unknown purpose, and stands there longing to gallop away, Elizabeth
Dalloway sat silent. Was Miss Kilman going to say anything more?
“Don’t quite forget me,” said Doris Kilman; her voice quivered. Right
away 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 the
desk, 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 had
gone.
So she sat. She got up, blundered off among the little tables, rocking
slightly from side to side, and somebody came after her with her
petticoat, and she lost her way, and was hemmed in by trunks specially
prepared for taking to India; next got among the accouchement sets, and
baby linen; through all the commodities of the world, perishable and
permanent, hams, drugs, flowers, stationery, variously smelling, now
sweet, now sour she lurched; saw herself thus lurching with her hat
askew, very red in the face, full length in a looking-glass; and at
last came out into the street.
The tower of Westminster Cathedral rose in front of her, the habitation
of God. In the midst of the traffic, there was the habitation of
God. Doggedly she set off with her parcel to that other sanctuary,
the Abbey, where, raising her hands in a tent before her face, she
sat beside those driven into shelter too; the variously assorted
worshippers, now divested of social rank, almost of sex, as they raised
their hands before their faces; but once they removed them, instantly
reverent, middle class, English men and women, some of them desirous of
seeing 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 the
strollers, and still, as people gazed round and shuffled past the tomb
of the Unknown Warrior, still she barred her eyes with her fingers and
tried in this double darkness, for the light in the Abbey was bodiless,
to aspire above the vanities, the desires, the commodities, to rid
herself both of hatred and of love. Her hands twitched. She seemed
to struggle. Yet to others God was accessible and the path to Him
smooth. Mr. Fletcher, retired, of the Treasury, Mrs. Gorham, widow of
the famous K.C., approached Him simply, and having done their praying,
leant back, enjoyed the music (the organ pealed sweetly), and saw Miss
Kilman at the end of the row, praying, praying, and, being still on the
threshold of their underworld, thought of her sympathetically as a soul
haunting 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 neat
as a new pin, could not help being a little distressed by the poor
lady’s disorder; her hair down; her parcel on the floor. She did not
at once let him pass. But, as he stood gazing about him, at the white
marbles, grey window panes, and accumulated treasures (for he was
extremely proud of the Abbey), her largeness, robustness, and power as
she sat there shifting her knees from time to time (it was so rough the
approach to her God--so tough her desires) impressed him, as they had
impressed Mrs. Dalloway (she could not get the thought of her out of
her mind that afternoon), the Rev. Edward Whittaker, and Elizabeth too.
And Elizabeth waited in Victoria Street for an omnibus. It was so nice
to 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 poplar
trees, early dawn, hyacinths, fawns, running water, and garden lilies;
and it made her life a burden to her, for she so much preferred being
left alone to do what she liked in the country, but they would compare
her to lilies, and she had to go to parties, and London was so dreary
compared with being alone in the country with her father and the dogs.
Buses swooped, settled, were off--garish caravans, glistening with
red and yellow varnish. But which should she get on to? She had no
preferences. Of course, she would not push her way. She inclined to be
passive. It was expression she needed, but her eyes were fine, Chinese,
oriental, and, as her mother said, with such nice shoulders and holding
herself so straight, she was always charming to look at; and lately,
in the evening especially, when she was interested, for she never
seemed excited, she looked almost beautiful, very stately, very serene.
What could she be thinking? Every man fell in love with her, and she
was really awfully bored. For it was beginning. Her mother could see
that--the compliments were beginning. That she did not care more about
it--for instance for her clothes--sometimes worried Clarissa, but
perhaps it was as well with all those puppies and guinea pigs about
having distemper, and it gave her a charm. And now there was this odd
friendship with Miss Kilman. Well, thought Clarissa about three o’clock
in the morning, reading Baron Marbot for she could not sleep, it proves
she has a heart.
Suddenly Elizabeth stepped forward and most competently boarded the
omnibus, in front of everybody. She took a seat on top. The impetuous
creature--a pirate--started forward, sprang away; she had to hold the
rail to steady herself, for a pirate it was, reckless, unscrupulous,
bearing down ruthlessly, circumventing dangerously, boldly snatching
a passenger, or ignoring a passenger, squeezing eel-like and arrogant
in between, and then rushing insolently all sails spread up Whitehall.
And did Elizabeth give one thought to poor Miss Kilman who loved her
without jealousy, to whom she had been a fawn in the open, a moon in a
glade? 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 was
like riding, to be rushing up Whitehall; and to each movement of the
omnibus the beautiful body in the fawn-coloured coat responded freely
like a rider, like the figurehead of a ship, for the breeze slightly
disarrayed her; the heat gave her cheeks the pallor of white painted
wood; 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 so
difficult. And was she right? If it was being on committees and giving
up hours and hours every day (she hardly ever saw him in London) that
helped the poor, her father did that, goodness knows,--if that was what
Miss Kilman meant about being a Christian; but it was so difficult to
say. Oh, she would like to go a little further. Another penny was it to
the Strand? Here was another penny then. She would go up the Strand.
She liked people who were ill. And every profession is open to
the women of your generation, said Miss Kilman. So she might be a
doctor. She might be a farmer. Animals are often ill. She might own a
thousand acres and have people under her. She would go and see them
in their cottages. This was Somerset House. One might be a very good
farmer--and that, strangely enough though Miss Kilman had her share in
it, was almost entirely due to Somerset House. It looked so splendid,
so serious, that great grey building. And she liked the feeling of
people working. She liked those churches, like shapes of grey paper,
breasting the stream of the Strand. It was quite different here from
Westminster, she thought, getting off at Chancery Lane. It was so
serious; it was so busy. In short, she would like to have a profession.
She would become a doctor, a farmer, possibly go into Parliament, if
she found it necessary, all because of the Strand.
The feet of those people busy about their activities, hands putting
stone 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, of
administration, and with it all so stately (she was in the Temple), gay
(there was the river), pious (there was the Church), made her quite
determined, whatever her mother might say, to become either a farmer or
a 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 one
was alone--buildings without architects’ names, crowds of people
coming back from the city having more power than single clergymen
in Kensington, than any of the books Miss Kilman had lent her, to
stimulate what lay slumbrous, clumsy, and shy on the mind’s sandy floor
to break surface, as a child suddenly stretches its arms; it was just
that, 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 the
sandy floor. She must go home. She must dress for dinner. But what was
the 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 strange
house by night with a candle, on edge lest the owner should suddenly
fling wide his bedroom door and ask her business, nor did she dare
wander off into queer alleys, tempting bye-streets, any more than in a
strange house open doors which might be bedroom doors, or sitting-room
doors, or lead straight to the larder. For no Dalloways came down the
Strand daily; she was a pioneer, a stray, venturing, trusting.
In many ways, her mother felt, she was extremely immature, like a
child still, attached to dolls, to old slippers; a perfect baby; and
that was charming. But then, of course, there was in the Dalloway
family the tradition of public service. Abbesses, principals, head
mistresses, dignitaries, in the republic of women--without being
brilliant, any of them, they were that. She penetrated a little further
in the direction of St. Paul’s. She liked the geniality, sisterhood,
motherhood, brotherhood of this uproar. It seemed to her good. The
noise was tremendous; and suddenly there were trumpets (the unemployed)
blaring, rattling about in the uproar; military music; as if people
were marching; yet had they been dying--had some woman breathed her
last and whoever was watching, opening the window of the room where she
had just brought off that act of supreme dignity, looked down on Fleet
Street, that uproar, that military music would have come triumphing up
to him, consolatory, indifferent.
It was not conscious. There was no recognition in it of one fortune, or
fate, and for that very reason even to those dazed with watching for
the last shivers of consciousness on the faces of the dying, consoling.
Forgetfulness in people might wound, their ingratitude corrode, but
this voice, pouring endlessly, year in year out, would take whatever
it might be; this vow; this van; this life; this procession, would
wrap them all about and carry them on, as in the rough stream of a
glacier 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 be
wandering 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 a
thin black veil over the sun and over the Strand. The faces faded; the
omnibuses suddenly lost their glow. For although the clouds were of
mountainous white so that one could fancy hacking hard chips off with a
hatchet, with broad golden slopes, lawns of celestial pleasure gardens,
on their flanks, and had all the appearance of settled habitations
assembled for the conference of gods above the world, there was a
perpetual movement among them. Signs were interchanged, when, as if to
fulfil some scheme arranged already, now a summit dwindled, now a whole
block of pyramidal size which had kept its station inalterably advanced
into the midst or gravely led the procession to fresh anchorage. Fixed
though they seemed at their posts, at rest in perfect unanimity,
nothing could be fresher, freer, more sensitive superficially than the
snow-white or gold-kindled surface; to change, to go, to dismantle the
solemn assemblage was immediately possible; and in spite of the grave
fixity, the accumulated robustness and solidity, now they struck light
to the earth, now darkness.
Calmly and competently, Elizabeth Dalloway mounted the Westminster
omnibus.
Going and coming, beckoning, signalling, so the light and shadow which
now made the wall grey, now the bananas bright yellow, now made the
Strand grey, now made the omnibuses bright yellow, seemed to Septimus
Warren Smith lying on the sofa in the sitting-room; watching the watery
gold glow and fade with the astonishing sensibility of some live
creature on the roses, on the wall-paper. Outside the trees dragged
their leaves like nets through the depths of the air; the sound of
water was in the room and through the waves came the voices of birds
singing. Every power poured its treasures on his head, and his hand lay
there on the back of the sofa, as he had seen his hand lie when he was
bathing, floating, on the top of the waves, while far away on shore he
heard dogs barking and barking far away. Fear no more, says the heart
in the body; fear no more.
He was not afraid. At every moment Nature signified by some laughing
hint like that gold spot which went round the wall--there, there,
there--her determination to show, by brandishing her plumes, shaking
her tresses, flinging her mantle this way and that, beautifully, always
beautifully, and standing close up to breathe through her hollowed
hands 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 him
smiling. It was not marriage; it was not being one’s husband to look
strange like that, always to be starting, laughing, sitting hour after
hour silent, or clutching her and telling her to write. The table
drawer was full of those writings; about war; about Shakespeare; about
great discoveries; how there is no death. Lately he had become excited
suddenly for no reason (and both Dr. Holmes and Sir William Bradshaw
said excitement was the worst thing for him), and waved his hands and
cried out that he knew the truth! He knew everything! That man, his
friend who was killed, Evans, had come, he said. He was singing behind
the screen. She wrote it down just as he spoke it. Some things were
very beautiful; others sheer nonsense. And he was always stopping in
the middle, changing his mind; wanting to add something; hearing
something new; listening with his hand up.
But she heard nothing.
And once they found the girl who did the room reading one of these
papers in fits of laughter. It was a dreadful pity. For that made
Septimus cry out about human cruelty--how they tear each other to
pieces. The fallen, he said, they tear to pieces. “Holmes is on us,”
he would say, and he would invent stories about Holmes; Holmes eating
porridge; Holmes reading Shakespeare--making himself roar with laughter
or rage, for Dr. Holmes seemed to stand for something horrible to him.
“Human nature,” he called him. Then there were the visions. He was
drowned, he used to say, and lying on a cliff with the gulls screaming
over 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 man
crying in the street. But “Lovely!” he used to cry, and the tears would
run 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. And
he would lie listening until suddenly he would cry that he was falling
down, down into the flames! Actually she would look for flames, it was
so vivid. But there was nothing. They were alone in the room. It was a
dream, she would tell him and so quiet him at last, but sometimes she
was frightened too. She sighed as she sat sewing.
Her sigh was tender and enchanting, like the wind outside a wood in
the evening. Now she put down her scissors; now she turned to take
something from the table. A little stir, a little crinkling, a little
tapping built up something on the table there, where she sat sewing.
Through his eyelashes he could see her blurred outline; her little
black 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 her
silk. She was making a hat for Mrs. Filmer’s married daughter, whose
name 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 not
like 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 do
something to show that they were grateful. She had come into the room
the 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 had
told him about it at the time; she had found Mrs. Peters playing the
gramophone.
He began, very cautiously, to open his eyes, to see whether a
gramophone was really there. But real things--real things were too
exciting. He must be cautious. He would not go mad. First he looked
at the fashion papers on the lower shelf, then, gradually at the
gramophone with the green trumpet. Nothing could be more exact. And
so, gathering courage, he looked at the sideboard; the plate of
bananas; the engraving of Queen Victoria and the Prince Consort; at the
mantelpiece, with the jar of roses. None of these things moved. All
were 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 said
that he travelled for some company. “Just now he is in Hull,” she said.
“Just now!” She said that with her Italian accent. She said that
herself. He shaded his eyes so that he might see only a little of her
face at a time, first the chin, then the nose, then the forehead, in
case it were deformed, or had some terrible mark on it. But no, there
she was, perfectly natural, sewing, with the pursed lips that women
have, the set, the melancholy expression, when sewing. But there
was nothing terrible about it, he assured himself, looking a second
time, a third time at her face, her hands, for what was frightening
or disgusting in her as she sat there in broad daylight, sewing? Mrs.
Peters had a spiteful tongue. Mr. Peters was in Hull. Why then rage
and prophesy? Why fly scourged and outcast? Why be made to tremble and
sob by the clouds? Why seek truths and deliver messages when Rezia sat
sticking 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, as
he watched Rezia trimming the straw hat for Mrs. Peters, of a coverlet
of 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 course
it 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’s
hat.
How it rejoiced her that! Not for weeks had they laughed like this
together, poking fun privately like married people. What she meant was
that if Mrs. Filmer had come in, or Mrs. Peters or anybody they would
not have understood what she and Septimus were laughing at.
“There,” she said, pinning a rose to one side of the hat. Never had she
felt so happy! Never in her life!
But that was still more ridiculous, Septimus said. Now the poor woman
looked like a pig at a fair. (Nobody ever made her laugh as Septimus
did.)
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 putting
odd colours together--for though he had no fingers, could not even do
up a parcel, he had a wonderful eye, and often he was right, sometimes
absurd, 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 was
finished--that is to say the design; she must stitch it together. But
she must be very, very careful, he said, to keep it just as he had made
it.
So she sewed. When she sewed, he thought, she made a sound like a
kettle on the hob; bubbling, murmuring, always busy, her strong little
pointed fingers pinching and poking; her needle flashing straight.
The sun might go in and out, on the tassels, on the wall-paper, but
he would wait, he thought, stretching out his feet, looking at his
ringed 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 wood
sometimes in the evening, when, because of a fall in the ground, or
some arrangement of the trees (one must be scientific above all,
scientific), warmth lingers, and the air buffets the cheek like the
wing of a bird.
“There it is,” said Rezia, twirling Mrs. Peters’ hat on the tips of her
fingers. “That’ll do for the moment. Later ...” her sentence bubbled
away drip, drip, drip, like a contented tap left running.
It was wonderful. Never had he done anything which made him feel so
proud. 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 become
himself 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 and
looking first this side then that. Then she snatched it off again, for
there was a tap at the door. Could it be Sir William Bradshaw? Had he
sent already?
No! it was only the small girl with the evening paper.
What always happened, then happened--what happened every night of their
lives. The small girl sucked her thumb at the door; Rezia went down
on her knees; Rezia cooed and kissed; Rezia got a bag of sweets out
of the table drawer. For so it always happened. First one thing, then
another. 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 game
she was playing with Mrs. Filmer’s grandchild, both of them laughing,
chattering at the same time, at their game. He was very tired. He was
very happy. He would sleep. He shut his eyes. But directly he saw
nothing the sounds of the game became fainter and stranger and sounded
like the cries of people seeking and not finding, and passing further
and further away. They had lost him!
He started up in terror. What did he see? The plate of bananas on the
sideboard. Nobody was there (Rezia had taken the child to its mother.
It was bedtime). That was it: to be alone forever. That was the doom
pronounced in Milan when he came into the room and saw them cutting out
buckram shapes with their scissors; to be alone forever.
He was alone with the sideboard and the bananas. He was alone, exposed
on this bleak eminence, stretched out--but not on a hill-top; not on
a crag; on Mrs. Filmer’s sitting-room sofa. As for the visions, the
faces, the voices of the dead, where were they? There was a screen in
front of him, with black bulrushes and blue swallows. Where he had once
seen 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 a
curtain rustled. Those were the voices of the dead. The screen, the
coal-scuttle, the sideboard remained to him. Let him then face the
screen, the coal-scuttle and the sideboard ... but Rezia burst into the
room chattering.