going to say?
If she worried about these parties he would not let her give them. Did
she 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 he
were about to say something; and she wondered what? Why? There were the
roses.
“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 and
wife a gulf; and that one must respect, thought Clarissa, watching
him open the door; for one would not part with it oneself, or take
it, against his will, from one’s husband, without losing one’s
independence, 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 after
luncheon” to the end of time, because a doctor had ordered it once.
It was like him to take what doctors said literally; part of his
adorable, divine simplicity, which no one had to the same extent;
which made him go and do the thing while she and Peter frittered
their time away bickering. He was already half-way to the House of
Commons, to his Armenians, his Albanians, having settled her on the
sofa, looking at his roses. And people would say, “Clarissa Dalloway
is spoilt.” She cared much more for her roses than for the Armenians.
Hunted out of existence, maimed, frozen, the victims of cruelty and
injustice (she had heard Richard say so over and over again)--no, she
could feel nothing for the Albanians, or was it the Armenians? but she
loved her roses (didn’t that help the Armenians?)--the only flowers
she could bear to see cut. But Richard was already at the House of
Commons; at his Committee, having settled all her difficulties. But
no; alas, that was not true. He did not see the reasons against asking
Ellie Henderson. She would do it, of course, as he wished it. Since
he had brought the pillows, she would lie down.... But--but--why did
she suddenly feel, for no reason that she could discover, desperately
unhappy? As a person who has dropped some grain of pearl or diamond
into the grass and parts the tall blades very carefully, this way and
that, and searches here and there vainly, and at last spies it there
at the roots, so she went through one thing and another; no, it was not
Sally Seton saying that Richard would never be in the Cabinet because
he had a second-class brain (it came back to her); no, she did not
mind that; nor was it to do with Elizabeth either and Doris Kilman;
those were facts. It was a feeling, some unpleasant feeling, earlier
in the day perhaps; something that Peter had said, combined with some
depression of her own, in her bedroom, taking off her hat; and what
Richard had said had added to it, but what had he said? There were his
roses. Her parties! That was it! Her parties! Both of them criticised
her very unfairly, laughed at her very unjustly, for her parties. That
was it! That was it!
Well, how was she going to defend herself? Now that she knew what it
was, she felt perfectly happy. They thought, or Peter at any rate
thought, that she enjoyed imposing herself; liked to have famous people
about her; great names; was simply a snob in short. Well, Peter might
think so. Richard merely thought it foolish of her to like excitement
when 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 presence
of this thing which she felt to be so obvious became physically
existent; 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 she
could say was (and nobody could be expected to understand): They’re an
offering; which sounded horribly vague. But who was Peter to make out
that life was all plain sailing?--Peter always in love, always in love
with the wrong woman? What’s your love? she might say to him. And she
knew his answer; how it is the most important thing in the world and no
woman possibly understood it. Very well. But could any man understand
what she meant either? about life? She could not imagine Peter or
Richard taking the trouble to give a party for no reason whatever.
But to go deeper, beneath what people said (and these judgements, how
superficial, how fragmentary they are!) in her own mind now, what did
it 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; and
somebody else, say, in Mayfair. And she felt quite continuously a sense
of their existence; and she felt what a waste; and she felt what a
pity; and she felt if only they could be brought together; so she did
it. 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; loved
success; 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 death
was!--that it must end; and no one in the whole world would know how
she had loved it all; how, every instant....
The door opened. Elizabeth knew that her mother was resting. She came
in very quietly. She stood perfectly still. Was it that some Mongol
had been wrecked on the coast of Norfolk (as Mrs. Hilbery said), had
mixed with the Dalloway ladies, perhaps, a hundred years ago? For the
Dalloways, in general, were fair-haired; blue-eyed; Elizabeth, on
the contrary, was dark; had Chinese eyes in a pale face; an Oriental
mystery; was gentle, considerate, still. As a child, she had had a
perfect sense of humour; but now at seventeen, why, Clarissa could not
in the least understand, she had become very serious; like a hyacinth,
sheathed in glossy green, with buds just tinted, a hyacinth which has
had 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 in
her mackintosh, listening to whatever they said.
Yes, Miss Kilman stood on the landing, and wore a mackintosh; but had
her reasons. First, it was cheap; second, she was over forty; and did
not, after all, dress to please. She was poor, moreover; degradingly
poor. Otherwise she would not be taking jobs from people like the
Dalloways; from rich people, who liked to be kind. Mr. Dalloway, to
do him justice, had been kind. But Mrs. Dalloway had not. She had
been merely condescending. She came from the most worthless of all
classes--the rich, with a smattering of culture. They had expensive
things everywhere; pictures, carpets, lots of servants. She considered
that she had a perfect right to anything that the Dalloways did for her.
She had been cheated. Yes, the word was no exaggeration, for surely
a girl has a right to some kind of happiness? And she had never been
happy, what with being so clumsy and so poor. And then, just as she
might have had a chance at Miss Dolby’s school, the war came; and she
had never been able to tell lies. Miss Dolby thought she would be
happier with people who shared her views about the Germans. She had had
to go. It was true that the family was of German origin; spelt the name
Kiehlman in the eighteenth century; but her brother had been killed.
They turned her out because she would not pretend that the Germans were
all villains--when she had German friends, when the only happy days
of her life had been spent in Germany! And after all, she could read
history. She had had to take whatever she could get. Mr. Dalloway had
come across her working for the Friends. He had allowed her (and that
was really generous of him) to teach his daughter history. Also she
did a little Extension lecturing and so on. Then Our Lord had come to
her (and here she always bowed her head). She had seen the light two
years and three months ago. Now she did not envy women like Clarissa
Dalloway; she pitied them.
She pitied and despised them from the bottom of her heart, as she stood
on the soft carpet, looking at the old engraving of a little girl
with a muff. With all this luxury going on, what hope was there for
a better state of things? Instead of lying on a sofa--“My mother is
resting,” Elizabeth had said--she should have been in a factory; behind
a counter; Mrs. Dalloway and all the other fine ladies!
Bitter and burning, Miss Kilman had turned into a church two years
three months ago. She had heard the Rev. Edward Whittaker preach; the
boys sing; had seen the solemn lights descend, and whether it was the
music, or the voices (she herself when alone in the evening found
comfort in a violin; but the sound was excruciating; she had no ear),
the hot and turbulent feelings which boiled and surged in her had been
assuaged as she sat there, and she had wept copiously, and gone to call
on Mr. Whittaker at his private house in Kensington. It was the hand of
God, he said. The Lord had shown her the way. So now, whenever the hot
and painful feelings boiled within her, this hatred of Mrs. Dalloway,
this grudge against the world, she thought of God. She thought of
Mr. Whittaker. Rage was succeeded by calm. A sweet savour filled her
veins, her lips parted, and, standing formidable upon the landing in
her 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 Miss
Kilman and her mother hated each other. She could not bear to see them
together. She ran upstairs to find her gloves.
But Miss Kilman did not hate Mrs. Dalloway. Turning her large
gooseberry-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; who
have trifled your life away! And there rose in her an overmastering
desire to overcome her; to unmask her. If she could have felled her
it would have eased her. But it was not the body; it was the soul and
its mockery that she wished to subdue; make feel her mastery. If only
she could make her weep; could ruin her; humiliate her; bring her to
her knees crying, You are right! But this was God’s will, not Miss
Kilman’s. It was to be a religious victory. So she glared; so she
glowered.
Clarissa was really shocked. This a Christian--this woman! This woman
had taken her daughter from her! She in touch with invisible presences!
Heavy, ugly, commonplace, without kindness or grace, she know the
meaning of life!
“You are taking Elizabeth to the Stores?” Mrs. Dalloway said.
Miss Kilman said she was. They stood there. Miss Kilman was not going
to make herself agreeable. She had always earned her living. Her
knowledge of modern history was thorough in the extreme. She did out of
her meagre income set aside so much for causes she believed in; whereas
this woman did nothing, believed nothing; brought up her daughter--but
here was Elizabeth, rather out of breath, the beautiful girl.
So they were going to the Stores. Odd it was, as Miss Kilman stood
there (and stand she did, with the power and taciturnity of some
prehistoric monster armoured for primeval warfare), how, second by
second, the idea of her diminished, how hatred (which was for ideas,
not people) crumbled, how she lost her malignity, her size, became
second by second merely Miss Kilman, in a mackintosh, whom Heaven knows
Clarissa 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 was
taking her daughter from her, Clarissa leant over the bannisters and
cried out, “Remember the party! Remember our party to-night!”
But Elizabeth had already opened the front door; there was a van
passing; 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 now
that the body of Miss Kilman was not before her, it overwhelmed
her--the idea. The cruelest things in the world, she thought, seeing
them clumsy, hot, domineering, hypocritical, eavesdropping, jealous,
infinitely cruel and unscrupulous, dressed in a mackintosh coat, on
the landing; love and religion. Had she ever tried to convert any one
herself? Did she not wish everybody merely to be themselves? And she
watched out of the window the old lady opposite climbing upstairs. Let
her climb upstairs if she wanted to; let her stop; then let her, as
Clarissa had often seen her, gain her bedroom, part her curtains, and
disappear again into the background. Somehow one respected that--that
old woman looking out of the window, quite unconscious that she was
being watched. There was something solemn in it--but love and religion
would destroy that, whatever it was, the privacy of the soul. The
odious Kilman would destroy it. Yet it was a sight that made her want
to cry.
Love destroyed too. Everything that was fine, everything that was true
went. Take Peter Walsh now. There was a man, charming, clever, with
ideas about everything. If you wanted to know about Pope, say, or
Addison, or just to talk nonsense, what people were like, what things
meant, 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 after
all these years, and what did he talk about? Himself. Horrible passion!
she thought. Degrading passion! she thought, thinking of Kilman and her
Elizabeth 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 the
window, as if she were attached to that sound, that string. Gigantic as
it was, it had something to do with her. Down, down, into the midst
of ordinary things the finger fell making the moment solemn. She was
forced, so Clarissa imagined, by that sound, to move, to go--but where?
Clarissa tried to follow her as she turned and disappeared, and could
still just see her white cap moving at the back of the bedroom. She was
still there moving about at the other end of the room. Why creeds and
prayers and mackintoshes? when, thought Clarissa, that’s the miracle,
that’s the mystery; that old lady, she meant, whom she could see going
from chest of drawers to dressing-table. She could still see her. And
the supreme mystery which Kilman might say she had solved, or Peter
might say he had solved, but Clarissa didn’t believe either of them had
the 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 two
minutes after Big Ben, came shuffling in with its lap full of odds and
ends, which it dumped down as if Big Ben were all very well with his
majesty laying down the law, so solemn, so just, but she must remember
all sorts of little things besides--Mrs. Marsham, Ellie Henderson,
glasses for ices--all sorts of little things came flooding and lapping
and dancing in on the wake of that solemn stroke which lay flat like
a bar of gold on the sea. Mrs. Marsham, Ellie Henderson, glasses for
ices. She must telephone now at once.
Volubly, troublously, the late clock sounded, coming in on the wake
of Big Ben, with its lap full of trifles. Beaten up, broken up by the
assault of carriages, the brutality of vans, the eager advance of
myriads of angular men, of flaunting women, the domes and spires of
offices and hospitals, the last relics of this lap full of odds and
ends seemed to break, like the spray of an exhausted wave, upon the
body 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 insulted
her. That she expected. But she had not triumphed; she had not mastered
the flesh. Ugly, clumsy, Clarissa Dalloway had laughed at her for being
that; and had revived the fleshly desires, for she minded looking as
she did beside Clarissa. Nor could she talk as she did. But why wish to
resemble her? Why? She despised Mrs. Dalloway from the bottom of her
heart. She was not serious. She was not good. Her life was a tissue of
vanity and deceit. Yet Doris Kilman had been overcome. She had, as a
matter of fact, very nearly burst into tears when Clarissa Dalloway
laughed at her. “It is the flesh, it is the flesh,” she muttered (it
being her habit to talk aloud) trying to subdue this turbulent and
painful feeling as she walked down Victoria Street. She prayed to God.
She could not help being ugly; she could not afford to buy pretty
clothes. Clarissa Dalloway had laughed--but she would concentrate her
mind upon something else until she had reached the pillar-box. At any
rate she had got Elizabeth. But she would think of something else; she
would 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 world
which had scorned her, sneered at her, cast her off, beginning with
this indignity--the infliction of her unlovable body which people could
not bear to see. Do her hair as she might, her forehead remained like
an 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 seemed
to her that, except for Elizabeth, her food was all that she lived
for; her comforts; her dinner, her tea; her hot-water bottle at night.
But one must fight; vanquish; have faith in God. Mr. Whittaker had
said 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 to
suffer when other women, like Clarissa Dalloway, escaped? Knowledge
comes through suffering, said Mr. Whittaker.
She had passed the pillar-box, and Elizabeth had turned into the cool
brown tobacco department of the Army and Navy Stores while she was
still muttering to herself what Mr. Whittaker had said about knowledge
coming 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 her
abstraction 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 girl
serving thought her mad.
Elizabeth rather wondered, as they did up the parcel, what Miss Kilman
was 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 was
her way of eating, eating with intensity, then looking, again and
again, at a plate of sugared cakes on the table next them; then, when
a lady and a child sat down and the child took the cake, could Miss
Kilman really mind it? Yes, Miss Kilman did mind it. She had wanted
that cake--the pink one. The pleasure of eating was almost the only
pure 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 (she
was fond of such metaphors), jolted by every pebble, so she would say
staying on after the lesson standing by the fireplace with her bag of
books, her “satchel,” she called it, on a Tuesday morning, after the
lesson was over. And she talked too about the war. After all, there
were people who did not think the English invariably right. There
were books. There were meetings. There were other points of view.
Would Elizabeth like to come with her to listen to So-and-so (a most
extraordinary looking old man)? Then Miss Kilman took her to some
church in Kensington and they had tea with a clergyman. She had lent
her books. Law, medicine, politics, all professions are open to women
of your generation, said Miss Kilman. But for herself, her career was
absolutely ruined and was it her fault? Good gracious, said Elizabeth,
no.
And her mother would come calling to say that a hamper had come from
Bourton and would Miss Kilman like some flowers? To Miss Kilman she
was always very, very nice, but Miss Kilman squashed the flowers all
in a bunch, and hadn’t any small talk, and what interested Miss Kilman
bored her mother, and Miss Kilman and she were terrible together; and
Miss Kilman swelled and looked very plain. But then Miss Kilman was
frightfully clever. Elizabeth had never thought about the poor. They
lived with everything they wanted,--her mother had breakfast in bed
every day; Lucy carried it up; and she liked old women because they
were Duchesses, and being descended from some Lord. But Miss Kilman
said (one of those Tuesday mornings when the lesson was over), “My
grandfather kept an oil and colour shop in Kensington.” Miss Kilman
made one feel so small.
Miss Kilman took another cup of tea. Elizabeth, with her oriental
bearing, her inscrutable mystery, sat perfectly upright; no, she did
not want anything more. She looked for her gloves--her white gloves.
They were under the table. Ah, but she must not go! Miss Kilman could
not let her go! this youth, that was so beautiful, this girl, whom she
genuinely loved! Her large hand opened and shut on the table.
But perhaps it was a little flat somehow, Elizabeth felt. And really
she 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. Elizabeth
supposed she was going; her mother wanted her to go. She must not let
parties absorb her, Miss Kilman said, fingering the last two inches of
a chocolate éclair.
She did not much like parties, Elizabeth said. Miss Kilman opened her
mouth, slightly projected her chin, and swallowed down the last inches
of the chocolate éclair, then wiped her fingers, and washed the tea
round 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 her
hers absolutely and forever and then die; that was all she wanted.
But to sit here, unable to think of anything to say; to see Elizabeth
turning 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 from
going. “People don’t ask me to parties”--and she knew as she said it
that it was this egotism that was her undoing; Mr. Whittaker had warned
her; but she could not help it. She had suffered so horribly. “Why
should they ask me?” she said. “I’m plain, I’m unhappy.” She knew it
was idiotic. But it was all those people passing--people with parcels
who 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 “your
mother” but no, she could not, not to Elizabeth. “I pity other people,”
she said, “more.”