil-like uponhills, falling indeed with something of a cloud’s sudden sobriety andstillness upon faces which a second before had been utterly disorderly.But now mystery had brushed them with her wing; they had heard thevoice of authority; the spirit of religion was abroad with her eyesbandaged tight and her lips gaping wide. But nobody knew whose facehad been seen. Was it the Prince of Wales’s, the Queen’s, the PrimeMinister’s? Whose face was it? Nobody knew.
Edgar J. Watkiss, with his roll of lead piping round his arm, saidaudibly, humorously of course: “The Proime Minister’s kyar.”
Septimus Warren Smith, who found himself unable to pass, heard him.
Septimus Warren Smith, aged about thirty, pale-faced, beak-nosed,wearing brown shoes and a shabby overcoat, with hazel eyes which hadthat look of apprehension in them which makes complete strangersapprehensive too. The world has raised its whip; where will it descend?
Everything had come to a standstill. The throb of the motor enginessounded like a pulse irregularly drumming through an entire body. Thesun became extraordinarily hot because the motor car had stoppedoutside Mulberry’s shop window; old ladies on the tops of omnibusesspread their black parasols; here a green, here a red parasol openedwith a little pop. Mrs. Dalloway, coming to the window with her armsfull of sweet peas, looked out with her little pink face pursed inenquiry. Every one looked at the motor car. Septimus looked. Boys onbicycles sprang off. Traffic accumulated. And there the motor carstood, with drawn blinds, and upon them a curious pattern like a tree,Septimus thought, and this gradual drawing together of everything toone centre before his eyes, as if some horror had come almost to thesurface and was about to burst into flames, terrified him. The worldwavered and quivered and threatened to burst into flames. It is I whoam blocking the way, he thought. Was he not being looked at and pointedat; was he not weighted there, rooted to the pavement, for a purpose?But for what purpose?
“Let us go on, Septimus,” said his wife, a little woman, with largeeyes in a sallow pointed face; an Italian girl.
But Lucrezia herself could not help looking at the motor car and thetree pattern on the blinds. Was it the Queen in there--the Queen goingshopping?
The chauffeur, who had been opening something, turning something,shutting something, got on to the box.
“Come on,” said Lucrezia.
But her husband, for they had been married four, five years now,jumped, started, and said, “All right!” angrily, as if she hadinterrupted him.
People must notice; people must see. People, she thought, looking atthe crowd staring at the motor car; the English people, with theirchildren and their horses and their clothes, which she admired in away; but they were “people” now, because Septimus had said, “I willkill myself”; an awful thing to say. Suppose they had heard him? Shelooked at the crowd. Help, help! she wanted to cry out to butchers’boys and women. Help! Only last autumn she and Septimus had stood onthe Embankment wrapped in the same cloak and, Septimus reading a paperinstead of talking, she had snatched it from him and laughed in the oldman’s face who saw them! But failure one conceals. She must take himaway into some park.
“Now we will cross,” she said.
She had a right to his arm, though it was without feeling. He wouldgive her, who was so simple, so impulsive, only twenty-four, withoutfriends in England, who had left Italy for his sake, a piece of bone.
The motor car with its blinds drawn and an air of inscrutable reserveproceeded towards Piccadilly, still gazed at, still ruffling the faceson both sides of the street with the same dark breath of venerationwhether for Queen, Prince, or Prime Minister nobody knew. The faceitself had been seen only once by three people for a few seconds.Even the sex was now in dispute. But there could be no doubt thatgreatness was seated within; greatness was passing, hidden, down BondStreet, removed only by a hand’s-breadth from ordinary people who mightnow, for the first and last time, be within speaking distance of themajesty of England, of the enduring symbol of the state which will beknown to curious antiquaries, sifting the ruins of time, when Londonis a grass-grown path and all those hurrying along the pavement thisWednesday morning are but bones with a few wedding rings mixed up intheir dust and the gold stoppings of innumerable decayed teeth. Theface in the motor car will then be known.
It is probably the Queen, thought Mrs. Dalloway, coming out ofMulberry’s with her flowers; the Queen. And for a second she wore alook of extreme dignity standing by the flower shop in the sunlightwhile the car passed at a foot’s pace, with its blinds drawn. The Queengoing to some hospital; the Queen opening some bazaar, thought Clarissa.
The crush was terrific for the time of day. Lords, Ascot, Hurlingham,what was it? she wondered, for the street was blocked. The Britishmiddle classes sitting sideways on the tops of omnibuses with parcelsand umbrellas, yes, even furs on a day like this, were, she thought,more ridiculous, more unlike anything there has ever been than onecould conceive; and the Queen herself held up; the Queen herself unableto pass. Clarissa was suspended on one side of Brook Street; Sir JohnBuckhurst, the old Judge on the other, with the car between them (SirJohn had laid down the law for years and liked a well-dressed woman)when the chauffeur, leaning ever so slightly, said or showed somethingto the policeman, who saluted and raised his arm and jerked his headand moved the omnibus to the side and the car passed through. Slowlyand very silently it took its way.
Clarissa guessed; Clarissa knew of course; she had seen somethingwhite, magical, circular, in the footman’s hand, a disc inscribedwith a name,--the Queen’s, the Prince of Wales’s, the PrimeMinister’s?--which, by force of its own lustre, burnt its way through(Clarissa saw the car diminishing, disappearing), to blaze amongcandelabras, glittering stars, breasts stiff with oak leaves, HughWhitbread and all his colleagues, the gentlemen of England, that nightin Buckingham Palace. And Clarissa, too, gave a party. She stiffened alittle; so she would stand at the top of her stairs.
The car had gone, but it had left a slight ripple which flowed throughglove shops and hat shops and tailors’ shops on both sides of BondStreet. For thirty seconds all heads were inclined the same way--to thewindow. Choosing a pair of gloves--should they be to the elbow or aboveit, lemon or pale grey?--ladies stopped; when the sentence was finishedsomething had happened. Something so trifling in single instances thatno mathematical instrument, though capable of transmitting shocksin China, could register the vibration; yet in its fulness ratherformidable and in its common appeal emotional; for in all the hat shopsand tailors’ shops strangers looked at each other and thought of thedead; of the flag; of Empire. In a public house in a back street aColonial insulted the House of Windsor which led to words, broken beerglasses, and a general shindy, which echoed strangely across the wayin the ears of girls buying white underlinen threaded with pure whiteribbon for their weddings. For the surface agitation of the passing caras it sunk grazed something very profound.
Gliding across Piccadilly, the car turned down St. James’s Street. Tallmen, men of robust physique, well-dressed men with their tail-coats andtheir white slips and their hair raked back who, for reasons difficultto discriminate, were standing in the bow window of Brooks’s withtheir hands behind the tails of their coats, looking out, perceivedinstinctively that greatness was passing, and the pale light of theimmortal presence fell upon them as it had fallen upon ClarissaDalloway. At once they stood even straighter, and removed their hands,and seemed ready to attend their Sovereign, if need be, to the cannon’smouth, as their ancestors had done before them. The white busts and thelittle tables in the background covered with copies of the _Tatler_ andsyphons of soda water seemed to approve; seemed to indicate the flowingcorn and the manor houses of England; and to return the frail hum ofthe motor wheels as the walls of a whispering gallery return a singlevoice expanded and made sonorous by the might of a whole cathedral.Shawled Moll Pratt with her flowers on the pavement wished the dearboy well (it was the Prince of Wales for certain) and would have tossedthe price of a pot of beer--a bunch of roses--into St. James’s Streetout of sheer light-heartedness and contempt of poverty had she not seenthe constable’s eye upon her, discouraging an old Irishwoman’s loyalty.The sentries at St. James’s saluted; Queen Alexandra’s policemanapproved.
A small crowd meanwhile had gathered at the gates of BuckinghamPalace. Listlessly, yet confidently, poor people all of them, theywaited; looked at the Palace itself with the flag flying; at Victoria,billowing on her mound, admired her shelves of running water, hergeraniums; singled out from the motor cars in the Mall first this one,then that; bestowed emotion, vainly, upon commoners out for a drive;recalled their tribute to keep it unspent while this car passed andthat; and all the time let rumour accumulate in their veins and thrillthe nerves in their thighs at the thought of Royalty looking at them;the Queen bowing; the Prince saluting; at the thought of the heavenlylife divinely bestowed upon Kings; of the equerries and deep curtsies;of the Queen’s old doll’s house; of Princess Mary married to anEnglishman, and the Prince--ah! the Prince! who took wonderfully, theysaid, after old King Edward, but was ever so much slimmer. The Princelived at St. James’s; but he might come along in the morning to visithis mother.
So Sarah Bletchley said with her baby in her arms, tipping her footup and down as though she were by her own fender in Pimlico, butkeeping her eyes on the Mall, while Emily Coates ranged over the Palacewindows and thought of the housemaids, the innumerable housemaids, thebedrooms, the innumerable bedrooms. Joined by an elderly gentleman withan Aberdeen terrier, by men without occupation, the crowd increased.Little Mr. Bowley, who had rooms in the Albany and was sealed withwax over the deeper sources of life but could be unsealed suddenly,inappropriately, sentimentally, by this sort of thing--poor womenwaiting to see the Queen go past--poor women, nice little children,orphans, widows, the War--tut-tut--actually had tears in his eyes. Abreeze flaunting ever so warmly down the Mall through the thin trees,past the bronze heroes, lifted some flag flying in the British breastof Mr. Bowley and he raised his hat as the car turned into the Malland held it high as the car approached; and let the poor mothers ofPimlico press close to him, and stood very upright. The car came on.
Suddenly Mrs. Coates looked up into the sky. The sound of an aeroplanebored ominously into the ears of the crowd. There it was coming overthe trees, letting out white smoke from behind, which curled andtwisted, actually writing something! making letters in the sky! Everyone looked up.
Dropping dead down the aeroplane soared straight up, curved in a loop,raced, sank, rose, and whatever it did, wherever it went, out flutteredbehind it a thick ruffled bar of white smoke which curled and wreathedupon the sky in letters. But what letters? A C was it? an E, then an L?Only for a moment did they lie still; then they moved and melted andwere rubbed out up in the sky, and the aeroplane shot further away andagain, in a fresh space of sky, began writing a K, an E, a Y perhaps?
“Glaxo,” said Mrs. Coates in a strained, awestricken voice, gazingstraight up, and her baby, lying stiff and white in her arms, gazedstraight up.
“Kreemo,” murmured Mrs. Bletchley, like a sleep-walker. With his hatheld out perfectly still in his hand, Mr. Bowley gazed straight up.All down the Mall people were standing and looking up into the sky.As they looked the whole world became perfectly silent, and a flightof gulls crossed the sky, first one gull leading, then another, and inthis extraordinary silence and peace, in this pallor, in this purity,bells struck eleven times, the sound fading up there among the gulls.
The aeroplane turned and raced and swooped exactly where it liked,swiftly, freely, like a skater--
“That’s an E,” said Mrs. Bletchley-- or a dancer--
“It’s toffee,” murmured Mr. Bowley-- (and the car went in at the gatesand nobody looked at it), and shutting off the smoke, away and away itrushed, and the smoke faded and assembled itself round the broad whiteshapes of the clouds.
It had gone; it was behind the clouds. There was no sound. The cloudsto which the letters E, G, or L had attached themselves moved freely,as if destined to cross from West to East on a mission of the greatestimportance which would never be revealed, and yet certainly so itwas--a mission of the greatest importance. Then suddenly, as a traincomes out of a tunnel, the aeroplane rushed out of the clouds again,the sound boring into the ears of all people in the Mall, in the GreenPark, in Piccadilly, in Regent Street, in Regent’s Park, and the barof smoke curved behind and it dropped down, and it soared up and wroteone letter after another--but what word was it writing?
Lucrezia Warren Smith, sitting by her husband’s side on a seat inRegent’s Park in the Broad Walk, looked up.
“Look, look, Septimus!” she cried. For Dr. Holmes had told her to makeher husband (who had nothing whatever seriously the matter with him butwas a little out of sorts) take an interest in things outside himself.
So, thought Septimus, looking up, they are signalling to me. Not indeedin actual words; that is, he could not read the language yet; but itwas plain enough, this beauty, this exquisite beauty, and tears filledhis eyes as he looked at the smoke words languishing and melting in thesky and bestowing upon him in their inexhaustible charity and laughinggoodness one shape after another of unimaginable beauty and signallingtheir intention to provide him, for nothing, for ever, for lookingmerely, with beauty, more beauty! Tears ran down his cheeks.
It was toffee; they were advertising toffee, a nursemaid told Rezia.Together they began to spell t ... o ... f....
“K ... R ...” said the nursemaid, and Septimus heard her say “KayArr” close to his ear, deeply, softly, like a mellow organ, but witha roughness in her voice like a grasshopper’s, which rasped his spinedeliciously and sent running up into his brain waves of sound which,concussing, broke. A marvellous discovery indeed--that the human voicein certain atmospheric conditions (for one must be scientific, aboveall scientific) can quicken trees into life! Happily Rezia put her handwith a tremendous weight on his knee so that he was weighted down,transfixed, or the excitement of the elm trees rising and falling,rising and falling with all their leaves alight and the colour thinningand thickening from blue to the green of a hollow wave, like plumes onhorses’ heads, feathers on ladies’, so proudly they rose and fell, sosuperbly, would have sent him mad. But he would not go mad. He wouldshut his eyes; he would see no more.
But they beckoned; leaves were alive; trees were alive. And the leavesbeing connected by millions of fibres with his own body, there on theseat, fanned it up and down; when the branch stretched he, too, madethat statement. The sparrows fluttering, rising, and falling in jaggedfountains were part of the pattern; the white and blue, barred withblack branches. Sounds made harmonies with premeditation; the spacesbetween them were as significant as the sounds. A child cried. Rightlyfar away a horn sounded. All taken together meant the birth of a newreligion--
“Septimus!” said Rezia. He started violently. People must notice.
“I am going to walk to the fountain and back,” she said.
For she could stand it no longer. Dr. Holmes might say there wasnothing the matter. Far rather would she that he were dead! She couldnot sit beside him when he stared so and did not see her and madeeverything terrible; sky and tree, children playing, dragging carts,blowing whistles, falling down; all were terrible. And he would notkill himself; and she could tell no one. “Septimus has been working toohard”--that was all she could say to her own mother. To love makes onesolitary, she thought. She could tell nobody, not even Septimus now,and looking back, she saw him sitting in his shabby overcoat alone, onthe seat, hunched up, staring. And it was cowardly for a man to say hewould kill himself, but Septimus had fought; he was brave; he was notSeptimus now. She put on her lace collar. She put on her new hat andhe never noticed; and he was happy without her. Nothing could make herhappy without him! Nothing! He was selfish. So men are. For he was notill. Dr. Holmes said there was nothing the matter with him. She spreadher hand before her. Look! Her wedding ring slipped--she had grown sothin. It was she who suffered--but she had nobody to tell.
Far was Italy and the white houses and the room where her sisters satmaking hats, and the streets crowded every evening with people walking,laughing out loud, not half alive like people here, huddled up in Bathchairs, looking at a few ugly flowers stuck in pots!
“For you should see the Milan gardens,” she said aloud. But to whom?
There was nobody. Her words faded. So a rocket fades. Its sparks,having grazed their way into the night, surrender to it, dark descends,pours over the outlines of houses and towers; bleak hillsides softenand fall in. But though they are gone, the night is full of them;robbed of colour, blank of windows, they exist more ponderously, giveout what the frank daylight fails to transmit--the trouble and suspenseof things conglomerated there in the darkness; huddled together in thedarkness; reft of the relief which dawn brings when, washing the wallswhite and grey, spotting each window-pane, lifting the mist from thefields, showing the red-brown cows peacefully grazing, all is once moredecked out to the eye; exists again. I am alone; I am alone! she cried,by the fountain in Regent’s Park (staring at the Indian and his cross),as perhaps at midnight, when all boundaries are lost, the countryreverts to its ancient shape, as the Romans saw it, lying cloudy, whenthey landed, and the hills had no names and rivers wound they knew notwhere--such was her darkness; when suddenly, as if a shelf were shotforth and she stood on it, she said how she was his wife, married yearsago in Milan, his wife, and would never, never tell that he was mad!Turning, the shelf fell; down, down she dropped. For he was gone, shethought--gone, as he threatened, to kill himself--to throw himselfunder a cart! But no; there he was; still sitting alone on the seat, inhis shabby overcoat, his legs crossed, staring, talking aloud.
Men must not cut down trees. There is a God. (He noted such revelationson the backs of envelopes.) Change the world. No one kills from hatred.Make it known (he wrote it down). He waited. He listened. A sparrowperched on the railing opposite chirped Septimus, Septimus, four orfive times over and went on, drawing its notes out, to sing freshly andpiercingly in Greek words how there is no crime and, joined by anothersparrow, they sang in voices prolonged and piercing in Greek words,from trees in the meadow of life beyond a river where the dead walk,how there is no death.
There was his hand; there the dead. White things were assembling behindthe railings opposite. But he dared not look. Evans was behind therailings!
“What are you saying?” said Rezia suddenly, sitting down by him.
Interrupted again! She was always interrupting.
Away from people--they must get away from people, he said (jumpingup), right away over there, where there were chairs beneath a tree andthe long slope of the park dipped like a length of green stuff witha ceiling cloth of blue and pink smoke high above, and there was arampart of far irregular houses hazed in smoke, the traffic hummed ina circle, and on the right, dun-coloured animals stretched long necksover the Zoo palings, barking, howling. There they sat down under atree.
“Look,” she implored him, pointing at a little troop of boys carryingcricket stumps, and one shuffled, spun round on his heel and shuffled,as if he were acting a clown at the music hall.
“Look,” she implored him, for Dr. Holmes had told her to make himnotice real things, go to a music hall, play cricket--that was the verygame, Dr. Holmes said, a nice out-of-door game, the very game for herhusband.
“Look,” she repeated.
Look the unseen bade him, the voice which now communicated with him whowas the greatest of mankind, Septimus, lately taken from life to death,the Lord who had come to renew society, who lay like a coverlet, a snowblanket smitten only by the sun, for ever unwasted, suffering for ever,the scapegoat, the eternal sufferer, but he did not want it, he moaned,putting from him with a wave of his hand that eternal suffering, thateternal loneliness.
“Look,” she repeated, for he must not talk aloud to himself out ofdoors.
“Oh look,” she implored him. But what was there to look at? A fewsheep. That was all.
The way to Regent’s Park Tube station--could they tell her the way toRegent’s Park Tube station--Maisie Johnson wanted to know. She was onlyup from Edinburgh two days ago.
“Not this way--over there!” Rezia exclaimed, waving her aside, lest sheshould see Septimus.
Both seemed queer, Maisie Johnson thought. Everything seemed veryqueer. In London for the first time, come to take up a post at heruncle’s in Leadenhall Street, and now walking through Regent’s Park inthe morning, this couple on the chairs gave her quite a turn; the youngwoman seeming foreign, the man looking queer; so that should she bevery old she would still remember and make it jangle again among hermemories how she had walked through Regent’s Park on a fine summer’smorning fifty years ago. For she was only nineteen and had got her wayat last, to come to London; and now how queer it was, this couple shehad asked the way of, and the girl started and jerked her hand, and theman--he seemed awfully odd; quarrelling, perhaps; parting for ever,perhaps; something was up, she knew; and now all these people (for shereturned to the Broad Walk), the stone basins, the prim flowers, theold men and women, invalids most of them in Bath chairs--all seemed,after Edinburgh, so queer. And Maisie Johnson, as she joined thatgently trudging, vaguely gazing, breeze-kissed company--squirrelsperching and preening, sparrow fountains fluttering for crumbs, dogsbusy with the railings, busy with each other, while the soft warm airwashed over them and lent to the fixed unsurprised gaze with whichthey received life something whimsical and mollified--Maisie Johnsonpositively felt she must cry Oh! (for that young man on the seat hadgiven her quite a turn. Something was up, she knew.)
Horror! horror! she wanted to cry. (She had left her people; they hadwarned her what would happen.)
Why hadn’t she stayed at home? she cried, twisting the knob of the ironrailing.
That girl, thought Mrs. Dempster (who saved crusts for the squirrelsand often ate her lunch in Regent’s Park), don’t know a thing yet; andreally it seemed to her better to be a little stout, a little slack,a little moderate in one’s expectations. Percy drank. Well, better tohave a son, thought Mrs. Dempster. She had had a hard time of it, andcouldn’t help smiling at a girl like that. You’ll get married, foryou’re pretty enough, thought Mrs. Dempster. Get married, she thought,and then you’ll know. Oh, the cooks, and so on. Every man has his ways.But whether I’d have chosen quite like that if I could have known,thought Mrs. Dempster, and could not help wishing to whisper a wordto Maisie Johnson; to feel on the creased pouch of her worn old facethe kiss of pity. For it’s been a hard life, thought Mrs. Dempster.What hadn’t she given to it? Roses; figure; her feet too. (She drew theknobbed lumps beneath her skirt.)
Roses, she thought sardonically. All trash, m’dear. For really, whatwith eating, drinking, and mating, the bad days and good, life had beenno mere matter of roses, and what was more, let me tell you, CarrieDempster had no wish to change her lot with any woman’s in KentishTown! But, she implored, pity. Pity, for the loss of roses. Pity sheasked of Maisie Johnson, standing by the hyacinth beds.
Ah, but that aeroplane! Hadn’t Mrs. Dempster always longed to seeforeign parts? She had a nephew, a missionary. It soared and shot. Shealways went on the sea at Margate, not out o’ sight of land, but shehad no patience with women who were afraid of water. It swept and fell.Her stomach was in her mouth. Up again. There’s a fine young felleraboard of it, Mrs. Dempster wagered, and away and away it went, fastand fading, away and away the aeroplane shot; soaring over Greenwichand all the masts; over the little island of grey churches, St. Paul’sand the rest till, on either side of London, fields spread out anddark brown woods where adventurous thrushes hopping boldly, glancingquickly, snatched the snail and tapped him on a stone, once, twice,thrice.
Away and away the aeroplane shot, till it was nothing but a brightspark; an aspiration; a concentration; a symbol (so it seemed to Mr.Bentley, vigorously rolling his strip of turf at Greenwich) of man’ssoul; of his determination, thought Mr. Bentley, sweeping round thecedar tree, to get outside his body, beyond his house, by means ofthought, Einstein, speculation, mathematics, the Mendelian theory--awaythe aeroplane shot.
Then, while a seedy-looking nondescript man carrying a leather bagstood on the steps of St. Paul’s Cathedral, and hesitated, for withinwas what balm, how great a welcome, how many tombs with banners wavingover them, tokens of victories not over armies, but over, he thought,that plaguy spirit of truth seeking which leaves me at present withouta situation, and more than that, the cathedral offers company, hethought, invites you to membership of a society; great men belong toit; martyrs have died for it; why not enter in, he thought, put thisleather bag stuffed with pamphlets before an altar, a cross, thesymbol of something which has soared beyond seeking and questing andknocking of words together and has become all spirit, disembodied,ghostly--why not enter in? he thought and while he hesitated out flewthe aeroplane over Ludgate Circus.
It was strange; it was still. Not a sound was to be heard above thetraffic. Unguided it seemed; sped of its own free will. And now,curving up and up, straight up, like something mounting in ecstasy, inpure delight, out from behind poured white smoke looping, writing a T,an O, an F.
* * * * *
“What are they looking at?” said Clarissa Dalloway to the maid whoopened her door.
The hall of the house was cool as a vault. Mrs. Dalloway raised herhand to her eyes, and, as the maid shut the door to, and she heard theswish of Lucy’s skirts, she felt like a nun who has left the worldand feels fold round her the familiar veils and the response to olddevotions. The cook whistled in the kitchen. She heard the click of thetypewriter. It was her life, and, bending her head over the hall table,she bowed beneath the influence, felt blessed and purified, saying toherself, as she took the pad with the telephone message on it, howmoments like this are buds on the tree of life, flowers of darknessthey are, she thought (as if some lovely rose had blossomed for hereyes only); not for a moment did she believe in God; but all themore, she thought, taking up the pad, must one repay in daily life toservants, yes, to dogs and canaries, above all to Richard her husband,who was the foundation of it--of the gay sounds, of the green lights,of the cook even whistling, for Mrs. Walker was Irish and whistledall day long--one must pay back from this secret deposit of exquisitemoments, she thought, lifting the pad, while Lucy stood by her, tryingto explain how.
“Mr. Dalloway, ma’am”--
Clarissa read on the telephone pad, “Lady Bruton wishes to know if Mr.Dalloway will lunch with her to-day.”
“Mr. Dalloway, ma’am, told me to tell you he would be lunching out.”
“Dear!” said Clarissa, and Lucy shared as she meant her to herdisappointment (but not the pang); felt the concord between them; tookthe hint; thought how the gentry love; gilded her own future with calm;and, taking Mrs. Dalloway’s parasol, handled it like a sacred weaponwhich a Goddess, having acquitted herself honourably in the field ofbattle, sheds, and placed it in the umbrella stand.
“Fear no more,” said Clarissa. Fear no more the heat o’ the sun; forthe shock of Lady Bruton asking Richard to lunch without her made themoment in which she had stood shiver, as a plant on the river-bed feelsthe shock of a passing oar and shivers: so she rocked: so she shivered.
Millicent Bruton, whose lunch parties were said to be extraordinarilyamusing, had not asked her. No vulgar jealousy could separate herfrom Richard. But she feared time itself, and read on Lady Bruton’sface, as if it had been a dial cut in impassive stone, the dwindlingof life; how year by year her share was sliced; how little the marginthat remained was capable any longer of stretching, of absorbing, asin the youthful years, the colours, salts, tones of existence, so thatshe filled the room she entered, and felt often as she stood hesitatingone moment on the threshold of her drawing-room, an exquisite suspense,such as might stay a diver before plunging while the sea darkens andbrightens beneath him, and the waves which threaten to break, but onlygently split their surface, roll and conceal and encrust as they justturn over the weeds with pearl.
She put the pad on the hall table. She began to go slowly upstairs,with her hand on the bannisters, as if she had left a party, wherenow this friend now that had flashed back her face, her voice; hadshut the door and gone out and stood alone, a single figure againstthe appalling night, or rather, to be accurate, against the stare ofthis matter-of-fact June morning; soft with the glow of rose petalsfor some, she knew, and felt it, as she paused by the open staircasewindow which let in blinds flapping, dogs barking, let in, she thought,feeling herself suddenly shrivelled, aged, breastless, the grinding,blowing, flowering of the day, out of doors, out of the window, out ofher body and brain which now failed, since Lady Bruton, whose lunchparties were said to be extraordinarily amusing, had not asked her.
Like a nun withdrawing, or a child exploring a tower, she wentupstairs, paused at the window, came to the bathroom. There was thegreen linoleum and a tap dripping. There was an emptiness about theheart of life; an attic room. Women must put off their rich apparel.At midday they must disrobe. She pierced the pincushion and laid herfeathered yellow hat on the bed. The sheets were clean, tight stretchedin a broad white band from side to side. Narrower and narrower wouldher bed be. The candle was half burnt down and she had read deep inBaron Marbot’s _Memoirs_. She had read late at night of the retreatfrom Moscow. For the House sat so long that Richard insisted, after herillness, that she must sleep undisturbed. And really she preferred toread of the retreat from Moscow. He knew it. So the room was an attic;the bed narrow; and lying there reading, for she slept badly, she couldnot dispel a virginity preserved through childbirth which clung to herlike a sheet. Lovely in girlhood, suddenly there came a moment--forexample on the river beneath the woods at Clieveden--when, throughsome contraction of this cold spirit, she had failed him. And then atConstantinople, and again and again. She could see what she lacked.It was not beauty; it was not mind. It was something central whichpermeated; something warm which broke up surfaces and rippled the coldcontact of man and woman, or of women together. For _that_ she coulddimly perceive. She resented it, had a scruple picked up Heaven knowswhere, or, as she felt, sent by Nature (who is invariably wise); yetshe could not resist sometimes yielding to the charm of a woman, nota girl, of a woman confessing, as to her they often did, some scrape,some folly. And whether it was pity, or their beauty, or that she wasolder, or some accident--like a faint scent, or a violin next door (sostrange is the power of sounds at certain moments), she did undoubtedlythen feel what men felt. Only for a moment; but it was enough. It wasa sudden revelation, a tinge like a blush which one tried to checkand then, as it spread, one yielded to its expansion, and rushed tothe farthest verge and there quivered and felt the world come closer,swollen with some astonishing significance, some pressure of rapture,which split its thin skin and gushed and poured with an extraordinaryalleviation over the cracks and sores! Then, for that moment, shehad seen an illumination; a match burning in a crocus; an innermeaning almost expressed. But the close withdrew; the hard softened.It was over--the moment. Against such moments (with women too) therecontrasted (as she laid her hat down) the bed and Baron Marbot and thecandle half-burnt. Lying awake, the floor creaked; the lit house wassuddenly darkened, and if she raised her head she could just hear theclick of the handle released as gently as possible by Richard, whoslipped upstairs in his socks and then, as often as not, dropped hishot-water bottle and swore! How she laughed!
But this question of love (she thought, putting her coat away), thisfalling in love with women. Take Sally Seton; her relation in the olddays with Sally Seton. Had not that, after all, been love?
She sat on the floor--that was her first impression of Sally--she saton the floor with her arms round her knees, smoking a cigarette. Wherecould it have been? The Mannings? The Kinloch-Jones’s? At some party(where, she could not be certain), for she had a distinct recollectionof saying to the man she was with, “Who is _that_?” And he had toldher, and said that Sally’s parents did not get on (how that shockedher--that one’s parents should quarrel!). But all that evening shecould not take her eyes off Sally. It was an extraordinary beautyof the kind she most admired, dark, large-eyed, with that qualitywhich, since she hadn’t got it herself, she always envied--a sort ofabandonment, as if she could say anything, do anything; a qualitymuch commoner in foreigners than in Englishwomen. Sally always saidshe had French blood in her veins, an ancestor had been with MarieAntoinette, had his head cut off, left a ruby ring. Perhaps that summershe came to stay at Bourton, walking in quite unexpectedly without apenny in her pocket, one night after dinner, and upsetting poor AuntHelena to such an extent that she never forgave her. There had beensome quarrel at home. She literally hadn’t a penny that night when shecame to them--had pawned a brooch to come down. She had rushed off ina passion. They sat up till all hours of the night talking. Sally itwas who made her feel, for the first time, how sheltered the life atBourton was. She knew nothing about sex--nothing about social problems.She had once seen an old man who had dropped dead in a field--she hadseen cows just after their calves were born. But Aunt Helena neverliked discussion of anything (when Sally gave her William Morris, ithad to be wrapped in brown paper). There they sat, hour after hour,talking in her bedroom at the top of the house, talking about life, howthey were to reform the world. They meant to found a society to abolishprivate property, and actually had a letter written, though not sentout. The ideas were Sally’s, of course--but very soon she was just asexcited--read Plato in bed before breakfast; read Morris; read Shelleyby the hour.
Sally’s power was amazing, her gift, her personality. There was her waywith flowers, for instance. At Bourton they always had stiff littlevases all the way down the table. Sally went out, picked hollyhocks,dahlias--all sorts of flowers that had never been seen together--cuttheir heads off, and made them swim on the top of water in bowls.The effect was extraordinary--coming in to dinner in the sunset. (Ofcourse Aunt Helena thought it wicked to treat flowers like that.) Thenshe forgot her sponge, and ran along the passage naked. That grim oldhousemaid, Ellen Atkins, went about grumbling--“Suppose any of thegentlemen had seen?” Indeed she did shock people. She was untidy, Papasaid.
The strange thing, on looking back, was the purity, the integrity,of her feeling for Sally. It was not like one’s feeling for a man.It was completely disinterested, and besides, it had a quality whichcould only exist between women, between women just grown up. It wasprotective, on her side; sprang from a sense of being in leaguetogether, a presentiment of something that was bound to part them(they spoke of marriage always as a catastrophe), which led to thischivalry, this protective feeling which was much more on her sidethan Sally’s. For in those days she was completely reckless; did themost idiotic things out of bravado; bicycled round the parapet on theterrace; smoked cigars. Absurd, she was--very absurd. But the charmwas overpowering, to her at least, so that she could remember standingin her bedroom at the top of the house holding the hot-water can in herhands and saying aloud, “She is beneath this roof.... She is beneaththis roof!”
No, the words meant absolutely nothing to her now. She could not evenget an echo of her old emotion. But she could remember going coldwith excitement, and doing her hair in a kind of ecstasy (now the oldfeeling began to come back to her, as she took out her hairpins, laidthem on the dressing-table, began to do her hair), with the rooksflaunting up and down in the pink evening light, and dressing, andgoing downstairs, and feeling as she crossed the hall “if it were nowto die ’twere now to be most happy.” That was her feeling--Othello’sfeeling, and she felt it, she was convinced, as strongly as Shakespearemeant Othello to feel it, all because she was coming down to dinner ina white frock to meet Sally Seton!
She was wearing pink gauze--was that possible? She _seemed_, anyhow,all light, glowing, like some bird or air ball that has flown in,attached itself for a moment to a bramble. But nothing is so strangewhen one is in love (and what was this except being in love?) as thecomplete indifference of other people. Aunt Helena just wandered offafter dinner; Papa read the paper. Peter Walsh might have been there,and old Miss Cummings; Joseph Breitkopf certainly was, for he cameevery summer, poor old man, for weeks and weeks, and pretended to readGerman with her, but really played the piano and sang Brahms withoutany voice.
All this was only a background for Sally. She stood by the fireplacetalking, in that beautiful voice which made everything she said soundlike a caress, to Papa, who had begun to be attracted rather againsthis will (he never got over lending her one of his books and findingit soaked on the terrace), when suddenly she said, “What a shame tosit indoors!” and they all went out on to the terrace and walked upand down. Peter Walsh and Joseph Breitkopf went on about Wagner. Sheand Sally fell a little behind. Then came the most exquisite moment ofher whole life passing a stone urn with flowers in it. Sally stopped;picked a flower; kissed her on the lips. The whole world might haveturned upside down! The others disappeared; there she was alone withSally. And she felt that she had been given a present, wrapped up,and told just to keep it, not to look at it--a diamond, somethinginfinitely precious, wrapped up, which, as they walked (up and down,up and down), she uncovered, or the radiance burnt through, therevelation, the religious feeling!--when old Joseph and Peter facedthem:
“Star-gazing?” said Peter.
It was like running one’s face against a granite wall in the darkness!It was shocking; it was horrible!
Not for herself. She felt only how Sally was being mauled already,maltreated; she felt his hostility; his jealousy; his determinationto break into their companionship. All this she saw as one sees alandscape in a flash of lightning--and Sally (never had she admired herso much!) gallantly taking her way unvanquished. She laughed. She madeold Joseph tell her the names of the stars, which he liked doing veryseriously. She stood there: she listened. She heard the names of thestars.
“Oh this horror!” she said to herself, as if she had known all alongthat something would interrupt, would embitter her moment of happiness.
Yet, after all, how much she owed to him later. Always when shethought of him she thought of their quarrels for some reason--becauseshe wanted his good opinion so much, perhaps. She owed him words:“sentimental,” “civilised”; they started up every day of her lifeas if he guarded her. A book was sentimental; an attitude to lifesentimental. “Sentimental,” perhaps she was to be thinking of the past.What would he think, she wondered, when he came back?
That she had grown older? Would he say that, or would she see himthinking when he came back, that she had grown older? It was true.Since her illness she had turned almost white.
Laying her brooch on the table, she had a sudden spasm, as if, whileshe mused, the icy claws had had the chance to fix in her. She wasnot old yet. She had just broken into her fifty-second year. Monthsand months of it were still untouched. June, July, August! Each stillremained almost whole, and, as if to catch the falling drop, Clarissa(crossing to the dressing-table) plunged into the very heart of themoment, transfixed it, there--the moment of this June morning on whichwas the pressure of all the other mornings, seeing the glass, thedressing-table, and all the bottles afresh, collecting the whole of herat one point (as she looked into the glass), seeing the delicate pinkface of the woman who was that very night to give a party; of ClarissaDalloway; of herself.
How many million times she had seen her face, and always with the sameimperceptible contraction! She pursed her lips when she looked in theglass. It was to give her face point. That was her self--pointed;dartlike; definite. That was her self when some effort, some callon her to be her self, drew the parts together, she alone knew howdifferent, how incompatible and composed so for the world only intoone centre, one diamond, one woman who sat in her drawing-room andmade a meeting-point, a radiancy no doubt in some dull lives, a refugefor the lonely to come to, perhaps; she had helped young people, whowere grateful to her; had tried to be the same always, never showinga sign of all the other sides of her--faults, jealousies, vanities,suspicions, like this of Lady Bruton not asking her to lunch; which,she thought (combing her hair finally), is utterly base! Now, where washer dress?
Her evening dresses hung in the cupboard. Clarissa, plunging her handinto the softness, gently detached the green dress and carried itto the window. She had torn it. Some one had trod on the skirt. Shehad felt it give at the Embassy party at the top among the folds.By artificial light the green shone, but lost its colour now in thesun. She would mend it. Her maids had too much to do. She would wearit to-night. She would take her silks, her scissors, her--what wasit?--her thimble, of course, down into the drawing-room, for she mustalso write, and see that things generally were more or less in order.
Strange, she thought, pausing on the landing, and assembling thatdiamond shape, that single person, strange how a mistress knows thevery moment, the very temper of her house! Faint sounds rose in spiralsup the well of the stairs; the swish of a mop; tapping; knocking; aloudness when the front door opened; a voice repeating a message in thebasem*nt; the chink of silver on a tray; clean silver for the party.All was for the party.
(And Lucy, coming into the drawing-room with her tray held out, putthe giant candlesticks on the mantelpiece, the silver casket in themiddle, turned the crystal dolphin towards the clock. They wouldcome; they would stand; they would talk in the mincing tones whichshe could imitate, ladies and gentlemen. Of all, her mistress wasloveliest--mistress of silver, of linen, of china, for the sun, thesilver, doors off their hinges, Rumpelmayer’s men, gave her a sense, asshe laid the paper-knife on the inlaid table, of something achieved.Behold! Behold! she said, speaking to her old friends in the baker’sshop, where she had first seen service at Caterham, prying into theglass. She was Lady Angela, attending Princess Mary, when in came Mrs.Dalloway.)
“Oh Lucy,” she said, “the silver does look nice!”
“And how,” she said, turning the crystal dolphin to stand straight,“how did you enjoy the play last night?” “Oh, they had to go beforethe end!” she said. “They had to be back at ten!” she said. “So theydon’t know what happened,” she said. “That does seem hard luck,” shesaid (for her servants stayed later, if they asked her). “That doesseem rather a shame,” she said, taking the old bald-looking cushion inthe middle of the sofa and putting it in Lucy’s arms, and giving her alittle push, and crying:
“Take it away! Give it to Mrs. Walker with my compliments! Take itaway!” she cried.
And Lucy stopped at the drawing-room door, holding the cushion, andsaid, very shyly, turning a little pink, Couldn’t she help to mend thatdress?
But, said Mrs. Dalloway, she had enough on her hands already, quiteenough of her own to do without that.
“But, thank you, Lucy, oh, thank you,” said Mrs. Dalloway, and thankyou, thank you, she went on saying (sitting down on the sofa with herdress over her knees, her scissors, her silks), thank you, thank you,she went on saying in gratitude to her servants generally for helpingher to be like this, to be what she wanted, gentle, generous-hearted.Her servants liked her. And then this dress of hers--where was thetear? and now her needle to be threaded. This was a favourite dress,one of Sally Parker’s, the last almost she ever made, alas, for Sallyhad now retired, living at Ealing, and if ever I have a moment, thoughtClarissa (but never would she have a moment any more), I shall go andsee her at Ealing. For she was a character, thought Clarissa, a realartist. She thought of little out-of-the-way things; yet her dresseswere never queer. You could wear them at Hatfield; at BuckinghamPalace. She had worn them at Hatfield; at Buckingham Palace.
Quiet descended on her, calm, content, as her needle, drawing the silksmoothly to its gentle pause, collected the green folds together andattached them, very lightly, to the belt. So on a summer’s day wavescollect, overbalance, and fall; collect and fall; and the whole worldseems to be saying “that is all” more and more ponderously, until eventhe heart in the body which lies in the sun on the beach says too,That is all. Fear no more, says the heart. Fear no more, says theheart, committing its burden to some sea, which sighs collectively forall sorrows, and renews, begins, collects, lets fall. And the bodyalone listens to the passing bee; the wave breaking; the dog barking,far away barking and barking.
“Heavens, the front-door bell!” exclaimed Clarissa, staying her needle.Roused, she listened.
“Mrs. Dalloway will see me,” said the elderly man in the hall. “Oh yes,she will see _me_,” he repeated, putting Lucy aside very benevolently,and running upstairs ever so quickly. “Yes, yes, yes,” he muttered ashe ran upstairs. “She will see me. After five years in India, Clarissawill see me.”
“Who can--what can,” asked Mrs. Dalloway (thinking it was outrageousto be interrupted at eleven o’clock on the morning of the day shewas giving a party), hearing a step on the stairs. She heard a handupon the door. She made to hide her dress, like a virgin protectingchastity, respecting privacy. Now the brass knob slipped. Now the dooropened, and in came--for a single second she could not remember whathe was called! so surprised she was to see him, so glad, so shy, soutterly taken aback to have Peter Walsh come to her unexpectedly inthe morning! (She had not read his letter.)
“And how are you?” said Peter Walsh, positively trembling; taking bothher hands; kissing both her hands. She’s grown older, he thought,sitting down. I shan’t tell her anything about it, he thought,for she’s grown older. She’s looking at me, he thought, a suddenembarrassment coming over him, though he had kissed her hands. Puttinghis hand into his pocket, he took out a large pocket-knife and halfopened the blade.
Exactly the same, thought Clarissa; the same queer look; the same checksuit; a little out of the straight his face is, a little thinner,dryer, perhaps, but he looks awfully well, and just the same.
“How heavenly it is to see you again!” she exclaimed. He had his knifeout. That’s so like him, she thought.
He had only reached town last night, he said; would have to godown into the country at once; and how was everything, how waseverybody--Richard? Elizabeth?
“And what’s all this?” he said, tilting his penknife towards her greendress.
He’s very well dressed, thought Clarissa; yet he always criticises_me_.
Here she is mending her dress; mending her dress as usual, he thought;here she’s been sitting all the time I’ve been in India; mending herdress; playing about; going to parties; running to the House and backand all that, he thought, growing more and more irritated, more andmore agitated, for there’s nothing in the world so bad for some womenas marriage, he thought; and politics; and having a Conservativehusband, like the admirable Richard. So it is, so it is, he thought,shutting his knife with a snap.
“Richard’s very well. Richard’s at a Committee,” said Clarissa.
And she opened her scissors, and said, did he mind her just finishingwhat she was doing to her dress, for they had a party that night?
“Which I shan’t ask you to,” she said. “My dear Peter!” she said.
But it was delicious to hear her say that--my dear Peter! Indeed, itwas all so delicious--the silver, the chairs; all so delicious!
Why wouldn’t she ask him to her party? he asked.
Now of course, thought Clarissa, he’s enchanting! perfectly enchanting!Now I remember how impossible it was ever to make up my mind--and whydid I make up my mind--not to marry him? she wondered, that awfulsummer?
“But it’s so extraordinary that you should have come this morning!” shecried, putting her hands, one on top of another, down on her dress.
“Do you remember,” she said, “how the blinds used to flap at Bourton?”
“They did,” he said; and he remembered breakfasting alone, veryawkwardly, with her father; who had died; and he had not written toClarissa. But he had never got on well with old Parry, that querulous,weak-kneed old man, Clarissa’s father, Justin Parry.
“I often wish I’d got on better with your father,” he said.
“But he never liked any one who--our friends,” said Clarissa; and couldhave bitten her tongue for thus reminding Peter that he had wanted tomarry her.
Of course I did, thought Peter; it almost broke my heart too, hethought; and was overcome with his own grief, which rose like a moonlooked at from a terrace, ghastly beautiful with light from the sunkenday. I was more unhappy than I’ve ever been since, he thought. And asif in truth he were sitting there on the terrace he edged a littletowards Clarissa; put his hand out; raised it; let it fall. Thereabove them it hung, that moon. She too seemed to be sitting with him onthe terrace, in the moonlight.
“Herbert has it now,” she said. “I never go there now,” she said.
Then, just as happens on a terrace in the moonlight, when one personbegins to feel ashamed that he is already bored, and yet as the othersits silent, very quiet, sadly looking at the moon, does not like tospeak, moves his foot, clears his throat, notices some iron scroll on atable leg, stirs a leaf, but says nothing--so Peter Walsh did now. Forwhy go back like this to the past? he thought. Why make him think of itagain? Why make him suffer, when she had tortured him so infernally?Why?
“Do you remember the lake?” she said, in an abrupt voice, under thepressure of an emotion which caught her heart, made the muscles of herthroat stiff, and contracted her lips in a spasm as she said “lake.”For she was a child, throwing bread to the ducks, between her parents,and at the same time a grown woman coming to her parents who stoodby the lake, holding her life in her arms which, as she neared them,grew larger and larger in her arms, until it became a whole life, acomplete life, which she put down by them and said, “This is what Ihave made of it! This!” And what had she made of it? What, indeed?sitting there sewing this morning with Peter.
She looked at Peter Walsh; her look, passing through all that timeand that emotion, reached him doubtfully; settled on him tearfully;and rose and fluttered away, as a bird touches a branch and rises andflutters away. Quite simply she wiped her eyes.
“Yes,” said Peter. “Yes, yes, yes,” he said, as if she drew up to thesurface something which positively hurt him as it rose. Stop! Stop!he wanted to cry. For he was not old; his life was not over; not byany means. He was only just past fifty. Shall I tell her, he thought,or not? He would like to make a clean breast of it all. But she istoo cold, he thought; sewing, with her scissors; Daisy would lookordinary beside Clarissa. And she would think me a failure, which I amin their sense, he thought; in the Dalloways’ sense. Oh yes, he had nodoubt about that; he was a failure, compared with all this--the inlaidtable, the mounted paper-knife, the dolphin and the candlesticks,the chair-covers and the old valuable English tinted prints--he wasa failure! I detest the smugness of the whole affair he thought;Richard’s doing, not Clarissa’s; save that she married him. (HereLucy came into the room, carrying silver, more silver, but charming,slender, graceful she looked, he thought, as she stooped to put itdown.) And this has been going on all the time! he thought; week afterweek; Clarissa’s life; while I--he thought; and at once everythingseemed to radiate from him; journeys; rides; quarrels; adventures;bridge parties; love affairs; work; work, work! and he took out hisknife quite openly--his old horn-handled knife which Clarissa couldswear he had had these thirty years--and clenched his fist upon it.
What an extraordinary habit that was, Clarissa thought; always playingwith a knife. Always making one feel, too, frivolous; empty-minded;a mere silly chatterbox, as he used. But I too, she thought, and,taking up her needle, summoned, like a Queen whose guards have fallenasleep and left her unprotected (she had been quite taken aback by thisvisit--it had upset her) so that any one can stroll in and have a lookat her where she lies with the brambles curving over her, summonedto her help the things she did; the things she liked; her husband;Elizabeth; her self, in short, which Peter hardly knew now, all to comeabout her and beat off the enemy.
“Well, and what’s happened to you?” she said. So before a battlebegins, the horses paw the ground; toss their heads; the light shineson their flanks; their necks curve. So Peter Walsh and Clarissa,sitting side by side on the blue sofa, challenged each other. Hispowers chafed and tossed in him. He assembled from different quartersall sorts of things; praise; his career at Oxford; his marriage, whichshe knew nothing whatever about; how he had loved; and altogether donehis job.
“Millions of things!” he exclaimed, and, urged by the assembly ofpowers which were now charging this way and that and giving him thefeeling at once frightening and extremely exhilarating of being rushedthrough the air on the shoulders of people he could no longer see, heraised his hands to his forehead.
Clarissa sat very upright; drew in her breath.
“I am in love,” he said, not to her however, but to some one raised upin the dark so that you could not touch her but must lay your garlanddown on the grass in the dark.
“In love,” he repeated, now speaking rather dryly to ClarissaDalloway; “in love with a girl in India.” He had deposited his garland.Clarissa could make what she would of it.
“In love!” she said. That he at his age should be sucked under in hislittle bow-tie by that monster! And there’s no flesh on his neck; hishands are red; and he’s six months older than I am! her eye flashedback to her; but in her heart she felt, all the same, he is in love. Hehas that, she felt; he is in love.
But the indomitable egotism which for ever rides down the hosts opposedto it, the river which says on, on, on; even though, it admits, theremay be no goal for us whatever, still on, on; this indomitable egotismcharged her cheeks with colour; made her look very young; very pink;very bright-eyed as she sat with her dress upon her knee, and herneedle held to the end of green silk, trembling a little. He was inlove! Not with her. With some younger woman, of course.
“And who is she?” she asked.
Now this statue must be brought from its height and set down betweenthem.
“A married woman, unfortunately,” he said; “the wife of a Major in theIndian Army.”
And with a curious ironical sweetness he smiled as he placed her inthis ridiculous way before Clarissa.
(All the same, he is in love, thought Clarissa.)
“She has,” he continued, very reasonably, “two small children; a boyand a girl; and I have come over to see my lawyers about the divorce.”
There they are! he thought. Do what you like with them, Clarissa!There they are! And second by second it seemed to him that the wife ofthe Major in the Indian Army (his Daisy) and her two small childrenbecame more and more lovely as Clarissa looked at them; as if he hadset light to a grey pellet on a plate and there had risen up a lovelytree in the brisk sea-salted air of their intimacy (for in some ways noone understood him, felt with him, as Clarissa did)--their exquisiteintimacy.
She flattered him; she fooled him, thought Clarissa; shaping the woman,the wife of the Major in the Indian Army, with three strokes of aknife. What a waste! What a folly! All his life long Peter had beenfooled like that; first getting sent down from Oxford; next marryingthe girl on the boat going out to India; now the wife of a Major in theIndian Army--thank Heaven she had refused to marry him! Still, he wasin love; her old friend, her dear Peter, he was in love.
“But what are you going to do?” she asked him. Oh the lawyers andsolicitors, Messrs. Hooper and Grateley of Lincoln’s Inn, they weregoing to do it, he said. And he actually pared his nails with hispocket-knife.
For Heaven’s sake, leave your knife alone! she cried to herself inirrepressible irritation; it was his silly unconventionality, hisweakness; his lack of the ghost of a notion what any one else wasfeeling that annoyed her, had always annoyed her; and now at his age,how silly!
I know all that, Peter thought; I know what I’m up against, he thought,running his finger along the blade of his knife, Clarissa and Dallowayand all the rest of them; but I’ll show Clarissa--and then to his uttersurprise, suddenly thrown by those uncontrollable forces thrown throughthe air, he burst into tears; wept; wept without the least shame,sitting on the sofa, the tears running down his cheeks.
And Clarissa had leant forward, taken his hand, drawn him to her,kissed him,--actually had felt his face on hers before she could downthe brandishing of silver flashing--plumes like pampas grass in atropic gale in her breast, which, subsiding, left her holding his hand,patting his knee and, feeling as she sat back extraordinarily at herease with him and light-hearted, all in a clap it came over her, If Ihad married him, this gaiety would have been mine all day!
It was all over for her. The sheet was stretched and the bed narrow.She had gone up into the tower alone and left them blackberrying inthe sun. The door had shut, and there among the dust of fallen plasterand the litter of birds’ nests how distant the view had looked, andthe sounds came thin and chill (once on Leith Hill, she remembered),and Richard, Richard! she cried, as a sleeper in the night starts andstretches a hand in the dark for help. Lunching with Lady Bruton, itcame back to her. He has left me; I am alone for ever, she thought,folding her hands upon her knee.
Peter Walsh had got up and crossed to the window and stood with hisback to her, flicking a bandanna handkerchief from side to side.Masterly and dry and desolate he looked, his thin shoulder-bladeslifting his coat slightly; blowing his nose violently. Take me withyou, Clarissa thought impulsively, as if he were starting directly uponsome great voyage; and then, next moment, it was as if the five acts ofa play that had been very exciting and moving were now over and she hadlived a lifetime in them and had run away, had lived with Peter, andit was now over.
Now it was time to move, and, as a woman gathers her things together,her cloak, her gloves, her opera-glasses, and gets up to go out of thetheatre into the street, she rose from the sofa and went to Peter.
And it was awfully strange, he thought, how she still had the power,as she came tinkling, rustling, still had the power as she came acrossthe room, to make the moon, which he detested, rise at Bourton on theterrace in the summer sky.
“Tell me,” he said, seizing her by the shoulders. “Are you happy,Clarissa? Does Richard--”
The door opened.
“Here is my Elizabeth,” said Clarissa, emotionally, histrionically,perhaps.
“How d’y do?” said Elizabeth coming forward.
The sound of Big Ben striking the half-hour struck out between themwith extraordinary vigour, as if a young man, strong, indifferent,inconsiderate, were swinging dumb-bells this way and that.
“Hullo, Elizabeth!” cried Peter, stuffing his handkerchief into hispocket, going quickly to her, saying “Good-bye, Clarissa” withoutlooking at her, leaving the room quickly, and running downstairs andopening the hall door.
“Peter! Peter!” cried Clarissa, following him out on to the landing.“My party to-night! Remember my party to-night!” she cried, having toraise her voice against the roar of the open air, and, overwhelmed bythe traffic and the sound of all the clocks striking, her voice crying“Remember my party to-night!” sounded frail and thin and very far awayas Peter Walsh shut the door.
* * * * *
Remember my party, remember my party, said Peter Walsh as he steppeddown the street, speaking to himself rhythmically, in time with theflow of the sound, the direct downright sound of Big Ben strikingthe half-hour. (The leaden circles dissolved in the air.) Oh theseparties, he thought; Clarissa’s parties. Why does she give theseparties, he thought. Not that he blamed her or this effigy of a manin a tail-coat with a carnation in his buttonhole coming towards him.Only one person in the world could be as he was, in love. And therehe was, this fortunate man, himself, reflected in the plate-glasswindow of a motor-car manufacturer in Victoria Street. All India laybehind him; plains, mountains; epidemics of cholera; a district twiceas big as Ireland; decisions he had come to alone--he, Peter Walsh;who was now really for the first time in his life, in love. Clarissahad grown hard, he thought; and a trifle sentimental into the bargain,he suspected, looking at the great motor-cars capable of doing--howmany miles on how many gallons? For he had a turn for mechanics; hadinvented a plough in his district, had ordered wheel-barrows fromEngland, but the coolies wouldn’t use them, all of which Clarissa knewnothing whatever about.
The way she said “Here is my Elizabeth!”--that annoyed him. Why not“Here’s Elizabeth” simply? It was insincere. And Elizabeth didn’t likeit either. (Still the last tremors of the great booming voice shookthe air round him; the half-hour; still early; only half-past elevenstill.) For he understood young people; he liked them. There was alwayssomething cold in Clarissa, he thought. She had always, even as a girl,a sort of timidity, which in middle age becomes conventionality, andthen it’s all up, it’s all up, he thought, looking rather drearily intothe glassy depths, and wondering whether by calling at that hour he hadannoyed her; overcome with shame suddenly at having been a fool; wept;been emotional; told her everything, as usual, as usual.
As a cloud crosses the sun, silence falls on London; and falls on themind. Effort ceases. Time flaps on the mast. There we stop; there westand. Rigid, the skeleton of habit alone upholds the human frame.Where there is nothing, Peter Walsh said to himself; feeling hollowedout, utterly empty within. Clarissa refused me, he thought. He stoodthere thinking, Clarissa refused me.
Ah, said St. Margaret’s, like a hostess who comes into her drawing-roomon the very stroke of the hour and finds her guests there already. I amnot late. No, it is precisely half-past eleven, she says. Yet, thoughshe is perfectly right, her voice, being the voice of the hostess, isreluctant to inflict its individuality. Some grief for the past holdsit back; some concern for the present. It is half-past eleven, shesays, and the sound of St. Margaret’s glides into the recesses of theheart and buries itself in ring after ring of sound, like somethingalive which wants to confide itself, to disperse itself, to be, witha tremor of delight, at rest--like Clarissa herself, thought PeterWalsh, coming down the stairs on the stroke of the hour in white.It is Clarissa herself, he thought, with a deep emotion, and anextraordinarily clear, yet puzzling, recollection of her, as if thisbell had come into the room years ago, where they sat at some moment ofgreat intimacy, and had gone from one to the other and had left, like abee with honey, laden with the moment. But what room? What moment? Andwhy had he been so profoundly happy when the clock was striking? Then,as the sound of St. Margaret’s languished, he thought, She has beenill, and the sound expressed languor and suffering. It was her heart,he remembered; and the sudden loudness of the final stroke tolled fordeath that surprised in the midst of life, Clarissa falling where shestood, in her drawing-room. No! No! he cried. She is not dead! I am notold, he cried, and marched up Whitehall, as if there rolled down tohim, vigorous, unending, his future.
He was not old, or set, or dried in the least. As for caring what theysaid of him--the Dalloways, the Whitbreads, and their set, he cared nota straw--not a straw (though it was true he would have, some time orother, to see whether Richard couldn’t help him to some job). Striding,staring, he glared at the statue of the Duke of Cambridge. He had beensent down from Oxford--true. He had been a Socialist, in some sense afailure--true. Still the future of civilisation lies, he thought, inthe hands of young men like that; of young men such as he was, thirtyyears ago; with their love of abstract principles; getting books sentout to them all the way from London to a peak in the Himalayas;reading science; reading philosophy. The future lies in the hands ofyoung men like that, he thought.
A patter like the patter of leaves in a wood came from behind, and withit a rustling, regular thudding sound, which as it overtook him drummedhis thoughts, strict in step, up Whitehall, without his doing. Boys inuniform, carrying guns, marched with their eyes ahead of them, marched,their arms stiff, and on their faces an expression like the letters ofa legend written round the base of a statue praising duty, gratitude,fidelity, love of England.
It is, thought Peter Walsh, beginning to keep step with them, a veryfine training. But they did not look robust. They were weedy for themost part, boys of sixteen, who might, to-morrow, stand behind bowlsof rice, cakes of soap on counters. Now they wore on them unmixed withsensual pleasure or daily preoccupations the solemnity of the wreathwhich they had fetched from Finsbury Pavement to the empty tomb. Theyhad taken their vow. The traffic respected it; vans were stopped.
I can’t keep up with them, Peter Walsh thought, as they marched upWhitehall, and sure enough, on they marched, past him, past every one,in their steady way, as if one will worked legs and arms uniformly,and life, with its varieties, its irreticences, had been laid under apavement of monuments and wreaths and drugged into a stiff yet staringcorpse by discipline. One had to respect it; one might laugh; but onehad to respect it, he thought. There they go, thought Peter Walsh,pausing at the edge of the pavement; and all the exalted statues,Nelson, Gordon, Havelock, the black, the spectacular images of greatsoldiers stood looking ahead of them, as if they too had made thesame renunciation (Peter Walsh felt he too had made it, the greatrenunciation), trampled under the same temptations, and achieved atlength a marble stare. But the stare Peter Walsh did not want forhimself in the least; though he could respect it in others. He couldrespect it in boys. They don’t know the troubles of the flesh yet,he thought, as the marching boys disappeared in the direction of theStrand--all that I’ve been through, he thought, crossing the road, andstanding under Gordon’s statue, Gordon whom as a boy he had worshipped;Gordon standing lonely with one leg raised and his arms crossed,--poorGordon, he thought.
And just because nobody yet knew he was in London, except Clarissa,and the earth, after the voyage, still seemed an island to him, thestrangeness of standing alone, alive, unknown, at half-past eleven inTrafalgar Square overcame him. What is it? Where am I? And why, afterall, does one do it? he thought, the divorce seeming all moonshine. Anddown his mind went flat as a marsh, and three great emotions bowledover him; understanding; a vast philanthropy; and finally, as if theresult of the others, an irrepressible, exquisite delight; as if insidehis brain by another hand strings were pulled, shutters moved, andhe, having nothing to do with it, yet stood at the opening of endlessavenues, down which if he chose he might wander. He had not felt soyoung for years.
He had escaped! was utterly free--as happens in the downfall of habitwhen the mind, like an unguarded flame, bows and bends and seems aboutto blow from its holding. I haven’t felt so young for years! thoughtPeter, escaping (only of course for an hour or so) from being preciselywhat he was, and feeling like a child who runs out of doors, andsees, as he runs, his old nurse waving at the wrong window. But she’sextraordinarily attractive, he thought, as, walking across TrafalgarSquare in the direction of the Haymarket, came a young woman who, asshe passed Gordon’s statue, seemed, Peter Walsh thought (susceptible ashe was), to shed veil after veil, until she became the very woman hehad always had in mind; young, but stately; merry, but discreet; black,but enchanting.
Straightening himself and stealthily fingering his pocket-knife hestarted after her to follow this woman, this excitement, which seemedeven with its back turned to shed on him a light which connected them,which singled him out, as if the random uproar of the traffic hadwhispered through hollowed hands his name, not Peter, but his privatename which he called himself in his own thoughts. “You,” she said, only“you,” saying it with her white gloves and her shoulders. Then thethin long cloak which the wind stirred as she walked past Dent’s shopin co*ckspur Street blew out with an enveloping kindness, a mournfultenderness, as of arms that would open and take the tired--
But she’s not married; she’s young; quite young, thought Peter, thered carnation he had seen her wear as she came across Trafalgar Squareburning again in his eyes and making her lips red. But she waited atthe kerbstone. There was a dignity about her. She was not worldly, likeClarissa; not rich, like Clarissa. Was she, he wondered as she moved,respectable? Witty, with a lizard’s flickering tongue, he thought(for one must invent, must allow oneself a little diversion), a coolwaiting wit, a darting wit; not noisy.
She moved; she crossed; he followed her. To embarrass her was the lastthing he wished. Still if she stopped he would say “Come and have anice,” he would say, and she would answer, perfectly simply, “Oh yes.”
But other people got between them in the street, obstructing him,blotting her out. He pursued; she changed. There was colour in hercheeks; mockery in her eyes; he was an adventurer, reckless, hethought, swift, daring, indeed (landed as he was last night fromIndia) a romantic buccaneer, careless of all these damned proprieties,yellow dressing-gowns, pipes, fishing-rods, in the shop windows; andrespectability and evening parties and spruce old men wearing whiteslips beneath their waistcoats. He was a buccaneer. On and on she went,across Piccadilly, and up Regent Street, ahead of him, her cloak, hergloves, her shoulders combining with the fringes and the laces and thefeather boas in the windows to make the spirit of finery and whimsywhich dwindled out of the shops on to the pavement, as the light of alamp goes wavering at night over hedges in the darkness.
Laughing and delightful, she had crossed Oxford Street and GreatPortland Street and turned down one of the little streets, and now, andnow, the great moment was approaching, for now she slackened, openedher bag, and with one look in his direction, but not at him, one lookthat bade farewell, summed up the whole situation and dismissed ittriumphantly, for ever, had fitted her key, opened the door, and gone!Clarissa’s voice saying, Remember my party, Remember my party, sangin his ears. The house was one of those flat red houses with hangingflower-baskets of vague impropriety. It was over.
Well, I’ve had my fun; I’ve had it, he thought, looking up at theswinging baskets of pale geraniums. And it was smashed to atoms--hisfun, for it was half made up, as he knew very well; invented, thisescapade with the girl; made up, as one makes up the better partof life, he thought--making oneself up; making her up; creating anexquisite amusem*nt, and something more. But odd it was, and quitetrue; all this one could never share--it smashed to atoms.
He turned; went up the street, thinking to find somewhere to sit, tillit was time for Lincoln’s Inn--for Messrs. Hooper and Grateley. Whereshould he go? No matter. Up the street, then, towards Regent’s Park.His boots on the pavement struck out “no matter”; for it was early,still very early.
It was a splendid morning too. Like the pulse of a perfect heart,life struck straight through the streets. There was no fumbling--nohesitation. Sweeping and swerving, accurately, punctually, noiselessly,there, precisely at the right instant, the motor-car stopped at thedoor. The girl, silk-stockinged, feathered, evanescent, but not to himparticularly attractive (for he had had his fling), alighted. Admirablebutlers, tawny chow dogs, halls laid in black and white lozenges withwhite blinds blowing, Peter saw through the opened door and approvedof. A splendid achievement in its own way, after all, London; theseason; civilisation. Coming as he did from a respectable Anglo-Indianfamily which for at least three generations had administered theaffairs of a continent (it’s strange, he thought, what a sentiment Ihave about that, disliking India, and empire, and army as he did),there were moments when civilisation, even of this sort, seemed dear tohim as a personal possession; moments of pride in England; in butlers;chow dogs; girls in their security. Ridiculous enough, still there itis, he thought. And the doctors and men of business and capable womenall going about their business, punctual, alert, robust, seemed to himwholly admirable, good fellows, to whom one would entrust one’s life,companions in the art of living, who would see one through. What withone thing and another, the show was really very tolerable; and he wouldsit down in the shade and smoke.
There was Regent’s Park. Yes. As a child he had walked in Regent’sPark--odd, he thought, how the thought of childhood keeps coming backto me--the result of seeing Clarissa, perhaps; for women live much morein the past than we do, he thought. They attach themselves to places;and their fathers--a woman’s always proud of her father. Bourton was anice place, a very nice place, but I could never get on with the oldman, he thought. There was quite a scene one night--an argument aboutsomething or other, what, he could not remember. Politics presumably.
Yes, he remembered Regent’s Park; the long straight walk; the littlehouse where one bought air-balls to the left; an absurd statue with aninscription somewhere or other. He looked for an empty seat. He didnot want to be bothered (feeling a little drowsy as he did) by peopleasking him the time. An elderly grey nurse, with a baby asleep in itsperambulator--that was the best he could do for himself; sit down atthe far end of the seat by that nurse.
She’s a queer-looking girl, he thought, suddenly remembering Elizabethas she came into the room and stood by her mother. Grown big; quitegrown-up, not exactly pretty; handsome rather; and she can’t be morethan eighteen. Probably she doesn’t get on with Clarissa. “There’smy Elizabeth”--that sort of thing--why not “Here’s Elizabeth”simply?--trying to make out, like most mothers, that things are whatthey’re not. She trusts to her charm too much, he thought. She overdoesit.
The rich benignant cigar smoke eddied coolly down his throat; hepuffed it out again in rings which breasted the air bravely for amoment; blue, circular--I shall try and get a word alone with Elizabethto-night, he thought--then began to wobble into hour-glass shapes andtaper away; odd shapes they take, he thought. Suddenly he closed hiseyes, raised his hand with an effort, and threw away the heavy end ofhis cigar. A great brush swept smooth across his mind, sweeping acrossit moving branches, children’s voices, the shuffle of feet, and peoplepassing, and humming traffic, rising and falling traffic. Down, downhe sank into the plumes and feathers of sleep, sank, and was muffledover.
* * * * *
The grey nurse resumed her knitting as Peter Walsh, on the hot seatbeside her, began snoring. In her grey dress, moving her handsindefatigably yet quietly, she seemed like the champion of the rightsof sleepers, like one of those spectral presences which rise intwilight in woods made of sky and branches. The solitary traveller,haunter of lanes, disturber of ferns, and devastator of great hemlockplants, looking up, suddenly sees the giant figure at the end of theride.
By conviction an atheist perhaps, he is taken by surprise with momentsof extraordinary exaltation. Nothing exists outside us except a stateof mind, he thinks; a desire for solace, for relief, for somethingoutside these miserable pigmies, these feeble, these ugly, these cravenmen and women. But if he can conceive of her, then in some sort sheexists, he thinks, and advancing down the path with his eyes upon skyand branches he rapidly endows them with womanhood; sees with amazementhow grave they become; how majestically, as the breeze stirs them, theydispense with a dark flutter of the leaves charity, comprehension,absolution, and then, flinging themselves suddenly aloft, confound thepiety of their aspect with a wild carouse.
Such are the visions which proffer great cornucopias full of fruit tothe solitary traveller, or murmur in his ear like sirens lollopingaway on the green sea waves, or are dashed in his face like bunches ofroses, or rise to the surface like pale faces which fishermen flounderthrough floods to embrace.
Such are the visions which ceaselessly float up, pace beside, put theirfaces in front of, the actual thing; often overpowering the solitarytraveller and taking away from him the sense of the earth, the wish toreturn, and giving him for substitute a general peace, as if (so hethinks as he advances down the forest ride) all this fever of livingwere simplicity itself; and myriads of things merged in one thing;and this figure, made of sky and branches as it is, had risen fromthe troubled sea (he is elderly, past fifty now) as a shape might besucked up out of the waves to shower down from her magnificent handscompassion, comprehension, absolution. So, he thinks, may I never goback to the lamplight; to the sitting-room; never finish my book; neverknock out my pipe; never ring for Mrs. Turner to clear away; ratherlet me walk straight on to this great figure, who will, with a toss ofher head, mount me on her streamers and let me blow to nothingness withthe rest.
Such are the visions. The solitary traveller is soon beyond the wood;and there, coming to the door with shaded eyes, possibly to look forhis return, with hands raised, with white apron blowing, is an elderlywoman who seems (so powerful is this infirmity) to seek, over a desert,a lost son; to search for a rider destroyed; to be the figure of themother whose sons have been killed in the battles of the world. So,as the solitary traveller advances down the village street wherethe women stand knitting and the men dig in the garden, the eveningseems ominous; the figures still; as if some august fate, known tothem, awaited without fear, were about to sweep them into completeannihilation.
Indoors among ordinary things, the cupboard, the table, the window-sillwith its geraniums, suddenly the outline of the landlady, bending toremove the cloth, becomes soft with light, an adorable emblem whichonly the recollection of cold human contacts forbids us to embrace. Shetakes the marmalade; she shuts it in the cupboard.
“There is nothing more to-night, sir?”
But to whom does the solitary traveller make reply?
* * * * *
So the elderly nurse knitted over the sleeping baby in Regent’s Park.So Peter Walsh snored.
He woke with extreme suddenness, saying to himself, “The death of thesoul.”
“Lord, Lord!” he said to himself out loud, stretching and opening hiseyes. “The death of the soul.” The words attached themselves to somescene, to some room, to some past he had been dreaming of. It becameclearer; the scene, the room, the past he had been dreaming of.
It was at Bourton that summer, early in the ’nineties, when he was sopassionately in love with Clarissa. There were a great many peoplethere, laughing and talking, sitting round a table after tea and theroom was bathed in yellow light and full of cigarette smoke. Theywere talking about a man who had married his housemaid, one of theneighbouring squires, he had forgotten his name. He had married hishousemaid, and she had been brought to Bourton to call--an awful visitit had been. She was absurdly over-dressed, “like a co*ckatoo,” Clarissahad said, imitating her, and she never stopped talking. On and on shewent, on and on. Clarissa imitated her. Then somebody said--SallySeton it was--did it make any real difference to one’s feelings toknow that before they’d married she had had a baby? (In those days,in mixed company, it was a bold thing to say.) He could see Clarissanow, turning bright pink; somehow contracting; and saying, “Oh, I shallnever be able to speak to her again!” Whereupon the whole party sittinground the tea-table seemed to wobble. It was very uncomfortable.
He hadn’t blamed her for minding the fact, since in those days agirl brought up as she was, knew nothing, but it was her manner thatannoyed him; timid; hard; something arrogant; unimaginative; prudish.“The death of the soul.” He had said that instinctively, ticketing themoment as he used to do--the death of her soul.
Every one wobbled; every one seemed to bow, as she spoke, and then tostand up different. He could see Sally Seton, like a child who hasbeen in mischief, leaning forward, rather flushed, wanting to talk,but afraid, and Clarissa did frighten people. (She was Clarissa’sgreatest friend, always about the place, totally unlike her, anattractive creature, handsome, dark, with the reputation in those daysof great daring and he used to give her cigars, which she smoked inher bedroom. She had either been engaged to somebody or quarrelledwith her family and old Parry disliked them both equally, which was agreat bond.) Then Clarissa, still with an air of being offended withthem all, got up, made some excuse, and went off, alone. As she openedthe door, in came that great shaggy dog which ran after sheep. Sheflung herself upon him, went into raptures. It was as if she said toPeter--it was all aimed at him, he knew--“I know you thought me absurdabout that woman just now; but see how extraordinarily sympathetic Iam; see how I love my Rob!”
They had always this queer power of communicating without words. Sheknew directly he criticised her. Then she would do something quiteobvious to defend herself, like this fuss with the dog--but it nevertook him in, he always saw through Clarissa. Not that he said anything,of course; just sat looking glum. It was the way their quarrels oftenbegan.
She shut the door. At once he became extremely depressed. It allseemed useless--going on being in love; going on quarrelling; goingon making it up, and he wandered off alone, among outhouses, stables,looking at the horses. (The place was quite a humble one; theParrys were never very well off; but there were always grooms andstable-boys about--Clarissa loved riding--and an old coachman--whatwas his name?--an old nurse, old Moody, old Goody, some such name theycalled her, whom one was taken to visit in a little room with lots ofphotographs, lots of bird-cages.)
It was an awful evening! He grew more and more gloomy, not about thatonly; about everything. And he couldn’t see her; couldn’t explain toher; couldn’t have it out. There were always people about--she’d go onas if nothing had happened. That was the devilish part of her--thiscoldness, this woodenness, something very profound in her, which he hadfelt again this morning talking to her; an impenetrability. Yet Heavenknows he loved her. She had some queer power of fiddling on one’snerves, turning one’s nerves to fiddle-strings, yes.
He had gone in to dinner rather late, from some idiotic idea of makinghimself felt, and had sat down by old Miss Parry--Aunt Helena--Mr.Parry’s sister, who was supposed to preside. There she sat in herwhite Cashmere shawl, with her head against the window--a formidableold lady, but kind to him, for he had found her some rare flower, andshe was a great botanist, marching off in thick boots with a blackcollecting-box slung between her shoulders. He sat down beside her,and couldn’t speak. Everything seemed to race past him; he just satthere, eating. And then half-way through dinner he made himself lookacross at Clarissa for the first time. She was talking to a young manon her right. He had a sudden revelation. “She will marry that man,” hesaid to himself. He didn’t even know his name.
For of course it was that afternoon, that very afternoon, that Dallowayhad come over; and Clarissa called him “Wickham”; that was thebeginning of it all. Somebody had brought him over; and Clarissa gothis name wrong. She introduced him to everybody as Wickham. At lasthe said “My name is Dalloway!”--that was his first view of Richard--afair young man, rather awkward, sitting on a deck-chair, and blurtingout “My name is Dalloway!” Sally got hold of it; always after that shecalled him “My name is Dalloway!”
He was a prey to revelations at that time. This one--that she wouldmarry Dalloway--was blinding--overwhelming at the moment. There was asort of--how could he put it?--a sort of ease in her manner to him;something maternal; something gentle. They were talking about politics.All through dinner he tried to hear what they were saying.
Afterwards he could remember standing by old Miss Parry’s chair in thedrawing-room. Clarissa came up, with her perfect manners, like a realhostess, and wanted to introduce him to some one--spoke as if they hadnever met before, which enraged him. Yet even then he admired her forit. He admired her courage; her social instinct; he admired her powerof carrying things through. “The perfect hostess,” he said to her,whereupon she winced all over. But he meant her to feel it. He wouldhave done anything to hurt her after seeing her with Dalloway. So sheleft him. And he had a feeling that they were all gathered togetherin a conspiracy against him--laughing and talking--behind his back.There he stood by Miss Parry’s chair as though he had been cut outof wood, he talking about wild flowers. Never, never had he sufferedso infernally! He must have forgotten even to pretend to listen; atlast he woke up; he saw Miss Parry looking rather disturbed, ratherindignant, with her prominent eyes fixed. He almost cried out that hecouldn’t attend because he was in Hell! People began going out of theroom. He heard them talking about fetching cloaks; about its beingcold on the water, and so on. They were going boating on the lake bymoonlight--one of Sally’s mad ideas. He could hear her describing themoon. And they all went out. He was left quite alone.
“Don’t you want to go with them?” said Aunt Helena--old MissParry!--she had guessed. And he turned round and there was Clarissaagain. She had come back to fetch him. He was overcome by hergenerosity--her goodness.
“Come along,” she said. “They’re waiting.”
He had never felt so happy in the whole of his life! Without a wordthey made it up. They walked down to the lake. He had twenty minutes ofperfect happiness. Her voice, her laugh, her dress (something floating,white, crimson), her spirit, her adventurousness; she made them alldisembark and explore the island; she startled a hen; she laughed; shesang. And all the time, he knew perfectly well, Dalloway was fallingin love with her; she was falling in love with Dalloway; but it didn’tseem to matter. Nothing mattered. They sat on the ground and talked--heand Clarissa. They went in and out of each other’s minds without anyeffort. And then in a second it was over. He said to himself as theywere getting into the boat, “She will marry that man,” dully, withoutany resentment; but it was an obvious thing. Dalloway would marryClarissa.
Dalloway rowed them in. He said nothing. But somehow as they watchedhim start, jumping on to his bicycle to ride twenty miles through thewoods, wobbling off down the drive, waving his hand and disappearing,he obviously did feel, instinctively, tremendously, strongly, all that;the night; the romance; Clarissa. He deserved to have her.
For himself, he was absurd. His demands upon Clarissa (he could seeit now) were absurd. He asked impossible things. He made terriblescenes. She would have accepted him still, perhaps, if he had been lessabsurd. Sally thought so. She wrote him all that summer long letters;how they had talked of him; how she had praised him, how Clarissaburst into tears! It was an extraordinary summer--all letters, scenes,telegrams--arriving at Bourton early in the morning, hanging about tillthe servants were up; appalling _tête-à-têtes_ with old Mr. Parry atbreakfast; Aunt Helena formidable but kind; Sally sweeping him off fortalks in the vegetable garden; Clarissa in bed with headaches.
The final scene, the terrible scene which he believed had matteredmore than anything in the whole of his life (it might be anexaggeration--but still so it did seem now) happened at three o’clockin the afternoon of a very hot day. It was a trifle that led up toit--Sally at lunch saying something about Dalloway, and calling him “Myname is Dalloway”; whereupon Clarissa suddenly stiffened, coloured,in a way she had, and rapped out sharply, “We’ve had enough of thatfeeble joke.” That was all; but for him it was precisely as if she hadsaid, “I’m only amusing myself with you; I’ve an understanding withRichard Dalloway.” So he took it. He had not slept for nights. “It’sgot to be finished one way or the other,” he said to himself. He sent anote to her by Sally asking her to meet him by the fountain at three.“Something very important has happened,” he scribbled at the end of it.
The fountain was in the middle of a little shrubbery, far from thehouse, with shrubs and trees all round it. There she came, even beforethe time, and they stood with the fountain between them, the spout (itwas broken) dribbling water incessantly. How sights fix themselves uponthe mind! For example, the vivid green moss.
She did not move. “Tell me the truth, tell me the truth,” he kept onsaying. He felt as if his forehead would burst. She seemed contracted,petrified. She did not move. “Tell me the truth,” he repeated, whensuddenly that old man Breitkopf popped his head in carrying the_Times_; stared at them; gaped; and went away. They neither of themmoved. “Tell me the truth,” he repeated. He felt that he was grindingagainst something physically hard; she was unyielding. She was likeiron, like flint, rigid up the backbone. And when she said, “It’s nouse. It’s no use. This is the end”--after he had spoken for hours, itseemed, with the tears running down his cheeks--it was as if she hadhit him in the face. She turned, she left him, went away.
“Clarissa!” he cried. “Clarissa!” But she never came back. It was over.He went away that night. He never saw her again.
* * * * *
It was awful, he cried, awful, awful!
Still, the sun was hot. Still, one got over things. Still, life hada way of adding day to day. Still, he thought, yawning and beginningto take notice--Regent’s Park had changed very little since hewas a boy, except for the squirrels--still, presumably there werecompensations--when little Elise Mitchell, who had been picking uppebbles to add to the pebble collection which she and her brother weremaking on the nursery mantelpiece, plumped her handful down on thenurse’s knee and scudded off again full tilt into a lady’s legs. PeterWalsh laughed out.
But Lucrezia Warren Smith was saying to herself, It’s wicked; whyshould I suffer? she was asking, as she walked down the broad path. No;I can’t stand it any longer, she was saying, having left Septimus, whowasn’t Septimus any longer, to say hard, cruel, wicked things, to talkto himself, to talk to a dead man, on the seat over there; when thechild ran full tilt into her, fell flat, and burst out crying.
That was comforting rather. She stood her upright, dusted her frock,kissed her.
But for herself she had done nothing wrong; she had loved Septimus; shehad been happy; she had had a beautiful home, and there her sisterslived still, making hats. Why should _she_ suffer?
The child ran straight back to its nurse, and Rezia saw her scolded,comforted, taken up by the nurse who put down her knitting, and thekind-looking man gave her his watch to blow open to comfort her--butwhy should _she_ be exposed? Why not left in Milan? Why tortured? Why?
Slightly waved by tears the broad path, the nurse, the man in grey,the perambulator, rose and fell before her eyes. To be rocked by thismalignant torturer was her lot. But why? She was like a bird shelteringunder the thin hollow of a leaf, who blinks at the sun when the leafmoves; starts at the crack of a dry twig. She was exposed; she wassurrounded by the enormous trees, vast clouds of an indifferent world,exposed; tortured; and why should she suffer? Why?
She frowned; she stamped her foot. She must go back again to Septimussince it was almost time for them to be going to Sir William Bradshaw.She must go back and tell him, go back to him sitting there on thegreen chair under the tree, talking to himself, or to that dead manEvans, whom she had only seen once for a moment in the shop. He hadseemed a nice quiet man; a great friend of Septimus’s, and he had beenkilled in the War. But such things happen to every one. Every one hasfriends who were killed in the War. Every one gives up something whenthey marry. She had given up her home. She had come to live here, inthis awful city. But Septimus let himself think about horrible things,as she could too, if she tried. He had grown stranger and stranger.He said people were talking behind the bedroom walls. Mrs. Filmerthought it odd. He saw things too--he had seen an old woman’s headin the middle of a fern. Yet he could be happy when he chose. Theywent to Hampton Court on top of a bus, and they were perfectly happy.All the little red and yellow flowers were out on the grass, likefloating lamps he said, and talked and chattered and laughed, makingup stories. Suddenly he said, “Now we will kill ourselves,” when theywere standing by the river, and he looked at it with a look which shehad seen in his eyes when a train went by, or an omnibus--a look as ifsomething fascinated him; and she felt he was going from her and shecaught him by the arm. But going home he was perfectly quiet--perfectlyreasonable. He would argue with her about killing themselves; andexplain how wicked people were; how he could see them making up lies asthey passed in the street. He knew all their thoughts, he said; he kneweverything. He knew the meaning of the world, he said.
Then when they got back he could hardly walk. He lay on the sofa andmade her hold his hand to prevent him from falling down, down, hecried, into the flames! and saw faces laughing at him, calling himhorrible disgusting names, from the walls, and hands pointing roundthe screen. Yet they were quite alone. But he began to talk aloud,answering people, arguing, laughing, crying, getting very excited andmaking her write things down. Perfect nonsense it was; about death;about Miss Isabel Pole. She could stand it no longer. She would go back.
She was close to him now, could see him staring at the sky, muttering,clasping his hands. Yet Dr. Holmes said there was nothing the matterwith him. What then had happened--why had he gone, then, why, when shesat by him, did he start, frown at her, move away, and point at herhand, take her hand, look at it terrified?
Was it that she had taken off her wedding ring? “My hand has grown sothin,” she said. “I have put it in my purse,” she told him.
He dropped her hand. Their marriage was over, he thought, with agony,with relief. The rope was cut; he mounted; he was free, as it wasdecreed that he, Septimus, the lord of men, should be free; alone(since his wife had thrown away her wedding ring; since she had lefthim), he, Septimus, was alone, called forth in advance of the mass ofmen to hear the truth, to learn the meaning, which now at last, afterall the toils of civilisation--Greeks, Romans, Shakespeare, Darwin,and now himself--was to be given whole to.... “To whom?” he askedaloud. “To the Prime Minister,” the voices which rustled above his headreplied. The supreme secret must be told to the Cabinet; first thattrees are alive; next there is no crime; next love, universal love,he muttered, gasping, trembling, painfully drawing out these profoundtruths which needed, so deep were they, so difficult, an immense effortto speak out, but the world was entirely changed by them for ever.
No crime; love; he repeated, fumbling for his card and pencil, whena Skye terrier snuffed his trousers and he started in an agony offear. It was turning into a man! He could not watch it happen! It washorrible, terrible to see a dog become a man! At once the dog trottedaway.
Heaven was divinely merciful, infinitely benignant. It spared him,pardoned his weakness. But what was the scientific explanation (for onemust be scientific above all things)? Why could he see through bodies,see into the future, when dogs will become men? It was the heat wavepresumably, operating upon a brain made sensitive by eons of evolution.Scientifically speaking, the flesh was melted off the world. His bodywas macerated until only the nerve fibres were left. It was spreadlike a veil upon a rock.
He lay back in his chair, exhausted but upheld. He lay resting,waiting, before he again interpreted, with effort, with agony, tomankind. He lay very high, on the back of the world. The earth thrilledbeneath him. Red flowers grew through his flesh; their stiff leavesrustled by his head. Music began clanging against the rocks up here.It is a motor horn down in the street, he muttered; but up here itcannoned from rock to rock, divided, met in shocks of sound which rosein smooth columns (that music should be visible was a discovery) andbecame an anthem, an anthem twined round now by a shepherd boy’s piping(That’s an old man playing a penny whistle by the public-house, hemuttered) which, as the boy stood still came bubbling from his pipe,and then, as he climbed higher, made its exquisite plaint while thetraffic passed beneath. This boy’s elegy is played among the traffic,thought Septimus. Now he withdraws up into the snows, and roses hangabout him--the thick red roses which grow on my bedroom wall, hereminded himself. The music stopped. He has his penny, he reasoned itout, and has gone on to the next public-house.
But he himself remained high on his rock, like a drowned sailor on arock. I leant over the edge of the boat and fell down, he thought. Iwent under the sea. I have been dead, and yet am now alive, but let merest still; he begged (he was talking to himself again--it was awful,awful!); and as, before waking, the voices of birds and the sound ofwheels chime and chatter in a queer harmony, grow louder and louder andthe sleeper feels himself drawing to the shores of life, so he felthimself drawing towards life, the sun growing hotter, cries soundinglouder, something tremendous about to happen.
He had only to open his eyes; but a weight was on them; a fear. Hestrained; he pushed; he looked; he saw Regent’s Park before him. Longstreamers of sunlight fawned at his feet. The trees waved, brandished.We welcome, the world seemed to say; we accept; we create. Beauty, theworld seemed to say. And as if to prove it (scientifically) whereverhe looked at the houses, at the railings, at the antelopes stretchingover the palings, beauty sprang instantly. To watch a leaf quiveringin the rush of air was an exquisite joy. Up in the sky swallowsswooping, swerving, flinging themselves in and out, round and round,yet always with perfect control as if elastics held them; and the fliesrising and falling; and the sun spotting now this leaf, now that, inmockery, dazzling it with soft gold in pure good temper; and now andagain some chime (it might be a motor horn) tinkling divinely on thegrass stalks--all of this, calm and reasonable as it was, made out ofordinary things as it was, was the truth now; beauty, that was thetruth now. Beauty was everywhere.
“It is time,” said Rezia.
The word “time” split its husk; poured its riches over him; and fromhis lips fell like shells, like shavings from a plane, without hismaking them, hard, white, imperishable words, and flew to attachthemselves to their places in an ode to Time; an immortal ode toTime. He sang. Evans answered from behind the tree. The dead were inThessaly, Evans sang, among the orchids. There they waited till the Warwas over, and now the dead, now Evans himself--
“For God’s sake don’t come!” Septimus cried out. For he could not lookupon the dead.
But the branches parted. A man in grey was actually walking towardsthem. It was Evans! But no mud was on him; no wounds; he was notchanged. I must tell the whole world, Septimus cried, raising his hand(as the dead man in the grey suit came nearer), raising his hand likesome colossal figure who has lamented the fate of man for ages inthe desert alone with his hands pressed to his forehead, furrows ofdespair on his cheeks, and now sees light on the desert’s edge whichbroadens and strikes the iron-black figure (and Septimus half rose fromhis chair), and with legions of men prostrate behind him he, the giantmourner, receives for one moment on his face the whole--
“But I am so unhappy, Septimus,” said Rezia trying to make him sit down.
The millions lamented; for ages they had sorrowed. He would turn round,he would tell them in a few moments, only a few moments more, of thisrelief, of this joy, of this astonishing revelation--
“The time, Septimus,” Rezia repeated. “What is the time?”
He was talking, he was starting, this man must notice him. He waslooking at them.
“I will tell you the time,” said Septimus, very slowly, very drowsily,smiling mysteriously. As he sat smiling at the dead man in the greysuit the quarter struck--the quarter to twelve.
And that is being young, Peter Walsh thought as he passed them. To behaving an awful scene--the poor girl looked absolutely desperate--inthe middle of the morning. But what was it about, he wondered, whathad the young man in the overcoat been saying to her to make her looklike that; what awful fix had they got themselves into, both to lookso desperate as that on a fine summer morning? The amusing thing aboutcoming back to England, after five years, was the way it made, anyhowthe first days, things stand out as if one had never seen them before;lovers squabbling under a tree; the domestic family life of the parks.Never had he seen London look so enchanting--the softness of thedistances; the richness; the greenness; the civilisation, after India,he thought, strolling across the grass.
This susceptibility to impressions had been his undoing no doubt.Still at his age he had, like a boy or a girl even, these alternationsof mood; good days, bad days, for no reason whatever, happiness froma pretty face, downright misery at the sight of a frump. After Indiaof course one fell in love with every woman one met. There was afreshness about them; even the poorest dressed better than five yearsago surely; and to his eye the fashions had never been so becoming; thelong black cloaks; the slimness; the elegance; and then the deliciousand apparently universal habit of paint. Every woman, even the mostrespectable, had roses blooming under glass; lips cut with a knife;curls of Indian ink; there was design, art, everywhere; a change ofsome sort had undoubtedly taken place. What did the young people thinkabout? Peter Walsh asked himself.
Those five years--1918 to 1923--had been, he suspected, somehow veryimportant. People looked different. Newspapers seemed different.Now for instance there was a man writing quite openly in one of therespectable weeklies about water-closets. That you couldn’t havedone ten years ago--written quite openly about water-closets in arespectable weekly. And then this taking out a stick of rouge, or apowder-puff and making up in public. On board ship coming home therewere lots of young men and girls--Betty and Bertie he remembered inparticular--carrying on quite openly; the old mother sitting andwatching them with her knitting, cool as a cucumber. The girl wouldstand still and powder her nose in front of every one. And they weren’tengaged; just having a good time; no feelings hurt on either side. Ashard as nails she was--Betty What’shername--; but a thorough good sort.She would make a very good wife at thirty--she would marry when itsuited her to marry; marry some rich man and live in a large house nearManchester.
Who was it now who had done that? Peter Walsh asked himself, turninginto the Broad Walk,--married a rich man and lived in a large housenear Manchester? Somebody who had written him a long, gushing letterquite lately about “blue hydrangeas.” It was seeing blue hydrangeasthat made her think of him and the old days--Sally Seton, of course! Itwas Sally Seton--the last person in the world one would have expectedto marry a rich man and live in a large house near Manchester, thewild, the daring, the romantic Sally!
But of all that ancient lot, Clarissa’s friends--Whitbreads,Kinderleys, Cunninghams, Kinloch-Jones’s--Sally was probably the best.She tried to get hold of things by the right end anyhow. She sawthrough Hugh Whitbread anyhow--the admirable Hugh--when Clarissa andthe rest were at his feet.
“The Whitbreads?” he could hear her saying. “Who are the Whitbreads?Coal merchants. Respectable tradespeople.”
Hugh she detested for some reason. He thought of nothing but his ownappearance, she said. He ought to have been a Duke. He would be certainto marry one of the Royal Princesses. And of course Hugh had the mostextraordinary, the most natural, the most sublime respect for theBritish aristocracy of any human being he had ever come across. EvenClarissa had to own that. Oh, but he was such a dear, so unselfish,gave up shooting to please his old mother--remembered his aunts’birthdays, and so on.
Sally, to do her justice, saw through all that. One of the things heremembered best was an argument one Sunday morning at Bourton aboutwomen’s rights (that antediluvian topic), when Sally suddenly losther temper, flared up, and told Hugh that he represented all thatwas most detestable in British middle-class life. She told him thatshe considered him responsible for the state of “those poor girls inPiccadilly”--Hugh, the perfect gentleman, poor Hugh!--never did a manlook more horrified! She did it on purpose she said afterwards (forthey used to get together in the vegetable garden and compare notes).“He’s read nothing, thought nothing, felt nothing,” he could hear hersaying in that very emphatic voice which carried so much farther thanshe knew. The stable boys had more life in them than Hugh, she said. Hewas a perfect specimen of the public school type, she said. No countrybut England could have produced him. She was really spiteful, forsome reason; had some grudge against him. Something had happened--heforgot what--in the smoking-room. He had insulted her--kissed her?Incredible! Nobody believed a word against Hugh of course. Who could?Kissing Sally in the smoking-room! If it had been some HonourableEdith or Lady Violet, perhaps; but not that ragamuffin Sally without apenny to her name, and a father or a mother gambling at Monte Carlo.For of all the people he had ever met Hugh was the greatest snob--themost obsequious--no, he didn’t cringe exactly. He was too much of aprig for that. A first-rate valet was the obvious comparison--somebodywho walked behind carrying suit cases; could be trusted to sendtelegrams--indispensable to hostesses. And he’d found his job--marriedhis Honourable Evelyn; got some little post at Court, looked afterthe King’s cellars, polished the Imperial shoe-buckles, went about inknee-breeches and lace ruffles. How remorseless life is! A little jobat Court!
He had married this lady, the Honourable Evelyn, and they livedhereabouts, so he thought (looking at the pompous houses overlookingthe Park), for he had lunched there once in a house which had, likeall Hugh’s possessions, something that no other house could possiblyhave--linen cupboards it might have been. You had to go and look atthem--you had to spend a great deal of time always admiring whateverit was--linen cupboards, pillow-cases, old oak furniture, pictures,which Hugh had picked up for an old song. But Mrs. Hugh sometimes gavethe show away. She was one of those obscure mouse-like little womenwho admire big men. She was almost negligible. Then suddenly she wouldsay something quite unexpected--something sharp. She had the relics ofthe grand manner perhaps. The steam coal was a little too strong forher--it made the atmosphere thick. And so there they lived, with theirlinen cupboards and their old masters and their pillow-cases fringedwith real lace at the rate of five or ten thousand a year presumably,while he, who was two years older than Hugh, cadged for a job.
At fifty-three he had to come and ask them to put him into somesecretary’s office, to find him some usher’s job teaching little boysLatin, at the beck and call of some mandarin in an office, somethingthat brought in five hundred a year; for if he married Daisy, evenwith his pension, they could never do on less. Whitbread could do itpresumably; or Dalloway. He didn’t mind what he asked Dalloway. He wasa thorough good sort; a bit limited; a bit thick in the head; yes;but a thorough good sort. Whatever he took up he did in the samematter-of-fact sensible way; without a touch of imagination, without aspark of brilliancy, but with the inexplicable niceness of his type. Heought to have been a country gentleman--he was wasted on politics. Hewas at his best out of doors, with horses and dogs--how good he was,for instance, when that great shaggy dog of Clarissa’s got caught ina trap and had its paw half torn off, and Clarissa turned faint andDalloway did the whole thing; bandaged, made splints; told Clarissa notto be a fool. That was what she liked him for perhaps--that was whatshe needed. “Now, my dear, don’t be a fool. Hold this--fetch that,” allthe time talking to the dog as if it were a human being.
But how could she swallow all that stuff about poetry? How could shelet him hold forth about Shakespeare? Seriously and solemnly RichardDalloway got on his hind legs and said that no decent man ought toread Shakespeare’s sonnets because it was like listening at keyholes(besides the relationship was not one that he approved). No decentman ought to let his wife visit a deceased wife’s sister. Incredible!The only thing to do was to pelt him with sugared almonds--it was atdinner. But Clarissa sucked it all in; thought it so honest of him;so independent of him; Heaven knows if she didn’t think him the mostoriginal mind she’d ever met!
That was one of the bonds between Sally and himself. There was a gardenwhere they used to walk, a walled-in place, with rose-bushes and giantcauliflowers--he could remember Sally tearing off a rose, stopping toexclaim at the beauty of the cabbage leaves in the moonlight (it wasextraordinary how vividly it all came back to him, things he hadn’tthought of for years,) while she implored him, half laughing of course,to carry off Clarissa, to save her from the Hughs and the Dallowaysand all the other “perfect gentlemen” who would “stifle her soul” (shewrote reams of poetry in those days), make a mere hostess of her,encourage her worldliness. But one must do Clarissa justice. She wasn’tgoing to marry Hugh anyhow. She had a perfectly clear notion of whatshe wanted. Her emotions were all on the surface. Beneath, she wasvery shrewd--a far better judge of character than Sally, for instance,and with it all, purely feminine; with that extraordinary gift, thatwoman’s gift, of making a world of her own wherever she happened to be.She came into a room; she stood, as he had often seen her, in a doorwaywith lots of people round her. But it was Clarissa one remembered.Not that she was striking; not beautiful at all; there was nothingpicturesque about her; she never said anything specially clever; thereshe was, however; there she was.
No, no, no! He was not in love with her any more! He only felt, afterseeing her that morning, among her scissors and silks, making ready forthe party, unable to get away from the thought of her; she kept comingback and back like a sleeper jolting against him in a railway carriage;which was not being in love, of course; it was thinking of her,criticising her, starting again, after thirty years, trying to explainher. The obvious thing to say of her was that she was worldly; caredtoo much for rank and society and getting on in the world--which wastrue in a sense; she had admitted it to him. (You could always get herto own up if you took the trouble; she was honest.) What she would saywas that she hated frumps, fogies, failures, like himself presumably;thought people had no right to slouch about with their hands in theirpockets; must do something, be something; and these great swells, theseduch*esses, these hoary old Countesses one met in her drawing-room,unspeakably remote as he felt them to be from anything that mattereda straw, stood for something real to her. Lady Bexborough, she saidonce, held herself upright (so did Clarissa herself; she never loungedin any sense of the word; she was straight as a dart, a little rigidin fact). She said they had a kind of courage which the older shegrew the more she respected. In all this there was a great deal ofDalloway, of course; a great deal of the public-spirited, BritishEmpire, tariff-reform, governing-class spirit, which had grown on her,as it tends to do. With twice his wits, she had to see things throughhis eyes--one of the tragedies of married life. With a mind of herown, she must always be quoting Richard--as if one couldn’t know to atittle what Richard thought by reading the _Morning Post_ of a morning!These parties for example were all for him, or for her idea of him (todo Richard justice he would have been happier farming in Norfolk). Shemade her drawing-room a sort of meeting-place; she had a genius for it.Over and over again he had seen her take some raw youth, twist him,turn him, wake him up; set him going. Infinite numbers of dull peopleconglomerated round her of course. But odd unexpected people turned up;an artist sometimes; sometimes a writer; queer fish in that atmosphere.And behind it all was that network of visiting, leaving cards, beingkind to people; running about with bunches of flowers, little presents;So-and-so was going to France--must have an air-cushion; a real drainon her strength; all that interminable traffic that women of her sortkeep up; but she did it genuinely, from a natural instinct.
Oddly enough, she was one of the most thoroughgoing sceptics he hadever met, and possibly (this was a theory he used to make up to accountfor her, so transparent in some ways, so inscrutable in others),possibly she said to herself, As we are a doomed race, chained to asinking ship (her favourite reading as a girl was Huxley and Tyndall,and they were fond of these nautical metaphors), as the whole thing isa bad joke, let us, at any rate, do our part; mitigate the sufferingsof our fellow-prisoners (Huxley again); decorate the dungeon withflowers and air-cushions; be as decent as we possibly can. Thoseruffians, the Gods, shan’t have it all their own way,--her notionbeing that the Gods, who never lost a chance of hurting, thwartingand spoiling human lives were seriously put out if, all the same,you behaved like a lady. That phase came directly after Sylvia’sdeath--that horrible affair. To see your own sister killed by a fallingtree (all Justin Parry’s fault--all his carelessness) before yourvery eyes, a girl too on the verge of life, the most gifted of them,Clarissa always said, was enough to turn one bitter. Later she wasn’tso positive perhaps; she thought there were no Gods; no one was toblame; and so she evolved this atheist’s religion of doing good for thesake of goodness.
And of course she enjoyed life immensely. It was her nature to enjoy(though goodness only knows, she had her reserves; it was a meresketch, he often felt, that even he, after all these years, could makeof Clarissa). Anyhow there was no bitterness in her; none of thatsense of moral virtue which is so repulsive in good women. She enjoyedpractically everything. If you walked with her in Hyde Park now itwas a bed of tulips, now a child in a perambulator, now some absurdlittle drama she made up on the spur of the moment. (Very likely, shewould have talked to those lovers, if she had thought them unhappy.)She had a sense of comedy that was really exquisite, but she neededpeople, always people, to bring it out, with the inevitable result thatshe frittered her time away, lunching, dining, giving these incessantparties of hers, talking nonsense, sayings things she didn’t mean,blunting the edge of her mind, losing her discrimination. There shewould sit at the head of the table taking infinite pains with some oldbuffer who might be useful to Dalloway--they knew the most appallingbores in Europe--or in came Elizabeth and everything must give way to_her_. She was at a High School, at the inarticulate stage last time hewas over, a round-eyed, pale-faced girl, with nothing of her mother inher, a silent stolid creature, who took it all as a matter of course,let her mother make a fuss of her, and then said “May I go now?” likea child of four; going off, Clarissa explained, with that mixture ofamusem*nt and pride which Dalloway himself seemed to rouse in her,to play hockey. And now Elizabeth was “out,” presumably; thought himan old fogy, laughed at her mother’s friends. Ah well, so be it.The compensation of growing old, Peter Walsh thought, coming out ofRegent’s Park, and holding his hat in hand, was simply this; that thepassions remain as strong as ever, but one has gained--at last!--thepower which adds the supreme flavour to existence,--the power of takinghold of experience, of turning it round, slowly, in the light.
A terrible confession it was (he put his hat on again), but now, at theage of fifty-three one scarcely needed people any more. Life itself,every moment of it, every drop of it, here, this instant, now, in thesun, in Regent’s Park, was enough. Too much indeed. A whole lifetimewas too short to bring out, now that one had acquired the power, thefull flavour; to extract every ounce of pleasure, every shade ofmeaning; which both were so much more solid than they used to be, somuch less personal. It was impossible that he should ever suffer againas Clarissa had made him suffer. For hours at a time (pray God that onemight say these things without being overheard!), for hours and days henever thought of Daisy.
Could it be that he was in love with her then, remembering the misery,the torture, the extraordinary passion of those days? It was adifferent thing altogether--a much pleasanter thing--the truth being,of course, that now _she_ was in love with _him_. And that perhaps wasthe reason why, when the ship actually sailed, he felt an extraordinaryrelief, wanted nothing so much as to be alone; was annoyed to find allher little attentions--cigars, notes, a rug for the voyage--in hiscabin. Every one if they were honest would say the same; one doesn’twant people after fifty; one doesn’t want to go on telling women theyare pretty; that’s what most men of fifty would say, Peter Walshthought, if they were honest.
But then these astonishing accesses of emotion--bursting into tearsthis morning, what was all that about? What could Clarissa have thoughtof him? thought him a fool presumably, not for the first time. It wasjealousy that was at the bottom of it--jealousy which survives everyother passion of mankind, Peter Walsh thought, holding his pocket-knifeat arm’s length. She had been meeting Major Orde, Daisy said in herlast letter; said it on purpose he knew; said it to make him jealous;he could see her wrinkling her forehead as she wrote, wondering whatshe could say to hurt him; and yet it made no difference; he wasfurious! All this pother of coming to England and seeing lawyers wasn’tto marry her, but to prevent her from marrying anybody else. That waswhat tortured him, that was what came over him when he saw Clarissa socalm, so cold, so intent on her dress or whatever it was; realisingwhat she might have spared him, what she had reduced him to--awhimpering, snivelling old ass. But women, he thought, shutting hispocket-knife, don’t know what passion is. They don’t know the meaningof it to men. Clarissa was as cold as an icicle. There she would siton the sofa by his side, let him take her hand, give him one kiss--Herehe was at the crossing.
A sound interrupted him; a frail quivering sound, a voice bubbling upwithout direction, vigour, beginning or end, running weakly and shrillyand with an absence of all human meaning into
ee um fah um sofoo swee too eem oo--
the voice of no age or sex, the voice of an ancient spring spoutingfrom the earth; which issued, just opposite Regent’s Park Tube stationfrom a tall quivering shape, like a funnel, like a rusty pump, like awind-beaten tree for ever barren of leaves which lets the wind run upand down its branches singing
ee um fah um sofoo swee too eem oo
and rocks and creaks and moans in the eternal breeze.
Through all ages--when the pavement was grass, when it was swamp,through the age of tusk and mammoth, through the age of silent sunrise,the battered woman--for she wore a skirt--with her right hand exposed,her left clutching at her side, stood singing of love--love which haslasted a million years, she sang, love which prevails, and millions ofyears ago, her lover, who had been dead these centuries, had walked,she crooned, with her in May; but in the course of ages, long as summerdays, and flaming, she remembered, with nothing but red asters, he hadgone; death’s enormous sickle had swept those tremendous hills, andwhen at last she laid her hoary and immensely aged head on the earth,now become a mere cinder of ice, she implored the Gods to lay by herside a bunch of purple heather, there on her high burial place whichthe last rays of the last sun caressed; for then the pageant of theuniverse would be over.
As the ancient song bubbled up opposite Regent’s Park Tube stationstill the earth seemed green and flowery; still, though it issued fromso rude a mouth, a mere hole in the earth, muddy too, matted with rootfibres and tangled grasses, still the old bubbling burbling song,soaking through the knotted roots of infinite ages, and skeletons andtreasure, streamed away in rivulets over the pavement and all along theMarylebone Road, and down towards Euston, fertilising, leaving a dampstain.
Still remembering how once in some primeval May she had walked with herlover, this rusty pump, this battered old woman with one hand exposedfor coppers the other clutching her side, would still be there in tenmillion years, remembering how once she had walked in May, where thesea flows now, with whom it did not matter--he was a man, oh yes, a manwho had loved her. But the passage of ages had blurred the clarity ofthat ancient May day; the bright petalled flowers were hoar and silverfrosted; and she no longer saw, when she implored him (as she did nowquite clearly) “look in my eyes with thy sweet eyes intently,” sheno longer saw brown eyes, black whiskers or sunburnt face but only alooming shape, a shadow shape, to which, with the bird-like freshnessof the very aged she still twittered “give me your hand and let mepress it gently” (Peter Walsh couldn’t help giving the poor creature acoin as he stepped into his taxi), “and if some one should see, whatmatter they?” she demanded; and her fist clutched at her side, and shesmiled, pocketing her shilling, and all peering inquisitive eyes seemedblotted out, and the passing generations--the pavement was crowded withbustling middle-class people--vanished, like leaves, to be troddenunder, to be soaked and steeped and made mould of by that eternalspring--
ee um fah um sofoo swee too eem oo
“Poor old woman,” said Rezia Warren Smith, waiting to cross.
Oh poor old wretch!
Suppose it was a wet night? Suppose one’s father, or somebody who hadknown one in better days had happened to pass, and saw one standingthere in the gutter? And where did she sleep at night?
Cheerfully, almost gaily, the invincible thread of sound wound up intothe air like the smoke from a cottage chimney, winding up clean beechtrees and issuing in a tuft of blue smoke among the topmost leaves.“And if some one should see, what matter they?”
Since she was so unhappy, for weeks and weeks now, Rezia had givenmeanings to things that happened, almost felt sometimes that she muststop people in the street, if they looked good, kind people, just tosay to them “I am unhappy”; and this old woman singing in the street“if some one should see, what matter they?” made her suddenly quitesure that everything was going to be right. They were going to SirWilliam Bradshaw; she thought his name sounded nice; he would cureSeptimus at once. And then there was a brewer’s cart, and the greyhorses had upright bristles of straw in their tails; there werenewspaper placards. It was a silly, silly dream, being unhappy.
So they crossed, Mr. and Mrs. Septimus Warren Smith, and was there,after all, anything to draw attention to them, anything to make apasser-by suspect here is a young man who carries in him the greatestmessage in the world, and is, moreover, the happiest man in the world,and the most miserable? Perhaps they walked more slowly than otherpeople, and there was something hesitating, trailing, in the man’swalk, but what more natural for a clerk, who has not been in the WestEnd on a weekday at this hour for years, than to keep looking at thesky, looking at this, that and the other, as if Portland Place were aroom he had come into when the family are away, the chandeliers beinghung in holland bags, and the caretaker, as she lets in long shafts ofdusty light upon deserted, queer-looking arm-chairs, lifting one cornerof the long blinds, explains to the visitors what a wonderful placeit is; how wonderful, but at the same time, he thinks, as he looks atchairs and tables, how strange.
To look at, he might have been a clerk, but of the better sort; for hewore brown boots; his hands were educated; so, too, his profile--hisangular, big-nosed, intelligent, sensitive profile; but not his lipsaltogether, for they were loose; and his eyes (as eyes tend to be),eyes merely; hazel, large; so that he was, on the whole, a border case,neither one thing nor the other, might end with a house at Purley and amotor car, or continue renting apartments in back streets all his life;one of those half-educated, self-educated men whose education is alllearnt from books borrowed from public libraries, read in the eveningafter the day’s work, on the advice of well-known authors consulted byletter.
As for the other experiences, the solitary ones, which people gothrough alone, in their bedrooms, in their offices, walking the fieldsand the streets of London, he had them; had left home, a mere boy,because of his mother; she lied; because he came down to tea for thefiftieth time with his hands unwashed; because he could see no futurefor a poet in Stroud; and so, making a confidant of his little sister,had gone to London leaving an absurd note behind him, such as greatmen have written, and the world has read later when the story of theirstruggles has become famous.
London has swallowed up many millions of young men called Smith;thought nothing of fantastic Christian names like Septimus with whichtheir parents have thought to distinguish them. Lodging off the EustonRoad, there were experiences, again experiences, such as change a facein two years from a pink innocent oval to a face lean, contracted,hostile. But of all this what could the most observant of friends havesaid except what a gardener says when he opens the conservatory doorin the morning and finds a new blossom on his plant:--It has flowered;flowered from vanity, ambition, idealism, passion, loneliness, courage,laziness, the usual seeds, which all muddled up (in a room off theEuston Road), made him shy, and stammering, made him anxious to improvehimself, made him fall in love with Miss Isabel Pole, lecturing in theWaterloo Road upon Shakespeare.
Was he not like Keats? she asked; and reflected how she might give hima taste of _Antony and Cleopatra_ and the rest; lent him books; wrotehim scraps of letters; and lit in him such a fire as burns only oncein a lifetime, without heat, flickering a red gold flame infinitelyethereal and insubstantial over Miss Pole; _Antony and Cleopatra_; andthe Waterloo Road. He thought her beautiful, believed her impeccablywise; dreamed of her, wrote poems to her, which, ignoring the subject,she corrected in red ink; he saw her, one summer evening, walking in agreen dress in a square. “It has flowered,” the gardener might havesaid, had he opened the door; had he come in, that is to say, anynight about this time, and found him writing; found him tearing up hiswriting; found him finishing a masterpiece at three o’clock in themorning and running out to pace the streets, and visiting churches, andfasting one day, drinking another, devouring Shakespeare, Darwin, _TheHistory of Civilisation_, and Bernard Shaw.
Something was up, Mr. Brewer knew; Mr. Brewer, managing clerk atSibleys and Arrowsmiths, auctioneers, valuers, land and estate agents;something was up, he thought, and, being paternal with his young men,and thinking very highly of Smith’s abilities, and prophesying that hewould, in ten or fifteen years, succeed to the leather arm-chair in theinner room under the skylight with the deed-boxes round him, “if hekeeps his health,” said Mr. Brewer, and that was the danger--he lookedweakly; advised football, invited him to supper and was seeing his wayto consider recommending a rise of salary, when something happenedwhich threw out many of Mr. Brewer’s calculations, took away his ablestyoung fellows, and eventually, so prying and insidious were the fingersof the European War, smashed a plaster cast of Ceres, ploughed a holein the geranium beds, and utterly ruined the cook’s nerves at Mr.Brewer’s establishment at Muswell Hill.
Septimus was one of the first to volunteer. He went to France to savean England which consisted almost entirely of Shakespeare’s plays andMiss Isabel Pole in a green dress walking in a square. There in thetrenches the change which Mr. Brewer desired when he advised footballwas produced instantly; he developed manliness; he was promoted; hedrew the attention, indeed the affection of his officer, Evans byname. It was a case of two dogs playing on a hearth-rug; one worryinga paper screw, snarling, snapping, giving a pinch, now and then, atthe old dog’s ear; the other lying somnolent, blinking at the fire,raising a paw, turning and growling good-temperedly. They had to betogether, share with each other, fight with each other, quarrel witheach other. But when Evans (Rezia who had only seen him once calledhim “a quiet man,” a sturdy red-haired man, undemonstrative in thecompany of women), when Evans was killed, just before the Armistice, inItaly, Septimus, far from showing any emotion or recognising that herewas the end of a friendship, congratulated himself upon feeling verylittle and very reasonably. The War had taught him. It was sublime. Hehad gone through the whole show, friendship, European War, death, hadwon promotion, was still under thirty and was bound to survive. He wasright there. The last shells missed him. He watched them explode withindifference. When peace came he was in Milan, billeted in the house ofan innkeeper with a courtyard, flowers in tubs, little tables in theopen, daughters making hats, and to Lucrezia, the younger daughter, hebecame engaged one evening when the panic was on him--that he could notfeel.
For now that it was all over, truce signed, and the dead buried,he had, especially in the evening, these sudden thunder-claps offear. He could not feel. As he opened the door of the room where theItalian girls sat making hats, he could see them; could hear them;they were rubbing wires among coloured beads in saucers; they wereturning buckram shapes this way and that; the table was all strewnwith feathers, spangles, silks, ribbons; scissors were rapping on thetable; but something failed him; he could not feel. Still, scissorsrapping, girls laughing, hats being made protected him; he was assuredof safety; he had a refuge. But he could not sit there all night. Therewere moments of waking in the early morning. The bed was falling; hewas falling. Oh for the scissors and the lamplight and the buckramshapes! He asked Lucrezia to marry him, the younger of the two, thegay, the frivolous, with those little artist’s fingers that she wouldhold up and say “It is all in them.” Silk, feathers, what not werealive to them.
“It is the hat that matters most,” she would say, when they walkedout together. Every hat that passed, she would examine; and the cloakand the dress and the way the woman held herself. Ill-dressing,over-dressing she stigmatised, not savagely, rather with impatientmovements of the hands, like those of a painter who puts from himsome obvious well-meant glaring imposture; and then, generously, butalways critically, she would welcome a shop-girl who had turned herlittle bit of stuff gallantly, or praise, wholly, with enthusiastic andprofessional understanding, a French lady descending from her carriage,in chinchilla, robes, pearls.
“Beautiful!” she would murmur, nudging Septimus, that he might see.But beauty was behind a pane of glass. Even taste (Rezia liked ices,chocolates, sweet things) had no relish to him. He put down his cupon the little marble table. He looked at people outside; happy theyseemed, collecting in the middle of the street, shouting, laughing,squabbling over nothing. But he could not taste, he could not feel. Inthe tea-shop among the tables and the chattering waiters the appallingfear came over him--he could not feel. He could reason; he could read,Dante for example, quite easily (“Septimus, do put down your book,”said Rezia, gently shutting the _Inferno_), he could add up his bill;his brain was perfect; it must be the fault of the world then--that hecould not feel.
“The English are so silent,” Rezia said. She liked it, she said. Sherespected these Englishmen, and wanted to see London, and the Englishhorses, and the tailor-made suits, and could remember hearing howwonderful the shops were, from an Aunt who had married and lived inSoho.
It might be possible, Septimus thought, looking at England from thetrain window, as they left Newhaven; it might be possible that theworld itself is without meaning.
At the office they advanced him to a post of considerableresponsibility. They were proud of him; he had won crosses. “You havedone your duty; it is up to us--” began Mr. Brewer; and could notfinish, so pleasurable was his emotion. They took admirable lodgingsoff the Tottenham Court Road.
Here he opened Shakespeare once more. That boy’s business of theintoxication of language--_Antony and Cleopatra_--had shrivelledutterly. How Shakespeare loathed humanity--the putting on of clothes,the getting of children, the sordidity of the mouth and the belly!This was now revealed to Septimus; the message hidden in the beauty ofwords. The secret signal which one generation passes, under disguise,to the next is loathing, hatred, despair. Dante the same. Aeschylus(translated) the same. There Rezia sat at the table trimming hats. Shetrimmed hats for Mrs. Filmer’s friends; she trimmed hats by the hour.She looked pale, mysterious, like a lily, drowned, under water, hethought.
“The English are so serious,” she would say, putting her arms roundSeptimus, her cheek against his.
Love between man and woman was repulsive to Shakespeare. The businessof copulation was filth to him before the end. But, Rezia said, shemust have children. They had been married five years.
They went to the Tower together; to the Victoria and Albert Museum;stood in the crowd to see the King open Parliament. And there were theshops--hat shops, dress shops, shops with leather bags in the window,where she would stand staring. But she must have a boy.
She must have a son like Septimus, she said. But nobody could belike Septimus; so gentle; so serious; so clever. Could she not readShakespeare too? Was Shakespeare a difficult author? she asked.
One cannot bring children into a world like this. One cannot perpetuatesuffering, or increase the breed of these lustful animals, who have nolasting emotions, but only whims and vanities, eddying them now thisway, now that.
He watched her snip, shape, as one watches a bird hop, flit in thegrass, without daring to move a finger. For the truth is (let herignore it) that human beings have neither kindness, nor faith, norcharity beyond what serves to increase the pleasure of the moment.They hunt in packs. Their packs scour the desert and vanish screaminginto the wilderness. They desert the fallen. They are plasteredover with grimaces. There was Brewer at the office, with his waxedmoustache, coral tie-pin, white slip, and pleasurable emotions--allcoldness and clamminess within,--his geraniums ruined in the War--hiscook’s nerves destroyed; or Amelia What’shername, handing round cupsof tea punctually at five--a leering, sneering obscene little harpy;and the Toms and Berties in their starched shirt fronts oozing thickdrops of vice. They never saw him drawing pictures of them naked attheir antics in his notebook. In the street, vans roared past him;brutality blared out on placards; men were trapped in mines; womenburnt alive; and once a maimed file of lunatics being exercised ordisplayed for the diversion of the populace (who laughed aloud), ambledand nodded and grinned past him, in the Tottenham Court Road, each halfapologetically, yet triumphantly, inflicting his hopeless woe. Andwould _he_ go mad?
At tea Rezia told him that Mrs. Filmer’s daughter was expecting a baby._She_ could not grow old and have no children! She was very lonely, shewas very unhappy! She cried for the first time since they were married.Far away he heard her sobbing; he heard it accurately, he noticed itdistinctly; he compared it to a piston thumping. But he felt nothing.
His wife was crying, and he felt nothing; only each time she sobbed inthis profound, this silent, this hopeless way, he descended anotherstep into the pit.
At last, with a melodramatic gesture which he assumed mechanically andwith complete consciousness of its insincerity, he dropped his headon his hands. Now he had surrendered; now other people must help him.People must be sent for. He gave in.
Nothing could rouse him. Rezia put him to bed. She sent for adoctor--Mrs. Filmer’s Dr. Holmes. Dr. Holmes examined him. There wasnothing whatever the matter, said Dr. Holmes. Oh, what a relief! Whata kind man, what a good man! thought Rezia. When he felt like that hewent to the Music Hall, said Dr. Holmes. He took a day off with hiswife and played golf. Why not try two tabloids of bromide dissolvedin a glass of water at bedtime? These old Bloomsbury houses, saidDr. Holmes, tapping the wall, are often full of very fine panelling,which the landlords have the folly to paper over. Only the other day,visiting a patient, Sir Somebody Something in Bedford Square--
So there was no excuse; nothing whatever the matter, except the sinfor which human nature had condemned him to death; that he did notfeel. He had not cared when Evans was killed; that was worst; but allthe other crimes raised their heads and shook their fingers and jeeredand sneered over the rail of the bed in the early hours of the morningat the prostrate body which lay realising its degradation; how he hadmarried his wife without loving her; had lied to her; seduced her;outraged Miss Isabel Pole, and was so pocked and marked with vice thatwomen shuddered when they saw him in the street. The verdict of humannature on such a wretch was death.
Dr. Holmes came again. Large, fresh coloured, handsome, flicking hisboots, looking in the glass, he brushed it all aside--headaches,sleeplessness, fears, dreams--nerve symptoms and nothing more, he said.If Dr. Holmes found himself even half a pound below eleven stone six,he asked his wife for another plate of porridge at breakfast. (Reziawould learn to cook porridge.) But, he continued, health is largely amatter in our own control. Throw yourself into outside interests; takeup some hobby. He opened Shakespeare--_Antony and Cleopatra_; pushedShakespeare aside. Some hobby, said Dr. Holmes, for did he not owe hisown excellent health (and he worked as hard as any man in London) tothe fact that he could always switch off from his patients on to oldfurniture? And what a very pretty comb, if he might say so, Mrs. WarrenSmith was wearing!
When the damned fool came again, Septimus refused to see him. Did heindeed? said Dr. Holmes, smiling agreeably. Really he had to give thatcharming little lady, Mrs. Smith, a friendly push before he could getpast her into her husband’s bedroom.
“So you’re in a funk,” he said agreeably, sitting down by his patient’sside. He had actually talked of killing himself to his wife, quite agirl, a foreigner, wasn’t she? Didn’t that give her a very odd ideaof English husbands? Didn’t one owe perhaps a duty to one’s wife?Wouldn’t it be better to do something instead of lying in bed? For hehad had forty years’ experience behind him; and Septimus could take Dr.Holmes’s word for it--there was nothing whatever the matter with him.And next time Dr. Holmes came he hoped to find Smith out of bed and notmaking that charming little lady his wife anxious about him.
Human nature, in short, was on him--the repulsive brute, with theblood-red nostrils. Holmes was on him. Dr. Holmes came quite regularlyevery day. Once you stumble, Septimus wrote on the back of a postcard,human nature is on you. Holmes is on you. Their only chance was toescape, without letting Holmes know; to Italy--anywhere, anywhere, awayfrom Dr. Holmes.
But Rezia could not understand him. Dr. Holmes was such a kind man. Hewas so interested in Septimus. He only wanted to help them, he said.He had four little children and he had asked her to tea, she toldSeptimus.
So he was deserted. The whole world was clamouring: Kill yourself,kill yourself, for our sakes. But why should he kill himself for theirsakes? Food was pleasant; the sun hot; and this killing oneself, howdoes one set about it, with a table knife, uglily, with floods ofblood,--by sucking a gaspipe? He was too weak; he could scarcely raisehis hand. Besides, now that he was quite alone, condemned, deserted,as those who are about to die are alone, there was a luxury in it, anisolation full of sublimity; a freedom which the attached can neverknow. Holmes had won of course; the brute with the red nostrils hadwon. But even Holmes himself could not touch this last relic strayingon the edge of the world, this outcast, who gazed back at the inhabitedregions, who lay, like a drowned sailor, on the shore of the world.
It was at that moment (Rezia gone shopping) that the great revelationtook place. A voice spoke from behind the screen. Evans was speaking.The dead were with him.
“Evans, Evans!” he cried.
Mr. Smith was talking aloud to himself, Agnes the servant girl cried toMrs. Filmer in the kitchen. “Evans, Evans,” he had said as she broughtin the tray. She jumped, she did. She scuttled downstairs.
And Rezia came in, with her flowers, and walked across the room, andput the roses in a vase, upon which the sun struck directly, and itwent laughing, leaping round the room.
She had had to buy the roses, Rezia said, from a poor man in thestreet. But they were almost dead already, she said, arranging theroses.
So there was a man outside; Evans presumably; and the roses, whichRezia said were half dead, had been picked by him in the fieldsof Greece. “Communication is health; communication is happiness,communication--” he muttered.
“What are you saying, Septimus?” Rezia asked, wild with terror, for hewas talking to himself.
She sent Agnes running for Dr. Holmes. Her husband, she said, was mad.He scarcely knew her.
“You brute! You brute!” cried Septimus, seeing human nature, that isDr. Holmes, enter the room.
“Now what’s all this about?” said Dr. Holmes in the most amiable way inthe world. “Talking nonsense to frighten your wife?” But he would givehim something to make him sleep. And if they were rich people, said Dr.Holmes, looking ironically round the room, by all means let them goto Harley Street; if they had no confidence in him, said Dr. Holmes,looking not quite so kind.
It was precisely twelve o’clock; twelve by Big Ben; whose stroke waswafted over the northern part of London; blent with that of otherclocks, mixed in a thin ethereal way with the clouds and wisps ofsmoke, and died up there among the seagulls--twelve o’clock struckas Clarissa Dalloway laid her green dress on her bed, and the WarrenSmiths walked down Harley Street. Twelve was the hour of theirappointment. Probably, Rezia thought, that was Sir William Bradshaw’shouse with the grey motor car in front of it. The leaden circlesdissolved in the air.
Indeed it was--Sir William Bradshaw’s motor car; low, powerful, greywith plain initials interlocked on the panel, as if the pomps ofheraldry were incongruous, this man being the ghostly helper, thepriest of science; and, as the motor car was grey, so to match itssober suavity, grey furs, silver grey rugs were heaped in it, tokeep her ladyship warm while she waited. For often Sir William wouldtravel sixty miles or more down into the country to visit the rich,the afflicted, who could afford the very large fee which Sir Williamvery properly charged for his advice. Her ladyship waited with therugs about her knees an hour or more, leaning back, thinking sometimesof the patient, sometimes, excusably, of the wall of gold, mountingminute by minute while she waited; the wall of gold that was mountingbetween them and all shifts and anxieties (she had borne them bravely;they had had their struggles) until she felt wedged on a calm ocean,where only spice winds blow; respected, admired, envied, with scarcelyanything left to wish for, though she regretted her stoutness; largedinner-parties every Thursday night to the profession; an occasionalbazaar to be opened; Royalty greeted; too little time, alas, with herhusband, whose work grew and grew; a boy doing well at Eton; she wouldhave liked a daughter too; interests she had, however, in plenty; childwelfare; the after-care of the epileptic, and photography, so thatif there was a church building, or a church decaying, she bribed thesexton, got the key and took photographs, which were scarcely to bedistinguished from the work of professionals, while she waited.
Sir William himself was no longer young. He had worked very hard; hehad won his position by sheer ability (being the son of a shopkeeper);loved his profession; made a fine figurehead at ceremonies and spokewell--all of which had by the time he was knighted given him a heavylook, a weary look (the stream of patients being so incessant, theresponsibilities and privileges of his profession so onerous), whichweariness, together with his grey hairs, increased the extraordinarydistinction of his presence and gave him the reputation (of the utmostimportance in dealing with nerve cases) not merely of lightning skill,and almost infallible accuracy in diagnosis but of sympathy; tact;understanding of the human soul. He could see the first moment theycame into the room (the Warren Smiths they were called); he was certaindirectly he saw the man; it was a case of extreme gravity. It was acase of complete breakdown--complete physical and nervous breakdown,with every symptom in an advanced stage, he ascertained in two or threeminutes (writing answers to questions, murmured discreetly, on a pinkcard).
How long had Dr. Holmes been attending him?
Six weeks.
Prescribed a little bromide? Said there was nothing the matter? Ah yes(those general practitioners! thought Sir William. It took half histime to undo their blunders. Some were irreparable).
“You served with great distinction in the War?”
The patient repeated the word “war” interrogatively.
He was attaching meanings to words of a symbolical kind. A serioussymptom, to be noted on the card.
“The War?” the patient asked. The European War--that little shindy ofschoolboys with gunpowder? Had he served with distinction? He reallyforgot. In the War itself he had failed.
“Yes, he served with the greatest distinction,” Rezia assured thedoctor; “he was promoted.”
“And they have the very highest opinion of you at your office?” SirWilliam murmured, glancing at Mr. Brewer’s very generously wordedletter. “So that you have nothing to worry you, no financial anxiety,nothing?”
He had committed an appalling crime and been condemned to death byhuman nature.
“I have--I have,” he began, “committed a crime--”
“He has done nothing wrong whatever,” Rezia assured the doctor. If Mr.Smith would wait, said Sir William, he would speak to Mrs. Smith inthe next room. Her husband was very seriously ill, Sir William said.Did he threaten to kill himself?
Oh, he did, she cried. But he did not mean it, she said. Of course not.It was merely a question of rest, said Sir William; of rest, rest,rest; a long rest in bed. There was a delightful home down in thecountry where her husband would be perfectly looked after. Away fromher? she asked. Unfortunately, yes; the people we care for most are notgood for us when we are ill. But he was not mad, was he? Sir Williamsaid he never spoke of “madness”; he called it not having a sense ofproportion. But her husband did not like doctors. He would refuse to gothere. Shortly and kindly Sir William explained to her the state of thecase. He had threatened to kill himself. There was no alternative. Itwas a question of law. He would lie in bed in a beautiful house in thecountry. The nurses were admirable. Sir William would visit him once aweek. If Mrs. Warren Smith was quite sure she had no more questions toask--he never hurried his patients--they would return to her husband.She had nothing more to ask--not of Sir William.
So they returned to the most exalted of mankind; the criminal whofaced his judges; the victim exposed on the heights; the fugitive; thedrowned sailor; the poet of the immortal ode; the Lord who had gonefrom life to death; to Septimus Warren Smith, who sat in the arm-chairunder the skylight staring at a photograph of Lady Bradshaw in Courtdress, muttering messages about beauty.
“We have had our little talk,” said Sir William.
“He says you are very, very ill,” Rezia cried.
“We have been arranging that you should go into a home,” said SirWilliam.
“One of Holmes’s homes?” sneered Septimus.
The fellow made a distasteful impression. For there was in Sir William,whose father had been a tradesman, a natural respect for breeding andclothing, which shabbiness nettled; again, more profoundly, there wasin Sir William, who had never had time for reading, a grudge, deeplyburied, against cultivated people who came into his room and intimatedthat doctors, whose profession is a constant strain upon all thehighest faculties, are not educated men.
“One of _my_ homes, Mr. Warren Smith,” he said, “where we will teachyou to rest.”
And there was just one thing more.
He was quite certain that when Mr. Warren Smith was well he was thelast man in the world to frighten his wife. But he had talked ofkilling himself.
“We all have our moments of depression,” said Sir William.
Once you fall, Septimus repeated to himself, human nature is on you.Holmes and Bradshaw are on you. They scour the desert. They flyscreaming into the wilderness. The rack and the thumbscrew are applied.Human nature is remorseless.
“Impulses came upon him sometimes?” Sir William asked, with his pencilon a pink card.
That was his own affair, said Septimus.
“Nobody lives for himself alone,” said Sir William, glancing at thephotograph of his wife in Court dress.
“And you have a brilliant career before you,” said Sir William. Therewas Mr. Brewer’s letter on the table. “An exceptionally brilliantcareer.”
But if he confessed? If he communicated? Would they let him off then,his torturers?
“I--I--” he stammered.
But what was his crime? He could not remember it.
“Yes?” Sir William encouraged him. (But it was growing late.)
Love, trees, there is no crime--what was his message?
He could not remember it.
“I--I--” Septimus stammered.
“Try to think as little about yourself as possible,” said Sir Williamkindly. Really, he was not fit to be about.
Was there anything else they wished to ask him? Sir William would makeall arrangements (he murmured to Rezia) and he would let her knowbetween five and six that evening he murmured.
“Trust everything to me,” he said, and dismissed them.
Never, never had Rezia felt such agony in her life! She had asked forhelp and been deserted! He had failed them! Sir William Bradshaw wasnot a nice man.
The upkeep of that motor car alone must cost him quite a lot, saidSeptimus, when they got out into the street.
She clung to his arm. They had been deserted.
But what more did she want?
To his patients he gave three-quarters of an hour; and if in thisexacting science which has to do with what, after all, we know nothingabout--the nervous system, the human brain--a doctor loses his senseof proportion, as a doctor he fails. Health we must have; and healthis proportion; so that when a man comes into your room and says he isChrist (a common delusion), and has a message, as they mostly have, andthreatens, as they often do, to kill himself, you invoke proportion;order rest in bed; rest in solitude; silence and rest; rest withoutfriends, without books, without messages; six months’ rest; until a manwho went in weighing seven stone six comes out weighing twelve.
Proportion, divine proportion, Sir William’s goddess, was acquiredby Sir William walking hospitals, catching salmon, begetting oneson in Harley Street by Lady Bradshaw, who caught salmon herselfand took photographs scarcely to be distinguished from the workof professionals. Worshipping proportion, Sir William not onlyprospered himself but made England prosper, secluded her lunatics,forbade childbirth, penalised despair, made it impossible for theunfit to propagate their views until they, too, shared his sense ofproportion--his, if they were men, Lady Bradshaw’s if they were women(she embroidered, knitted, spent four nights out of seven at homewith her son), so that not only did his colleagues respect him, hissubordinates fear him, but the friends and relations of his patientsfelt for him the keenest gratitude for insisting that these propheticChrists and Christesses, who prophesied the end of the world, or theadvent of God, should drink milk in bed, as Sir William ordered; SirWilliam with his thirty years’ experience of these kinds of cases, andhis infallible instinct, this is madness, this sense; in fact, hissense of proportion.
But Proportion has a sister, less smiling, more formidable, a Goddesseven now engaged--in the heat and sands of India, the mud and swamp ofAfrica, the purlieus of London, wherever in short the climate or thedevil tempts men to fall from the true belief which is her own--is evennow engaged in dashing down shrines, smashing idols, and setting upin their place her own stern countenance. Conversion is her name andshe feasts on the wills of the weakly, loving to impress, to impose,adoring her own features stamped on the face of the populace. At HydePark Corner on a tub she stands preaching; shrouds herself in whiteand walks penitentially disguised as brotherly love through factoriesand parliaments; offers help, but desires power; smites out of herway roughly the dissentient, or dissatisfied; bestows her blessingon those who, looking upward, catch submissively from her eyes thelight of their own. This lady too (Rezia Warren Smith divined it) hadher dwelling in Sir William’s heart, though concealed, as she mostlyis, under some plausible disguise; some venerable name; love, duty,self sacrifice. How he would work--how toil to raise funds, propagatereforms, initiate institutions! But conversion, fastidious Goddess,loves blood better than brick, and feasts most subtly on the humanwill. For example, Lady Bradshaw. Fifteen years ago she had gone under.It was nothing you could put your finger on; there had been no scene,no snap; only the slow sinking, water-logged, of her will into his.Sweet was her smile, swift her submission; dinner in Harley Street,numbering eight or nine courses, feeding ten or fifteen guests of theprofessional classes, was smooth and urbane. Only as the evening woreon a very slight dulness, or uneasiness perhaps, a nervous twitch,fumble, stumble and confusion indicated, what it was really painful tobelieve--that the poor lady lied. Once, long ago, she had caught salmonfreely: now, quick to minister to the craving which lit her husband’seye so oilily for dominion, for power, she cramped, squeezed, pared,pruned, drew back, peeped through; so that without knowing preciselywhat made the evening disagreeable, and caused this pressure on thetop of the head (which might well be imputed to the professionalconversation, or the fatigue of a great doctor whose life, LadyBradshaw said, “is not his own but his patients’”) disagreeable itwas: so that guests, when the clock struck ten, breathed in the air ofHarley Street even with rapture; which relief, however, was denied tohis patients.
There in the grey room, with the pictures on the wall, and the valuablefurniture, under the ground glass skylight, they learnt the extent oftheir transgressions; huddled up in arm-chairs, they watched him gothrough, for their benefit, a curious exercise with the arms, which heshot out, brought sharply back to his hip, to prove (if the patientwas obstinate) that Sir William was master of his own actions, whichthe patient was not. There some weakly broke down; sobbed, submitted;others, inspired by Heaven knows what intemperate madness, called SirWilliam to his face a damnable humbug; questioned, even more impiously,life itself. Why live? they demanded. Sir William replied that lifewas good. Certainly Lady Bradshaw in ostrich feathers hung over themantelpiece, and as for his income it was quite twelve thousand ayear. But to us, they protested, life has given no such bounty. Heacquiesced. They lacked a sense of proportion. And perhaps, after all,there is no God? He shrugged his shoulders. In short, this living ornot living is an affair of our own? But there they were mistaken. SirWilliam had a friend in Surrey where they taught, what Sir Williamfrankly admitted was a difficult art--a sense of proportion. Therewere, moreover, family affection; honour; courage; and a brilliantcareer. All of these had in Sir William a resolute champion. If theyfailed him, he had to support police and the good of society, which,he remarked very quietly, would take care, down in Surrey, that theseunsocial impulses, bred more than anything by the lack of good blood,were held in control. And then stole out from her hiding-place andmounted her throne that Goddess whose lust is to override opposition,to stamp indelibly in the sanctuaries of others the image of herself.Naked, defenceless, the exhausted, the friendless received the impressof Sir William’s will. He swooped; he devoured. He shut people up. Itwas this combination of decision and humanity that endeared Sir Williamso greatly to the relations of his victims.
But Rezia Warren Smith cried, walking down Harley Street, that she didnot like that man.
Shredding and slicing, dividing and subdividing, the clocks ofHarley Street nibbled at the June day, counselled submission, upheldauthority, and pointed out in chorus the supreme advantages of a senseof proportion, until the mound of time was so far diminished that acommercial clock, suspended above a shop in Oxford Street, announced,genially and fraternally, as if it were a pleasure to Messrs. Rigby andLowndes to give the information gratis, that it was half-past one.
Looking up, it appeared that each letter of their names stood forone of the hours; subconsciously one was grateful to Rigby andLowndes for giving one time ratified by Greenwich; and this gratitude(so Hugh Whitbread ruminated, dallying there in front of the shopwindow), naturally took the form later of buying off Rigby and Lowndessocks or shoes. So he ruminated. It was his habit. He did not godeeply. He brushed surfaces; the dead languages, the living, life inConstantinople, Paris, Rome; riding, shooting, tennis, it had beenonce. The malicious asserted that he now kept guard at BuckinghamPalace, dressed in silk stockings and knee-breeches, over what nobodyknew. But he did it extremely efficiently. He had been afloat on thecream of English society for fifty-five years. He had known PrimeMinisters. His affections were understood to be deep. And if it weretrue that he had not taken part in any of the great movements of thetime or held important office, one or two humble reforms stood tohis credit; an improvement in public shelters was one; the protectionof owls in Norfolk another; servant girls had reason to be gratefulto him; and his name at the end of letters to the _Times_, asking forfunds, appealing to the public to protect, to preserve, to clear uplitter, to abate smoke, and stamp out immorality in parks, commandedrespect.
A magnificent figure he cut too, pausing for a moment (as the sound ofthe half hour died away) to look critically, magisterially, at socksand shoes; impeccable, substantial, as if he beheld the world from acertain eminence, and dressed to match; but realised the obligationswhich size, wealth, health, entail, and observed punctiliously evenwhen not absolutely necessary, little courtesies, old-fashionedceremonies which gave a quality to his manner, something to imitate,something to remember him by, for he would never lunch, for example,with Lady Bruton, whom he had known these twenty years, withoutbringing her in his outstretched hand a bunch of carnations and askingMiss Brush, Lady Bruton’s secretary, after her brother in South Africa,which, for some reason, Miss Brush, deficient though she was in everyattribute of female charm, so much resented that she said “Thank you,he’s doing very well in South Africa,” when, for half a dozen years, hehad been doing badly in Portsmouth.
Lady Bruton herself preferred Richard Dalloway, who arrived at the nextmoment. Indeed they met on the doorstep.
Lady Bruton preferred Richard Dalloway of course. He was made ofmuch finer material. But she wouldn’t let them run down her poordear Hugh. She could never forget his kindness--he had been reallyremarkably kind--she forgot precisely upon what occasion. But hehad been--remarkably kind. Anyhow, the difference between one manand another does not amount to much. She had never seen the senseof cutting people up, as Clarissa Dalloway did--cutting them up andsticking them together again; not at any rate when one was sixty-two.She took Hugh’s carnations with her angular grim smile. There wasnobody else coming, she said. She had got them there on falsepretences, to help her out of a difficulty--
“But let us eat first,” she said.
And so there began a soundless and exquisite passing to and frothrough swing doors of aproned white-capped maids, handmaidens notof necessity, but adepts in a mystery or grand deception practisedby hostesses in Mayfair from one-thirty to two, when, with a wave ofthe hand, the traffic ceases, and there rises instead this profoundillusion in the first place about the food--how it is not paid for; andthen that the table spreads itself voluntarily with glass and silver,little mats, saucers of red fruit; films of brown cream mask turbot; incasseroles severed chickens swim; coloured, undomestic, the fire burns;and with the wine and the coffee (not paid for) rise jocund visionsbefore musing eyes; gently speculative eyes; eyes to whom life appearsmusical, mysterious; eyes now kindled to observe genially the beautyof the red carnations which Lady Bruton (whose movements were alwaysangular) had laid beside her plate, so that Hugh Whitbread, feeling atpeace with the entire universe and at the same time completely sure ofhis standing, said, resting his fork,
“Wouldn’t they look charming against your lace?”
Miss Brush resented this familiarity intensely. She thought him anunderbred fellow. She made Lady Bruton laugh.
Lady Bruton raised the carnations, holding them rather stiffly withmuch the same attitude with which the General held the scroll in thepicture behind her; she remained fixed, tranced. Which was she now,the General’s great-grand-daughter? great-great-grand-daughter? RichardDalloway asked himself. Sir Roderick, Sir Miles, Sir Talbot--that wasit. It was remarkable how in that family the likeness persisted in thewomen. She should have been a general of dragoons herself. And Richardwould have served under her, cheerfully; he had the greatest respectfor her; he cherished these romantic views about well-set-up old womenof pedigree, and would have liked, in his good-humoured way, to bringsome young hot-heads of his acquaintance to lunch with her; as if atype like hers could be bred of amiable tea-drinking enthusiasts! Heknew her country. He knew her people. There was a vine, still bearing,which either Lovelace or Herrick--she never read a word of poetryherself, but so the story ran--had sat under. Better wait to put beforethem the question that bothered her (about making an appeal to thepublic; if so, in what terms and so on), better wait until they havehad their coffee, Lady Bruton thought; and so laid the carnations downbeside her plate.
“How’s Clarissa?” she asked abruptly.
Clarissa always said that Lady Bruton did not like her. Indeed, LadyBruton had the reputation of being more interested in politics thanpeople; of talking like a man; of having had a finger in some notoriousintrigue of the eighties, which was now beginning to be mentionedin memoirs. Certainly there was an alcove in her drawing-room, anda table in that alcove, and a photograph upon that table of GeneralSir Talbot Moore, now deceased, who had written there (one evening inthe eighties) in Lady Bruton’s presence, with her cognisance, perhapsadvice, a telegram ordering the British troops to advance upon anhistorical occasion. (She kept the pen and told the story.) Thus, whenshe said in her offhand way “How’s Clarissa?” husbands had difficultyin persuading their wives and indeed, however devoted, were secretlydoubtful themselves, of her interest in women who often got in theirhusbands’ way, prevented them from accepting posts abroad, and had tobe taken to the seaside in the middle of the session to recover frominfluenza. Nevertheless her inquiry, “How’s Clarissa?” was known bywomen infallibly, to be a signal from a well-wisher, from an almostsilent companion, whose utterances (half a dozen perhaps in the courseof a lifetime) signified recognition of some feminine comradeship whichwent beneath masculine lunch parties and united Lady Bruton and Mrs.Dalloway, who seldom met, and appeared when they did meet indifferentand even hostile, in a singular bond.
“I met Clarissa in the Park this morning,” said Hugh Whitbread, divinginto the casserole, anxious to pay himself this little tribute, for hehad only to come to London and he met everybody at once; but greedy,one of the greediest men she had ever known, Milly Brush thought, whoobserved men with unflinching rectitude, and was capable of everlastingdevotion, to her own sex in particular, being knobbed, scraped,angular, and entirely without feminine charm.
“D’you know who’s in town?” said Lady Bruton suddenly bethinking her.“Our old friend, Peter Walsh.”
They all smiled. Peter Walsh! And Mr. Dalloway was genuinely glad,Milly Brush thought; and Mr. Whitbread thought only of his chicken.
Peter Walsh! All three, Lady Bruton, Hugh Whitbread, and RichardDalloway, remembered the same thing--how passionately Peter had beenin love; been rejected; gone to India; come a cropper; made a mess ofthings; and Richard Dalloway had a very great liking for the dear oldfellow too. Milly Brush saw that; saw a depth in the brown of his eyes;saw him hesitate; consider; which interested her, as Mr. Dallowayalways interested her, for what was he thinking, she wondered, aboutPeter Walsh?
That Peter Walsh had been in love with Clarissa; that he would go backdirectly after lunch and find Clarissa; that he would tell her, in somany words, that he loved her. Yes, he would say that.
Milly Brush once might almost have fallen in love with these silences;and Mr. Dalloway was always so dependable; such a gentleman too. Now,being forty, Lady Bruton had only to nod, or turn her head a littleabruptly, and Milly Brush took the signal, however deeply she mightbe sunk in these reflections of a detached spirit, of an uncorruptedsoul whom life could not bamboozle, because life had not offered hera trinket of the slightest value; not a curl, smile, lip, cheek,nose; nothing whatever; Lady Bruton had only to nod, and Perkins wasinstructed to quicken the coffee.
“Yes; Peter Walsh has come back,” said Lady Bruton. It was vaguelyflattering to them all. He had come back, battered, unsuccessful, totheir secure shores. But to help him, they reflected, was impossible;there was some flaw in his character. Hugh Whitbread said one mightof course mention his name to So-and-so. He wrinkled lugubriously,consequentially, at the thought of the letters he would write to theheads of Government offices about “my old friend, Peter Walsh,” andso on. But it wouldn’t lead to anything--not to anything permanent,because of his character.
“In trouble with some woman,” said Lady Bruton. They had all guessedthat _that_ was at the bottom of it.
“However,” said Lady Bruton, anxious to leave the subject, “we shallhear the whole story from Peter himself.”
(The coffee was very slow in coming.)
“The address?” murmured Hugh Whitbread; and there was at once a ripplein the grey tide of service which washed round Lady Bruton day in, dayout, collecting, intercepting, enveloping her in a fine tissue whichbroke concussions, mitigated interruptions, and spread round the housein Brook Street a fine net where things lodged and were picked outaccurately, instantly, by grey-haired Perkins, who had been with LadyBruton these thirty years and now wrote down the address; handed it toMr. Whitbread, who took out his pocket-book, raised his eyebrows, andslipping it in among documents of the highest importance, said that hewould get Evelyn to ask him to lunch.
(They were waiting to bring the coffee until Mr. Whitbread hadfinished.)
Hugh was very slow, Lady Bruton thought. He was getting fat, shenoticed. Richard always kept himself in the pink of condition. Shewas getting impatient; the whole of her being was setting positively,undeniably, domineeringly brushing aside all this unnecessary trifling(Peter Walsh and his affairs) upon that subject which engaged herattention, and not merely her attention, but that fibre which wasthe ramrod of her soul, that essential part of her without whichMillicent Bruton would not have been Millicent Bruton; that projectfor emigrating young people of both sexes born of respectable parentsand setting them up with a fair prospect of doing well in Canada. Sheexaggerated. She had perhaps lost her sense of proportion. Emigrationwas not to others the obvious remedy, the sublime conception. It wasnot to them (not to Hugh, or Richard, or even to devoted Miss Brush)the liberator of the pent egotism, which a strong martial woman, wellnourished, well descended, of direct impulses, downright feelings, andlittle introspective power (broad and simple--why could not every onebe broad and simple? she asked) feels rise within her, once youth ispast, and must eject upon some object--it may be Emigration, it may beEmancipation; but whatever it be, this object round which the essenceof her soul is daily secreted, becomes inevitably prismatic, lustrous,half looking-glass, half precious stone; now carefully hidden in casepeople should sneer at it; now proudly displayed. Emigration hadbecome, in short, largely Lady Bruton.
But she had to write. And one letter to the _Times_, she used to sayto Miss Brush, cost her more than to organise an expedition to SouthAfrica (which she had done in the war). After a morning’s battlebeginning, tearing up, beginning again, she used to feel the futilityof her own womanhood as she felt it on no other occasion, and wouldturn gratefully to the thought of Hugh Whitbread who possessed--no onecould doubt it--the art of writing letters to the _Times_.
A being so differently constituted from herself, with such a commandof language; able to put things as editors like them put; had passionswhich one could not call simply greed. Lady Bruton often suspendedjudgement upon men in deference to the mysterious accord in whichthey, but no woman, stood to the laws of the universe; knew how to putthings; knew what was said; so that if Richard advised her, and Hughwrote for her, she was sure of being somehow right. So she let Hugh eathis soufflé; asked after poor Evelyn; waited until they were smoking,and then said,
“Milly, would you fetch the papers?”
And Miss Brush went out, came back; laid papers on the table; and Hughproduced his fountain pen; his silver fountain pen, which had donetwenty years’ service, he said, unscrewing the cap. It was still inperfect order; he had shown it to the makers; there was no reason,they said, why it should ever wear out; which was somehow to Hugh’scredit, and to the credit of the sentiments which his pen expressed (soRichard Dalloway felt) as Hugh began carefully writing capital letterswith rings round them in the margin, and thus marvellously reducedLady Bruton’s tangles to sense, to grammar such as the editor of the_Times_, Lady Bruton felt, watching the marvellous transformation,must respect. Hugh was slow. Hugh was pertinacious. Richard said onemust take risks. Hugh proposed modifications in deference to people’sfeelings, which, he said rather tartly when Richard laughed, “had tobe considered,” and read out “how, therefore, we are of opinion thatthe times are ripe ... the superfluous youth of our ever-increasingpopulation ... what we owe to the dead ...” which Richard thoughtall stuffing and bunkum, but no harm in it, of course, and Hugh wenton drafting sentiments in alphabetical order of the highest nobility,brushing the cigar ash from his waistcoat, and summing up now and thenthe progress they had made until, finally, he read out the draft of aletter which Lady Bruton felt certain was a masterpiece. Could her ownmeaning sound like that?
Hugh could not guarantee that the editor would put it in; but he wouldbe meeting somebody at luncheon.
Whereupon Lady Bruton, who seldom did a graceful thing, stuffed allHugh’s carnations into the front of her dress, and flinging her handsout called him “My Prime Minister!” What she would have done withoutthem both she did not know. They rose. And Richard Dalloway strolledoff as usual to have a look at the General’s portrait, because hemeant, whenever he had a moment of leisure, to write a history of LadyBruton’s family.
And Millicent Bruton was very proud of her family. But they couldwait, they could wait, she said, looking at the picture; meaning thather family, of military men, administrators, admirals, had been menof action, who had done their duty; and Richard’s first duty was tohis country, but it was a fine face, she said; and all the papers wereready for Richard down at Aldmixton whenever the time came; the LabourGovernment she meant. “Ah, the news from India!” she cried.
And then, as they stood in the hall taking yellow gloves from the bowlon the malachite table and Hugh was offering Miss Brush with quiteunnecessary courtesy some discarded ticket or other compliment, whichshe loathed from the depths of her heart and blushed brick red, Richardturned to Lady Bruton, with his hat in his hand, and said,
“We shall see you at our party to-night?” whereupon Lady Bruton resumedthe magnificence which letter-writing had shattered. She might come; orshe might not come. Clarissa had wonderful energy. Parties terrifiedLady Bruton. But then, she was getting old. So she intimated, standingat her doorway; handsome; very erect; while her chow stretched behindher, and Miss Brush disappeared into the background with her hands fullof papers.
And Lady Bruton went ponderously, majestically, up to her room, lay,one arm extended, on the sofa. She sighed, she snored, not that shewas asleep, only drowsy and heavy, drowsy and heavy, like a field ofclover in the sunshine this hot June day, with the bees going roundand about and the yellow butterflies. Always she went back to thosefields down in Devonshire, where she had jumped the brooks on Patty,her pony, with Mortimer and Tom, her brothers. And there were the dogs;there were the rats; there were her father and mother on the lawnunder the trees, with the tea-things out, and the beds of dahlias, thehollyhocks, the pampas grass; and they, little wretches, always up tosome mischief! stealing back through the shrubbery, so as not to beseen, all bedraggled from some roguery. What old nurse used to sayabout her frocks!
Ah dear, she remembered--it was Wednesday in Brook Street. Those kindgood fellows, Richard Dalloway, Hugh Whitbread, had gone this hot daythrough the streets whose growl came up to her lying on the sofa. Powerwas hers, position, income. She had lived in the forefront of her time.She had had good friends; known the ablest men of her day. MurmuringLondon flowed up to her, and her hand, lying on the sofa back, curledupon some imaginary baton such as her grandfathers might have held,holding which she seemed, drowsy and heavy, to be commanding battalionsmarching to Canada, and those good fellows walking across London, thatterritory of theirs, that little bit of carpet, Mayfair.
And they went further and further from her, being attached to her by athin thread (since they had lunched with her) which would stretch andstretch, get thinner and thinner as they walked across London; as ifone’s friends were attached to one’s body, after lunching with them, bya thin thread, which (as she dozed there) became hazy with the sound ofbells, striking the hour or ringing to service, as a single spider’sthread is blotted with rain-drops, and, burdened, sags down. So sheslept.
And Richard Dalloway and Hugh Whitbread hesitated at the corner ofConduit Street at the very moment that Millicent Bruton, lying on thesofa, let the thread snap; snored. Contrary winds buffeted at thestreet corner. They looked in at a shop window; they did not wish tobuy or to talk but to part, only with contrary winds buffeting thestreet corner, with some sort of lapse in the tides of the body, twoforces meeting in a swirl, morning and afternoon, they paused. Somenewspaper placard went up in the air, gallantly, like a kite at first,then paused, swooped, fluttered; and a lady’s veil hung. Yellowawnings trembled. The speed of the morning traffic slackened, andsingle carts rattled carelessly down half-empty streets. In Norfolk,of which Richard Dalloway was half thinking, a soft warm wind blewback the petals; confused the waters; ruffled the flowering grasses.Haymakers, who had pitched beneath hedges to sleep away the morningtoil, parted curtains of green blades; moved trembling globes of cowparsley to see the sky; the blue, the steadfast, the blazing summer sky.
Aware that he was looking at a silver two-handled Jacobean mug,and that Hugh Whitbread admired condescendingly with airs ofconnoisseurship a Spanish necklace which he thought of asking the priceof in case Evelyn might like it--still Richard was torpid; could notthink or move. Life had thrown up this wreckage; shop windows full ofcoloured paste, and one stood stark with the lethargy of the old, stiffwith the rigidity of the old, looking in. Evelyn Whitbread might liketo buy this Spanish necklace--so she might. Yawn he must. Hugh wasgoing into the shop.
“Right you are!” said Richard, following.
Goodness knows he didn’t want to go buying necklaces with Hugh. Butthere are tides in the body. Morning meets afternoon. Borne like afrail shallop on deep, deep floods, Lady Bruton’s great-grandfatherand his memoir and his campaigns in North America were whelmed andsunk. And Millicent Bruton too. She went under. Richard didn’t care astraw what became of Emigration; about that letter, whether the editorput it in or not. The necklace hung stretched between Hugh’s admirablefingers. Let him give it to a girl, if he must buy jewels--any girl,any girl in the street. For the worthlessness of this life did strikeRichard pretty forcibly--buying necklaces for Evelyn. If he’d had a boyhe’d have said, Work, work. But he had his Elizabeth; he adored hisElizabeth.
“I should like to see Mr. Dubonnet,” said Hugh in his curt worldly way.It appeared that this Dubonnet had the measurements of Mrs. Whitbread’sneck, or, more strangely still, knew her views upon Spanish jewelleryand the extent of her possessions in that line (which Hugh could notremember). All of which seemed to Richard Dalloway awfully odd. Forhe never gave Clarissa presents, except a bracelet two or three yearsago, which had not been a success. She never wore it. It pained himto remember that she never wore it. And as a single spider’s threadafter wavering here and there attaches itself to the point of a leaf,so Richard’s mind, recovering from its lethargy, set now on his wife,Clarissa, whom Peter Walsh had loved so passionately; and Richard hadhad a sudden vision of her there at luncheon; of himself and Clarissa;of their life together; and he drew the tray of old jewels towards him,and taking up first this brooch then that ring, “How much is that?” heasked, but doubted his own taste. He wanted to open the drawing-roomdoor and come in holding out something; a present for Clarissa. Onlywhat? But Hugh was on his legs again. He was unspeakably pompous.Really, after dealing here for thirty-five years he was not going tobe put off by a mere boy who did not know his business. For Dubonnet,it seemed, was out, and Hugh would not buy anything until Mr. Dubonnetchose to be in; at which the youth flushed and bowed his correctlittle bow. It was all perfectly correct. And yet Richard couldn’thave said that to save his life! Why these people stood that damnedinsolence he could not conceive. Hugh was becoming an intolerable ass.Richard Dalloway could not stand more than an hour of his society.And, flicking his bowler hat by way of farewell, Richard turned atthe corner of Conduit Street eager, yes, very eager, to travel thatspider’s thread of attachment between himself and Clarissa; he wouldgo straight to her, in Westminster.
But he wanted to come in holding something. Flowers? Yes, flowers,since he did not trust his taste in gold; any number of flowers,roses, orchids, to celebrate what was, reckoning things as you will,an event; this feeling about her when they spoke of Peter Walsh atluncheon; and they never spoke of it; not for years had they spoken ofit; which, he thought, grasping his red and white roses together (avast bunch in tissue paper), is the greatest mistake in the world. Thetime comes when it can’t be said; one’s too shy to say it, he thought,pocketing his sixpence or two of change, setting off with his greatbunch held against his body to Westminster to say straight out in somany words (whatever she might think of him), holding out his flowers,“I love you.” Why not? Really it was a miracle thinking of the war, andthousands of poor chaps, with all their lives before them, shovelledtogether, already half forgotten; it was a miracle. Here he was walkingacross London to say to Clarissa in so many words that he loved her.Which one never does say, he thought. Partly one’s lazy; partly one’sshy. And Clarissa--it was difficult to think of her; except in starts,as at luncheon, when he saw her quite distinctly; their whole life.He stopped at the crossing; and repeated--being simple by nature, andundebauched, because he had tramped, and shot; being pertinacious anddogged, having championed the down-trodden and followed his instinctsin the House of Commons; being preserved in his simplicity yet at thesame time grown rather speechless, rather stiff--he repeated that itwas a miracle that he should have married Clarissa; a miracle--hislife had been a miracle, he thought; hesitating to cross. But it didmake his blood boil to see little creatures of five or six crossingPiccadilly alone. The police ought to have stopped the traffic at once.He had no illusions about the London police. Indeed, he was collectingevidence of their malpractices; and those costermongers, not allowedto stand their barrows in the streets; and prostitutes, good Lord, thefault wasn’t in them, nor in young men either, but in our detestablesocial system and so forth; all of which he considered, could be seenconsidering, grey, dogged, dapper, clean, as he walked across the Parkto tell his wife that he loved her.
For he would say it in so many words, when he came into the room.Because it is a thousand pities never to say what one feels, hethought, crossing the Green Park and observing with pleasure how inthe shade of the trees whole families, poor families, were sprawling;children kicking up their legs; sucking milk; paper bags thrown about,which could easily be picked up (if people objected) by one of thosefat gentlemen in livery; for he was of opinion that every park, andevery square, during the summer months should be open to children (thegrass of the park flushed and faded, lighting up the poor mothers ofWestminster and their crawling babies, as if a yellow lamp were movedbeneath). But what could be done for female vagrants like that poorcreature, stretched on her elbow (as if she had flung herself on theearth, rid of all ties, to observe curiously, to speculate boldly,to consider the whys and the wherefores, impudent, loose-lipped,humorous), he did not know. Bearing his flowers like a weapon, RichardDalloway approached her; intent he passed her; still there was timefor a spark between them--she laughed at the sight of him, he smiledgood-humouredly, considering the problem of the female vagrant; notthat they would ever speak. But he would tell Clarissa that he lovedher, in so many words. He had, once upon a time, been jealous of PeterWalsh; jealous of him and Clarissa. But she had often said to him thatshe had been right not to marry Peter Walsh; which, knowing Clarissa,was obviously true; she wanted support. Not that she was weak; but shewanted support.
As for Buckingham Palace (like an old prima donna facing the audienceall in white) you can’t deny it a certain dignity, he considered, nordespise what does, after all, stand to millions of people (a littlecrowd was waiting at the gate to see the King drive out) for a symbol,absurd though it is; a child with a box of bricks could have donebetter, he thought; looking at the memorial to Queen Victoria (whom hecould remember in her horn spectacles driving through Kensington), itswhite mound, its billowing motherliness; but he liked being ruled bythe descendant of Horsa; he liked continuity; and the sense of handingon the traditions of the past. It was a great age in which to havelived. Indeed, his own life was a miracle; let him make no mistakeabout it; here he was, in the prime of life, walking to his house inWestminster to tell Clarissa that he loved her. Happiness is this hethought.
It is this, he said, as he entered Dean’s Yard. Big Ben was beginningto strike, first the warning, musical; then the hour, irrevocable.Lunch parties waste the entire afternoon, he thought, approaching hisdoor.
The sound of Big Ben flooded Clarissa’s drawing-room, where she sat,ever so annoyed, at her writing-table; worried; annoyed. It wasperfectly true that she had not asked Ellie Henderson to her party; butshe had done it on purpose. Now Mrs. Marsham wrote “she had told EllieHenderson she would ask Clarissa--Ellie so much wanted to come.”
But why should she invite all the dull women in London to herparties? Why should Mrs. Marsham interfere? And there was Elizabethcloseted all this time with Doris Kilman. Anything more nauseatingshe could not conceive. Prayer at this hour with that woman. And thesound of the bell flooded the room with its melancholy wave; whichreceded, and gathered itself together to fall once more, when sheheard, distractingly, something fumbling, something scratching at thedoor. Who at this hour? Three, good Heavens! Three already! For withoverpowering directness and dignity the clock struck three; and sheheard nothing else; but the door handle slipped round and in cameRichard! What a surprise! In came Richard, holding out flowers. Shehad failed him, once at Constantinople; and Lady Bruton, whose lunchparties were said to be extraordinarily amusing, had not asked her. Hewas holding out flowers--roses, red and white roses. (But he could notbring himself to say he loved her; not in so many words.)
But how lovely, she said, taking his flowers. She understood; sheunderstood without his speaking; his Clarissa. She put them in vases onthe mantelpiece. How lovely they looked! she said. And was it amusing,she asked? Had Lady Bruton asked after her? Peter Walsh was back. Mrs.Marsham had written. Must she ask Ellie Henderson? That woman Kilmanwas upstairs.
“But let us sit down for five minutes,” said Richard.
It all looked so empty. All the chairs were against the wall. What hadthey been doing? Oh, it was for the party; no, he had not forgotten,the party. Peter Walsh was back. Oh yes; she had had him. And he wasgoing to get a divorce; and he was in love with some woman out there.And he hadn’t changed in the slightest. There she was, mending herdress....
“Thinking of Bourton,” she said.
“Hugh was at lunch,” said Richard. She had met him too! Well, he wasgetting absolutely intolerable. Buying Evelyn necklaces; fatter thanever; an intolerable ass.
“And it came over me ‘I might have married you,’” she said, thinkingof Peter sitting there in his little bow-tie; with that knife, openingit, shutting it. “Just as he always was, you know.”
They were talking about him at lunch, said Richard. (But he couldnot tell her he loved her. He held her hand. Happiness is this, hethought.) They had been writing a letter to the _Times_ for MillicentBruton. That was about all Hugh was fit for.
“And our dear Miss Kilman?” he asked. Clarissa thought the rosesabsolutely lovely; first bunched together; now of their own accordstarting apart.
“Kilman arrives just as we’ve done lunch,” she said. “Elizabeth turnspink. They shut themselves up. I suppose they’re praying.”
Lord! He didn’t like it; but these things pass over if you let them.
“In a mackintosh with an umbrella,” said Clarissa.
He had not said “I love you”; but he held her hand. Happiness is this,is this, he thought.
“But why should I ask all the dull women in London to my parties?” saidClarissa. And if Mrs. Marsham gave a party, did _she_ invite her guests?
“Poor Ellie Henderson,” said Richard--it was a very odd thing how muchClarissa minded about her parties, he thought.
But Richard had no notion of the look of a room. However--what was hegoing to say?
If she worried about these parties he would not let her give them. Didshe wish she had married Peter? But he must go.
He must be off, he said, getting up. But he stood for a moment as if hewere about to say something; and she wondered what? Why? There were theroses.
“Some Committee?” she asked, as he opened the door.
“Armenians,” he said; or perhaps it was “Albanians.”
And there is a dignity in people; a solitude; even between husband andwife a gulf; and that one must respect, thought Clarissa, watchinghim open the door; for one would not part with it oneself, or takeit, against his will, from one’s husband, without losing one’sindependence, one’s self-respect--something, after all, priceless.
He returned with a pillow and a quilt.
“An hour’s complete rest after luncheon,” he said. And he went.
How like him! He would go on saying “An hour’s complete rest afterluncheon” to the end of time, because a doctor had ordered it once.It was like him to take what doctors said literally; part of hisadorable, divine simplicity, which no one had to the same extent;which made him go and do the thing while she and Peter fritteredtheir time away bickering. He was already half-way to the House ofCommons, to his Armenians, his Albanians, having settled her on thesofa, looking at his roses. And people would say, “Clarissa Dallowayis spoilt.” She cared much more for her roses than for the Armenians.Hunted out of existence, maimed, frozen, the victims of cruelty andinjustice (she had heard Richard say so over and over again)--no, shecould feel nothing for the Albanians, or was it the Armenians? but sheloved her roses (didn’t that help the Armenians?)--the only flowersshe could bear to see cut. But Richard was already at the House ofCommons; at his Committee, having settled all her difficulties. Butno; alas, that was not true. He did not see the reasons against askingEllie Henderson. She would do it, of course, as he wished it. Sincehe had brought the pillows, she would lie down.... But--but--why didshe suddenly feel, for no reason that she could discover, desperatelyunhappy? As a person who has dropped some grain of pearl or diamondinto the grass and parts the tall blades very carefully, this way andthat, and searches here and there vainly, and at last spies it thereat the roots, so she went through one thing and another; no, it was notSally Seton saying that Richard would never be in the Cabinet becausehe had a second-class brain (it came back to her); no, she did notmind that; nor was it to do with Elizabeth either and Doris Kilman;those were facts. It was a feeling, some unpleasant feeling, earlierin the day perhaps; something that Peter had said, combined with somedepression of her own, in her bedroom, taking off her hat; and whatRichard had said had added to it, but what had he said? There were hisroses. Her parties! That was it! Her parties! Both of them criticisedher very unfairly, laughed at her very unjustly, for her parties. Thatwas it! That was it!
Well, how was she going to defend herself? Now that she knew what itwas, she felt perfectly happy. They thought, or Peter at any ratethought, that she enjoyed imposing herself; liked to have famous peopleabout her; great names; was simply a snob in short. Well, Peter mightthink so. Richard merely thought it foolish of her to like excitementwhen she knew it was bad for her heart. It was childish, he thought.And both were quite wrong. What she liked was simply life.
“That’s what I do it for,” she said, speaking aloud, to life.
Since she was lying on the sofa, cloistered, exempt, the presenceof this thing which she felt to be so obvious became physicallyexistent; with robes of sound from the street, sunny, with hot breath,whispering, blowing out the blinds. But suppose Peter said to her,“Yes, yes, but your parties--what’s the sense of your parties?” all shecould say was (and nobody could be expected to understand): They’re anoffering; which sounded horribly vague. But who was Peter to make outthat life was all plain sailing?--Peter always in love, always in lovewith the wrong woman? What’s your love? she might say to him. And sheknew his answer; how it is the most important thing in the world and nowoman possibly understood it. Very well. But could any man understandwhat she meant either? about life? She could not imagine Peter orRichard taking the trouble to give a party for no reason whatever.
But to go deeper, beneath what people said (and these judgements, howsuperficial, how fragmentary they are!) in her own mind now, what didit mean to her, this thing she called life? Oh, it was very queer.Here was So-and-so in South Kensington; some one up in Bayswater; andsomebody else, say, in Mayfair. And she felt quite continuously a senseof their existence; and she felt what a waste; and she felt what apity; and she felt if only they could be brought together; so she didit. And it was an offering; to combine, to create; but to whom?
An offering for the sake of offering, perhaps. Anyhow, it was her gift.Nothing else had she of the slightest importance; could not think,write, even play the piano. She muddled Armenians and Turks; lovedsuccess; hated discomfort; must be liked; talked oceans of nonsense:and to this day, ask her what the Equator was, and she did not know.
All the same, that one day should follow another; Wednesday, Thursday,Friday, Saturday; that one should wake up in the morning; see the sky;walk in the park; meet Hugh Whitbread; then suddenly in came Peter;then these roses; it was enough. After that, how unbelievable deathwas!--that it must end; and no one in the whole world would know howshe had loved it all; how, every instant....
The door opened. Elizabeth knew that her mother was resting. She camein very quietly. She stood perfectly still. Was it that some Mongolhad been wrecked on the coast of Norfolk (as Mrs. Hilbery said), hadmixed with the Dalloway ladies, perhaps, a hundred years ago? For theDalloways, in general, were fair-haired; blue-eyed; Elizabeth, onthe contrary, was dark; had Chinese eyes in a pale face; an Orientalmystery; was gentle, considerate, still. As a child, she had had aperfect sense of humour; but now at seventeen, why, Clarissa could notin the least understand, she had become very serious; like a hyacinth,sheathed in glossy green, with buds just tinted, a hyacinth which hashad no sun.
She stood quite still and looked at her mother; but the door was ajar,and outside the door was Miss Kilman, as Clarissa knew; Miss Kilman inher mackintosh, listening to whatever they said.
Yes, Miss Kilman stood on the landing, and wore a mackintosh; but hadher reasons. First, it was cheap; second, she was over forty; and didnot, after all, dress to please. She was poor, moreover; degradinglypoor. Otherwise she would not be taking jobs from people like theDalloways; from rich people, who liked to be kind. Mr. Dalloway, todo him justice, had been kind. But Mrs. Dalloway had not. She hadbeen merely condescending. She came from the most worthless of allclasses--the rich, with a smattering of culture. They had expensivethings everywhere; pictures, carpets, lots of servants. She consideredthat she had a perfect right to anything that the Dalloways did for her.
She had been cheated. Yes, the word was no exaggeration, for surelya girl has a right to some kind of happiness? And she had never beenhappy, what with being so clumsy and so poor. And then, just as shemight have had a chance at Miss Dolby’s school, the war came; and shehad never been able to tell lies. Miss Dolby thought she would behappier with people who shared her views about the Germans. She had hadto go. It was true that the family was of German origin; spelt the nameKiehlman in the eighteenth century; but her brother had been killed.They turned her out because she would not pretend that the Germans wereall villains--when she had German friends, when the only happy daysof her life had been spent in Germany! And after all, she could readhistory. She had had to take whatever she could get. Mr. Dalloway hadcome across her working for the Friends. He had allowed her (and thatwas really generous of him) to teach his daughter history. Also shedid a little Extension lecturing and so on. Then Our Lord had come toher (and here she always bowed her head). She had seen the light twoyears and three months ago. Now she did not envy women like ClarissaDalloway; she pitied them.
She pitied and despised them from the bottom of her heart, as she stoodon the soft carpet, looking at the old engraving of a little girlwith a muff. With all this luxury going on, what hope was there fora better state of things? Instead of lying on a sofa--“My mother isresting,” Elizabeth had said--she should have been in a factory; behinda counter; Mrs. Dalloway and all the other fine ladies!
Bitter and burning, Miss Kilman had turned into a church two yearsthree months ago. She had heard the Rev. Edward Whittaker preach; theboys sing; had seen the solemn lights descend, and whether it was themusic, or the voices (she herself when alone in the evening foundcomfort in a violin; but the sound was excruciating; she had no ear),the hot and turbulent feelings which boiled and surged in her had beenassuaged as she sat there, and she had wept copiously, and gone to callon Mr. Whittaker at his private house in Kensington. It was the hand ofGod, he said. The Lord had shown her the way. So now, whenever the hotand painful feelings boiled within her, this hatred of Mrs. Dalloway,this grudge against the world, she thought of God. She thought ofMr. Whittaker. Rage was succeeded by calm. A sweet savour filled herveins, her lips parted, and, standing formidable upon the landing inher mackintosh, she looked with steady and sinister serenity at Mrs.Dalloway, who came out with her daughter.
Elizabeth said she had forgotten her gloves. That was because MissKilman and her mother hated each other. She could not bear to see themtogether. She ran upstairs to find her gloves.
But Miss Kilman did not hate Mrs. Dalloway. Turning her largegooseberry-coloured eyes upon Clarissa, observing her small pink face,her delicate body, her air of freshness and fashion, Miss Kilman felt,Fool! Simpleton! You who have known neither sorrow nor pleasure; whohave trifled your life away! And there rose in her an overmasteringdesire to overcome her; to unmask her. If she could have felled herit would have eased her. But it was not the body; it was the soul andits mockery that she wished to subdue; make feel her mastery. If onlyshe could make her weep; could ruin her; humiliate her; bring her toher knees crying, You are right! But this was God’s will, not MissKilman’s. It was to be a religious victory. So she glared; so sheglowered.
Clarissa was really shocked. This a Christian--this woman! This womanhad taken her daughter from her! She in touch with invisible presences!Heavy, ugly, commonplace, without kindness or grace, she know themeaning of life!
“You are taking Elizabeth to the Stores?” Mrs. Dalloway said.
Miss Kilman said she was. They stood there. Miss Kilman was not goingto make herself agreeable. She had always earned her living. Herknowledge of modern history was thorough in the extreme. She did out ofher meagre income set aside so much for causes she believed in; whereasthis woman did nothing, believed nothing; brought up her daughter--buthere was Elizabeth, rather out of breath, the beautiful girl.
So they were going to the Stores. Odd it was, as Miss Kilman stoodthere (and stand she did, with the power and taciturnity of someprehistoric monster armoured for primeval warfare), how, second bysecond, the idea of her diminished, how hatred (which was for ideas,not people) crumbled, how she lost her malignity, her size, becamesecond by second merely Miss Kilman, in a mackintosh, whom Heaven knowsClarissa would have liked to help.
At this dwindling of the monster, Clarissa laughed. Saying good-bye,she laughed.
Off they went together, Miss Kilman and Elizabeth, downstairs.
With a sudden impulse, with a violent anguish, for this woman wastaking her daughter from her, Clarissa leant over the bannisters andcried out, “Remember the party! Remember our party to-night!”
But Elizabeth had already opened the front door; there was a vanpassing; she did not answer.
Love and religion! thought Clarissa, going back into the drawing-room,tingling all over. How detestable, how detestable they are! For nowthat the body of Miss Kilman was not before her, it overwhelmedher--the idea. The cruelest things in the world, she thought, seeingthem clumsy, hot, domineering, hypocritical, eavesdropping, jealous,infinitely cruel and unscrupulous, dressed in a mackintosh coat, onthe landing; love and religion. Had she ever tried to convert any oneherself? Did she not wish everybody merely to be themselves? And shewatched out of the window the old lady opposite climbing upstairs. Lether climb upstairs if she wanted to; let her stop; then let her, asClarissa had often seen her, gain her bedroom, part her curtains, anddisappear again into the background. Somehow one respected that--thatold woman looking out of the window, quite unconscious that she wasbeing watched. There was something solemn in it--but love and religionwould destroy that, whatever it was, the privacy of the soul. Theodious Kilman would destroy it. Yet it was a sight that made her wantto cry.
Love destroyed too. Everything that was fine, everything that was truewent. Take Peter Walsh now. There was a man, charming, clever, withideas about everything. If you wanted to know about Pope, say, orAddison, or just to talk nonsense, what people were like, what thingsmeant, Peter knew better than any one. It was Peter who had helped her;Peter who had lent her books. But look at the women he loved--vulgar,trivial, commonplace. Think of Peter in love--he came to see her afterall these years, and what did he talk about? Himself. Horrible passion!she thought. Degrading passion! she thought, thinking of Kilman and herElizabeth walking to the Army and Navy Stores.
Big Ben struck the half-hour.
How extraordinary it was, strange, yes, touching, to see the old lady(they had been neighbours ever so many years) move away from thewindow, as if she were attached to that sound, that string. Gigantic asit was, it had something to do with her. Down, down, into the midstof ordinary things the finger fell making the moment solemn. She wasforced, so Clarissa imagined, by that sound, to move, to go--but where?Clarissa tried to follow her as she turned and disappeared, and couldstill just see her white cap moving at the back of the bedroom. She wasstill there moving about at the other end of the room. Why creeds andprayers and mackintoshes? when, thought Clarissa, that’s the miracle,that’s the mystery; that old lady, she meant, whom she could see goingfrom chest of drawers to dressing-table. She could still see her. Andthe supreme mystery which Kilman might say she had solved, or Petermight say he had solved, but Clarissa didn’t believe either of them hadthe ghost of an idea of solving, was simply this: here was one room;there another. Did religion solve that, or love?
Love--but here the other clock, the clock which always struck twominutes after Big Ben, came shuffling in with its lap full of odds andends, which it dumped down as if Big Ben were all very well with hismajesty laying down the law, so solemn, so just, but she must rememberall sorts of little things besides--Mrs. Marsham, Ellie Henderson,glasses for ices--all sorts of little things came flooding and lappingand dancing in on the wake of that solemn stroke which lay flat likea bar of gold on the sea. Mrs. Marsham, Ellie Henderson, glasses forices. She must telephone now at once.
Volubly, troublously, the late clock sounded, coming in on the wakeof Big Ben, with its lap full of trifles. Beaten up, broken up by theassault of carriages, the brutality of vans, the eager advance ofmyriads of angular men, of flaunting women, the domes and spires ofoffices and hospitals, the last relics of this lap full of odds andends seemed to break, like the spray of an exhausted wave, upon thebody of Miss Kilman standing still in the street for a moment to mutter“It is the flesh.”
It was the flesh that she must control. Clarissa Dalloway had insultedher. That she expected. But she had not triumphed; she had not masteredthe flesh. Ugly, clumsy, Clarissa Dalloway had laughed at her for beingthat; and had revived the fleshly desires, for she minded looking asshe did beside Clarissa. Nor could she talk as she did. But why wish toresemble her? Why? She despised Mrs. Dalloway from the bottom of herheart. She was not serious. She was not good. Her life was a tissue ofvanity and deceit. Yet Doris Kilman had been overcome. She had, as amatter of fact, very nearly burst into tears when Clarissa Dallowaylaughed at her. “It is the flesh, it is the flesh,” she muttered (itbeing her habit to talk aloud) trying to subdue this turbulent andpainful feeling as she walked down Victoria Street. She prayed to God.She could not help being ugly; she could not afford to buy prettyclothes. Clarissa Dalloway had laughed--but she would concentrate hermind upon something else until she had reached the pillar-box. At anyrate she had got Elizabeth. But she would think of something else; shewould think of Russia; until she reached the pillar-box.
How nice it must be, she said, in the country, struggling, as Mr.Whittaker had told her, with that violent grudge against the worldwhich had scorned her, sneered at her, cast her off, beginning withthis indignity--the infliction of her unlovable body which people couldnot bear to see. Do her hair as she might, her forehead remained likean egg, bald, white. No clothes suited her. She might buy anything.And for a woman, of course, that meant never meeting the opposite sex.Never would she come first with any one. Sometimes lately it had seemedto her that, except for Elizabeth, her food was all that she livedfor; her comforts; her dinner, her tea; her hot-water bottle at night.But one must fight; vanquish; have faith in God. Mr. Whittaker hadsaid she was there for a purpose. But no one knew the agony! He said,pointing to the crucifix, that God knew. But why should she have tosuffer when other women, like Clarissa Dalloway, escaped? Knowledgecomes through suffering, said Mr. Whittaker.
She had passed the pillar-box, and Elizabeth had turned into the coolbrown tobacco department of the Army and Navy Stores while she wasstill muttering to herself what Mr. Whittaker had said about knowledgecoming through suffering and the flesh. “The flesh,” she muttered.
What department did she want? Elizabeth interrupted her.
“Petticoats,” she said abruptly, and stalked straight on to the lift.
Up they went. Elizabeth guided her this way and that; guided her in herabstraction as if she had been a great child, an unwieldy battleship.There were the petticoats, brown, decorous, striped, frivolous, solid,flimsy; and she chose, in her abstraction, portentously, and the girlserving thought her mad.
Elizabeth rather wondered, as they did up the parcel, what Miss Kilmanwas thinking. They must have their tea, said Miss Kilman, rousing,collecting herself. They had their tea.
Elizabeth rather wondered whether Miss Kilman could be hungry. It washer way of eating, eating with intensity, then looking, again andagain, at a plate of sugared cakes on the table next them; then, whena lady and a child sat down and the child took the cake, could MissKilman really mind it? Yes, Miss Kilman did mind it. She had wantedthat cake--the pink one. The pleasure of eating was almost the onlypure pleasure left her, and then to be baffled even in that!
When people are happy, they have a reserve, she had told Elizabeth,upon which to draw, whereas she was like a wheel without a tyre (shewas fond of such metaphors), jolted by every pebble, so she would saystaying on after the lesson standing by the fireplace with her bag ofbooks, her “satchel,” she called it, on a Tuesday morning, after thelesson was over. And she talked too about the war. After all, therewere people who did not think the English invariably right. Therewere books. There were meetings. There were other points of view.Would Elizabeth like to come with her to listen to So-and-so (a mostextraordinary looking old man)? Then Miss Kilman took her to somechurch in Kensington and they had tea with a clergyman. She had lenther books. Law, medicine, politics, all professions are open to womenof your generation, said Miss Kilman. But for herself, her career wasabsolutely ruined and was it her fault? Good gracious, said Elizabeth,no.
And her mother would come calling to say that a hamper had come fromBourton and would Miss Kilman like some flowers? To Miss Kilman shewas always very, very nice, but Miss Kilman squashed the flowers allin a bunch, and hadn’t any small talk, and what interested Miss Kilmanbored her mother, and Miss Kilman and she were terrible together; andMiss Kilman swelled and looked very plain. But then Miss Kilman wasfrightfully clever. Elizabeth had never thought about the poor. Theylived with everything they wanted,--her mother had breakfast in bedevery day; Lucy carried it up; and she liked old women because theywere duch*esses, and being descended from some Lord. But Miss Kilmansaid (one of those Tuesday mornings when the lesson was over), “Mygrandfather kept an oil and colour shop in Kensington.” Miss Kilmanmade one feel so small.
Miss Kilman took another cup of tea. Elizabeth, with her orientalbearing, her inscrutable mystery, sat perfectly upright; no, she didnot want anything more. She looked for her gloves--her white gloves.They were under the table. Ah, but she must not go! Miss Kilman couldnot let her go! this youth, that was so beautiful, this girl, whom shegenuinely loved! Her large hand opened and shut on the table.
But perhaps it was a little flat somehow, Elizabeth felt. And reallyshe would like to go.
But said Miss Kilman, “I’ve not quite finished yet.”
Of course, then, Elizabeth would wait. But it was rather stuffy in here.
“Are you going to the party to-night?” Miss Kilman said. Elizabethsupposed she was going; her mother wanted her to go. She must not letparties absorb her, Miss Kilman said, fingering the last two inches ofa chocolate éclair.
She did not much like parties, Elizabeth said. Miss Kilman opened hermouth, slightly projected her chin, and swallowed down the last inchesof the chocolate éclair, then wiped her fingers, and washed the tearound in her cup.
She was about to split asunder, she felt. The agony was so terrific.If she could grasp her, if she could clasp her, if she could make herhers absolutely and forever and then die; that was all she wanted.But to sit here, unable to think of anything to say; to see Elizabethturning against her; to be felt repulsive even by her--it was too much;she could not stand it. The thick fingers curled inwards.
“I never go to parties,” said Miss Kilman, just to keep Elizabeth fromgoing. “People don’t ask me to parties”--and she knew as she said itthat it was this egotism that was her undoing; Mr. Whittaker had warnedher; but she could not help it. She had suffered so horribly. “Whyshould they ask me?” she said. “I’m plain, I’m unhappy.” She knew itwas idiotic. But it was all those people passing--people with parcelswho despised her, who made her say it. However, she was Doris Kilman.She had her degree. She was a woman who had made her way in the world.Her knowledge of modern history was more than respectable.
“I don’t pity myself,” she said. “I pity”--she meant to say “yourmother” but no, she could not, not to Elizabeth. “I pity other people,”she said, “more.”
Like some dumb creature who has been brought up to a gate for anunknown purpose, and stands there longing to gallop away, ElizabethDalloway sat silent. Was Miss Kilman going to say anything more?
“Don’t quite forget me,” said Doris Kilman; her voice quivered. Rightaway to the end of the field the dumb creature galloped in terror.
The great hand opened and shut.
Elizabeth turned her head. The waitress came. One had to pay at thedesk, Elizabeth said, and went off, drawing out, so Miss Kilman felt,the very entrails in her body, stretching them as she crossed the room,and then, with a final twist, bowing her head very politely, she went.
She had gone. Miss Kilman sat at the marble table among the éclairs,stricken once, twice, thrice by shocks of suffering. She had gone. Mrs.Dalloway had triumphed. Elizabeth had gone. Beauty had gone, youth hadgone.
So she sat. She got up, blundered off among the little tables, rockingslightly from side to side, and somebody came after her with herpetticoat, and she lost her way, and was hemmed in by trunks speciallyprepared for taking to India; next got among the accouchement sets, andbaby linen; through all the commodities of the world, perishable andpermanent, hams, drugs, flowers, stationery, variously smelling, nowsweet, now sour she lurched; saw herself thus lurching with her hataskew, very red in the face, full length in a looking-glass; and atlast came out into the street.
The tower of Westminster Cathedral rose in front of her, the habitationof God. In the midst of the traffic, there was the habitation ofGod. Doggedly she set off with her parcel to that other sanctuary,the Abbey, where, raising her hands in a tent before her face, shesat beside those driven into shelter too; the variously assortedworshippers, now divested of social rank, almost of sex, as they raisedtheir hands before their faces; but once they removed them, instantlyreverent, middle class, English men and women, some of them desirous ofseeing the wax works.
But Miss Kilman held her tent before her face. Now she was deserted;now rejoined. New worshippers came in from the street to replace thestrollers, and still, as people gazed round and shuffled past the tombof the Unknown Warrior, still she barred her eyes with her fingers andtried in this double darkness, for the light in the Abbey was bodiless,to aspire above the vanities, the desires, the commodities, to ridherself both of hatred and of love. Her hands twitched. She seemedto struggle. Yet to others God was accessible and the path to Himsmooth. Mr. Fletcher, retired, of the Treasury, Mrs. Gorham, widow ofthe famous K.C., approached Him simply, and having done their praying,leant back, enjoyed the music (the organ pealed sweetly), and saw MissKilman at the end of the row, praying, praying, and, being still on thethreshold of their underworld, thought of her sympathetically as a soulhaunting the same territory; a soul cut out of immaterial substance;not a woman, a soul.
But Mr. Fletcher had to go. He had to pass her, and being himself neatas a new pin, could not help being a little distressed by the poorlady’s disorder; her hair down; her parcel on the floor. She did notat once let him pass. But, as he stood gazing about him, at the whitemarbles, grey window panes, and accumulated treasures (for he wasextremely proud of the Abbey), her largeness, robustness, and power asshe sat there shifting her knees from time to time (it was so rough theapproach to her God--so tough her desires) impressed him, as they hadimpressed Mrs. Dalloway (she could not get the thought of her out ofher mind that afternoon), the Rev. Edward Whittaker, and Elizabeth too.
And Elizabeth waited in Victoria Street for an omnibus. It was so niceto be out of doors. She thought perhaps she need not go home just yet.It was so nice to be out in the air. So she would get on to an omnibus.And already, even as she stood there, in her very well cut clothes,it was beginning.... People were beginning to compare her to poplartrees, early dawn, hyacinths, fawns, running water, and garden lilies;and it made her life a burden to her, for she so much preferred beingleft alone to do what she liked in the country, but they would compareher to lilies, and she had to go to parties, and London was so drearycompared with being alone in the country with her father and the dogs.
Buses swooped, settled, were off--garish caravans, glistening withred and yellow varnish. But which should she get on to? She had nopreferences. Of course, she would not push her way. She inclined to bepassive. It was expression she needed, but her eyes were fine, Chinese,oriental, and, as her mother said, with such nice shoulders and holdingherself so straight, she was always charming to look at; and lately,in the evening especially, when she was interested, for she neverseemed excited, she looked almost beautiful, very stately, very serene.What could she be thinking? Every man fell in love with her, and shewas really awfully bored. For it was beginning. Her mother could seethat--the compliments were beginning. That she did not care more aboutit--for instance for her clothes--sometimes worried Clarissa, butperhaps it was as well with all those puppies and guinea pigs abouthaving distemper, and it gave her a charm. And now there was this oddfriendship with Miss Kilman. Well, thought Clarissa about three o’clockin the morning, reading Baron Marbot for she could not sleep, it provesshe has a heart.
Suddenly Elizabeth stepped forward and most competently boarded theomnibus, in front of everybody. She took a seat on top. The impetuouscreature--a pirate--started forward, sprang away; she had to hold therail to steady herself, for a pirate it was, reckless, unscrupulous,bearing down ruthlessly, circumventing dangerously, boldly snatchinga passenger, or ignoring a passenger, squeezing eel-like and arrogantin between, and then rushing insolently all sails spread up Whitehall.And did Elizabeth give one thought to poor Miss Kilman who loved herwithout jealousy, to whom she had been a fawn in the open, a moon in aglade? She was delighted to be free. The fresh air was so delicious.It had been so stuffy in the Army and Navy Stores. And now it waslike riding, to be rushing up Whitehall; and to each movement of theomnibus the beautiful body in the fawn-coloured coat responded freelylike a rider, like the figurehead of a ship, for the breeze slightlydisarrayed her; the heat gave her cheeks the pallor of white paintedwood; and her fine eyes, having no eyes to meet, gazed ahead, blank,bright, with the staring incredible innocence of sculpture.
It was always talking about her own sufferings that made Miss Kilman sodifficult. And was she right? If it was being on committees and givingup hours and hours every day (she hardly ever saw him in London) thathelped the poor, her father did that, goodness knows,--if that was whatMiss Kilman meant about being a Christian; but it was so difficult tosay. Oh, she would like to go a little further. Another penny was it tothe Strand? Here was another penny then. She would go up the Strand.
She liked people who were ill. And every profession is open tothe women of your generation, said Miss Kilman. So she might be adoctor. She might be a farmer. Animals are often ill. She might own athousand acres and have people under her. She would go and see themin their cottages. This was Somerset House. One might be a very goodfarmer--and that, strangely enough though Miss Kilman had her share init, was almost entirely due to Somerset House. It looked so splendid,so serious, that great grey building. And she liked the feeling ofpeople working. She liked those churches, like shapes of grey paper,breasting the stream of the Strand. It was quite different here fromWestminster, she thought, getting off at Chancery Lane. It was soserious; it was so busy. In short, she would like to have a profession.She would become a doctor, a farmer, possibly go into Parliament, ifshe found it necessary, all because of the Strand.
The feet of those people busy about their activities, hands puttingstone to stone, minds eternally occupied not with trivial chatterings(comparing women to poplars--which was rather exciting, of course,but very silly), but with thoughts of ships, of business, of law, ofadministration, and with it all so stately (she was in the Temple), gay(there was the river), pious (there was the Church), made her quitedetermined, whatever her mother might say, to become either a farmer ora doctor. But she was, of course, rather lazy.
And it was much better to say nothing about it. It seemed so silly.It was the sort of thing that did sometimes happen, when onewas alone--buildings without architects’ names, crowds of peoplecoming back from the city having more power than single clergymenin Kensington, than any of the books Miss Kilman had lent her, tostimulate what lay slumbrous, clumsy, and shy on the mind’s sandy floorto break surface, as a child suddenly stretches its arms; it was justthat, perhaps, a sigh, a stretch of the arms, an impulse, a revelation,which has its effects for ever, and then down again it went to thesandy floor. She must go home. She must dress for dinner. But what wasthe time?--where was a clock?
She looked up Fleet Street. She walked just a little way towards St.Paul’s, shyly, like some one penetrating on tiptoe, exploring a strangehouse by night with a candle, on edge lest the owner should suddenlyfling wide his bedroom door and ask her business, nor did she darewander off into queer alleys, tempting bye-streets, any more than in astrange house open doors which might be bedroom doors, or sitting-roomdoors, or lead straight to the larder. For no Dalloways came down theStrand daily; she was a pioneer, a stray, venturing, trusting.
In many ways, her mother felt, she was extremely immature, like achild still, attached to dolls, to old slippers; a perfect baby; andthat was charming. But then, of course, there was in the Dallowayfamily the tradition of public service. Abbesses, principals, headmistresses, dignitaries, in the republic of women--without beingbrilliant, any of them, they were that. She penetrated a little furtherin the direction of St. Paul’s. She liked the geniality, sisterhood,motherhood, brotherhood of this uproar. It seemed to her good. Thenoise was tremendous; and suddenly there were trumpets (the unemployed)blaring, rattling about in the uproar; military music; as if peoplewere marching; yet had they been dying--had some woman breathed herlast and whoever was watching, opening the window of the room where shehad just brought off that act of supreme dignity, looked down on FleetStreet, that uproar, that military music would have come triumphing upto him, consolatory, indifferent.
It was not conscious. There was no recognition in it of one fortune, orfate, and for that very reason even to those dazed with watching forthe last shivers of consciousness on the faces of the dying, consoling.Forgetfulness in people might wound, their ingratitude corrode, butthis voice, pouring endlessly, year in year out, would take whateverit might be; this vow; this van; this life; this procession, wouldwrap them all about and carry them on, as in the rough stream of aglacier the ice holds a splinter of bone, a blue petal, some oak trees,and rolls them on.
But it was later than she thought. Her mother would not like her to bewandering off alone like this. She turned back down the Strand.
A puff of wind (in spite of the heat, there was quite a wind) blew athin black veil over the sun and over the Strand. The faces faded; theomnibuses suddenly lost their glow. For although the clouds were ofmountainous white so that one could fancy hacking hard chips off with ahatchet, with broad golden slopes, lawns of celestial pleasure gardens,on their flanks, and had all the appearance of settled habitationsassembled for the conference of gods above the world, there was aperpetual movement among them. Signs were interchanged, when, as if tofulfil some scheme arranged already, now a summit dwindled, now a wholeblock of pyramidal size which had kept its station inalterably advancedinto the midst or gravely led the procession to fresh anchorage. Fixedthough they seemed at their posts, at rest in perfect unanimity,nothing could be fresher, freer, more sensitive superficially than thesnow-white or gold-kindled surface; to change, to go, to dismantle thesolemn assemblage was immediately possible; and in spite of the gravefixity, the accumulated robustness and solidity, now they struck lightto the earth, now darkness.
Calmly and competently, Elizabeth Dalloway mounted the Westminsteromnibus.
Going and coming, beckoning, signalling, so the light and shadow whichnow made the wall grey, now the bananas bright yellow, now made theStrand grey, now made the omnibuses bright yellow, seemed to SeptimusWarren Smith lying on the sofa in the sitting-room; watching the waterygold glow and fade with the astonishing sensibility of some livecreature on the roses, on the wall-paper. Outside the trees draggedtheir leaves like nets through the depths of the air; the sound ofwater was in the room and through the waves came the voices of birdssinging. Every power poured its treasures on his head, and his hand laythere on the back of the sofa, as he had seen his hand lie when he wasbathing, floating, on the top of the waves, while far away on shore heheard dogs barking and barking far away. Fear no more, says the heartin the body; fear no more.
He was not afraid. At every moment Nature signified by some laughinghint like that gold spot which went round the wall--there, there,there--her determination to show, by brandishing her plumes, shakingher tresses, flinging her mantle this way and that, beautifully, alwaysbeautifully, and standing close up to breathe through her hollowedhands Shakespeare’s words, her meaning.
Rezia, sitting at the table twisting a hat in her hands, watched him;saw him smiling. He was happy then. But she could not bear to see himsmiling. It was not marriage; it was not being one’s husband to lookstrange like that, always to be starting, laughing, sitting hour afterhour silent, or clutching her and telling her to write. The tabledrawer was full of those writings; about war; about Shakespeare; aboutgreat discoveries; how there is no death. Lately he had become excitedsuddenly for no reason (and both Dr. Holmes and Sir William Bradshawsaid excitement was the worst thing for him), and waved his hands andcried out that he knew the truth! He knew everything! That man, hisfriend who was killed, Evans, had come, he said. He was singing behindthe screen. She wrote it down just as he spoke it. Some things werevery beautiful; others sheer nonsense. And he was always stopping inthe middle, changing his mind; wanting to add something; hearingsomething new; listening with his hand up.
But she heard nothing.
And once they found the girl who did the room reading one of thesepapers in fits of laughter. It was a dreadful pity. For that madeSeptimus cry out about human cruelty--how they tear each other topieces. The fallen, he said, they tear to pieces. “Holmes is on us,”he would say, and he would invent stories about Holmes; Holmes eatingporridge; Holmes reading Shakespeare--making himself roar with laughteror rage, for Dr. Holmes seemed to stand for something horrible to him.“Human nature,” he called him. Then there were the visions. He wasdrowned, he used to say, and lying on a cliff with the gulls screamingover him. He would look over the edge of the sofa down into the sea.Or he was hearing music. Really it was only a barrel organ or some mancrying in the street. But “Lovely!” he used to cry, and the tears wouldrun down his cheeks, which was to her the most dreadful thing of all,to see a man like Septimus, who had fought, who was brave, crying. Andhe would lie listening until suddenly he would cry that he was fallingdown, down into the flames! Actually she would look for flames, it wasso vivid. But there was nothing. They were alone in the room. It was adream, she would tell him and so quiet him at last, but sometimes shewas frightened too. She sighed as she sat sewing.
Her sigh was tender and enchanting, like the wind outside a wood inthe evening. Now she put down her scissors; now she turned to takesomething from the table. A little stir, a little crinkling, a littletapping built up something on the table there, where she sat sewing.Through his eyelashes he could see her blurred outline; her littleblack body; her face and hands; her turning movements at the table,as she took up a reel, or looked (she was apt to lose things) for hersilk. She was making a hat for Mrs. Filmer’s married daughter, whosename was--he had forgotten her name.
“What is the name of Mrs. Filmer’s married daughter?” he asked.
“Mrs. Peters,” said Rezia. She was afraid it was too small, she said,holding it before her. Mrs. Peters was a big woman; but she did notlike her. It was only because Mrs. Filmer had been so good to them.“She gave me grapes this morning,” she said--that Rezia wanted to dosomething to show that they were grateful. She had come into the roomthe other evening and found Mrs. Peters, who thought they were out,playing the gramophone.
“Was it true?” he asked. She was playing the gramophone? Yes; she hadtold him about it at the time; she had found Mrs. Peters playing thegramophone.
He began, very cautiously, to open his eyes, to see whether agramophone was really there. But real things--real things were tooexciting. He must be cautious. He would not go mad. First he lookedat the fashion papers on the lower shelf, then, gradually at thegramophone with the green trumpet. Nothing could be more exact. Andso, gathering courage, he looked at the sideboard; the plate ofbananas; the engraving of Queen Victoria and the Prince Consort; at themantelpiece, with the jar of roses. None of these things moved. Allwere still; all were real.
“She is a woman with a spiteful tongue,” said Rezia.
“What does Mr. Peters do?” Septimus asked.
“Ah,” said Rezia, trying to remember. She thought Mrs. Filmer had saidthat he travelled for some company. “Just now he is in Hull,” she said.
“Just now!” She said that with her Italian accent. She said thatherself. He shaded his eyes so that he might see only a little of herface at a time, first the chin, then the nose, then the forehead, incase it were deformed, or had some terrible mark on it. But no, thereshe was, perfectly natural, sewing, with the pursed lips that womenhave, the set, the melancholy expression, when sewing. But therewas nothing terrible about it, he assured himself, looking a secondtime, a third time at her face, her hands, for what was frighteningor disgusting in her as she sat there in broad daylight, sewing? Mrs.Peters had a spiteful tongue. Mr. Peters was in Hull. Why then rageand prophesy? Why fly scourged and outcast? Why be made to tremble andsob by the clouds? Why seek truths and deliver messages when Rezia satsticking pins into the front of her dress, and Mr. Peters was in Hull?Miracles, revelations, agonies, loneliness, falling through the sea,down, down into the flames, all were burnt out, for he had a sense, ashe watched Rezia trimming the straw hat for Mrs. Peters, of a coverletof flowers.
“It’s too small for Mrs. Peters,” said Septimus.
For the first time for days he was speaking as he used to do! Of courseit was--absurdly small, she said. But Mrs. Peters had chosen it.
He took it out of her hands. He said it was an organ grinder’s monkey’shat.
How it rejoiced her that! Not for weeks had they laughed like thistogether, poking fun privately like married people. What she meant wasthat if Mrs. Filmer had come in, or Mrs. Peters or anybody they wouldnot have understood what she and Septimus were laughing at.
“There,” she said, pinning a rose to one side of the hat. Never had shefelt so happy! Never in her life!
But that was still more ridiculous, Septimus said. Now the poor womanlooked like a pig at a fair. (Nobody ever made her laugh as Septimusdid.)
What had she got in her work-box? She had ribbons and beads, tassels,artificial flowers. She tumbled them out on the table. He began puttingodd colours together--for though he had no fingers, could not even doup a parcel, he had a wonderful eye, and often he was right, sometimesabsurd, of course, but sometimes wonderfully right.
“She shall have a beautiful hat!” he murmured, taking up this and that,Rezia kneeling by his side, looking over his shoulder. Now it wasfinished--that is to say the design; she must stitch it together. Butshe must be very, very careful, he said, to keep it just as he had madeit.
So she sewed. When she sewed, he thought, she made a sound like akettle on the hob; bubbling, murmuring, always busy, her strong littlepointed fingers pinching and poking; her needle flashing straight.The sun might go in and out, on the tassels, on the wall-paper, buthe would wait, he thought, stretching out his feet, looking at hisringed sock at the end of the sofa; he would wait in this warm place,this pocket of still air, which one comes on at the edge of a woodsometimes in the evening, when, because of a fall in the ground, orsome arrangement of the trees (one must be scientific above all,scientific), warmth lingers, and the air buffets the cheek like thewing of a bird.
“There it is,” said Rezia, twirling Mrs. Peters’ hat on the tips of herfingers. “That’ll do for the moment. Later ...” her sentence bubbledaway drip, drip, drip, like a contented tap left running.
It was wonderful. Never had he done anything which made him feel soproud. It was so real, it was so substantial, Mrs. Peters’ hat.
“Just look at it,” he said.
Yes, it would always make her happy to see that hat. He had becomehimself then, he had laughed then. They had been alone together.Always she would like that hat.
He told her to try it on.
“But I must look so queer!” she cried, running over to the glass andlooking first this side then that. Then she snatched it off again, forthere was a tap at the door. Could it be Sir William Bradshaw? Had hesent already?
No! it was only the small girl with the evening paper.
What always happened, then happened--what happened every night of theirlives. The small girl sucked her thumb at the door; Rezia went downon her knees; Rezia cooed and kissed; Rezia got a bag of sweets outof the table drawer. For so it always happened. First one thing, thenanother. So she built it up, first one thing and then another. Dancing,skipping, round and round the room they went. He took the paper.Surrey was all out, he read. There was a heat wave. Rezia repeated:Surrey was all out. There was a heat wave, making it part of the gameshe was playing with Mrs. Filmer’s grandchild, both of them laughing,chattering at the same time, at their game. He was very tired. He wasvery happy. He would sleep. He shut his eyes. But directly he sawnothing the sounds of the game became fainter and stranger and soundedlike the cries of people seeking and not finding, and passing furtherand further away. They had lost him!
He started up in terror. What did he see? The plate of bananas on thesideboard. Nobody was there (Rezia had taken the child to its mother.It was bedtime). That was it: to be alone forever. That was the doompronounced in Milan when he came into the room and saw them cutting outbuckram shapes with their scissors; to be alone forever.
He was alone with the sideboard and the bananas. He was alone, exposedon this bleak eminence, stretched out--but not on a hill-top; not ona crag; on Mrs. Filmer’s sitting-room sofa. As for the visions, thefaces, the voices of the dead, where were they? There was a screen infront of him, with black bulrushes and blue swallows. Where he had onceseen mountains, where he had seen faces, where he had seen beauty,there was a screen.
“Evans!” he cried. There was no answer. A mouse had squeaked, or acurtain rustled. Those were the voices of the dead. The screen, thecoal-scuttle, the sideboard remained to him. Let him then face thescreen, the coal-scuttle and the sideboard ... but Rezia burst into theroom chattering.
Some letter had come. Everybody’s plans were changed. Mrs. Filmer wouldnot be able to go to Brighton after all. There was no time to let Mrs.Williams know, and really Rezia thought it very, very annoying, whenshe caught sight of the hat and thought ... perhaps ... she ... mightjust make a little.... Her voice died out in contented melody.
“Ah, damn!” she cried (it was a joke of theirs, her swearing), theneedle had broken. Hat, child, Brighton, needle. She built it up; firstone thing, then another, she built it up, sewing.
She wanted him to say whether by moving the rose she had improved thehat. She sat on the end of the sofa.
They were perfectly happy now, she said, suddenly, putting the hatdown. For she could say anything to him now. She could say whatevercame into her head. That was almost the first thing she had felt abouthim, that night in the café when he had come in with his Englishfriends. He had come in, rather shyly, looking round him, and his hathad fallen when he hung it up. That she could remember. She knew he wasEnglish, though not one of the large Englishmen her sister admired, forhe was always thin; but he had a beautiful fresh colour; and with hisbig nose, his bright eyes, his way of sitting a little hunched madeher think, she had often told him, of a young hawk, that first eveningshe saw him, when they were playing dominoes, and he had come in--ofa young hawk; but with her he was always very gentle. She had neverseen him wild or drunk, only suffering sometimes through this terriblewar, but even so, when she came in, he would put it all away. Anything,anything in the whole world, any little bother with her work, anythingthat struck her to say she would tell him, and he understood at once.Her own family even were not the same. Being older than she was andbeing so clever--how serious he was, wanting her to read Shakespearebefore she could even read a child’s story in English!--being so muchmore experienced, he could help her. And she too could help him.
But this hat now. And then (it was getting late) Sir William Bradshaw.
She held her hands to her head, waiting for him to say did he likethe hat or not, and as she sat there, waiting, looking down, he couldfeel her mind, like a bird, falling from branch to branch, and alwaysalighting, quite rightly; he could follow her mind, as she sat therein one of those loose lax poses that came to her naturally and, if heshould say anything, at once she smiled, like a bird alighting withall its claws firm upon the bough.
But he remembered Bradshaw said, “The people we are most fond of arenot good for us when we are ill.” Bradshaw said, he must be taught torest. Bradshaw said they must be separated.
“Must,” “must,” why “must”? What power had Bradshaw over him? “Whatright has Bradshaw to say ‘must’ to me?” he demanded.
“It is because you talked of killing yourself,” said Rezia.(Mercifully, she could now say anything to Septimus.)
So he was in their power! Holmes and Bradshaw were on him! The brutewith the red nostrils was snuffing into every secret place! “Must” itcould say! Where were his papers? the things he had written?
She brought him his papers, the things he had written, things she hadwritten for him. She tumbled them out on to the sofa. They looked atthem together. Diagrams, designs, little men and women brandishingsticks for arms, with wings--were they?--on their backs; circlestraced round shillings and sixpences--the suns and stars; zigzaggingprecipices with mountaineers ascending roped together, exactly likeknives and forks; sea pieces with little faces laughing out of whatmight perhaps be waves: the map of the world. Burn them! he cried.Now for his writings; how the dead sing behind rhododendron bushes;odes to Time; conversations with Shakespeare; Evans, Evans, Evans--hismessages from the dead; do not cut down trees; tell the Prime Minister.Universal love: the meaning of the world. Burn them! he cried.
But Rezia laid her hands on them. Some were very beautiful, shethought. She would tie them up (for she had no envelope) with a pieceof silk.
Even if they took him, she said, she would go with him. They could notseparate them against their wills, she said.
Shuffling the edges straight, she did up the papers, and tied theparcel almost without looking, sitting beside him, he thought, as ifall her petals were about her. She was a flowering tree; and throughher branches looked out the face of a lawgiver, who had reached asanctuary where she feared no one; not Holmes; not Bradshaw; a miracle,a triumph, the last and greatest. Staggering he saw her mount theappalling staircase, laden with Holmes and Bradshaw, men who neverweighed less than eleven stone six, who sent their wives to Court, menwho made ten thousand a year and talked of proportion; who differentin their verdicts (for Holmes said one thing, Bradshaw another), yetjudges they were; who mixed the vision and the sideboard; saw nothingclear, yet ruled, yet inflicted. “Must” they said. Over them shetriumphed.
“There!” she said. The papers were tied up. No one should get at them.She would put them away.
And, she said, nothing should separate them. She sat down beside himand called him by the name of that hawk or crow which being maliciousand a great destroyer of crops was precisely like him. No one couldseparate them, she said.
Then she got up to go into the bedroom to pack their things, buthearing voices downstairs and thinking that Dr. Holmes had perhapscalled, ran down to prevent him coming up.
Septimus could hear her talking to Holmes on the staircase.
“My dear lady, I have come as a friend,” Holmes was saying.
“No. I will not allow you to see my husband,” she said.
He could see her, like a little hen, with her wings spread barring hispassage. But Holmes persevered.
“My dear lady, allow me....” Holmes said, putting her aside (Holmes wasa powerfully built man).
Holmes was coming upstairs. Holmes would burst open the door. Holmeswould say “In a funk, eh?” Holmes would get him. But no; not Holmes;not Bradshaw. Getting up rather unsteadily, hopping indeed from foot tofoot, he considered Mrs. Filmer’s nice clean bread knife with “Bread”carved on the handle. Ah, but one mustn’t spoil that. The gas fire?But it was too late now. Holmes was coming. Razors he might have got,but Rezia, who always did that sort of thing, had packed them. Thereremained only the window, the large Bloomsbury-lodging house window,the tiresome, the troublesome, and rather melodramatic business ofopening the window and throwing himself out. It was their idea oftragedy, not his or Rezia’s (for she was with him). Holmes and Bradshawlike that sort of thing. (He sat on the sill.) But he would wait tillthe very last moment. He did not want to die. Life was good. The sunhot. Only human beings--what did _they_ want? Coming down the staircaseopposite an old man stopped and stared at him. Holmes was at the door.“I’ll give it you!” he cried, and flung himself vigorously, violentlydown on to Mrs. Filmer’s area railings.
“The coward!” cried Dr. Holmes, bursting the door open. Rezia ranto the window, she saw; she understood. Dr. Holmes and Mrs. Filmercollided with each other. Mrs. Filmer flapped her apron and made herhide her eyes in the bedroom. There was a great deal of running upand down stairs. Dr. Holmes came in--white as a sheet, shaking allover, with a glass in his hand. She must be brave and drink something,he said (What was it? Something sweet), for her husband was horriblymangled, would not recover consciousness, she must not see him, must bespared as much as possible, would have the inquest to go through, pooryoung woman. Who could have foretold it? A sudden impulse, no one wasin the least to blame (he told Mrs. Filmer). And why the devil he didit, Dr. Holmes could not conceive.
It seemed to her as she drank the sweet stuff that she was openinglong windows, stepping out into some garden. But where? The clockwas striking--one, two, three: how sensible the sound was; comparedwith all this thumping and whispering; like Septimus himself. She wasfalling asleep. But the clock went on striking, four, five, six andMrs. Filmer waving her apron (they wouldn’t bring the body in here,would they?) seemed part of that garden; or a flag. She had once seen aflag slowly rippling out from a mast when she stayed with her aunt atVenice. Men killed in battle were thus saluted, and Septimus had beenthrough the War. Of her memories, most were happy.
She put on her hat, and ran through cornfields--where could it havebeen?--on to some hill, somewhere near the sea, for there were ships,gulls, butterflies; they sat on a cliff. In London too, there they sat,and, half dreaming, came to her through the bedroom door, rain falling,whisperings, stirrings among dry corn, the caress of the sea, as itseemed to her, hollowing them in its arched shell and murmuring to herlaid on shore, strewn she felt, like flying flowers over some tomb.
“He is dead,” she said, smiling at the poor old woman who guarded herwith her honest light-blue eyes fixed on the door. (They wouldn’t bringhim in here, would they?) But Mrs. Filmer pooh-poohed. Oh no, oh no!They were carrying him away now. Ought she not to be told? Marriedpeople ought to be together, Mrs. Filmer thought. But they must do asthe doctor said.
“Let her sleep,” said Dr. Holmes, feeling her pulse. She saw the largeoutline of his body standing dark against the window. So that was Dr.Holmes.
One of the triumphs of civilisation, Peter Walsh thought. It is one ofthe triumphs of civilisation, as the light high bell of the ambulancesounded. Swiftly, cleanly the ambulance sped to the hospital, havingpicked up instantly, humanely, some poor devil; some one hit on thehead, struck down by disease, knocked over perhaps a minute or soago at one of these crossings, as might happen to oneself. That wascivilisation. It struck him coming back from the East--the efficiency,the organisation, the communal spirit of London. Every cart or carriageof its own accord drew aside to let the ambulance pass. Perhaps it wasmorbid; or was it not touching rather, the respect which they showedthis ambulance with its victim inside--busy men hurrying home yetinstantly bethinking them as it passed of some wife; or presumablyhow easily it might have been them there, stretched on a shelf with adoctor and a nurse.... Ah, but thinking became morbid, sentimental,directly one began conjuring up doctors, dead bodies; a little glowof pleasure, a sort of lust too over the visual impression warned onenot to go on with that sort of thing any more--fatal to art, fatalto friendship. True. And yet, thought Peter Walsh, as the ambulanceturned the corner though the light high bell could be heard down thenext street and still farther as it crossed the Tottenham Court Road,chiming constantly, it is the privilege of loneliness; in privacy onemay do as one chooses. One might weep if no one saw. It had been hisundoing--this susceptibility--in Anglo-Indian society; not weepingat the right time, or laughing either. I have that in me, he thoughtstanding by the pillar-box, which could now dissolve in tears. Why,Heaven knows. Beauty of some sort probably, and the weight of the day,which beginning with that visit to Clarissa had exhausted him withits heat, its intensity, and the drip, drip, of one impression afteranother down into that cellar where they stood, deep, dark, and no onewould ever know. Partly for that reason, its secrecy, complete andinviolable, he had found life like an unknown garden, full of turnsand corners, surprising, yes; really it took one’s breath away, thesemoments; there coming to him by the pillar-box opposite the BritishMuseum one of them, a moment, in which things came together; thisambulance; and life and death. It was as if he were sucked up to somevery high roof by that rush of emotion and the rest of him, like awhite shell-sprinkled beach, left bare. It had been his undoing inAnglo-Indian society--this susceptibility.
Clarissa once, going on top of an omnibus with him somewhere, Clarissasuperficially at least, so easily moved, now in despair, now in thebest of spirits, all aquiver in those days and such good company,spotting queer little scenes, names, people from the top of a bus, forthey used to explore London and bring back bags full of treasures fromthe Caledonian market--Clarissa had a theory in those days--they hadheaps of theories, always theories, as young people have. It was toexplain the feeling they had of dissatisfaction; not knowing people;not being known. For how could they know each other? You met everyday; then not for six months, or years. It was unsatisfactory, theyagreed, how little one knew people. But she said, sitting on the busgoing up Shaftesbury Avenue, she felt herself everywhere; not “here,here, here”; and she tapped the back of the seat; but everywhere. Shewaved her hand, going up Shaftesbury Avenue. She was all that. So thatto know her, or any one, one must seek out the people who completedthem; even the places. Odd affinities she had with people she had neverspoken to, some woman in the street, some man behind a counter--eventrees, or barns. It ended in a transcendental theory which, with herhorror of death, allowed her to believe, or say that she believed (forall her scepticism), that since our apparitions, the part of us whichappears, are so momentary compared with the other, the unseen part ofus, which spreads wide, the unseen might survive, be recovered somehowattached to this person or that, or even haunting certain places afterdeath ... perhaps--perhaps.
Looking back over that long friendship of almost thirty years hertheory worked to this extent. Brief, broken, often painful as theiractual meetings had been what with his absences and interruptions(this morning, for instance, in came Elizabeth, like a long-leggedcolt, handsome, dumb, just as he was beginning to talk to Clarissa)the effect of them on his life was immeasurable. There was a mysteryabout it. You were given a sharp, acute, uncomfortable grain--theactual meeting; horribly painful as often as not; yet in absence, inthe most unlikely places, it would flower out, open, shed its scent,let you touch, taste, look about you, get the whole feel of it andunderstanding, after years of lying lost. Thus she had come to him; onboard ship; in the Himalayas; suggested by the oddest things (so SallySeton, generous, enthusiastic goose! thought of _him_ when she saw bluehydrangeas). She had influenced him more than any person he had everknown. And always in this way coming before him without his wishingit, cool, lady-like, critical; or ravishing, romantic, recalling somefield or English harvest. He saw her most often in the country, not inLondon. One scene after another at Bourton....
He had reached his hotel. He crossed the hall, with its mounds ofreddish chairs and sofas, its spike-leaved, withered-looking plants.He got his key off the hook. The young lady handed him some letters.He went upstairs--he saw her most often at Bourton, in the latesummer, when he stayed there for a week, or fortnight even, as peopledid in those days. First on top of some hill there she would stand,hands clapped to her hair, her cloak blowing out, pointing, cryingto them--she saw the Severn beneath. Or in a wood, making the kettleboil--very ineffective with her fingers; the smoke curtseying, blowingin their faces; her little pink face showing through; begging waterfrom an old woman in a cottage, who came to the door to watch them go.They walked always; the others drove. She was bored driving, dislikedall animals, except that dog. They tramped miles along roads. She wouldbreak off to get her bearings, pilot him back across country; and allthe time they argued, discussed poetry, discussed people, discussedpolitics (she was a Radical then); never noticing a thing except whenshe stopped, cried out at a view or a tree, and made him look withher; and so on again, through stubble fields, she walking ahead, witha flower for her aunt, never tired of walking for all her delicacy; todrop down on Bourton in the dusk. Then, after dinner, old Breitkopfwould open the piano and sing without any voice, and they would liesunk in arm-chairs, trying not to laugh, but always breaking down andlaughing, laughing--laughing at nothing. Breitkopf was supposed not tosee. And then in the morning, flirting up and down like a wagtail infront of the house....
Oh it was a letter from her! This blue envelope; that was her hand. Andhe would have to read it. Here was another of those meetings, boundto be painful! To read her letter needed the devil of an effort. “Howheavenly it was to see him. She must tell him that.” That was all.
But it upset him. It annoyed him. He wished she hadn’t written it.Coming on top of his thoughts, it was like a nudge in the ribs. Whycouldn’t she let him be? After all, she had married Dalloway, andlived with him in perfect happiness all these years.
These hotels are not consoling places. Far from it. Any number ofpeople had hung up their hats on those pegs. Even the flies, ifyou thought of it, had settled on other people’s noses. As for thecleanliness which hit him in the face, it wasn’t cleanliness, so muchas bareness, frigidity; a thing that had to be. Some arid matron madeher rounds at dawn sniffing, peering, causing blue-nosed maids toscour, for all the world as if the next visitor were a joint of meatto be served on a perfectly clean platter. For sleep, one bed; forsitting in, one arm-chair; for cleaning one’s teeth and shaving one’schin, one tumbler, one looking-glass. Books, letters, dressing-gown,slipped about on the impersonality of the horsehair like incongruousimpertinences. And it was Clarissa’s letter that made him see all this.“Heavenly to see you. She must say so!” He folded the paper; pushed itaway; nothing would induce him to read it again!
To get that letter to him by six o’clock she must have sat down andwritten it directly he left her; stamped it; sent somebody to thepost. It was, as people say, very like her. She was upset by hisvisit. She had felt a great deal; had for a moment, when she kissedhis hand, regretted, envied him even, remembered possibly (for hesaw her look it) something he had said--how they would change theworld if she married him perhaps; whereas, it was this; it was middleage; it was mediocrity; then forced herself with her indomitablevitality to put all that aside, there being in her a thread of lifewhich for toughness, endurance, power to overcome obstacles, andcarry her triumphantly through he had never known the like of. Yes;but there would come a reaction directly he left the room. She wouldbe frightfully sorry for him; she would think what in the world shecould do to give him pleasure (short always of the one thing) and hecould see her with the tears running down her cheeks going to herwriting-table and dashing off that one line which he was to findgreeting him.... “Heavenly to see you!” And she meant it.
Peter Walsh had now unlaced his boots.
But it would not have been a success, their marriage. The other thing,after all, came so much more naturally.
It was odd; it was true; lots of people felt it. Peter Walsh, who haddone just respectably, filled the usual posts adequately, was liked,but thought a little cranky, gave himself airs--it was odd that _he_should have had, especially now that his hair was grey, a contentedlook; a look of having reserves. It was this that made him attractiveto women who liked the sense that he was not altogether manly. Therewas something unusual about him, or something behind him. It might bethat he was bookish--never came to see you without taking up the bookon the table (he was now reading, with his bootlaces trailing on thefloor); or that he was a gentleman, which showed itself in the way heknocked the ashes out of his pipe, and in his manners of course towomen. For it was very charming and quite ridiculous how easily somegirl without a grain of sense could twist him round her finger. Butat her own risk. That is to say, though he might be ever so easy, andindeed with his gaiety and good-breeding fascinating to be with, it wasonly up to a point. She said something--no, no; he saw through that.He wouldn’t stand that--no, no. Then he could shout and rock and holdhis sides together over some joke with men. He was the best judge ofcooking in India. He was a man. But not the sort of man one had torespect--which was a mercy; not like Major Simmons, for instance; notin the least like that, Daisy thought, when, in spite of her two smallchildren, she used to compare them.
He pulled off his boots. He emptied his pockets. Out came with hispocket-knife a snapshot of Daisy on the verandah; Daisy all in white,with a fox-terrier on her knee; very charming, very dark; the best hehad ever seen of her. It did come, after all so naturally; so muchmore naturally than Clarissa. No fuss. No bother. No finicking andfidgeting. All plain sailing. And the dark, adorably pretty girl onthe verandah exclaimed (he could hear her). Of course, of course shewould give him everything! she cried (she had no sense of discretion)everything he wanted! she cried, running to meet him, whoever might belooking. And she was only twenty-four. And she had two children. Well,well!
Well indeed he had got himself into a mess at his age. And it came overhim when he woke in the night pretty forcibly. Suppose they did marry?For him it would be all very well, but what about her? Mrs. Burgess,a good sort and no chatterbox, in whom he had confided, thought thisabsence of his in England, ostensibly to see lawyers might serve tomake Daisy reconsider, think what it meant. It was a question ofher position, Mrs. Burgess said; the social barrier; giving up herchildren. She’d be a widow with a past one of these days, dragglingabout in the suburbs, or more likely, indiscriminate (you know, shesaid, what such women get like, with too much paint). But Peter Walshpooh-poohed all that. He didn’t mean to die yet. Anyhow she must settlefor herself; judge for herself, he thought, padding about the room inhis socks smoothing out his dress-shirt, for he might go to Clarissa’sparty, or he might go to one of the Halls, or he might settle in andread an absorbing book written by a man he used to know at Oxford. Andif he did retire, that’s what he’d do--write books. He would go toOxford and poke about in the Bodleian. Vainly the dark, adorably prettygirl ran to the end of the terrace; vainly waved her hand; vainlycried she didn’t care a straw what people said. There he was, the manshe thought the world of, the perfect gentleman, the fascinating, thedistinguished (and his age made not the least difference to her),padding about a room in an hotel in Bloomsbury, shaving, washing,continuing, as he took up cans, put down razors, to poke about in theBodleian, and get at the truth about one or two little matters thatinterested him. And he would have a chat with whoever it might be, andso come to disregard more and more precise hours for lunch, and missengagements, and when Daisy asked him, as she would, for a kiss, ascene, fail to come up to the scratch (though he was genuinely devotedto her)--in short it might be happier, as Mrs. Burgess said, that sheshould forget him, or merely remember him as he was in August 1922,like a figure standing at the cross roads at dusk, which grows more andmore remote as the dog-cart spins away, carrying her securely fastenedto the back seat, though her arms are outstretched, and as she seesthe figure dwindle and disappear still she cries out how she would doanything in the world, anything, anything, anything....
He never knew what people thought. It became more and more difficultfor him to concentrate. He became absorbed; he became busied with hisown concerns; now surly, now gay; dependent on women, absent-minded,moody, less and less able (so he thought as he shaved) to understandwhy Clarissa couldn’t simply find them a lodging and be nice to Daisy;introduce her. And then he could just--just do what? just haunt andhover (he was at the moment actually engaged in sorting out variouskeys, papers), swoop and taste, be alone, in short, sufficient tohimself; and yet nobody of course was more dependent upon others (hebuttoned his waistcoat); it had been his undoing. He could not keepout of smoking-rooms, liked colonels, liked golf, liked bridge, andabove all women’s society, and the fineness of their companionship, andtheir faithfulness and audacity and greatness in loving which thoughit had its drawbacks seemed to him (and the dark, adorably pretty facewas on top of the envelopes) so wholly admirable, so splendid a flowerto grow on the crest of human life, and yet he could not come up tothe scratch, being always apt to see round things (Clarissa had sappedsomething in him permanently), and to tire very easily of mute devotionand to want variety in love, though it would make him furious if Daisyloved anybody else, furious! for he was jealous, uncontrollably jealousby temperament. He suffered tortures! But where was his knife; hiswatch; his seals, his note-case, and Clarissa’s letter which he wouldnot read again but liked to think of, and Daisy’s photograph? And nowfor dinner.
They were eating.
Sitting at little tables round vases, dressed or not dressed, withtheir shawls and bags laid beside them, with their air of falsecomposure, for they were not used to so many courses at dinner, andconfidence, for they were able to pay for it, and strain, for theyhad been running about London all day shopping, sightseeing; and theirnatural curiosity, for they looked round and up as the nice-lookinggentleman in horn-rimmed spectacles came in, and their good nature,for they would have been glad to do any little service, such as lend atime-table or impart useful information, and their desire, pulsing inthem, tugging at them subterraneously, somehow to establish connectionsif it were only a birthplace (Liverpool, for example) in common orfriends of the same name; with their furtive glances, odd silences, andsudden withdrawals into family jocularity and isolation; there theysat eating dinner when Mr. Walsh came in and took his seat at a littletable by the curtain.
It was not that he said anything, for being solitary he could onlyaddress himself to the waiter; it was his way of looking at the menu,of pointing his forefinger to a particular wine, of hitching himselfup to the table, of addressing himself seriously, not gluttonouslyto dinner, that won him their respect; which, having to remainunexpressed for the greater part of the meal, flared up at the tablewhere the Morrises sat when Mr. Walsh was heard to say at the end ofthe meal, “Bartlett pears.” Why he should have spoken so moderatelyyet firmly, with the air of a disciplinarian well within his rightswhich are founded upon justice, neither young Charles Morris, norold Charles, neither Miss Elaine nor Mrs. Morris knew. But when hesaid, “Bartlett pears,” sitting alone at his table, they felt thathe counted on their support in some lawful demand; was champion ofa cause which immediately became their own, so that their eyes methis eyes sympathetically, and when they all reached the smoking-roomsimultaneously, a little talk between them became inevitable.
It was not very profound--only to the effect that London was crowded;had changed in thirty years; that Mr. Morris preferred Liverpool; thatMrs. Morris had been to the Westminster flower-show, and that theyhad all seen the Prince of Wales. Yet, thought Peter Walsh, no familyin the world can compare with the Morrises; none whatever; and theirrelations to each other are perfect, and they don’t care a hang for theupper classes, and they like what they like, and Elaine is trainingfor the family business, and the boy has won a scholarship at Leeds,and the old lady (who is about his own age) has three more children athome; and they have two motor cars, but Mr. Morris still mends theboots on Sunday: it is superb, it is absolutely superb, thought PeterWalsh, swaying a little backwards and forwards with his liqueur glassin his hand among the hairy red chairs and ash-trays, feeling very wellpleased with himself, for the Morrises liked him. Yes, they liked a manwho said, “Bartlett pears.” They liked him, he felt.
He would go to Clarissa’s party. (The Morrises moved off; but theywould meet again.) He would go to Clarissa’s party, because he wantedto ask Richard what they were doing in India--the conservative duffers.And what’s being acted? And music.... Oh yes, and mere gossip.
For this is the truth about our soul, he thought, our self, whofish-like inhabits deep seas and plies among obscurities threading herway between the boles of giant weeds, over sun-flickered spaces andon and on into gloom, cold, deep, inscrutable; suddenly she shootsto the surface and sports on the wind-wrinkled waves; that is, has apositive need to brush, scrape, kindle herself, gossiping. What did theGovernment mean--Richard Dalloway would know--to do about India?
Since it was a very hot night and the paper boys went by with placardsproclaiming in huge red letters that there was a heat-wave, wickerchairs were placed on the hotel steps and there, sipping, smoking,detached gentlemen sat. Peter Walsh sat there. One might fancy thatday, the London day, was just beginning. Like a woman who had slippedoff her print dress and white apron to array herself in blue andpearls, the day changed, put off stuff, took gauze, changed to evening,and with the same sigh of exhilaration that a woman breathes, tumblingpetticoats on the floor, it too shed dust, heat, colour; the trafficthinned; motor cars, tinkling, darting, succeeded the lumber of vans;and here and there among the thick foliage of the squares an intenselight hung. I resign, the evening seemed to say, as it paled and fadedabove the battlements and prominences, moulded, pointed, of hotel,flat, and block of shops, I fade, she was beginning, I disappear, butLondon would have none of it, and rushed her bayonets into the sky,pinioned her, constrained her to partnership in her revelry.
For the great revolution of Mr. Willett’s summer time had taken placesince Peter Walsh’s last visit to England. The prolonged evening wasnew to him. It was inspiriting, rather. For as the young people went bywith their despatch-boxes, awfully glad to be free, proud too, dumbly,of stepping this famous pavement, joy of a kind, cheap, tinselly, ifyou like, but all the same rapture, flushed their faces. They dressedwell too; pink stockings; pretty shoes. They would now have two hoursat the pictures. It sharpened, it refined them, the yellow-blue eveninglight; and on the leaves in the square shone lurid, livid--theylooked as if dipped in sea water--the foliage of a submerged city. Hewas astonished by the beauty; it was encouraging too, for where thereturned Anglo-Indian sat by rights (he knew crowds of them) in theOriental Club biliously summing up the ruin of the world, here washe, as young as ever; envying young people their summer time and therest of it, and more than suspecting from the words of a girl, from ahousemaid’s laughter--intangible things you couldn’t lay your handson--that shift in the whole pyramidal accumulation which in his youthhad seemed immovable. On top of them it had pressed; weighed them down,the women especially, like those flowers Clarissa’s Aunt Helena used topress between sheets of grey blotting-paper with Littré’s dictionaryon top, sitting under the lamp after dinner. She was dead now. He hadheard of her, from Clarissa, losing the sight of one eye. It seemed sofitting--one of nature’s masterpieces--that old Miss Parry should turnto glass. She would die like some bird in a frost gripping her perch.She belonged to a different age, but being so entire, so complete,would always stand up on the horizon, stone-white, eminent, like alighthouse marking some past stage on this adventurous, long, longvoyage, this interminable (he felt for a copper to buy a paper andread about Surrey and Yorkshire--he had held out that copper millionsof times. Surrey was all out once more)--this interminable life. Butcricket was no mere game. Cricket was important. He could never helpreading about cricket. He read the scores in the stop press first, thenhow it was a hot day; then about a murder case. Having done thingsmillions of times enriched them, though it might be said to take thesurface off. The past enriched, and experience, and having cared forone or two people, and so having acquired the power which the younglack, of cutting short, doing what one likes, not caring a rap whatpeople say and coming and going without any very great expectations(he left his paper on the table and moved off), which however (andhe looked for his hat and coat) was not altogether true of him, notto-night, for here he was starting to go to a party, at his age, withthe belief upon him that he was about to have an experience. But what?
Beauty anyhow. Not the crude beauty of the eye. It was not beautypure and simple--Bedford Place leading into Russell Square. It wasstraightness and emptiness of course; the symmetry of a corridor; butit was also windows lit up, a piano, a gramophone sounding; a senseof pleasure-making hidden, but now and again emerging when, throughthe uncurtained window, the window left open, one saw parties sittingover tables, young people slowly circling, conversations between menand women, maids idly looking out (a strange comment theirs, when workwas done), stockings drying on top ledges, a parrot, a few plants.Absorbing, mysterious, of infinite richness, this life. And in thelarge square where the cabs shot and swerved so quick, there wereloitering couples, dallying, embracing, shrunk up under the showerof a tree; that was moving; so silent, so absorbed, that one passed,discreetly, timidly, as if in the presence of some sacred ceremony tointerrupt which would have been impious. That was interesting. And soon into the flare and glare.
His light overcoat blew open, he stepped with indescribableidiosyncrasy, leant a little forward, tripped, with his hands behindhis back and his eyes still a little hawklike; he tripped throughLondon, towards Westminster, observing.
Was everybody dining out, then? Doors were being opened here by afootman to let issue a high-stepping old dame, in buckled shoes, withthree purple ostrich feathers in her hair. Doors were being opened forladies wrapped like mummies in shawls with bright flowers on them,ladies with bare heads. And in respectable quarters with stucco pillarsthrough small front gardens lightly swathed with combs in their hair(having run up to see the children), women came; men waited for them,with their coats blowing open, and the motor started. Everybody wasgoing out. What with these doors being opened, and the descent and thestart, it seemed as if the whole of London were embarking in littleboats moored to the bank, tossing on the waters, as if the whole placewere floating off in carnival. And Whitehall was skated over, silverbeaten as it was, skated over by spiders, and there was a sense ofmidges round the arc lamps; it was so hot that people stood abouttalking. And here in Westminster was a retired Judge, presumably,sitting four square at his house door dressed all in white. AnAnglo-Indian presumably.
And here a shindy of brawling women, drunken women; here only apoliceman and looming houses, high houses, domed houses, churches,parliaments, and the hoot of a steamer on the river, a hollow mistycry. But it was her street, this, Clarissa’s; cabs were rushing roundthe corner, like water round the piers of a bridge, drawn together, itseemed to him because they bore people going to her party, Clarissa’sparty.
The cold stream of visual impressions failed him now as if the eyewere a cup that overflowed and let the rest run down its china wallsunrecorded. The brain must wake now. The body must contract now,entering the house, the lighted house, where the door stood open,where the motor cars were standing, and bright women descending: thesoul must brave itself to endure. He opened the big blade of hispocket-knife.
* * * * *
Lucy came running full tilt downstairs, having just nipped in to thedrawing-room to smooth a cover, to straighten a chair, to pause amoment and feel whoever came in must think how clean, how bright, howbeautifully cared for, when they saw the beautiful silver, the brassfire-irons, the new chair-covers, and the curtains of yellow chintz:she appraised each; heard a roar of voices; people already coming upfrom dinner; she must fly!
The Prime Minister was coming, Agnes said: so she had heard them sayin the dining-room, she said, coming in with a tray of glasses. Did itmatter, did it matter in the least, one Prime Minister more or less? Itmade no difference at this hour of the night to Mrs. Walker among theplates, saucepans, cullenders, frying-pans, chicken in aspic, ice-creamfreezers, pared crusts of bread, lemons, soup tureens, and puddingbasins which, however hard they washed up in the scullery seemed tobe all on top of her, on the kitchen table, on chairs, while the fireblared and roared, the electric lights glared, and still supper had tobe laid. All she felt was, one Prime Minister more or less made not ascrap of difference to Mrs. Walker.
The ladies were going upstairs already, said Lucy; the ladies weregoing up, one by one, Mrs. Dalloway walking last and almost alwayssending back some message to the kitchen, “My love to Mrs. Walker,”that was it one night. Next morning they would go over the dishes--thesoup, the salmon; the salmon, Mrs. Walker knew, as usual underdone,for she always got nervous about the pudding and left it to Jenny;so it happened, the salmon was always underdone. But some lady withfair hair and silver ornaments had said, Lucy said, about the entrée,was it really made at home? But it was the salmon that bothered Mrs.Walker, as she spun the plates round and round, and pulled in dampersand pulled out dampers; and there came a burst of laughter from thedining-room; a voice speaking; then another burst of laughter--thegentlemen enjoying themselves when the ladies had gone. The tokay,said Lucy running in. Mr. Dalloway had sent for the tokay, from theEmperor’s cellars, the Imperial Tokay.
It was borne through the kitchen. Over her shoulder Lucy reported howMiss Elizabeth looked quite lovely; she couldn’t take her eyes off her;in her pink dress, wearing the necklace Mr. Dalloway had given her.Jenny must remember the dog, Miss Elizabeth’s fox-terrier, which, sinceit bit, had to be shut up and might, Elizabeth thought, want something.Jenny must remember the dog. But Jenny was not going upstairs with allthose people about. There was a motor at the door already! There was aring at the bell--and the gentlemen still in the dining-room, drinkingtokay!
There, they were going upstairs; that was the first to come, and nowthey would come faster and faster, so that Mrs. Parkinson (hired forparties) would leave the hall door ajar, and the hall would be fullof gentlemen waiting (they stood waiting, sleeking down their hair)while the ladies took their cloaks off in the room along the passage;where Mrs. Barnet helped them, old Ellen Barnet, who had been with thefamily for forty years, and came every summer to help the ladies, andremembered mothers when they were girls, and though very unassuming didshake hands; said “milady” very respectfully, yet had a humorous waywith her, looking at the young ladies, and ever so tactfully helpingLady Lovejoy, who had some trouble with her underbodice. And theycould not help feeling, Lady Lovejoy and Miss Alice, that some littleprivilege in the matter of brush and comb, was awarded them havingknown Mrs. Barnet--“thirty years, milady,” Mrs. Barnet supplied her.Young ladies did not use to rouge, said Lady Lovejoy, when they stayedat Bourton in the old days. And Miss Alice didn’t need rouge, said Mrs.Barnet, looking at her fondly. There Mrs. Barnet would sit, in thecloakroom, patting down the furs, smoothing out the Spanish shawls,tidying the dressing-table, and knowing perfectly well, in spite of thefurs and the embroideries, which were nice ladies, which were not. Thedear old body, said Lady Lovejoy, mounting the stairs, Clarissa’s oldnurse.
And then Lady Lovejoy stiffened. “Lady and Miss Lovejoy,” she said toMr. Wilkins (hired for parties). He had an admirable manner, as he bentand straightened himself, bent and straightened himself and announcedwith perfect impartiality “Lady and Miss Lovejoy ... Sir John and LadyNeedham ... Miss Weld ... Mr. Walsh.” His manner was admirable; hisfamily life must be irreproachable, except that it seemed impossiblethat a being with greenish lips and shaven cheeks could ever haveblundered into the nuisance of children.
“How delightful to see you!” said Clarissa. She said it to every one.How delightful to see you! She was at her worst--effusive, insincere.It was a great mistake to have come. He should have stayed at home andread his book, thought Peter Walsh; should have gone to a music hall;he should have stayed at home, for he knew no one.
Oh dear, it was going to be a failure; a complete failure, Clarissafelt it in her bones as dear old Lord Lexham stood there apologisingfor his wife who had caught cold at the Buckingham Palace garden party.She could see Peter out of the tail of her eye, criticising her, there,in that corner. Why, after all, did she do these things? Why seekpinnacles and stand drenched in fire? Might it consume her anyhow! Burnher to cinders! Better anything, better brandish one’s torch and hurlit to earth than taper and dwindle away like some Ellie Henderson! Itwas extraordinary how Peter put her into these states just by comingand standing in a corner. He made her see herself; exaggerate. It wasidiotic. But why did he come, then, merely to criticise? Why alwaystake, never give? Why not risk one’s one little point of view? Therehe was wandering off, and she must speak to him. But she would notget the chance. Life was that--humiliation, renunciation. What LordLexham was saying was that his wife would not wear her furs at thegarden party because “my dear, you ladies are all alike”--Lady Lexhambeing seventy-five at least! It was delicious, how they petted eachother, that old couple. She did like old Lord Lexham. She did think itmattered, her party, and it made her feel quite sick to know that itwas all going wrong, all falling flat. Anything, any explosion, anyhorror was better than people wandering aimlessly, standing in a bunchat a corner like Ellie Henderson, not even caring to hold themselvesupright.
Gently the yellow curtain with all the birds of Paradise blew out andit seemed as if there were a flight of wings into the room, rightout, then sucked back. (For the windows were open.) Was it draughty,Ellie Henderson wondered? She was subject to chills. But it did notmatter that she should come down sneezing to-morrow; it was the girlswith their naked shoulders she thought of, being trained to think ofothers by an old father, an invalid, late vicar of Bourton, but hewas dead now; and her chills never went to her chest, never. It wasthe girls she thought of, the young girls with their bare shoulders,she herself having always been a wisp of a creature, with her thinhair and meagre profile; though now, past fifty, there was beginningto shine through some mild beam, something purified into distinctionby years of self-abnegation but obscured again, perpetually, by herdistressing gentility, her panic fear, which arose from three hundredpounds’ income, and her weaponless state (she could not earn a penny)and it made her timid, and more and more disqualified year by year tomeet well-dressed people who did this sort of thing every night ofthe season, merely telling their maids “I’ll wear so and so,” whereasEllie Henderson ran out nervously and bought cheap pink flowers, halfa dozen, and then threw a shawl over her old black dress. For herinvitation to Clarissa’s party had come at the last moment. She was notquite happy about it. She had a sort of feeling that Clarissa had notmeant to ask her this year.
Why should she? There was no reason really, except that they had alwaysknown each other. Indeed, they were cousins. But naturally they hadrather drifted apart, Clarissa being so sought after. It was an eventto her, going to a party. It was quite a treat just to see the lovelyclothes. Wasn’t that Elizabeth, grown up, with her hair done in thefashionable way, in the pink dress? Yet she could not be more thanseventeen. She was very, very handsome. But girls when they firstcame out didn’t seem to wear white as they used. (She must remembereverything to tell Edith.) Girls wore straight frocks, perfectly tight,with skirts well above the ankles. It was not becoming, she thought.
So, with her weak eyesight, Ellie Henderson craned rather forward,and it wasn’t so much she who minded not having any one to talk to(she hardly knew anybody there), for she felt that they were all suchinteresting people to watch; politicians presumably; Richard Dalloway’sfriends; but it was Richard himself who felt that he could not let thepoor creature go on standing there all the evening by herself.
“Well, Ellie, and how’s the world treating _you_?” he said in hisgenial way, and Ellie Henderson, getting nervous and flushing andfeeling that it was extraordinarily nice of him to come and talk toher, said that many people really felt the heat more than the cold.
“Yes, they do,” said Richard Dalloway. “Yes.”
But what more did one say?
“Hullo, Richard,” said somebody, taking him by the elbow, and, goodLord, there was old Peter, old Peter Walsh. He was delighted to seehim--ever so pleased to see him! He hadn’t changed a bit. And off theywent together walking right across the room, giving each other littlepats, as if they hadn’t met for a long time, Ellie Henderson thought,watching them go, certain she knew that man’s face. A tall man, middleaged, rather fine eyes, dark, wearing spectacles, with a look of JohnBurrows. Edith would be sure to know.
The curtain with its flight of birds of Paradise blew out again. AndClarissa saw--she saw Ralph Lyon beat it back, and go on talking. Soit wasn’t a failure after all! it was going to be all right now--herparty. It had begun. It had started. But it was still touch and go. Shemust stand there for the present. People seemed to come in a rush.
Colonel and Mrs. Garrod ... Mr. Hugh Whitbread ... Mr. Bowley ... Mrs.Hilbery ... Lady Mary Maddox ... Mr. Quin ... intoned Wilkin. She hadsix or seven words with each, and they went on, they went into therooms; into something now, not nothing, since Ralph Lyon had beat backthe curtain.
And yet for her own part, it was too much of an effort. She was notenjoying it. It was too much like being--just anybody, standing there;anybody could do it; yet this anybody she did a little admire, couldn’thelp feeling that she had, anyhow, made this happen, that it marked astage, this post that she felt herself to have become, for oddly enoughshe had quite forgotten what she looked like, but felt herself a stakedriven in at the top of her stairs. Every time she gave a party shehad this feeling of being something not herself, and that every onewas unreal in one way; much more real in another. It was, she thought,partly their clothes, partly being taken out of their ordinary ways,partly the background, it was possible to say things you couldn’t sayanyhow else, things that needed an effort; possible to go much deeper.But not for her; not yet anyhow.
“How delightful to see you!” she said. Dear old Sir Harry! He wouldknow every one.
And what was so odd about it was the sense one had as they came up thestairs one after another, Mrs. Mount and Celia, Herbert Ainsty, Mrs.Dakers--oh and Lady Bruton!
“How awfully good of you to come!” she said, and she meant it--it wasodd how standing there one felt them going on, going on, some quiteold, some....
_What_ name? Lady Rosseter? But who on earth was Lady Rosseter?
“Clarissa!” That voice! It was Sally Seton! Sally Seton! after allthese years! She loomed through a mist. For she hadn’t looked like_that_, Sally Seton, when Clarissa grasped the hot water can, to thinkof her under this roof, under this roof! Not like that!
All on top of each other, embarrassed, laughing, words tumbledout--passing through London; heard from Clara Haydon; what a chance ofseeing you! So I thrust myself in--without an invitation....
One might put down the hot water can quite composedly. The lustre hadgone out of her. Yet it was extraordinary to see her again, older,happier, less lovely. They kissed each other, first this cheek thenthat, by the drawing-room door, and Clarissa turned, with Sally’s handin hers, and saw her rooms full, heard the roar of voices, saw thecandlesticks, the blowing curtains, and the roses which Richard hadgiven her.
“I have five enormous boys,” said Sally.
She had the simplest egotism, the most open desire to be thought firstalways, and Clarissa loved her for being still like that. “I can’tbelieve it!” she cried, kindling all over with pleasure at the thoughtof the past.
But alas, Wilkins; Wilkins wanted her; Wilkins was emitting in a voiceof commanding authority as if the whole company must be admonished andthe hostess reclaimed from frivolity, one name:
“The Prime Minister,” said Peter Walsh.
The Prime Minister? Was it really? Ellie Henderson marvelled. What athing to tell Edith!
One couldn’t laugh at him. He looked so ordinary. You might have stoodhim behind a counter and bought biscuits--poor chap, all rigged up ingold lace. And to be fair, as he went his rounds, first with Clarissathen with Richard escorting him, he did it very well. He tried to looksomebody. It was amusing to watch. Nobody looked at him. They justwent on talking, yet it was perfectly plain that they all knew, felt tothe marrow of their bones, this majesty passing; this symbol of whatthey all stood for, English society. Old Lady Bruton, and she lookedvery fine too, very stalwart in her lace, swam up, and they withdrewinto a little room which at once became spied upon, guarded, and asort of stir and rustle rippled through every one, openly: the PrimeMinister!
Lord, lord, the snobbery of the English! thought Peter Walsh, standingin the corner. How they loved dressing up in gold lace and doinghomage! There! That must be, by Jove it was, Hugh Whitbread, snuffinground the precincts of the great, grown rather fatter, rather whiter,the admirable Hugh!
He looked always as if he were on duty, thought Peter, a privileged,but secretive being, hoarding secrets which he would die to defend,though it was only some little piece of tittle-tattle dropped by acourt footman, which would be in all the papers to-morrow. Such werehis rattles, his baubles, in playing with which he had grown white,come to the verge of old age, enjoying the respect and affection ofall who had the privilege of knowing this type of the English publicschool man. Inevitably one made up things like that about Hugh; thatwas his style; the style of those admirable letters which Peter hadread thousands of miles across the sea in the _Times_, and had thankedGod he was out of that pernicious hubble-bubble if it were only tohear baboons chatter and coolies beat their wives. An olive-skinnedyouth from one of the Universities stood obsequiously by. Him he wouldpatronise, initiate, teach how to get on. For he liked nothing betterthan doing kindnesses, making the hearts of old ladies palpitate withthe joy of being thought of in their age, their affliction, thinkingthemselves quite forgotten, yet here was dear Hugh driving up andspending an hour talking of the past, remembering trifles, praising thehome-made cake, though Hugh might eat cake with a duch*ess any day ofhis life, and, to look at him, probably did spend a good deal of timein that agreeable occupation. The All-judging, the All-merciful, mightexcuse. Peter Walsh had no mercy. Villains there must be, and God knowsthe rascals who get hanged for battering the brains of a girl out in atrain do less harm on the whole than Hugh Whitbread and his kindness.Look at him now, on tiptoe, dancing forward, bowing and scraping,as the Prime Minister and Lady Bruton emerged, intimating for allthe world to see that he was privileged to say something, somethingprivate, to Lady Bruton as she passed. She stopped. She wagged her fineold head. She was thanking him presumably for some piece of servility.She had her toadies, minor officials in Government offices who ranabout putting through little jobs on her behalf, in return for whichshe gave them luncheon. But she derived from the eighteenth century.She was all right.
And now Clarissa escorted her Prime Minister down the room, prancing,sparkling, with the stateliness of her grey hair. She wore ear-rings,and a silver-green mermaid’s dress. Lolloping on the waves and braidingher tresses she seemed, having that gift still; to be; to exist; tosum it all up in the moment as she passed; turned, caught her scarfin some other woman’s dress, unhitched it, laughed, all with the mostperfect ease and air of a creature floating in its element. But age hadbrushed her; even as a mermaid might behold in her glass the settingsun on some very clear evening over the waves. There was a breath oftenderness; her severity, her prudery, her woodenness were all warmedthrough now, and she had about her as she said good-bye to the thickgold-laced man who was doing his best, and good luck to him, to lookimportant, an inexpressible dignity; an exquisite cordiality; as if shewished the whole world well, and must now, being on the very verge andrim of things, take her leave. So she made him think. (But he was notin love.)
Indeed, Clarissa felt, the Prime Minister had been good to come. And,walking down the room with him, with Sally there and Peter there andRichard very pleased, with all those people rather inclined, perhaps,to envy, she had felt that intoxication of the moment, that dilatationof the nerves of the heart itself till it seemed to quiver, steeped,upright;--yes, but after all it was what other people felt, that;for, though she loved it and felt it tingle and sting, still thesesemblances, these triumphs (dear old Peter, for example, thinking herso brilliant), had a hollowness; at arm’s length they were, not in theheart; and it might be that she was growing old but they satisfied herno longer as they used; and suddenly, as she saw the Prime Ministergo down the stairs, the gilt rim of the Sir Joshua picture of thelittle girl with a muff brought back Kilman with a rush; Kilman herenemy. That was satisfying; that was real. Ah, how she hated her--hot,hypocritical, corrupt; with all that power; Elizabeth’s seducer; thewoman who had crept in to steal and defile (Richard would say, Whatnonsense!). She hated her: she loved her. It was enemies one wanted,not friends--not Mrs. Durrant and Clara, Sir William and Lady Bradshaw,Miss Truelock and Eleanor Gibson (whom she saw coming upstairs). Theymust find her if they wanted her. She was for the party!
There was her old friend Sir Harry.
“Dear Sir Harry!” she said, going up to the fine old fellow who hadproduced more bad pictures than any other two Academicians in the wholeof St. John’s Wood (they were always of cattle, standing in sunsetpools absorbing moisture, or signifying, for he had a certain range ofgesture, by the raising of one foreleg and the toss of the antlers,“the Approach of the Stranger”--all his activities, dining out, racing,were founded on cattle standing absorbing moisture in sunset pools).
“What are you laughing at?” she asked him. For Willie Titcomb andSir Harry and Herbert Ainsty were all laughing. But no. Sir Harrycould not tell Clarissa Dalloway (much though he liked her; of hertype he thought her perfect, and threatened to paint her) his storiesof the music hall stage. He chaffed her about her party. He missedhis brandy. These circles, he said, were above him. But he likedher; respected her, in spite of her damnable, difficult upper-classrefinement, which made it impossible to ask Clarissa Dalloway to sit onhis knee. And up came that wandering will-o’-the-wisp, that vagulousphosphorescence, old Mrs. Hilbery, stretching her hands to the blazeof his laughter (about the Duke and the Lady), which, as she heard itacross the room, seemed to reassure her on a point which sometimesbothered her if she woke early in the morning and did not like to callher maid for a cup of tea; how it is certain we must die.
“They won’t tell us their stories,” said Clarissa.
“Dear Clarissa!” exclaimed Mrs. Hilbery. She looked to-night, she said,so like her mother as she first saw her walking in a garden in a greyhat.
And really Clarissa’s eyes filled with tears. Her mother, walking in agarden! But alas, she must go.
For there was Professor Brierly, who lectured on Milton, talking tolittle Jim Hutton (who was unable even for a party like this to compassboth tie and waistcoat or make his hair lie flat), and even at thisdistance they were quarrelling, she could see. For Professor Brierlywas a very queer fish. With all those degrees, honours, lectureshipsbetween him and the scribblers he suspected instantly an atmospherenot favourable to his queer compound; his prodigious learning andtimidity; his wintry charm without cordiality; his innocence blent withsnobbery; he quivered if made conscious by a lady’s unkempt hair, ayouth’s boots, of an underworld, very creditable doubtless, of rebels,of ardent young people; of would-be geniuses, and intimated with alittle toss of the head, with a sniff--Humph!--the value of moderation;of some slight training in the classics in order to appreciate Milton.Professor Brierly (Clarissa could see) wasn’t hitting it off withlittle Jim Hutton (who wore red socks, his black being at the laundry)about Milton. She interrupted.
She said she loved Bach. So did Hutton. That was the bond between them,and Hutton (a very bad poet) always felt that Mrs. Dalloway was far thebest of the great ladies who took an interest in art. It was odd howstrict she was. About music she was purely impersonal. She was rathera prig. But how charming to look at! She made her house so nice if itweren’t for her Professors. Clarissa had half a mind to snatch him offand set him down at the piano in the back room. For he played divinely.
“But the noise!” she said. “The noise!”
“The sign of a successful party.” Nodding urbanely, the Professorstepped delicately off.
“He knows everything in the whole world about Milton,” said Clarissa.
“Does he indeed?” said Hutton, who would imitate the Professorthroughout Hampstead; the Professor on Milton; the Professor onmoderation; the Professor stepping delicately off.
But she must speak to that couple, said Clarissa, Lord Gayton and NancyBlow.
Not that _they_ added perceptibly to the noise of the party. They werenot talking (perceptibly) as they stood side by side by the yellowcurtains. They would soon be off elsewhere, together; and never hadvery much to say in any circ*mstances. They looked; that was all. Thatwas enough. They looked so clean, so sound, she with an apricot bloomof powder and paint, but he scrubbed, rinsed, with the eyes of a bird,so that no ball could pass him or stroke surprise him. He struck, heleapt, accurately, on the spot. Ponies’ mouths quivered at the end ofhis reins. He had his honours, ancestral monuments, banners hangingin the church at home. He had his duties; his tenants; a mother andsisters; had been all day at Lords, and that was what they weretalking about--cricket, cousins, the movies--when Mrs. Dalloway cameup. Lord Gayton liked her most awfully. So did Miss Blow. She had suchcharming manners.
“It is angelic--it is delicious of you to have come!” she said. Sheloved Lords; she loved youth, and Nancy, dressed at enormous expense bythe greatest artists in Paris, stood there looking as if her body hadmerely put forth, of its own accord, a green frill.
“I had meant to have dancing,” said Clarissa.
For the young people could not talk. And why should they? Shout,embrace, swing, be up at dawn; carry sugar to ponies; kiss and caressthe snouts of adorable chows; and then all tingling and streaming,plunge and swim. But the enormous resources of the English language,the power it bestows, after all, of communicating feelings (at theirage, she and Peter would have been arguing all the evening), was notfor them. They would solidify young. They would be good beyond measureto the people on the estate, but alone, perhaps, rather dull.
“What a pity!” she said. “I had hoped to have dancing.”
It was so extraordinarily nice of them to have come! But talk ofdancing! The rooms were packed.
There was old Aunt Helena in her shawl. Alas, she must leave them--LordGayton and Nancy Blow. There was old Miss Parry, her aunt.
For Miss Helena Parry was not dead: Miss Parry was alive. She was pasteighty. She ascended staircases slowly with a stick. She was placed ina chair (Richard had seen to it). People who had known Burma in the’seventies were always led up to her. Where had Peter got to? Theyused to be such friends. For at the mention of India, or even Ceylon,her eyes (only one was glass) slowly deepened, became blue, beheld,not human beings--she had no tender memories, no proud illusions aboutViceroys, Generals, Mutinies--it was orchids she saw, and mountainpasses and herself carried on the backs of coolies in the ’sixties oversolitary peaks; or descending to uproot orchids (startling blossoms,never beheld before) which she painted in water-colour; an indomitableEnglishwoman, fretful if disturbed by the War, say, which dropped abomb at her very door, from her deep meditation over orchids and herown figure journeying in the ’sixties in India--but here was Peter.
“Come and talk to Aunt Helena about Burma,” said Clarissa.
And yet he had not had a word with her all the evening!
“We will talk later,” said Clarissa, leading him up to Aunt Helena, inher white shawl, with her stick.
“Peter Walsh,” said Clarissa.
That meant nothing.
Clarissa had asked her. It was tiring; it was noisy; but Clarissahad asked her. So she had come. It was a pity that they lived inLondon--Richard and Clarissa. If only for Clarissa’s health it wouldhave been better to live in the country. But Clarissa had always beenfond of society.
“He has been in Burma,” said Clarissa.
Ah. She could not resist recalling what Charles Darwin had said abouther little book on the orchids of Burma.
(Clarissa must speak to Lady Bruton.)
No doubt it was forgotten now, her book on the orchids of Burma,but it went into three editions before 1870, she told Peter. Sheremembered him now. He had been at Bourton (and he had left her, PeterWalsh remembered, without a word in the drawing-room that night whenClarissa had asked him to come boating).
“Richard so much enjoyed his lunch party,” said Clarissa to Lady Bruton.
“Richard was the greatest possible help,” Lady Bruton replied. “Hehelped me to write a letter. And how are you?”
“Oh, perfectly well!” said Clarissa. (Lady Bruton detested illness inthe wives of politicians.)
“And there’s Peter Walsh!” said Lady Bruton (for she could never thinkof anything to say to Clarissa; though she liked her. She had lots offine qualities; but they had nothing in common--she and Clarissa. Itmight have been better if Richard had married a woman with less charm,who would have helped him more in his work. He had lost his chance ofthe Cabinet). “There’s Peter Walsh!” she said, shaking hands with thatagreeable sinner, that very able fellow who should have made a name forhimself but hadn’t (always in difficulties with women), and, of course,old Miss Parry. Wonderful old lady!
Lady Bruton stood by Miss Parry’s chair, a spectral grenadier, drapedin black, inviting Peter Walsh to lunch; cordial; but without smalltalk, remembering nothing whatever about the flora or fauna of India.She had been there, of course; had stayed with three Viceroys; thoughtsome of the Indian civilians uncommonly fine fellows; but what atragedy it was--the state of India! The Prime Minister had just beentelling her (old Miss Parry huddled up in her shawl, did not care whatthe Prime Minister had just been telling her), and Lady Bruton wouldlike to have Peter Walsh’s opinion, he being fresh from the centre,and she would get Sir Sampson to meet him, for really it prevented herfrom sleeping at night, the folly of it, the wickedness she might say,being a soldier’s daughter. She was an old woman now, not good formuch. But her house, her servants, her good friend Milly Brush--didhe remember her?--were all there only asking to be used if--if theycould be of help, in short. For she never spoke of England, but thisisle of men, this dear, dear land, was in her blood (without readingShakespeare), and if ever a woman could have worn the helmet and shotthe arrow, could have led troops to attack, ruled with indomitablejustice barbarian hordes and lain under a shield noseless in a church,or made a green grass mound on some primeval hillside, that womanwas Millicent Bruton. Debarred by her sex and some truancy, too, ofthe logical faculty (she found it impossible to write a letter tothe _Times_), she had the thought of Empire always at hand, and hadacquired from her association with that armoured goddess her ramrodbearing, her robustness of demeanour, so that one could not figure hereven in death parted from the earth or roaming territories over which,in some spiritual shape, the Union Jack had ceased to fly. To be notEnglish even among the dead--no, no! Impossible!
But was it Lady Bruton (whom she used to know)? Was it Peter Walshgrown grey? Lady Rosseter asked herself (who had been Sally Seton).It was old Miss Parry certainly--the old aunt who used to be so crosswhen she stayed at Bourton. Never should she forget running along thepassage naked, and being sent for by Miss Parry! And Clarissa! ohClarissa! Sally caught her by the arm.
Clarissa stopped beside them.
“But I can’t stay,” she said. “I shall come later. Wait,” she said,looking at Peter and Sally. They must wait, she meant, until all thesepeople had gone.
“I shall come back,” she said, looking at her old friends, Sally andPeter, who were shaking hands, and Sally, remembering the past nodoubt, was laughing.
But her voice was wrung of its old ravishing richness; her eyes notaglow as they used to be, when she smoked cigars, when she ran downthe passage to fetch her sponge bag, without a stitch of clothing onher, and Ellen Atkins asked, What if the gentlemen had met her? Buteverybody forgave her. She stole a chicken from the larder becauseshe was hungry in the night; she smoked cigars in her bedroom; sheleft a priceless book in the punt. But everybody adored her (exceptperhaps Papa). It was her warmth; her vitality--she would paint, shewould write. Old women in the village never to this day forgot toask after “your friend in the red cloak who seemed so bright.” Sheaccused Hugh Whitbread, of all people (and there he was, her old friendHugh, talking to the Portuguese Ambassador), of kissing her in thesmoking-room to punish her for saying that women should have votes.Vulgar men did, she said. And Clarissa remembered having to persuadeher not to denounce him at family prayers--which she was capable ofdoing with her daring, her recklessness, her melodramatic love ofbeing the centre of everything and creating scenes, and it was bound,Clarissa used to think, to end in some awful tragedy; her death; hermartyrdom; instead of which she had married, quite unexpectedly, a baldman with a large buttonhole who owned, it was said, cotton mills atManchester. And she had five boys!
She and Peter had settled down together. They were talking: it seemedso familiar--that they should be talking. They would discuss the past.With the two of them (more even than with Richard) she shared her past;the garden; the trees; old Joseph Breitkopf singing Brahms without anyvoice; the drawing-room wall-paper; the smell of the mats. A part ofthis Sally must always be; Peter must always be. But she must leavethem. There were the Bradshaws, whom she disliked. She must go up toLady Bradshaw (in grey and silver, balancing like a sea-lion at theedge of its tank, barking for invitations, duch*esses, the typicalsuccessful man’s wife), she must go up to Lady Bradshaw and say....
But Lady Bradshaw anticipated her.
“We are shockingly late, dear Mrs. Dalloway, we hardly dared to comein,” she said.
And Sir William, who looked very distinguished, with his grey hair andblue eyes, said yes; they had not been able to resist the temptation.He was talking to Richard about that Bill probably, which they wantedto get through the Commons. Why did the sight of him, talking toRichard, curl her up? He looked what he was, a great doctor. A manabsolutely at the head of his profession, very powerful, rather worn.For think what cases came before him--people in the uttermost depths ofmisery; people on the verge of insanity; husbands and wives. He had todecide questions of appalling difficulty. Yet--what she felt was, onewouldn’t like Sir William to see one unhappy. No; not that man.
“How is your son at Eton?” she asked Lady Bradshaw.
He had just missed his eleven, said Lady Bradshaw, because of themumps. His father minded even more than he did, she thought “being,”she said, “nothing but a great boy himself.”
Clarissa looked at Sir William, talking to Richard. He did not looklike a boy--not in the least like a boy. She had once gone with someone to ask his advice. He had been perfectly right; extremely sensible.But Heavens--what a relief to get out to the street again! There wassome poor wretch sobbing, she remembered, in the waiting-room. Butshe did not know what it was--about Sir William; what exactly shedisliked. Only Richard agreed with her, “didn’t like his taste, didn’tlike his smell.” But he was extraordinarily able. They were talkingabout this Bill. Some case, Sir William was mentioning, lowering hisvoice. It had its bearing upon what he was saying about the deferredeffects of shell shock. There must be some provision in the Bill.
Sinking her voice, drawing Mrs. Dalloway into the shelter of a commonfemininity, a common pride in the illustrious qualities of husbands andtheir sad tendency to overwork, Lady Bradshaw (poor goose--one didn’tdislike her) murmured how, “just as we were starting, my husband wascalled up on the telephone, a very sad case. A young man (that is whatSir William is telling Mr. Dalloway) had killed himself. He had beenin the army.” Oh! thought Clarissa, in the middle of my party, here’sdeath, she thought.
She went on, into the little room where the Prime Minister had gonewith Lady Bruton. Perhaps there was somebody there. But there wasnobody. The chairs still kept the impress of the Prime Ministerand Lady Bruton, she turned deferentially, he sitting four-square,authoritatively. They had been talking about India. There was nobody.The party’s splendour fell to the floor, so strange it was to come inalone in her finery.
What business had the Bradshaws to talk of death at her party? Ayoung man had killed himself. And they talked of it at her party--theBradshaws talked of death. He had killed himself--but how? Alwaysher body went through it first, when she was told, suddenly, of anaccident; her dress flamed, her body burnt. He had thrown himself froma window. Up had flashed the ground; through him, blundering, bruising,went the rusty spikes. There he lay with a thud, thud, thud in hisbrain, and then a suffocation of blackness. So she saw it. But why hadhe done it? And the Bradshaws talked of it at her party!
She had once thrown a shilling into the Serpentine, never anythingmore. But he had flung it away. They went on living (she would have togo back; the rooms were still crowded; people kept on coming). They(all day she had been thinking of Bourton, of Peter, of Sally), theywould grow old. A thing there was that mattered; a thing, wreathedabout with chatter, defaced, obscured in her own life, let drop everyday in corruption, lies, chatter. This he had preserved. Death wasdefiance. Death was an attempt to communicate; people feeling theimpossibility of reaching the centre which, mystically, evaded them;closeness drew apart; rapture faded, one was alone. There was anembrace in death.
But this young man who had killed himself--had he plunged holding histreasure? “If it were now to die, ’twere now to be most happy,” she hadsaid to herself once, coming down in white.
Or there were the poets and thinkers. Suppose he had had that passion,and had gone to Sir William Bradshaw, a great doctor yet to herobscurely evil, without sex or lust, extremely polite to women, butcapable of some indescribable outrage--forcing your soul, that wasit--if this young man had gone to him, and Sir William had impressedhim, like that, with his power, might he not then have said (indeed shefelt it now), Life is made intolerable; they make life intolerable, menlike that?
Then (she had felt it only this morning) there was the terror; theoverwhelming incapacity, one’s parents giving it into one’s hands, thislife, to be lived to the end, to be walked with serenely; there was inthe depths of her heart an awful fear. Even now, quite often if Richardhad not been there reading the _Times_, so that she could crouch like abird and gradually revive, send roaring up that immeasurable delight,rubbing stick to stick, one thing with another, she must have perished.But that young man had killed himself.
Somehow it was her disaster--her disgrace. It was her punishment tosee sink and disappear here a man, there a woman, in this profounddarkness, and she forced to stand here in her evening dress. She hadschemed; she had pilfered. She was never wholly admirable. She hadwanted success. Lady Bexborough and the rest of it. And once she hadwalked on the terrace at Bourton.
It was due to Richard; she had never been so happy. Nothing couldbe slow enough; nothing last too long. No pleasure could equal, shethought, straightening the chairs, pushing in one book on the shelf,this having done with the triumphs of youth, lost herself in theprocess of living, to find it, with a shock of delight, as the sunrose, as the day sank. Many a time had she gone, at Bourton when theywere all talking, to look at the sky; or seen it between people’sshoulders at dinner; seen it in London when she could not sleep. Shewalked to the window.
It held, foolish as the idea was, something of her own in it, thiscountry sky, this sky above Westminster. She parted the curtains; shelooked. Oh, but how surprising!--in the room opposite the old ladystared straight at her! She was going to bed. And the sky. It will bea solemn sky, she had thought, it will be a dusky sky, turning awayits cheek in beauty. But there it was--ashen pale, raced over quicklyby tapering vast clouds. It was new to her. The wind must have risen.She was going to bed, in the room opposite. It was fascinating towatch her, moving about, that old lady, crossing the room, coming tothe window. Could she see her? It was fascinating, with people stilllaughing and shouting in the drawing-room, to watch that old woman,quite quietly, going to bed. She pulled the blind now. The clock beganstriking. The young man had killed himself; but she did not pity him;with the clock striking the hour, one, two, three, she did not pityhim, with all this going on. There! the old lady had put out her light!the whole house was dark now with this going on, she repeated, and thewords came to her, Fear no more the heat of the sun. She must go backto them. But what an extraordinary night! She felt somehow very likehim--the young man who had killed himself. She felt glad that he haddone it; thrown it away. The clock was striking. The leaden circlesdissolved in the air. He made her feel the beauty; made her feel thefun. But she must go back. She must assemble. She must find Sally andPeter. And she came in from the little room.
“But where is Clarissa?” said Peter. He was sitting on the sofa withSally. (After all these years he really could not call her “LadyRosseter.”) “Where’s the woman gone to?” he asked. “Where’s Clarissa?”
Sally supposed, and so did Peter for the matter of that, that therewere people of importance, politicians, whom neither of them knewunless by sight in the picture papers, whom Clarissa had to be niceto, had to talk to. She was with them. Yet there was Richard Dallowaynot in the Cabinet. He hadn’t been a success, Sally supposed? Forherself, she scarcely ever read the papers. She sometimes saw his namementioned. But then--well, she lived a very solitary life, in thewilds, Clarissa would say, among great merchants, great manufacturers,men, after all, who did things. She had done things too!
“I have five sons!” she told him.
Lord, Lord, what a change had come over her! the softness ofmotherhood; its egotism too. Last time they met, Peter remembered, hadbeen among the cauliflowers in the moonlight, the leaves “like roughbronze” she had said, with her literary turn; and she had picked arose. She had marched him up and down that awful night, after the sceneby the fountain; he was to catch the midnight train. Heavens, he hadwept!
That was his old trick, opening a pocket-knife, thought Sally, alwaysopening and shutting a knife when he got excited. They had been very,very intimate, she and Peter Walsh, when he was in love with Clarissa,and there was that dreadful, ridiculous scene over Richard Dallowayat lunch. She had called Richard “Wickham.” Why not call Richard“Wickham”? Clarissa had flared up! and indeed they had never seen eachother since, she and Clarissa, not more than half a dozen times perhapsin the last ten years. And Peter Walsh had gone off to India, and shehad heard vaguely that he had made an unhappy marriage, and she didn’tknow whether he had any children, and she couldn’t ask him, for he hadchanged. He was rather shrivelled-looking, but kinder, she felt, andshe had a real affection for him, for he was connected with her youth,and she still had a little Emily Brontë he had given her, and he was towrite, surely? In those days he was to write.
“Have you written?” she asked him, spreading her hand, her firm andshapely hand, on her knee in a way he recalled.
“Not a word!” said Peter Walsh, and she laughed.
She was still attractive, still a personage, Sally Seton. But whowas this Rosseter? He wore two camellias on his wedding day--thatwas all Peter knew of him. “They have myriads of servants, miles ofconservatories,” Clarissa wrote; something like that. Sally owned itwith a shout of laughter.
“Yes, I have ten thousand a year”--whether before the tax was paid orafter, she couldn’t remember, for her husband, “whom you must meet,”she said, “whom you would like,” she said, did all that for her.
And Sally used to be in rags and tatters. She had pawnedher grandmother’s ring which Marie Antoinette had given hergreat-grandfather to come to Bourton.
Oh yes, Sally remembered; she had it still, a ruby ring which MarieAntoinette had given her great-grandfather. She never had a pennyto her name in those days, and going to Bourton always meant somefrightful pinch. But going to Bourton had meant so much to her--hadkept her sane, she believed, so unhappy had she been at home. But thatwas all a thing of the past--all over now, she said. And Mr. Parry wasdead; and Miss Parry was still alive. Never had he had such a shock inhis life! said Peter. He had been quite certain she was dead. And themarriage had been, Sally supposed, a success? And that very handsome,very self-possessed young woman was Elizabeth, over there, by thecurtains, in red.
(She was like a poplar, she was like a river, she was like a hyacinth,Willie Titcomb was thinking. Oh how much nicer to be in the country anddo what she liked! She could hear her poor dog howling, Elizabeth wascertain.) She was not a bit like Clarissa, Peter Walsh said.
“Oh, Clarissa!” said Sally.
What Sally felt was simply this. She had owed Clarissa an enormousamount. They had been friends, not acquaintances, friends, and shestill saw Clarissa all in white going about the house with her handsfull of flowers--to this day tobacco plants made her think of Bourton.But--did Peter understand?--she lacked something. Lacked what was it?She had charm; she had extraordinary charm. But to be frank (and shefelt that Peter was an old friend, a real friend--did absence matter?did distance matter? She had often wanted to write to him, but tornit up, yet felt he understood, for people understand without thingsbeing said, as one realises growing old, and old she was, had beenthat afternoon to see her sons at Eton, where they had the mumps), tobe quite frank then, how could Clarissa have done it?--married RichardDalloway? a sportsman, a man who cared only for dogs. Literally, whenhe came into the room he smelt of the stables. And then all this? Shewaved her hand.
Hugh Whitbread it was, strolling past in his white waistcoat, dim, fat,blind, past everything he looked, except self-esteem and comfort.
“He’s not going to recognise _us_,” said Sally, and really she hadn’tthe courage--so that was Hugh! the admirable Hugh!
“And what does he do?” she asked Peter.
He blacked the King’s boots or counted bottles at Windsor, Peter toldher. Peter kept his sharp tongue still! But Sally must be frank, Petersaid. That kiss now, Hugh’s.
On the lips, she assured him, in the smoking-room one evening. She wentstraight to Clarissa in a rage. Hugh didn’t do such things! Clarissasaid, the admirable Hugh! Hugh’s socks were without exception the mostbeautiful she had ever seen--and now his evening dress. Perfect! Andhad he children?
“Everybody in the room has six sons at Eton,” Peter told her, excepthimself. He, thank God, had none. No sons, no daughters, no wife. Well,he didn’t seem to mind, said Sally. He looked younger, she thought,than any of them.
But it had been a silly thing to do, in many ways, Peter said, to marrylike that; “a perfect goose she was,” he said, but, he said, “we had asplendid time of it,” but how could that be? Sally wondered; what didhe mean? and how odd it was to know him and yet not know a single thingthat had happened to him. And did he say it out of pride? Very likely,for after all it must be galling for him (though he was an oddity,a sort of sprite, not at all an ordinary man), it must be lonely athis age to have no home, nowhere to go to. But he must stay with themfor weeks and weeks. Of course he would; he would love to stay withthem, and that was how it came out. All these years the Dalloways hadnever been once. Time after time they had asked them. Clarissa (forit was Clarissa of course) would not come. For, said Sally, Clarissawas at heart a snob--one had to admit it, a snob. And it was thatthat was between them, she was convinced. Clarissa thought she hadmarried beneath her, her husband being--she was proud of it--a miner’sson. Every penny they had he had earned. As a little boy (her voicetrembled) he had carried great sacks.
(And so she would go on, Peter felt, hour after hour; the miner’s son;people thought she had married beneath her; her five sons; and whatwas the other thing--plants, hydrangeas, syringas, very, very rarehibiscus lilies that never grow north of the Suez Canal, but she, withone gardener in a suburb near Manchester, had beds of them, positivelybeds! Now all that Clarissa had escaped, unmaternal as she was.)
A snob was she? Yes, in many ways. Where was she, all this time? It wasgetting late.
“Yet,” said Sally, “when I heard Clarissa was giving a party, I felt Icouldn’t _not_ come--must see her again (and I’m staying in VictoriaStreet, practically next door). So I just came without an invitation.But,” she whispered, “tell me, do. Who is this?”
It was Mrs. Hilbery, looking for the door. For how late it was getting!And, she murmured, as the night grew later, as people went, one foundold friends; quiet nooks and corners; and the loveliest views. Didthey know, she asked, that they were surrounded by an enchanted garden?Lights and trees and wonderful gleaming lakes and the sky. Just a fewfairy lamps, Clarissa Dalloway had said, in the back garden! But shewas a magician! It was a park.... And she didn’t know their names, butfriends she knew they were, friends without names, songs without words,always the best. But there were so many doors, such unexpected places,she could not find her way.
“Old Mrs. Hilbery,” said Peter; but who was that? that lady standingby the curtain all the evening, without speaking? He knew her face;connected her with Bourton. Surely she used to cut up underclothes atthe large table in the window? Davidson, was that her name?
“Oh, that is Ellie Henderson,” said Sally. Clarissa was really veryhard on her. She was a cousin, very poor. Clarissa _was_ hard on people.
She was rather, said Peter. Yet, said Sally, in her emotional way, witha rush of that enthusiasm which Peter used to love her for, yet dreadeda little now, so effusive she might become--how generous to her friendsClarissa was! and what a rare quality one found it, and how sometimesat night or on Christmas Day, when she counted up her blessings, sheput that friendship first. They were young; that was it. Clarissawas pure-hearted; that was it. Peter would think her sentimental. Soshe was. For she had come to feel that it was the only thing worthsaying--what one felt. Cleverness was silly. One must say simply whatone felt.
“But I do not know,” said Peter Walsh, “what I feel.”
Poor Peter, thought Sally. Why did not Clarissa come and talk to them?That was what he was longing for. She knew it. All the time he wasthinking only of Clarissa, and was fidgeting with his knife.
He had not found life simple, Peter said. His relations with Clarissahad not been simple. It had spoilt his life, he said. (They had been sointimate--he and Sally Seton, it was absurd not to say it.) One couldnot be in love twice, he said. And what could she say? Still, it isbetter to have loved (but he would think her sentimental--he used to beso sharp). He must come and stay with them in Manchester. That is allvery true, he said. All very true. He would love to come and stay withthem, directly he had done what he had to do in London.
And Clarissa had cared for him more than she had ever cared forRichard. Sally was positive of that.
“No, no, no!” said Peter (Sally should not have said that--she went toofar). That good fellow--there he was at the end of the room, holdingforth, the same as ever, dear old Richard. Who was he talking to? Sallyasked, that very distinguished-looking man? Living in the wilds as shedid, she had an insatiable curiosity to know who people were. But Peterdid not know. He did not like his looks, he said, probably a CabinetMinister. Of them all, Richard seemed to him the best, he said--themost disinterested.
“But what has he done?” Sally asked. Public work, she supposed. Andwere they happy together? Sally asked (she herself was extremelyhappy); for, she admitted, she knew nothing about them, only jumped toconclusions, as one does, for what can one know even of the people onelives with every day? she asked. Are we not all prisoners? She had reada wonderful play about a man who scratched on the wall of his cell,and she had felt that was true of life--one scratched on the wall.Despairing of human relationships (people were so difficult), she oftenwent into her garden and got from her flowers a peace which men andwomen never gave her. But no; he did not like cabbages; he preferredhuman beings, Peter said. Indeed, the young are beautiful, Sally said,watching Elizabeth cross the room. How unlike Clarissa at her age!Could he make anything of her? She would not open her lips. Not much,not yet, Peter admitted. She was like a lily, Sally said, a lily by theside of a pool. But Peter did not agree that we know nothing. We knoweverything, he said; at least he did.
But these two, Sally whispered, these two coming now (and really shemust go, if Clarissa did not come soon), this distinguished-lookingman and his rather common-looking wife who had been talking toRichard--what could one know about people like that?
“That they’re damnable humbugs,” said Peter, looking at them casually.He made Sally laugh.
But Sir William Bradshaw stopped at the door to look at a picture. Helooked in the corner for the engraver’s name. His wife looked too. SirWilliam Bradshaw was so interested in art.
When one was young, said Peter, one was too much excited to knowpeople. Now that one was old, fifty-two to be precise (Sally wasfifty-five, in body, she said, but her heart was like a girl’s oftwenty); now that one was mature then, said Peter, one could watch,one could understand, and one did not lose the power of feeling,he said. No, that is true, said Sally. She felt more deeply, morepassionately, every year. It increased, he said, alas, perhaps, but oneshould be glad of it--it went on increasing in his experience. Therewas some one in India. He would like to tell Sally about her. He wouldlike Sally to know her. She was married, he said. She had two smallchildren. They must all come to Manchester, said Sally--he must promisebefore they left.
There’s Elizabeth, he said, she feels not half what we feel, not yet.But, said Sally, watching Elizabeth go to her father, one can see theyare devoted to each other. She could feel it by the way Elizabeth wentto her father.
For her father had been looking at her, as he stood talking to theBradshaws, and he had thought to himself, Who is that lovely girl?And suddenly he realised that it was his Elizabeth, and he had notrecognised her, she looked so lovely in her pink frock! Elizabeth hadfelt him looking at her as she talked to Willie Titcomb. So she wentto him and they stood together, now that the party was almost over,looking at the people going, and the rooms getting emptier and emptier,with things scattered on the floor. Even Ellie Henderson was going,nearly last of all, though no one had spoken to her, but she had wantedto see everything, to tell Edith. And Richard and Elizabeth were ratherglad it was over, but Richard was proud of his daughter. And he had notmeant to tell her, but he could not help telling her. He had looked ather, he said, and he had wondered, Who is that lovely girl? and it washis daughter! That did make her happy. But her poor dog was howling.
“Richard has improved. You are right,” said Sally. “I shall go and talkto him. I shall say good-night. What does the brain matter,” said LadyRosseter, getting up, “compared with the heart?”
“I will come,” said Peter, but he sat on for a moment. What is thisterror? what is this ecstasy? he thought to himself. What is it thatfills me with extraordinary excitement?
It is Clarissa, he said.
For there she was.
THE END
