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 re-
semble 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. Whit-
taker had told her, with that violent grudge against the world which had
scorned her, sneered at her, cast her off, beginning with this indig-
nity—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, ex-
cept 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; van-
quish; have faith in God. Mr. Whittaker had said she was there for a pur-
pose. 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 Kil-
man 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 Kil-
man 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 fire-place 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 Kil-
man 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 terribletogether; 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 break-
fast in bed every day; Lucy carried it up; and she liked old women be-
cause 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 bear-
ing, 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 ab-
solutely 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 herdegree. 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 moth-
er" but no, she could not, not to Elizabeth. "I pity other people," she said,
"more."
Like some dumb creature who has been brought up to a gate for an
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 petti-
coat, and she lost her way, and was hemmed in by trunks specially pre-
pared 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. Dog-
gedly 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 andtried 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 Kil-
man 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 shift-
ing 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 af-
ternoon), 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 be-
ginning… . 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 prefer-
ences. 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 compli-
ments 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 Kil-
man. 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 impetu-
ous creature—a pirate—started forward, sprang away; she had to hold
the rail to steady herself, for a pirate it was, reckless, unscrupulous, bear-
ing down ruthlessly, circumventing dangerously, boldly snatching a pas-
senger, 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 figure-head 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 in-
credible 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 wo-
men 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 ofthe 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 farm-
er, 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 administra-
tion, 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 Kensing-
ton, 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 sur-
face, 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 tra-
dition of public service. Abbesses, principals, head mistresses, dignitar-
ies, 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 therewere trumpets (the unemployed) blaring, rattling about in the uproar;
military music; as if people were marching; yet had they been dy-
ing—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 milit-
ary 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. Forget-
fulness 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 om-
nibuses suddenly lost their glow. For although the clouds were of moun-
tainous 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 as-
sembled for the conference of gods above the world, there was a per-
petual 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 ad-
vanced 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 Westmin-
ster 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 laugh-
ing 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; oth-
ers 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 wouldlook over the edge of the sofa down into the sea. Or he was hearing mu-
sic. 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 Sep-
timus, who had fought, who was brave, crying. And he would lie listen-
ing 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 gramo-
phone 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 as-
sured 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 to-
gether, 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 wo-
man looked like a pig at a fair. (Nobody ever made her laugh as Sep-
timus 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 wasfinished—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 fin-
gers. "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. Al-
ways 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. Sur-
rey 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 thecries 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 pro-
nounced 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, ex-
posed 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 coals-
cuttle, the sideboard remained to him. Let him then face the screen, the
coal-scuttle and the sideboard … but Rezia burst into the room
chattering.
Some letter had come. Everybody's plans were changed. Mrs. Filmer
would not be able to go to Brighton after all. There was no time to let
Mrs. Williams know, and really Rezia thought it very, very annoying,
when she caught sight of the hat and thought … perhaps … she … might
just make a little… . Her voice died out in contented melody.
"Ah, damn!" she cried (it was a joke of theirs, her swearing), the needle
had broken. Hat, child, Brighton, needle. She built it up; first one thing,
then another, she built it up, sewing.
She wanted him to say whether by moving the rose she had improved
the hat. She sat on the end of the sofa.
They were perfectly happy now, she said, suddenly, putting the hat
down. For she could say anything to him now. She could say whatever
came into her head. That was almost the first thing she had felt about
him, that night in the café when he had come in with his English friends.
He had come in, rather shyly, looking round him, and his hat had fallen
when he hung it up. That she could remember. She knew he was Eng-
lish, though not one of the large Englishmen her sister admired, for he
was always thin; but he had a beautiful fresh colour; and with his big
nose, his bright eyes, his way of sitting a little hunched made her think,
she had often told him, of a young hawk, that first evening she saw him,
when they were playing dominoes, and he had come in—of a young hawk; but with her he was always very gentle. She had never seen him
wild or drunk, only suffering sometimes through this terrible war, but
even so, when she came in, he would put it all away. Anything, anything
in the whole world, any little bother with her work, anything that struck
her to say she would tell him, and he understood at once. Her own fam-
ily even were not the same. Being older than she was and being so clev-
er—how serious he was, wanting her to read Shakespeare before she
could even read a child's story in English!—being so much more experi-
enced, he could help her. And she too could help him.
But this hat now. And then (it was getting late) Sir William Bradshaw.
She held her hands to her head, waiting for him to say did he like the
hat or not, and as she sat there, waiting, looking down, he could feel her
mind, like a bird, falling from branch to branch, and always alighting,
quite rightly; he could follow her mind, as she sat there in one of those
loose lax poses that came to her naturally and, if he should say anything,
at once she smiled, like a bird alighting with all its claws firm upon the
bough.
But he remembered Bradshaw said, "The people we are most fond of
are not good for us when we are ill." Bradshaw said, he must be taught
to rest. Bradshaw said they must be separated.
"Must," "must," why "must"? What power had Bradshaw over him?
"What right has Bradshaw to say 'must' to me?" he demanded.
"It is because you talked of killing yourself," said Rezia. (Mercifully,
she could now say anything to Septimus.)
So he was in their power! Holmes and Bradshaw were on him! The
brute with the red nostrils was snuffing into every secret place! "Must" it
could say! Where were his papers? the things he had written?
She brought him his papers, the things he had written, things she had
written for him. She tumbled them out on to the sofa. They looked at
them together. Diagrams, designs, little men and women brandishing
sticks for arms, with wings—were they?—on their backs; circles traced
round shillings and sixpences—the suns and stars; zigzagging precipices
with mountaineers ascending roped together, exactly like knives and
forks; sea pieces with little faces laughing out of what might perhaps be
waves: the map of the world. Burn them! he cried. Now for his writings;
how the dead sing behind rhododendron bushes; odes to Time; conver-
sations with Shakespeare; Evans, Evans, Evans—his messages from the
dead; do not cut down trees; tell the Prime Minister. Universal love: the
meaning of the world. Burn them! he cried.
But Rezia laid her hands on them. Some were very beautiful, she
thought. She would tie them up (for she had no envelope) with a piece of
silk.
Even if they took him, she said, she would go with him. They could
not separate them against their wills, she said.
Shuffling the edges straight, she did up the papers, and tied the parcel
almost without looking, sitting beside him, he thought, as if all her petals
were about her. She was a flowering tree; and through her branches
looked out the face of a lawgiver, who had reached a sanctuary where
she feared no one; not Holmes; not Bradshaw; a miracle, a triumph, the
last and greatest. Staggering he saw her mount the appalling staircase,
laden with Holmes and Bradshaw, men who never weighed less than el-
even stone six, who sent their wives to Court, men who made ten thou-
sand a year and talked of proportion; who different in their verdicts (for
Holmes said one thing, Bradshaw another), yet judges they were; who
mixed the vision and the sideboard; saw nothing clear, yet ruled, yet in-
flicted. "Must" they said. Over them she triumphed.
"There!" she said. The papers were tied up. No one should get at them.
She would put them away.
And, she said, nothing should separate them. She sat down beside him
and called him by the name of that hawk or crow which being malicious
and a great destroyer of crops was precisely like him. No one could sep-
arate them, she said.
Then she got up to go into the bedroom to pack their things, but hear-
ing voices downstairs and thinking that Dr. Holmes had perhaps called,
ran down to prevent him coming up.
Septimus could hear her talking to Holmes on the staircase.
"My dear lady, I have come as a friend," Holmes was saying.
"No. I will not allow you to see my husband," she said.
He could see her, like a little hen, with her wings spread barring his
passage. But Holmes persevered.
"My dear lady, allow me … " Holmes said, putting her aside (Holmes
was a powerfully built man).
Holmes was coming upstairs. Holmes would burst open the door.
Holmes would say "In a funk, eh?" Holmes would get him. But no; not
Holmes; not Bradshaw. Getting up rather unsteadily, hopping indeed
from foot to foot, he considered Mrs. Filmer's nice clean bread knife with
"Bread" carved on the handle. Ah, but one mustn't spoil that. The gas
fire? But it was too late now. Holmes was coming. Razors he might have
got, but Rezia, who always did that sort of thing, had packed them.There remained only the window, the large Bloomsbury-lodging house
window, the tiresome, the troublesome, and rather melodramatic busi-
ness of opening the window and throwing himself out. It was their idea
of tragedy, not his or Rezia's (for she was with him). Holmes and Brad-
shaw like that sort of thing. (He sat on the sill.) But he would wait till the
very last moment. He did not want to die. Life was good. The sun hot.
Only human beings—what did they want? Coming down the staircase
opposite an old man stopped and stared at him. Holmes was at the door.
"I'll give it you!" he cried, and flung himself vigorously, violently down
on to Mrs. Filmer's area railings.
"The coward!" cried Dr. Holmes, bursting the door open. Rezia ran to
the window, she saw; she understood. Dr. Holmes and Mrs. Filmer col-
lided with each other. Mrs. Filmer flapped her apron and made her hide
her eyes in the bedroom. There was a great deal of running up and down
stairs. Dr. Holmes came in—white as a sheet, shaking all over, with a
glass in his hand. She must be brave and drink something, he said (What
was it? Something sweet), for her husband was horribly mangled, would
not recover consciousness, she must not see him, must be spared as
much as possible, would have the inquest to go through, poor young
woman. Who could have foretold it? A sudden impulse, no one was in
the least to blame (he told Mrs. Filmer). And why the devil he did it, Dr.
Holmes could not conceive.
It seemed to her as she drank the sweet stuff that she was opening
long windows, stepping out into some garden. But where? The clock was
striking—one, two, three: how sensible the sound was; compared with
all this thumping and whispering; like Septimus himself. She was falling
asleep. But the clock went on striking, four, five, six and Mrs. Filmer
waving her apron (they wouldn't bring the body in here, would they?)
seemed part of that garden; or a flag. She had once seen a flag slowly rip-
pling out from a mast when she stayed with her aunt at Venice. Men
killed in battle were thus saluted, and Septimus had been through the
War. Of her memories, most were happy.
She put on her hat, and ran through cornfields—where could it have
been?—on to some hill, somewhere near the sea, for there were ships,
gulls, butterflies; they sat on a cliff. In London too, there they sat, and,
half dreaming, came to her through the bedroom door, rain falling, whis-
perings, stirrings among dry corn, the caress of the sea, as it seemed to
her, hollowing them in its arched shell and murmuring to her laid on
shore, strewn she felt, like flying flowers over some tomb."He is dead," she said, smiling at the poor old woman who guarded
her with her honest light-blue eyes fixed on the door. (They wouldn't
bring him in here, would they?) But Mrs. Filmer pooh-poohed. Oh no, oh
no! They were carrying him away now. Ought she not to be told? Mar-
ried people ought to be together, Mrs. Filmer thought. But they must do
as the doctor said.
"Let her sleep," said Dr. Holmes, feeling her pulse. She saw the large
outline of his body standing dark against the window. So that was Dr.
Holmes.
One of the triumphs of civilisation, Peter Walsh thought. It is one of
the triumphs of civilisation, as the light high bell of the ambulance soun-
ded. Swiftly, cleanly the ambulance sped to the hospital, having picked
up instantly, humanely, some poor devil; some one hit on the head,
struck down by disease, knocked over perhaps a minute or so ago at one
of these crossings, as might happen to oneself. That was civilisation. It
struck him coming back from the East—the efficiency, the organisation,
the communal spirit of London. Every cart or carriage of its own accord
drew aside to let the ambulance pass. Perhaps it was morbid; or was it
not touching rather, the respect which they showed this ambulance with
its victim inside—busy men hurrying home yet instantly bethinking
them as it passed of some wife; or presumably how easily it might have
been them there, stretched on a shelf with a doctor and a nurse… . Ah,
but thinking became morbid, sentimental, directly one began conjuring
up doctors, dead bodies; a little glow of pleasure, a sort of lust too over
the visual impression warned one not to go on with that sort of thing any
more—fatal to art, fatal to friendship. True. And yet, thought Peter
Walsh, as the ambulance turned the corner though the light high bell
could be heard down the next street and still farther as it crossed the Tot-
tenham Court Road, chiming constantly, it is the privilege of loneliness;
in privacy one may do as one chooses. One might weep if no one saw. It
had been his undoing—this susceptibility—in Anglo-Indian society; not
weeping at the right time, or laughing either. I have that in me, he
thought standing by the pillar-box, which could now dissolve in tears.
Why, Heaven knows. Beauty of some sort probably, and the weight of
the day, which beginning with that visit to Clarissa had exhausted him
with its heat, its intensity, and the drip, drip, of one impression after an-
other down into that cellar where they stood, deep, dark, and no one
would ever know. Partly for that reason, its secrecy, complete and inviol-
able, he had found life like an unknown garden, full of turns and
corners, surprising, yes; really it took one's breath away, these moments;there coming to him by the pillar-box opposite the British Museum one
of them, a moment, in which things came together; this ambulance; and
life and death. It was as if he were sucked up to some very high roof by
that rush of emotion and the rest of him, like a white shell-sprinkled
beach, left bare. It had been his undoing in Anglo-Indian society—this
susceptibility.
Clarissa once, going on top of an omnibus with him somewhere,
Clarissa superficially at least, so easily moved, now in despair, now in
the best of spirits, all aquiver in those days and such good company,
spotting queer little scenes, names, people from the top of a bus, for they
used to explore London and bring back bags full of treasures from the
Caledonian market—Clarissa had a theory in those days—they had
heaps of theories, always theories, as young people have. It was to ex-
plain the feeling they had of dissatisfaction; not knowing people; not be-
ing known. For how could they know each other? You met every day;
then not for six months, or years. It was unsatisfactory, they agreed, how
little one knew people. But she said, sitting on the bus going up Shaftes-
bury Avenue, she felt herself everywhere; not "here, here, here"; and she
tapped the back of the seat; but everywhere. She waved her hand, going
up Shaftesbury Avenue. She was all that. So that to know her, or any
one, one must seek out the people who completed them; even the places.
Odd affinities she had with people she had never spoken to, some wo-
man in the street, some man behind a counter—even trees, or barns. It
ended in a transcendental theory which, with her horror of death, al-
lowed her to believe, or say that she believed (for all her scepticism), that
since our apparitions, the part of us which appears, are so momentary
compared with the other, the unseen part of us, which spreads wide, the
unseen might survive, be recovered somehow attached to this person or
that, or even haunting certain places after death … perhaps—perhaps.
Looking back over that long friendship of almost thirty years her the-
ory worked to this extent. Brief, broken, often painful as their actual
meetings had been what with his absences and interruptions (this morn-
ing, for instance, in came Elizabeth, like a long-legged colt, handsome,
dumb, just as he was beginning to talk to Clarissa) the effect of them on
his life was immeasurable. There was a mystery about it. You were given
a sharp, acute, uncomfortable grain—the actual meeting; horribly painful
as often as not; yet in absence, in the most unlikely places, it would
flower out, open, shed its scent, let you touch, taste, look about you, get
the whole feel of it and understanding, after years of lying lost. Thus she
had come to him; on board ship; in the Himalayas; suggested by theoddest things (so Sally Seton, generous, enthusiastic goose! thought of
him when she saw blue hydrangeas). She had influenced him more than
any person he had ever known. And always in this way coming before
him without his wishing it, cool, lady-like, critical; or ravishing, ro-
mantic, recalling some field or English harvest. He saw her most often in
the country, not in London. One scene after another at Bourton… .
He had reached his hotel. He crossed the hall, with its mounds of red-
dish chairs and sofas, its spike-leaved, withered-looking plants. He got
his key off the hook. The young lady handed him some letters. He went
upstairs—he saw her most often at Bourton, in the late summer, when he
stayed there for a week, or fortnight even, as people did in those days.
First on top of some hill there she would stand, hands clapped to her
hair, her cloak blowing out, pointing, crying to them—she saw the
Severn beneath. Or in a wood, making the kettle boil—very ineffective
with her fingers; the smoke curtseying, blowing in their faces; her little
pink face showing through; begging water from an old woman in a cot-
tage, who came to the door to watch them go. They walked always; the
others drove. She was bored driving, disliked all animals, except that
dog. They tramped miles along roads. She would break off to get her
bearings, pilot him back across country; and all the time they argued,
discussed poetry, discussed people, discussed politics (she was a Radical
then); never noticing a thing except when she stopped, cried out at a
view or a tree, and made him look with her; and so on again, through
stubble fields, she walking ahead, with a flower for her aunt, never tired
of walking for all her delicacy; to drop down on Bourton in the dusk.
Then, after dinner, old Breitkopf would open the piano and sing without
any voice, and they would lie sunk in arm-chairs, trying not to laugh, but
always breaking down and laughing, laughing—laughing at nothing.
Breitkopf was supposed not to see. And then in the morning, flirting up
and down like a wagtail in front of the house… .
Oh it was a letter from her! This blue envelope; that was her hand.
And he would have to read it. Here was another of those meetings,
bound to be painful! To read her letter needed the devil of an effort.
"How heavenly it was to see him. She must tell him that." That was all.
But it upset him. It annoyed him. He wished she hadn't written it.
Coming on top of his thoughts, it was like a nudge in the ribs. Why
couldn't she let him be? After all, she had married Dalloway, and lived
with him in perfect happiness all these years.
These hotels are not consoling places. Far from it. Any number of
people had hung up their hats on those pegs. Even the flies, if youthought of it, had settled on other people's noses. As for the cleanliness
which hit him in the face, it wasn't cleanliness, so much as bareness, fri-
gidity; a thing that had to be. Some arid matron made her rounds at
dawn sniffing, peering, causing blue-nosed maids to scour, for all the
world as if the next visitor were a joint of meat to be served on a per-
fectly clean platter. For sleep, one bed; for sitting in, one armchair; for
cleaning one's teeth and shaving one's chin, one tumbler, one looking-
glass. Books, letters, dressing-gown, slipped about on the impersonality
of the horsehair like incongruous impertinences. And it was Clarissa's
letter that made him see all this. "Heavenly to see you. She must say so!"
He folded the paper; pushed it away; nothing would induce him to read
it again!
To get that letter to him by six o'clock she must have sat down and
written it directly he left her; stamped it; sent somebody to the post. It
was, as people say, very like her. She was upset by his visit. She had felt
a great deal; had for a moment, when she kissed his hand, regretted, en-
vied him even, remembered possibly (for he saw her look it) something
he had said—how they would change the world if she married him per-
haps; whereas, it was this; it was middle age; it was mediocrity; then
forced herself with her indomitable vitality to put all that aside, there be-
ing in her a thread of life which for toughness, endurance, power to
overcome obstacles, and carry her triumphantly through he had never
known the like of. Yes; but there would come a reaction directly he left
the room. She would be frightfully sorry for him; she would think what
in the world she could do to give him pleasure (short always of the one
thing) and he could see her with the tears running down her cheeks go-
ing to her writing-table and dashing off that one line which he was to
find greeting him… . "Heavenly to see you!" And she meant it.
Peter Walsh had now unlaced his boots.
But it would not have been a success, their marriage. The other thing,
after all, came so much more naturally.
It was odd; it was true; lots of people felt it. Peter Walsh, who had
done just respectably, filled the usual posts adequately, was liked, but
thought a little cranky, gave himself airs—it was odd that he should have
had, especially now that his hair was grey, a contented look; a look of
having reserves. It was this that made him attractive to women who
liked the sense that he was not altogether manly. There was something
unusual about him, or something behind him. It might be that he was
bookish—never came to see you without taking up the book on the table
(he was now reading, with his bootlaces trailing on the floor); or that hewas a gentleman, which showed itself in the way he knocked the ashes
out of his pipe, and in his manners of course to women. For it was very
charming and quite ridiculous how easily some girl without a grain of
sense could twist him round her finger. But at her own risk. That is to
say, though he might be ever so easy, and indeed with his gaiety and
good-breeding fascinating to be with, it was only up to a point. She said
something—no, no; he saw through that. He wouldn't stand that—no,
no. Then he could shout and rock and hold his sides together over some
joke with men. He was the best judge of cooking in India. He was a man.
But not the sort of man one had to respect—which was a mercy; not like
Major Simmons, for instance; not in the least like that, Daisy thought,
when, in spite of her two small children, she used to compare them.
He pulled off his boots. He emptied his pockets. Out came with his
pocket-knife a snapshot of Daisy on the verandah; Daisy all in white,
with a fox-terrier on her knee; very charming, very dark; the best he had
ever seen of her. It did come, after all so naturally; so much more natur-
ally than Clarissa. No fuss. No bother. No finicking and fidgeting. All
plain sailing. And the dark, adorably pretty girl on the verandah ex-
claimed (he could hear her). Of course, of course she would give him
everything! she cried (she had no sense of discretion) everything he
wanted! she cried, running to meet him, whoever might be looking. And
she was only twenty-four. And she had two children. Well, well!
Well indeed he had got himself into a mess at his age. And it came
over him when he woke in the night pretty forcibly. Suppose they did
marry? For him it would be all very well, but what about her? Mrs. Bur-
gess, a good sort and no chatterbox, in whom he had confided, thought
this absence of his in England, ostensibly to see lawyers might serve to
make Daisy reconsider, think what it meant. It was a question of her pos-
ition, Mrs. Burgess said; the social barrier; giving up her children. She'd
be a widow with a past one of these days, draggling about in the sub-
urbs, or more likely, indiscriminate (you know, she said, what such wo-
men get like, with too much paint). But Peter Walsh pooh-poohed all
that. He didn't mean to die yet. Anyhow she must settle for herself; judge
for herself, he thought, padding about the room in his socks, smoothing
out his dress-shirt, for he might go to Clarissa's party, or he might go to
one of the Halls, or he might settle in and read an absorbing book written
by a man he used to know at Oxford. And if he did retire, that's what
he'd do—write books. He would go to Oxford and poke about in the
Bodleian. Vainly the dark, adorably pretty girl ran to the end of the ter-
race; vainly waved her hand; vainly cried she didn't care a straw whatpeople said. There he was, the man she thought the world of, the perfect
gentleman, the fascinating, the distinguished (and his age made not the
least difference to her), padding about a room in an hotel in Bloomsbury,
shaving, washing, continuing, as he took up cans, put down razors, to
poke about in the Bodleian, and get at the truth about one or two little
matters that interested him. And he would have a chat with whoever it
might be, and so come to disregard more and more precise hours for
lunch, and miss engagements, and when Daisy asked him, as she would,
for a kiss, a scene, fail to come up to the scratch (though he was genu-
inely devoted to her)—in short it might be happier, as Mrs. Burgess said,
that she should forget him, or merely remember him as he was in
August 1922, like a figure standing at the cross roads at dusk, which
grows more and more remote as the dog-cart spins away, carrying her
securely fastened to the back seat, though her arms are outstretched, and
as she sees the figure dwindle and disappear still she cries out how she
would do anything in the world, anything, anything, anything… .
He never knew what people thought. It became more and more diffi-
cult 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 under-
stand 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, be-
ing 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 any-
body else, furious! for he was jealous, uncontrollably jealous by tempera-
ment. 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.
