it was time for Lincoln’s Inn--for Messrs. Hooper and Grateley. Where
should 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--no
hesitation. Sweeping and swerving, accurately, punctually, noiselessly,
there, precisely at the right instant, the motor-car stopped at the
door. The girl, silk-stockinged, feathered, evanescent, but not to him
particularly attractive (for he had had his fling), alighted. Admirable
butlers, tawny chow dogs, halls laid in black and white lozenges with
white blinds blowing, Peter saw through the opened door and approved
of. A splendid achievement in its own way, after all, London; the
season; civilisation. Coming as he did from a respectable Anglo-Indian
family which for at least three generations had administered the
affairs of a continent (it’s strange, he thought, what a sentiment I
have about that, disliking India, and empire, and army as he did),
there were moments when civilisation, even of this sort, seemed dear to
him as a personal possession; moments of pride in England; in butlers;
chow dogs; girls in their security. Ridiculous enough, still there it
is, he thought. And the doctors and men of business and capable women
all going about their business, punctual, alert, robust, seemed to him
wholly admirable, good fellows, to whom one would entrust one’s life,
companions in the art of living, who would see one through. What with
one thing and another, the show was really very tolerable; and he would
sit down in the shade and smoke.
There was Regent’s Park. Yes. As a child he had walked in Regent’s
Park--odd, he thought, how the thought of childhood keeps coming back
to me--the result of seeing Clarissa, perhaps; for women live much more
in 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 a
nice place, a very nice place, but I could never get on with the old
man, he thought. There was quite a scene one night--an argument about
something or other, what, he could not remember. Politics presumably.
Yes, he remembered Regent’s Park; the long straight walk; the little
house where one bought air-balls to the left; an absurd statue with an
inscription somewhere or other. He looked for an empty seat. He did
not want to be bothered (feeling a little drowsy as he did) by people
asking him the time. An elderly grey nurse, with a baby asleep in its
perambulator--that was the best he could do for himself; sit down at
the far end of the seat by that nurse.
She’s a queer-looking girl, he thought, suddenly remembering Elizabeth
as she came into the room and stood by her mother. Grown big; quite
grown-up, not exactly pretty; handsome rather; and she can’t be more
than eighteen. Probably she doesn’t get on with Clarissa. “There’s
my Elizabeth”--that sort of thing--why not “Here’s Elizabeth”
simply?--trying to make out, like most mothers, that things are what
they’re not. She trusts to her charm too much, he thought. She overdoes
it.
The rich benignant cigar smoke eddied coolly down his throat; he
puffed it out again in rings which breasted the air bravely for a
moment; blue, circular--I shall try and get a word alone with Elizabeth
to-night, he thought--then began to wobble into hour-glass shapes and
taper away; odd shapes they take, he thought. Suddenly he closed his
eyes, raised his hand with an effort, and threw away the heavy end of
his cigar. A great brush swept smooth across his mind, sweeping across
it moving branches, children’s voices, the shuffle of feet, and people
passing, and humming traffic, rising and falling traffic. Down, down
he sank into the plumes and feathers of sleep, sank, and was muffled
over.
* * * * *
The grey nurse resumed her knitting as Peter Walsh, on the hot seat
beside her, began snoring. In her grey dress, moving her hands
indefatigably yet quietly, she seemed like the champion of the rights
of sleepers, like one of those spectral presences which rise in
twilight in woods made of sky and branches. The solitary traveller,
haunter of lanes, disturber of ferns, and devastator of great hemlock
plants, looking up, suddenly sees the giant figure at the end of the
ride.
By conviction an atheist perhaps, he is taken by surprise with moments
of extraordinary exaltation. Nothing exists outside us except a state
of mind, he thinks; a desire for solace, for relief, for something
outside these miserable pigmies, these feeble, these ugly, these craven
men and women. But if he can conceive of her, then in some sort she
exists, he thinks, and advancing down the path with his eyes upon sky
and branches he rapidly endows them with womanhood; sees with amazement
how grave they become; how majestically, as the breeze stirs them, they
dispense with a dark flutter of the leaves charity, comprehension,
absolution, and then, flinging themselves suddenly aloft, confound the
piety of their aspect with a wild carouse.
Such are the visions which proffer great cornucopias full of fruit to
the solitary traveller, or murmur in his ear like sirens lolloping
away on the green sea waves, or are dashed in his face like bunches of
roses, or rise to the surface like pale faces which fishermen flounder
through floods to embrace.
Such are the visions which ceaselessly float up, pace beside, put their
faces in front of, the actual thing; often overpowering the solitary
traveller and taking away from him the sense of the earth, the wish to
return, and giving him for substitute a general peace, as if (so he
thinks as he advances down the forest ride) all this fever of living
were simplicity itself; and myriads of things merged in one thing;
and this figure, made of sky and branches as it is, had risen from
the troubled sea (he is elderly, past fifty now) as a shape might be
sucked up out of the waves to shower down from her magnificent hands
compassion, comprehension, absolution. So, he thinks, may I never go
back to the lamplight; to the sitting-room; never finish my book; never
knock out my pipe; never ring for Mrs. Turner to clear away; rather
let me walk straight on to this great figure, who will, with a toss of
her head, mount me on her streamers and let me blow to nothingness with
the 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 for
his return, with hands raised, with white apron blowing, is an elderly
woman 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 the
mother whose sons have been killed in the battles of the world. So,
as the solitary traveller advances down the village street where
the women stand knitting and the men dig in the garden, the evening
seems ominous; the figures still; as if some august fate, known to
them, awaited without fear, were about to sweep them into complete
annihilation.
Indoors among ordinary things, the cupboard, the table, the window-sill
with its geraniums, suddenly the outline of the landlady, bending to
remove the cloth, becomes soft with light, an adorable emblem which
only the recollection of cold human contacts forbids us to embrace. She
takes 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 the
soul.”
“Lord, Lord!” he said to himself out loud, stretching and opening his
eyes. “The death of the soul.” The words attached themselves to some
scene, to some room, to some past he had been dreaming of. It became
clearer; the scene, the room, the past he had been dreaming of.
It was at Bourton that summer, early in the ’nineties, when he was so
passionately in love with Clarissa. There were a great many people
there, laughing and talking, sitting round a table after tea and the
room was bathed in yellow light and full of cigarette smoke. They
were talking about a man who had married his housemaid, one of the
neighbouring squires, he had forgotten his name. He had married his
housemaid, and she had been brought to Bourton to call--an awful visit
it had been. She was absurdly over-dressed, “like a cockatoo,” Clarissa
had said, imitating her, and she never stopped talking. On and on she
went, on and on. Clarissa imitated her. Then somebody said--Sally
Seton it was--did it make any real difference to one’s feelings to
know 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 Clarissa
now, turning bright pink; somehow contracting; and saying, “Oh, I shall
never be able to speak to her again!” Whereupon the whole party sitting
round the tea-table seemed to wobble. It was very uncomfortable.
He hadn’t blamed her for minding the fact, since in those days a
girl brought up as she was, knew nothing, but it was her manner that
annoyed him; timid; hard; something arrogant; unimaginative; prudish.
“The death of the soul.” He had said that instinctively, ticketing the
moment as he used to do--the death of her soul.
Every one wobbled; every one seemed to bow, as she spoke, and then to
stand up different. He could see Sally Seton, like a child who has
been in mischief, leaning forward, rather flushed, wanting to talk,
but afraid, and Clarissa did frighten people. (She was Clarissa’s
greatest friend, always about the place, totally unlike her, an
attractive creature, handsome, dark, with the reputation in those days
of great daring and he used to give her cigars, which she smoked in
her bedroom. She had either been engaged to somebody or quarrelled
with her family and old Parry disliked them both equally, which was a
great bond.) Then Clarissa, still with an air of being offended with
them all, got up, made some excuse, and went off, alone. As she opened
the door, in came that great shaggy dog which ran after sheep. She
flung herself upon him, went into raptures. It was as if she said to
Peter--it was all aimed at him, he knew--“I know you thought me absurd
about that woman just now; but see how extraordinarily sympathetic I
am; see how I love my Rob!”
They had always this queer power of communicating without words. She
knew directly he criticised her. Then she would do something quite
obvious to defend herself, like this fuss with the dog--but it never
took him in, he always saw through Clarissa. Not that he said anything,
of course; just sat looking glum. It was the way their quarrels often
began.
She shut the door. At once he became extremely depressed. It all
seemed useless--going on being in love; going on quarrelling; going
on making it up, and he wandered off alone, among outhouses, stables,
looking at the horses. (The place was quite a humble one; the
Parrys were never very well off; but there were always grooms and
stable-boys about--Clarissa loved riding--and an old coachman--what
was his name?--an old nurse, old Moody, old Goody, some such name they
called her, whom one was taken to visit in a little room with lots of
photographs, lots of bird-cages.)
It was an awful evening! He grew more and more gloomy, not about that
only; about everything. And he couldn’t see her; couldn’t explain to
her; couldn’t have it out. There were always people about--she’d go on
as if nothing had happened. That was the devilish part of her--this
coldness, this woodenness, something very profound in her, which he had
felt again this morning talking to her; an impenetrability. Yet Heaven
knows he loved her. She had some queer power of fiddling on one’s
nerves, turning one’s nerves to fiddle-strings, yes.
He had gone in to dinner rather late, from some idiotic idea of making
himself felt, and had sat down by old Miss Parry--Aunt Helena--Mr.
Parry’s sister, who was supposed to preside. There she sat in her
white Cashmere shawl, with her head against the window--a formidable
old lady, but kind to him, for he had found her some rare flower, and
she was a great botanist, marching off in thick boots with a black
collecting-box slung between her shoulders. He sat down beside her,
and couldn’t speak. Everything seemed to race past him; he just sat
there, eating. And then half-way through dinner he made himself look
across at Clarissa for the first time. She was talking to a young man
on her right. He had a sudden revelation. “She will marry that man,” he
said to himself. He didn’t even know his name.
For of course it was that afternoon, that very afternoon, that Dalloway
had come over; and Clarissa called him “Wickham”; that was the
beginning of it all. Somebody had brought him over; and Clarissa got
his name wrong. She introduced him to everybody as Wickham. At last
he said “My name is Dalloway!”--that was his first view of Richard--a
fair young man, rather awkward, sitting on a deck-chair, and blurting
out “My name is Dalloway!” Sally got hold of it; always after that she
called him “My name is Dalloway!”
He was a prey to revelations at that time. This one--that she would
marry Dalloway--was blinding--overwhelming at the moment. There was a
sort 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 the
drawing-room. Clarissa came up, with her perfect manners, like a real
hostess, and wanted to introduce him to some one--spoke as if they had
never met before, which enraged him. Yet even then he admired her for
it. He admired her courage; her social instinct; he admired her power
of carrying things through. “The perfect hostess,” he said to her,
whereupon she winced all over. But he meant her to feel it. He would
have done anything to hurt her after seeing her with Dalloway. So she
left him. And he had a feeling that they were all gathered together
in a conspiracy against him--laughing and talking--behind his back.
There he stood by Miss Parry’s chair as though he had been cut out
of wood, he talking about wild flowers. Never, never had he suffered
so infernally! He must have forgotten even to pretend to listen; at
last he woke up; he saw Miss Parry looking rather disturbed, rather
indignant, with her prominent eyes fixed. He almost cried out that he
couldn’t attend because he was in Hell! People began going out of the
room. He heard them talking about fetching cloaks; about its being
cold on the water, and so on. They were going boating on the lake by
moonlight--one of Sally’s mad ideas. He could hear her describing the
moon. And they all went out. He was left quite alone.
“Don’t you want to go with them?” said Aunt Helena--old Miss
Parry!--she had guessed. And he turned round and there was Clarissa
again. She had come back to fetch him. He was overcome by her
generosity--her goodness.
“Come along,” she said. “They’re waiting.”
He had never felt so happy in the whole of his life! Without a word
they made it up. They walked down to the lake. He had twenty minutes of
perfect happiness. Her voice, her laugh, her dress (something floating,
white, crimson), her spirit, her adventurousness; she made them all
disembark and explore the island; she startled a hen; she laughed; she
sang. And all the time, he knew perfectly well, Dalloway was falling
in love with her; she was falling in love with Dalloway; but it didn’t
seem to matter. Nothing mattered. They sat on the ground and talked--he
and Clarissa. They went in and out of each other’s minds without any
effort. And then in a second it was over. He said to himself as they
were getting into the boat, “She will marry that man,” dully, without
any resentment; but it was an obvious thing. Dalloway would marry
Clarissa.
Dalloway rowed them in. He said nothing. But somehow as they watched
him start, jumping on to his bicycle to ride twenty miles through the
woods, 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 see
it now) were absurd. He asked impossible things. He made terrible
scenes. She would have accepted him still, perhaps, if he had been less
absurd. Sally thought so. She wrote him all that summer long letters;
how they had talked of him; how she had praised him, how Clarissa
burst into tears! It was an extraordinary summer--all letters, scenes,
telegrams--arriving at Bourton early in the morning, hanging about till
the servants were up; appalling _tête-à-têtes_ with old Mr. Parry at
breakfast; Aunt Helena formidable but kind; Sally sweeping him off for
talks in the vegetable garden; Clarissa in bed with headaches.
The final scene, the terrible scene which he believed had mattered
more than anything in the whole of his life (it might be an
exaggeration--but still so it did seem now) happened at three o’clock
in the afternoon of a very hot day. It was a trifle that led up to
it--Sally at lunch saying something about Dalloway, and calling him “My
name is Dalloway”; whereupon Clarissa suddenly stiffened, coloured,
in a way she had, and rapped out sharply, “We’ve had enough of that
feeble joke.” That was all; but for him it was precisely as if she had
said, “I’m only amusing myself with you; I’ve an understanding with
Richard Dalloway.” So he took it. He had not slept for nights. “It’s
got to be finished one way or the other,” he said to himself. He sent a
note 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 the
house, with shrubs and trees all round it. There she came, even before
the time, and they stood with the fountain between them, the spout (it
was broken) dribbling water incessantly. How sights fix themselves upon
the mind! For example, the vivid green moss.
She did not move. “Tell me the truth, tell me the truth,” he kept on
saying. He felt as if his forehead would burst. She seemed contracted,
petrified. She did not move. “Tell me the truth,” he repeated, when
suddenly that old man Breitkopf popped his head in carrying the
_Times_; stared at them; gaped; and went away. They neither of them
moved. “Tell me the truth,” he repeated. He felt that he was grinding
against something physically hard; she was unyielding. She was like
iron, like flint, rigid up the backbone. And when she said, “It’s no
use. It’s no use. This is the end”--after he had spoken for hours, it
seemed, with the tears running down his cheeks--it was as if she had
hit 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 had
a way of adding day to day. Still, he thought, yawning and beginning
to take notice--Regent’s Park had changed very little since he
was a boy, except for the squirrels--still, presumably there were
compensations--when little Elise Mitchell, who had been picking up
pebbles to add to the pebble collection which she and her brother were
making on the nursery mantelpiece, plumped her handful down on the
nurse’s knee and scudded off again full tilt into a lady’s legs. Peter
Walsh laughed out.
But Lucrezia Warren Smith was saying to herself, It’s wicked; why
should 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, who
wasn’t Septimus any longer, to say hard, cruel, wicked things, to talk
to himself, to talk to a dead man, on the seat over there; when the
child 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; she
had been happy; she had had a beautiful home, and there her sisters
lived 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 the
kind-looking man gave her his watch to blow open to comfort her--but
why 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 this
malignant torturer was her lot. But why? She was like a bird sheltering
under the thin hollow of a leaf, who blinks at the sun when the leaf
moves; starts at the crack of a dry twig. She was exposed; she was
surrounded 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 Septimus
since 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 the
green chair under the tree, talking to himself, or to that dead man
Evans, whom she had only seen once for a moment in the shop. He had
seemed a nice quiet man; a great friend of Septimus’s, and he had been
killed in the War. But such things happen to every one. Every one has
friends who were killed in the War. Every one gives up something when
they marry. She had given up her home. She had come to live here, in
this 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. Filmer
thought it odd. He saw things too--he had seen an old woman’s head
in the middle of a fern. Yet he could be happy when he chose. They
went 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, like
floating lamps he said, and talked and chattered and laughed, making
up stories. Suddenly he said, “Now we will kill ourselves,” when they
were standing by the river, and he looked at it with a look which she
had seen in his eyes when a train went by, or an omnibus--a look as if
something fascinated him; and she felt he was going from her and she
caught him by the arm. But going home he was perfectly quiet--perfectly
reasonable. He would argue with her about killing themselves; and
explain how wicked people were; how he could see them making up lies as
they passed in the street. He knew all their thoughts, he said; he knew
everything. He knew the meaning of the world, he said.
Then when they got back he could hardly walk. He lay on the sofa and
made her hold his hand to prevent him from falling down, down, he
cried, into the flames! and saw faces laughing at him, calling him
horrible disgusting names, from the walls, and hands pointing round
the screen. Yet they were quite alone. But he began to talk aloud,
answering people, arguing, laughing, crying, getting very excited and
making 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 matter
with him. What then had happened--why had he gone, then, why, when she
sat by him, did he start, frown at her, move away, and point at her
hand, take her hand, look at it terrified?
Was it that she had taken off her wedding ring? “My hand has grown so
thin,” she said. “I have put it in my purse,” she told him.