for him to concentrate. He became absorbed; he became busied with his
own concerns; now surly, now gay; dependent on women, absent-minded,
moody, less and less able (so he thought as he shaved) to understand
why 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 and
hover (he was at the moment actually engaged in sorting out various
keys, papers), swoop and taste, be alone, in short, sufficient to
himself; and yet nobody of course was more dependent upon others (he
buttoned his waistcoat); it had been his undoing. He could not keep
out of smoking-rooms, liked colonels, liked golf, liked bridge, and
above all women’s society, and the fineness of their companionship, and
their faithfulness and audacity and greatness in loving which though
it had its drawbacks seemed to him (and the dark, adorably pretty face
was on top of the envelopes) so wholly admirable, so splendid a flower
to grow on the crest of human life, and yet he could not come up to
the scratch, being always apt to see round things (Clarissa had sapped
something in him permanently), and to tire very easily of mute devotion
and to want variety in love, though it would make him furious if Daisy
loved anybody else, furious! for he was jealous, uncontrollably jealous
by temperament. He suffered tortures! But where was his knife; his
watch; his seals, his note-case, and Clarissa’s letter which he would
not read again but liked to think of, and Daisy’s photograph? And now
for dinner.
They were eating.
Sitting at little tables round vases, dressed or not dressed, with
their shawls and bags laid beside them, with their air of false
composure, for they were not used to so many courses at dinner, and
confidence, for they were able to pay for it, and strain, for they
had been running about London all day shopping, sightseeing; and their
natural curiosity, for they looked round and up as the nice-looking
gentleman in horn-rimmed spectacles came in, and their good nature,
for they would have been glad to do any little service, such as lend a
time-table or impart useful information, and their desire, pulsing in
them, tugging at them subterraneously, somehow to establish connections
if it were only a birthplace (Liverpool, for example) in common or
friends of the same name; with their furtive glances, odd silences, and
sudden withdrawals into family jocularity and isolation; there they
sat eating dinner when Mr. Walsh came in and took his seat at a little
table by the curtain.
It was not that he said anything, for being solitary he could only
address himself to the waiter; it was his way of looking at the menu,
of pointing his forefinger to a particular wine, of hitching himself
up to the table, of addressing himself seriously, not gluttonously
to dinner, that won him their respect; which, having to remain
unexpressed for the greater part of the meal, flared up at the table
where the Morrises sat when Mr. Walsh was heard to say at the end of
the meal, “Bartlett pears.” Why he should have spoken so moderately
yet firmly, with the air of a disciplinarian well within his rights
which are founded upon justice, neither young Charles Morris, nor
old Charles, neither Miss Elaine nor Mrs. Morris knew. But when he
said, “Bartlett pears,” sitting alone at his table, they felt that
he counted on their support in some lawful demand; was champion of
a cause which immediately became their own, so that their eyes met
his eyes sympathetically, and when they all reached the smoking-room
simultaneously, 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; that
Mrs. Morris had been to the Westminster flower-show, and that they
had all seen the Prince of Wales. Yet, thought Peter Walsh, no family
in the world can compare with the Morrises; none whatever; and their
relations to each other are perfect, and they don’t care a hang for the
upper classes, and they like what they like, and Elaine is training
for 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 at
home; and they have two motor cars, but Mr. Morris still mends the
boots on Sunday: it is superb, it is absolutely superb, thought Peter
Walsh, swaying a little backwards and forwards with his liqueur glass
in his hand among the hairy red chairs and ash-trays, feeling very well
pleased with himself, for the Morrises liked him. Yes, they liked a man
who said, “Bartlett pears.” They liked him, he felt.
He would go to Clarissa’s party. (The Morrises moved off; but they
would meet again.) He would go to Clarissa’s party, because he wanted
to 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, who
fish-like inhabits deep seas and plies among obscurities threading her
way between the boles of giant weeds, over sun-flickered spaces and
on and on into gloom, cold, deep, inscrutable; suddenly she shoots
to the surface and sports on the wind-wrinkled waves; that is, has a
positive need to brush, scrape, kindle herself, gossiping. What did the
Government mean--Richard Dalloway would know--to do about India?
Since it was a very hot night and the paper boys went by with placards
proclaiming in huge red letters that there was a heat-wave, wicker
chairs were placed on the hotel steps and there, sipping, smoking,
detached gentlemen sat. Peter Walsh sat there. One might fancy that
day, the London day, was just beginning. Like a woman who had slipped
off her print dress and white apron to array herself in blue and
pearls, the day changed, put off stuff, took gauze, changed to evening,
and with the same sigh of exhilaration that a woman breathes, tumbling
petticoats on the floor, it too shed dust, heat, colour; the traffic
thinned; motor cars, tinkling, darting, succeeded the lumber of vans;
and here and there among the thick foliage of the squares an intense
light hung. I resign, the evening seemed to say, as it paled and faded
above the battlements and prominences, moulded, pointed, of hotel,
flat, and block of shops, I fade, she was beginning, I disappear, but
London 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 place
since Peter Walsh’s last visit to England. The prolonged evening was
new to him. It was inspiriting, rather. For as the young people went by
with their despatch-boxes, awfully glad to be free, proud too, dumbly,
of stepping this famous pavement, joy of a kind, cheap, tinselly, if
you like, but all the same rapture, flushed their faces. They dressed
well too; pink stockings; pretty shoes. They would now have two hours
at the pictures. It sharpened, it refined them, the yellow-blue evening
light; and on the leaves in the square shone lurid, livid--they
looked as if dipped in sea water--the foliage of a submerged city. He
was astonished by the beauty; it was encouraging too, for where the
returned Anglo-Indian sat by rights (he knew crowds of them) in the
Oriental Club biliously summing up the ruin of the world, here was
he, as young as ever; envying young people their summer time and the
rest of it, and more than suspecting from the words of a girl, from a
housemaid’s laughter--intangible things you couldn’t lay your hands
on--that shift in the whole pyramidal accumulation which in his youth
had seemed immovable. On top of them it had pressed; weighed them down,
the women especially, like those flowers Clarissa’s Aunt Helena used to
press between sheets of grey blotting-paper with Littré’s dictionary
on top, sitting under the lamp after dinner. She was dead now. He had
heard of her, from Clarissa, losing the sight of one eye. It seemed so
fitting--one of nature’s masterpieces--that old Miss Parry should turn
to 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 a
lighthouse marking some past stage on this adventurous, long, long
voyage, this interminable (he felt for a copper to buy a paper and
read about Surrey and Yorkshire--he had held out that copper millions
of times. Surrey was all out once more)--this interminable life. But
cricket was no mere game. Cricket was important. He could never help
reading about cricket. He read the scores in the stop press first, then
how it was a hot day; then about a murder case. Having done things
millions of times enriched them, though it might be said to take the
surface off. The past enriched, and experience, and having cared for
one or two people, and so having acquired the power which the young
lack, of cutting short, doing what one likes, not caring a rap what
people say and coming and going without any very great expectations
(he left his paper on the table and moved off), which however (and
he looked for his hat and coat) was not altogether true of him, not
to-night, for here he was starting to go to a party, at his age, with
the 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 beauty
pure and simple--Bedford Place leading into Russell Square. It was
straightness and emptiness of course; the symmetry of a corridor; but
it was also windows lit up, a piano, a gramophone sounding; a sense
of pleasure-making hidden, but now and again emerging when, through
the uncurtained window, the window left open, one saw parties sitting
over tables, young people slowly circling, conversations between men
and women, maids idly looking out (a strange comment theirs, when work
was done), stockings drying on top ledges, a parrot, a few plants.
Absorbing, mysterious, of infinite richness, this life. And in the
large square where the cabs shot and swerved so quick, there were
loitering couples, dallying, embracing, shrunk up under the shower
of a tree; that was moving; so silent, so absorbed, that one passed,
discreetly, timidly, as if in the presence of some sacred ceremony to
interrupt which would have been impious. That was interesting. And so
on into the flare and glare.
His light overcoat blew open, he stepped with indescribable
idiosyncrasy, leant a little forward, tripped, with his hands behind
his back and his eyes still a little hawklike; he tripped through
London, towards Westminster, observing.
Was everybody dining out, then? Doors were being opened here by a
footman to let issue a high-stepping old dame, in buckled shoes, with
three purple ostrich feathers in her hair. Doors were being opened for
ladies wrapped like mummies in shawls with bright flowers on them,
ladies with bare heads. And in respectable quarters with stucco pillars
through 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 was
going out. What with these doors being opened, and the descent and the
start, it seemed as if the whole of London were embarking in little
boats moored to the bank, tossing on the waters, as if the whole place
were floating off in carnival. And Whitehall was skated over, silver
beaten as it was, skated over by spiders, and there was a sense of
midges round the arc lamps; it was so hot that people stood about
talking. And here in Westminster was a retired Judge, presumably,
sitting four square at his house door dressed all in white. An
Anglo-Indian presumably.
And here a shindy of brawling women, drunken women; here only a
policeman and looming houses, high houses, domed houses, churches,
parliaments, and the hoot of a steamer on the river, a hollow misty
cry. But it was her street, this, Clarissa’s; cabs were rushing round
the corner, like water round the piers of a bridge, drawn together, it
seemed to him because they bore people going to her party, Clarissa’s
party.
The cold stream of visual impressions failed him now as if the eye
were a cup that overflowed and let the rest run down its china walls
unrecorded. 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: the
soul must brave itself to endure. He opened the big blade of his
pocket-knife.
* * * * *
Lucy came running full tilt downstairs, having just nipped in to the
drawing-room to smooth a cover, to straighten a chair, to pause a
moment and feel whoever came in must think how clean, how bright, how
beautifully cared for, when they saw the beautiful silver, the brass
fire-irons, the new chair-covers, and the curtains of yellow chintz:
she appraised each; heard a roar of voices; people already coming up
from dinner; she must fly!
The Prime Minister was coming, Agnes said: so she had heard them say
in the dining-room, she said, coming in with a tray of glasses. Did it
matter, did it matter in the least, one Prime Minister more or less? It
made no difference at this hour of the night to Mrs. Walker among the
plates, saucepans, cullenders, frying-pans, chicken in aspic, ice-cream
freezers, pared crusts of bread, lemons, soup tureens, and pudding
basins which, however hard they washed up in the scullery seemed to
be all on top of her, on the kitchen table, on chairs, while the fire
blared and roared, the electric lights glared, and still supper had to
be laid. All she felt was, one Prime Minister more or less made not a
scrap of difference to Mrs. Walker.
The ladies were going upstairs already, said Lucy; the ladies were
going up, one by one, Mrs. Dalloway walking last and almost always
sending back some message to the kitchen, “My love to Mrs. Walker,”
that was it one night. Next morning they would go over the dishes--the
soup, 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 with
fair 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 dampers
and pulled out dampers; and there came a burst of laughter from the
dining-room; a voice speaking; then another burst of laughter--the
gentlemen enjoying themselves when the ladies had gone. The tokay,
said Lucy running in. Mr. Dalloway had sent for the tokay, from the
Emperor’s cellars, the Imperial Tokay.
It was borne through the kitchen. Over her shoulder Lucy reported how
Miss 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, since
it bit, had to be shut up and might, Elizabeth thought, want something.
Jenny must remember the dog. But Jenny was not going upstairs with all
those people about. There was a motor at the door already! There was a
ring at the bell--and the gentlemen still in the dining-room, drinking
tokay!
There, they were going upstairs; that was the first to come, and now
they would come faster and faster, so that Mrs. Parkinson (hired for
parties) would leave the hall door ajar, and the hall would be full
of 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 the
family for forty years, and came every summer to help the ladies, and
remembered mothers when they were girls, and though very unassuming did
shake hands; said “milady” very respectfully, yet had a humorous way
with her, looking at the young ladies, and ever so tactfully helping
Lady Lovejoy, who had some trouble with her underbodice. And they
could not help feeling, Lady Lovejoy and Miss Alice, that some little
privilege in the matter of brush and comb, was awarded them having
known Mrs. Barnet--“thirty years, milady,” Mrs. Barnet supplied her.
Young ladies did not use to rouge, said Lady Lovejoy, when they stayed
at 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 the
cloakroom, patting down the furs, smoothing out the Spanish shawls,
tidying the dressing-table, and knowing perfectly well, in spite of the
furs and the embroideries, which were nice ladies, which were not. The
dear old body, said Lady Lovejoy, mounting the stairs, Clarissa’s old
nurse.
And then Lady Lovejoy stiffened. “Lady and Miss Lovejoy,” she said to
Mr. Wilkins (hired for parties). He had an admirable manner, as he bent
and straightened himself, bent and straightened himself and announced
with perfect impartiality “Lady and Miss Lovejoy ... Sir John and Lady
Needham ... Miss Weld ... Mr. Walsh.” His manner was admirable; his
family life must be irreproachable, except that it seemed impossible
that a being with greenish lips and shaven cheeks could ever have
blundered 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 and
read 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, Clarissa
felt it in her bones as dear old Lord Lexham stood there apologising
for 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 seek
pinnacles and stand drenched in fire? Might it consume her anyhow! Burn
her to cinders! Better anything, better brandish one’s torch and hurl
it to earth than taper and dwindle away like some Ellie Henderson! It
was extraordinary how Peter put her into these states just by coming
and standing in a corner. He made her see herself; exaggerate. It was
idiotic. But why did he come, then, merely to criticise? Why always
take, never give? Why not risk one’s one little point of view? There
he was wandering off, and she must speak to him. But she would not
get the chance. Life was that--humiliation, renunciation. What Lord
Lexham was saying was that his wife would not wear her furs at the
garden party because “my dear, you ladies are all alike”--Lady Lexham
being seventy-five at least! It was delicious, how they petted each
other, that old couple. She did like old Lord Lexham. She did think it
mattered, her party, and it made her feel quite sick to know that it
was all going wrong, all falling flat. Anything, any explosion, any
horror was better than people wandering aimlessly, standing in a bunch
at a corner like Ellie Henderson, not even caring to hold themselves
upright.
Gently the yellow curtain with all the birds of Paradise blew out and
it seemed as if there were a flight of wings into the room, right
out, then sucked back. (For the windows were open.) Was it draughty,
Ellie Henderson wondered? She was subject to chills. But it did not
matter that she should come down sneezing to-morrow; it was the girls
with their naked shoulders she thought of, being trained to think of
others by an old father, an invalid, late vicar of Bourton, but he
was dead now; and her chills never went to her chest, never. It was
the girls she thought of, the young girls with their bare shoulders,
she herself having always been a wisp of a creature, with her thin
hair and meagre profile; though now, past fifty, there was beginning
to shine through some mild beam, something purified into distinction
by years of self-abnegation but obscured again, perpetually, by her
distressing gentility, her panic fear, which arose from three hundred
pounds’ income, and her weaponless state (she could not earn a penny)
and it made her timid, and more and more disqualified year by year to
meet well-dressed people who did this sort of thing every night of
the season, merely telling their maids “I’ll wear so and so,” whereas
Ellie Henderson ran out nervously and bought cheap pink flowers, half
a dozen, and then threw a shawl over her old black dress. For her
invitation to Clarissa’s party had come at the last moment. She was not
quite happy about it. She had a sort of feeling that Clarissa had not
meant to ask her this year.
Why should she? There was no reason really, except that they had always
known each other. Indeed, they were cousins. But naturally they had
rather drifted apart, Clarissa being so sought after. It was an event
to her, going to a party. It was quite a treat just to see the lovely
clothes. Wasn’t that Elizabeth, grown up, with her hair done in the
fashionable way, in the pink dress? Yet she could not be more than
seventeen. She was very, very handsome. But girls when they first
came out didn’t seem to wear white as they used. (She must remember
everything 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 such
interesting people to watch; politicians presumably; Richard Dalloway’s
friends; but it was Richard himself who felt that he could not let the
poor creature go on standing there all the evening by herself.
“Well, Ellie, and how’s the world treating _you_?” he said in his
genial way, and Ellie Henderson, getting nervous and flushing and
feeling that it was extraordinarily nice of him to come and talk to
her, 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, good
Lord, there was old Peter, old Peter Walsh. He was delighted to see
him--ever so pleased to see him! He hadn’t changed a bit. And off they
went together walking right across the room, giving each other little
pats, 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, middle
aged, rather fine eyes, dark, wearing spectacles, with a look of John
Burrows. Edith would be sure to know.
The curtain with its flight of birds of Paradise blew out again. And
Clarissa saw--she saw Ralph Lyon beat it back, and go on talking. So
it wasn’t a failure after all! it was going to be all right now--her
party. It had begun. It had started. But it was still touch and go. She
must 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 had
six or seven words with each, and they went on, they went into the
rooms; into something now, not nothing, since Ralph Lyon had beat back
the curtain.
And yet for her own part, it was too much of an effort. She was not
enjoying it. It was too much like being--just anybody, standing there;
anybody could do it; yet this anybody she did a little admire, couldn’t
help feeling that she had, anyhow, made this happen, that it marked a
stage, this post that she felt herself to have become, for oddly enough
she had quite forgotten what she looked like, but felt herself a stake
driven in at the top of her stairs. Every time she gave a party she
had this feeling of being something not herself, and that every one
was 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 say
anyhow 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 would
know every one.
And what was so odd about it was the sense one had as they came up the
stairs one after another, Mrs. Mount and Celia, Herbert Ainsty, Mrs.
Dakers--oh and Lady Bruton!