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 use-
ful information, and their desire, pulsing in them, tugging at them sub-
terraneously, somehow to establish connections if it were only a birth-
place (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 ad-
dress 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 Liver-
pool; 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, sway-
ing 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 Lon-
don 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 part-
nership 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 theleaves 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 sum-
ming 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 sus-
pecting 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 im-
movable. On top of them it had pressed; weighed them down, the wo-
men especially, like those flowers Clarissa's Aunt Helena used to press
between sheets of grey blotting-paper with Littré's dictionary on top, sit-
ting 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 idiosyn-
crasy, lent a little forward, tripped, with his hands behind his back and
his eyes still a little hawklike; he tripped through London, towards West-
minster, 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 go-
ing 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 un-
recorded. The brain must wake now. The body must contract now, enter-
ing 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 mo-
ment 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 ap-
praised each; heard a roar of voices; people already coming up from din-
ner; 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 go-
ing up, one by one, Mrs. Dalloway walking last and almost always send-
ing 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 cel-
lars, 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 gen-
tlemen 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, look-
ing 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 embroider-
ies, 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 ex-
traordinary how Peter put her into these states just by coming and stand-
ing 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 ob-
scured 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 boughtcheap 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 al-
ways 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 interest-
ing 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 Bur-
rows. 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 en-
joying it. It was too much like being—just anybody, standing there; any-
body 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!
"How awfully good of you to come!" she said, and she meant it—it
was odd how standing there one felt them going on, going on, some
quite old, some …
What name? Lady Rosseter? But who on earth was Lady Rosseter?
"Clarissa!" That voice! It was Sally Seton! Sally Seton! after all these
years! She loomed through a mist. For she hadn't looked like that, Sally
Seton, when Clarissa grasped the hot water can, to think of her under
this roof, under this roof! Not like that!
All on top of each other, embarrassed, laughing, words tumbled
out—passing through London; heard from Clara Haydon; what a chance
of seeing you! So I thrust myself in—without an invitation… .
One might put down the hot water can quite composedly. The lustre
had gone out of her. Yet it was extraordinary to see her again, older, hap-
pier, less lovely. They kissed each other, first this cheek then that, by the
drawing-room door, and Clarissa turned, with Sally's hand in hers, and
saw her rooms full, heard the roar of voices, saw the candlesticks, the
blowing curtains, and the roses which Richard had given her."I have five enormous boys," said Sally.
She had the simplest egotism, the most open desire to be thought first
always, and Clarissa loved her for being still like that. "I can't believe it!"
she cried, kindling all over with pleasure at the thought of the past.
But alas, Wilkins; Wilkins wanted her; Wilkins was emitting in a voice
of commanding authority as if the whole company must be admonished
and the hostess reclaimed from frivolity, one name:
"The Prime Minister," said Peter Walsh.
The Prime Minister? Was it really? Ellie Henderson marvelled. What a
thing to tell Edith!
One couldn't laugh at him. He looked so ordinary. You might have
stood him behind a counter and bought biscuits—poor chap, all rigged
up in gold lace. And to be fair, as he went his rounds, first with Clarissa
then with Richard escorting him, he did it very well. He tried to look
somebody. It was amusing to watch. Nobody looked at him. They just
went on talking, yet it was perfectly plain that they all knew, felt to the
marrow of their bones, this majesty passing; this symbol of what they all
stood for, English society. Old Lady Bruton, and she looked very fine
too, very stalwart in her lace, swam up, and they withdrew into a little
room which at once became spied upon, guarded, and a sort of stir and
rustle rippled through every one, openly: the Prime Minister!
Lord, lord, the snobbery of the English! thought Peter Walsh, standing
in the corner. How they loved dressing up in gold lace and doing
homage! There! That must be, by Jove it was, Hugh Whitbread, snuffing
round the precincts of the great, grown rather fatter, rather whiter, the
admirable Hugh!
He looked always as if he were on duty, thought Peter, a privileged,
but secretive being, hoarding secrets which he would die to defend,
though it was only some little piece of tittle-tattle dropped by a court
footman, which would be in all the papers tomorrow. Such were his
rattles, his baubles, in playing with which he had grown white, come to
the verge of old age, enjoying the respect and affection of all who had the
privilege of knowing this type of the English public school man. Inevit-
ably one made up things like that about Hugh; that was his style; the
style of those admirable letters which Peter had read thousands of miles
across the sea in the Times, and had thanked God he was out of that
pernicious hubble-bubble if it were only to hear baboons chatter and
coolies beat their wives. An olive-skinned youth from one of the
Universities stood obsequiously by. Him he would patronise, initiate,
teach how to get on. For he liked nothing better than doing kindnesses,making the hearts of old ladies palpitate with the joy of being thought of
in their age, their affliction, thinking themselves quite forgotten, yet here
was dear Hugh driving up and spending an hour talking of the past, re-
membering trifles, praising the home-made cake, though Hugh might
eat cake with a Duchess any day of his life, and, to look at him, probably
did spend a good deal of time in that agreeable occupation. The All-
judging, the All-merciful, might excuse. Peter Walsh had no mercy. Vil-
lains there must be, and God knows the rascals who get hanged for bat-
tering the brains of a girl out in a train do less harm on the whole than
Hugh Whitbread and his kindness. Look at him now, on tiptoe, dancing
forward, bowing and scraping, as the Prime Minister and Lady Bruton
emerged, intimating for all the world to see that he was privileged to say
something, something private, to Lady Bruton as she passed. She
stopped. She wagged her fine old head. She was thanking him presum-
ably for some piece of servility. She had her toadies, minor officials in
Government offices who ran about putting through little jobs on her be-
half, in return for which she gave them luncheon. But she derived from
the eighteenth century. She was all right.
And now Clarissa escorted her Prime Minister down the room, pran-
cing, sparkling, with the stateliness of her grey hair. She wore ear-rings,
and a silver-green mermaid's dress. Lolloping on the waves and braiding
her tresses she seemed, having that gift still; to be; to exist; to sum it all
up in the moment as she passed; turned, caught her scarf in some other
woman's dress, unhitched it, laughed, all with the most perfect ease and
air of a creature floating in its element. But age had brushed her; even as
a mermaid might behold in her glass the setting sun on some very clear
evening over the waves. There was a breath of tenderness; her severity,
her prudery, her woodenness were all warmed through now, and she
had about her as she said good-bye to the thick gold-laced man who was
doing his best, and good luck to him, to look important, an inexpressible
dignity; an exquisite cordiality; as if she wished the whole world well,
and must now, being on the very verge and rim of things, take her leave.
So she made him think. (But he was not in love.)
Indeed, Clarissa felt, the Prime Minister had been good to come. And,
walking down the room with him, with Sally there and Peter there and
Richard very pleased, with all those people rather inclined, perhaps, to
envy, she had felt that intoxication of the moment, that dilatation of the
nerves of the heart itself till it seemed to quiver, steeped, upright;—yes,
but after all it was what other people felt, that; for, though she loved it
and felt it tingle and sting, still these semblances, these triumphs (dear old Peter, for example, thinking her so brilliant), had a hollowness; at
arm's length they were, not in the heart; and it might be that she was
growing old but they satisfied her no longer as they used; and suddenly,
as she saw the Prime Minister go down the stairs, the gilt rim of the Sir
Joshua picture of the little girl with a muff brought back Kilman with a
rush; Kilman her enemy. That was satisfying; that was real. Ah, how she
hated her—hot, hypocritical, corrupt; with all that power; Elizabeth's se-
ducer; the woman who had crept in to steal and defile (Richard would
say, What nonsense!). She hated her: she loved her. It was enemies one
wanted, not friends—not Mrs. Durrant and Clara, Sir William and Lady
Bradshaw, Miss Truelock and Eleanor Gibson (whom she saw coming
upstairs). They must find her if they wanted her. She was for the party!
There was her old friend Sir Harry.
"Dear Sir Harry!" she said, going up to the fine old fellow who had
produced more bad pictures than any other two Academicians in the
whole of St. John's Wood (they were always of cattle, standing in sunset
pools absorbing moisture, or signifying, for he had a certain range of ges-
ture, by the raising of one foreleg and the toss of the antlers, "the Ap-
proach of the Stranger"—all his activities, dining out, racing, were foun-
ded on cattle standing absorbing moisture in sunset pools).
"What are you laughing at?" she asked him. For Willie Titcomb and Sir
Harry and Herbert Ainsty were all laughing. But no. Sir Harry could not
tell Clarissa Dalloway (much though he liked her; of her type he thought
her perfect, and threatened to paint her) his stories of the music hall
stage. He chaffed her about her party. He missed his brandy. These
circles, he said, were above him. But he liked her; respected her, in spite
of her damnable, difficult upper-class refinement, which made it im-
possible to ask Clarissa Dalloway to sit on his knee. And up came that
wandering will-o'-the-wisp, that vagulous phosphorescence, old Mrs.
Hilbery, stretching her hands to the blaze of his laughter (about the Duke
and the Lady), which, as she heard it across the room, seemed to reas-
sure her on a point which sometimes bothered her if she woke early in
the morning and did not like to call her maid for a cup of tea; how it is
certain we must die.
"They won't tell us their stories," said Clarissa.
"Dear Clarissa!" exclaimed Mrs. Hilbery. She looked to-night, she said,
so like her mother as she first saw her walking in a garden in a grey hat.
And really Clarissa's eyes filled with tears. Her mother, walking in a
garden! But alas, she must go.For there was Professor Brierly, who lectured on Milton, talking to
little Jim Hutton (who was unable even for a party like this to compass
both tie and waistcoat or make his hair lie flat), and even at this distance
they were quarrelling, she could see. For Professor Brierly was a very
queer fish. With all those degrees, honours, lectureships between him
and the scribblers he suspected instantly an atmosphere not favourable
to his queer compound; his prodigious learning and timidity; his wintry
charm without cordiality; his innocence blent with snobbery; he
quivered if made conscious by a lady's unkempt hair, a youth's boots, of
an underworld, very creditable doubtless, of rebels, of ardent young
people; of would-be geniuses, and intimated with a little toss of the head,
with a sniff—Humph!—the value of moderation; of some slight training
in the classics in order to appreciate Milton. Professor Brierly (Clarissa
could see) wasn't hitting it off with little Jim Hutton (who wore red
socks, his black being at the laundry) about Milton. She interrupted.
She said she loved Bach. So did Hutton. That was the bond between
them, and Hutton (a very bad poet) always felt that Mrs. Dalloway was
far the best of the great ladies who took an interest in art. It was odd how
strict she was. About music she was purely impersonal. She was rather a
prig. But how charming to look at! She made her house so nice if it
weren't for her Professors. Clarissa had half a mind to snatch him off and
set him down at the piano in the back room. For he played divinely.
"But the noise!" she said. "The noise!"
"The sign of a successful party." Nodding urbanely, the Professor
stepped delicately off.
"He knows everything in the whole world about Milton," said Clarissa.
"Does he indeed?" said Hutton, who would imitate the Professor
throughout Hampstead; the Professor on Milton; the Professor on mod-
eration; the Professor stepping delicately off.
But she must speak to that couple, said Clarissa, Lord Gayton and
Nancy Blow.
Not that they added perceptibly to the noise of the party. They were
not talking (perceptibly) as they stood side by side by the yellow cur-
tains. They would soon be off elsewhere, together; and never had very
much to say in any circumstances. They looked; that was all. That was
enough. They looked so clean, so sound, she with an apricot bloom of
powder and paint, but he scrubbed, rinsed, with the eyes of a bird, so
that no ball could pass him or stroke surprise him. He struck, he leapt,
accurately, on the spot. Ponies' mouths quivered at the end of his reins.
He had his honours, ancestral monuments, banners hanging in thechurch at home. He had his duties; his tenants; a mother and sisters; had
been all day at Lords, and that was what they were talking
about—cricket, cousins, the movies—when Mrs. Dalloway came up.
Lord Gayton liked her most awfully. So did Miss Blow. She had such
charming manners.
"It is angelic—it is delicious of you to have come!" she said. She loved
Lords; she loved youth, and Nancy, dressed at enormous expense by the
greatest artists in Paris, stood there looking as if her body had merely
put forth, of its own accord, a green frill.
"I had meant to have dancing," said Clarissa.
For the young people could not talk. And why should they? Shout,
embrace, swing, be up at dawn; carry sugar to ponies; kiss and caress the
snouts of adorable chows; and then all tingling and streaming, plunge
and swim. But the enormous resources of the English language, the
power it bestows, after all, of communicating feelings (at their age, she
and Peter would have been arguing all the evening), was not for them.
They would solidify young. They would be good beyond measure to the
people on the estate, but alone, perhaps, rather dull.
"What a pity!" she said. "I had hoped to have dancing."
It was so extraordinarily nice of them to have come! But talk of dan-
cing! The rooms were packed.
There was old Aunt Helena in her shawl. Alas, she must leave
them—Lord Gayton and Nancy Blow. There was old Miss Parry, her
aunt.
For Miss Helena Parry was not dead: Miss Parry was alive. She was
past eighty. She ascended staircases slowly with a stick. She was placed
in a chair (Richard had seen to it). People who had known Burma in the
'seventies were always led up to her. Where had Peter got to? They used
to be such friends. For at the mention of India, or even Ceylon, her eyes
(only one was glass) slowly deepened, became blue, beheld, not human
beings—she had no tender memories, no proud illusions about Viceroys,
Generals, Mutinies—it was orchids she saw, and mountain passes and
herself carried on the backs of coolies in the 'sixties over solitary peaks;
or descending to uproot orchids (startling blossoms, never beheld be-
fore) which she painted in water-colour; an indomitable Englishwoman,
fretful if disturbed by the War, say, which dropped a bomb at her very
door, from her deep meditation over orchids and her own figure jour-
neying in the 'sixties in India—but here was Peter.
"Come and talk to Aunt Helena about Burma," said Clarissa.
And yet he had not had a word with her all the evening!"We will talk later," said Clarissa, leading him up to Aunt Helena, in
her white shawl, with her stick.
"Peter Walsh," said Clarissa.
That meant nothing.
Clarissa had asked her. It was tiring; it was noisy; but Clarissa had
asked her. So she had come. It was a pity that they lived in Lon-
don—Richard and Clarissa. If only for Clarissa's health it would have
been better to live in the country. But Clarissa had always been fond of
society.
"He has been in Burma," said Clarissa.
Ah. She could not resist recalling what Charles Darwin had said about
her little book on the orchids of Burma.
(Clarissa must speak to Lady Bruton.)
No doubt it was forgotten now, her book on the orchids of Burma, but
it went into three editions before 1870, she told Peter. She remembered
him now. He had been at Bourton (and he had left her, Peter Walsh re-
membered, without a word in the drawing-room that night when
Clarissa had asked him to come boating).
"Richard so much enjoyed his lunch party," said Clarissa to Lady
Bruton.
"Richard was the greatest possible help," Lady Bruton replied. "He
helped me to write a letter. And how are you?"
"Oh, perfectly well!" said Clarissa. (Lady Bruton detested illness in the
wives of politicians.)
"And there's Peter Walsh!" said Lady Bruton (for she could never think
of anything to say to Clarissa; though she liked her. She had lots of fine
qualities; but they had nothing in common—she and Clarissa. It might
have been better if Richard had married a woman with less charm, who
would have helped him more in his work. He had lost his chance of the
Cabinet). "There's Peter Walsh!" she said, shaking hands with that agree-
able sinner, that very able fellow who should have made a name for him-
self but hadn't (always in difficulties with women), and, of course, old
Miss Parry. Wonderful old lady!
Lady Bruton stood by Miss Parry's chair, a spectral grenadier, draped
in black, inviting Peter Walsh to lunch; cordial; but without small talk,
remembering nothing whatever about the flora or fauna of India. She
had been there, of course; had stayed with three Viceroys; thought some
of the Indian civilians uncommonly fine fellows; but what a tragedy it
was—the state of India! The Prime Minister had just been telling her (old
Miss Parry huddled up in her shawl, did not care what the PrimeMinister had just been telling her), and Lady Bruton would like to have
Peter Walsh's opinion, he being fresh from the centre, and she would get
Sir Sampson to meet him, for really it prevented her from sleeping at
night, the folly of it, the wickedness she might say, being a soldier's
daughter. She was an old woman now, not good for much. But her
house, her servants, her good friend Milly Brush—did he remember
her?—were all there only asking to be used if—if they could be of help,
in short. For she never spoke of England, but this isle of men, this dear,
dear land, was in her blood (without reading Shakespeare), and if ever a
woman could have worn the helmet and shot the arrow, could have led
troops to attack, ruled with indomitable justice barbarian hordes and lain
under a shield noseless in a church, or made a green grass mound on
some primeval hillside, that woman was Millicent Bruton. Debarred by
her sex and some truancy, too, of the logical faculty (she found it im-
possible to write a letter to the Times), she had the thought of Empire al-
ways at hand, and had acquired from her association with that armoured
goddess her ramrod bearing, her robustness of demeanour, so that one
could not figure her even in death parted from the earth or roaming ter-
ritories over which, in some spiritual shape, the Union Jack had ceased to
fly. To be not English even among the dead—no, no! Impossible!
But was it Lady Bruton (whom she used to know)? Was it Peter Walsh
grown grey? Lady Rosseter asked herself (who had been Sally Seton). It
was old Miss Parry certainly—the old aunt who used to be so cross when
she stayed at Bourton. Never should she forget running along the pas-
sage naked, and being sent for by Miss Parry! And Clarissa! oh Clarissa!
Sally caught her by the arm.
Clarissa stopped beside them.
"But I can't stay," she said. "I shall come later. Wait," she said, looking
at Peter and Sally. They must wait, she meant, until all these people had
gone.
"I shall come back," she said, looking at her old friends, Sally and
Peter, who were shaking hands, and Sally, remembering the past no
doubt, was laughing.
But her voice was wrung of its old ravishing richness; her eyes not
aglow as they used to be, when she smoked cigars, when she ran down
the passage to fetch her sponge bag, without a stitch of clothing on her,
and Ellen Atkins asked, What if the gentlemen had met her? But every-
body forgave her. She stole a chicken from the larder because she was
hungry in the night; she smoked cigars in her bedroom; she left a price-
less book in the punt. But everybody adored her (except perhaps Papa).It was her warmth; her vitality—she would paint, she would write. Old
women in the village never to this day forgot to ask after "your friend in
the red cloak who seemed so bright." She accused Hugh Whitbread, of
all people (and there he was, her old friend Hugh, talking to the Por-
tuguese Ambassador), of kissing her in the smoking-room to punish her
for saying that women should have votes. Vulgar men did, she said. And
Clarissa remembered having to persuade her not to denounce him at
family prayers—which she was capable of doing with her daring, her
recklessness, her melodramatic love of being the centre of everything
and creating scenes, and it was bound, Clarissa used to think, to end in
some awful tragedy; her death; her martyrdom; instead of which she had
married, quite unexpectedly, a bald man with a large buttonhole who
owned, it was said, cotton mills at Manchester. And she had five boys!
She and Peter had settled down together. They were talking: it seemed
so familiar—that they should be talking. They would discuss the past.
With the two of them (more even than with Richard) she shared her past;
the garden; the trees; old Joseph Breitkopf singing Brahms without any
voice; the drawing-room wallpaper; the smell of the mats. A part of this
Sally must always be; Peter must always be. But she must leave them.
There were the Bradshaws, whom she disliked. She must go up to Lady
Bradshaw (in grey and silver, balancing like a sea-lion at the edge of its
tank, barking for invitations, Duchesses, the typical successful man's
wife), she must go up to Lady Bradshaw and say …
But Lady Bradshaw anticipated her.
"We are shockingly late, dear Mrs. Dalloway, we hardly dared to come
in," she said.
And Sir William, who looked very distinguished, with his grey hair
and blue eyes, said yes; they had not been able to resist the temptation.
He was talking to Richard about that Bill probably, which they wanted
to get through the Commons. Why did the sight of him, talking to
Richard, curl her up? He looked what he was, a great doctor. A man ab-
solutely at the head of his profession, very powerful, rather worn. For
think what cases came before him—people in the uttermost depths of
misery; people on the verge of insanity; husbands and wives. He had to
decide questions of appalling difficulty. Yet—what she felt was, one
wouldn't like Sir William to see one unhappy. No; not that man.
"How is your son at Eton?" she asked Lady Bradshaw.
He had just missed his eleven, said Lady Bradshaw, because of the
mumps. His father minded even more than he did, she thought "being,"
she said, "nothing but a great boy himself."
Clarissa looked at Sir William, talking to Richard. He did not look like
a boy—not in the least like a boy. She had once gone with some one to
ask his advice. He had been perfectly right; extremely sensible. But
Heavens—what a relief to get out to the street again! There was some
poor wretch sobbing, she remembered, in the waiting-room. But she did
not know what it was—about Sir William; what exactly she disliked.
Only Richard agreed with her, "didn't like his taste, didn't like his smell."
But he was extraordinarily able. They were talking about this Bill. Some
case, Sir William was mentioning, lowering his voice. It had its bearing
upon what he was saying about the deferred effects of shell shock. There
must be some provision in the Bill.
Sinking her voice, drawing Mrs. Dalloway into the shelter of a com-
mon femininity, a common pride in the illustrious qualities of husbands
and their sad tendency to overwork, Lady Bradshaw (poor goose—one
didn't dislike her) murmured how, "just as we were starting, my hus-
band was called up on the telephone, a very sad case. A young man (that
is what Sir William is telling Mr. Dalloway) had killed himself. He had
been in the army." Oh! thought Clarissa, in the middle of my party,
here's death, she thought.
She went on, into the little room where the Prime Minister had gone
with Lady Bruton. Perhaps there was somebody there. But there was
nobody. The chairs still kept the impress of the Prime Minister and Lady
Bruton, she turned deferentially, he sitting four-square, authoritatively.
They had been talking about India. There was nobody. The party's
splendour fell to the floor, so strange it was to come in alone in her
finery.
What business had the Bradshaws to talk of death at her party? A
young man had killed himself. And they talked of it at her party—the
Bradshaws, talked of death. He had killed himself—but how? Always
her body went through it first, when she was told, suddenly, of an acci-
dent; her dress flamed, her body burnt. He had thrown himself from a
window. Up had flashed the ground; through him, blundering, bruising,
went the rusty spikes. There he lay with a thud, thud, thud in his brain,
and then a suffocation of blackness. So she saw it. But why had he done
it? And the Bradshaws talked of it at her party!
She had once thrown a shilling into the Serpentine, never anything
more. But he had flung it away. They went on living (she would have to
go back; the rooms were still crowded; people kept on coming). They (all
day she had been thinking of Bourton, of Peter, of Sally), they would
grow old. A thing there was that mattered; a thing, wreathed about withchatter, defaced, obscured in her own life, let drop every day in corrup-
tion, lies, chatter. This he had preserved. Death was defiance. Death was
an attempt to communicate; people feeling the impossibility of reaching
the centre which, mystically, evaded them; closeness drew apart; rapture
faded, one was alone. There was an embrace in death.
But this young man who had killed himself—had he plunged holding
his treasure? "If it were now to die, 'twere now to be most happy," she
had said to herself once, coming down in white.
Or there were the poets and thinkers. Suppose he had had that pas-
sion, and had gone to Sir William Bradshaw, a great doctor yet to her ob-
scurely evil, without sex or lust, extremely polite to women, but capable
of some indescribable outrage—forcing your soul, that was it—if this
young man had gone to him, and Sir William had impressed him, like
that, with his power, might he not then have said (indeed she felt it
now), Life is made intolerable; they make life intolerable, men like that?
Then (she had felt it only this morning) there was the terror; the over-
whelming incapacity, one's parents giving it into one's hands, this life, to
be lived to the end, to be walked with serenely; there was in the depths
of her heart an awful fear. Even now, quite often if Richard had not been
there reading the Times, so that she could crouch like a bird and gradu-
ally revive, send roaring up that immeasurable delight, rubbing stick to
stick, one thing with another, she must have perished. But that young
man had killed himself.
Somehow it was her disaster—her disgrace. It was her punishment to
see sink and disappear here a man, there a woman, in this profound
darkness, and she forced to stand here in her evening dress. She had
schemed; she had pilfered. She was never wholly admirable. She had
wanted success. Lady Bexborough and the rest of it. And once she had
walked on the terrace at Bourton.
It was due to Richard; she had never been so happy. Nothing could be
slow enough; nothing last too long. No pleasure could equal, she
thought, straightening the chairs, pushing in one book on the shelf, this
having done with the triumphs of youth, lost herself in the process of liv-
ing, to find it, with a shock of delight, as the sun rose, as the day sank.
Many a time had she gone, at Bourton when they were all talking, to
look at the sky; or seen it between people's shoulders at dinner; seen it in
London when she could not sleep. She walked to the window.
It held, foolish as the idea was, something of her own in it, this country
sky, this sky above Westminster. She parted the curtains; she looked. Oh,
but how surprising!—in the room opposite the old lady stared straight at her! She was going to bed. And the sky. It will be a solemn sky, she had
thought, it will be a dusky sky, turning away its cheek in beauty. But
there it was—ashen pale, raced over quickly by tapering vast clouds. It
was new to her. The wind must have risen. She was going to bed, in the
room opposite. It was fascinating to watch her, moving about, that old
lady, crossing the room, coming to the window. Could she see her? It
was fascinating, with people still laughing and shouting in the drawing-
room, to watch that old woman, quite quietly, going to bed. She pulled
the blind now. The clock began striking. The young man had killed him-
self; but she did not pity him; with the clock striking the hour, one, two,
three, she did not pity him, with all this going on. There! the old lady
had put out her light! the whole house was dark now with this going on,
she repeated, and the words came to her, Fear no more the heat of the
sun. She must go back to them. But what an extraordinary night! She felt
somehow very like him—the young man who had killed himself. She felt
glad that he had done it; thrown it away. The clock was striking. The
leaden circles dissolved in the air. He made her feel the beauty; made her
feel the fun. But she must go back. She must assemble. She must find
Sally and Peter. And she came in from the little room.
"But where is Clarissa?" said Peter. He was sitting on the sofa with
Sally. (After all these years he really could not call her "Lady Rosseter.")
"Where's the woman gone to?" he asked. "Where's Clarissa?"
Sally supposed, and so did Peter for the matter of that, that there were
people of importance, politicians, whom neither of them knew unless by
sight in the picture papers, whom Clarissa had to be nice to, had to talk
to. She was with them. Yet there was Richard Dalloway not in the Cabin-
et. He hadn't been a success, Sally supposed? For herself, she scarcely
ever read the papers. She sometimes saw his name mentioned. But
then—well, she lived a very solitary life, in the wilds, Clarissa would
say, among great merchants, great manufacturers, men, after all, who
did things. She had done things too!
"I have five sons!" she told him.
Lord, Lord, what a change had come over her! the softness of mother-
hood; its egotism too. Last time they met, Peter remembered, had been
among the cauliflowers in the moonlight, the leaves "like rough bronze"
she had said, with her literary turn; and she had picked a rose. She had
marched him up and down that awful night, after the scene by the foun-
tain; he was to catch the midnight train. Heavens, he had wept!
That was his old trick, opening a pocket-knife, thought Sally, always
opening and shutting a knife when he got excited. They had been very,very intimate, she and Peter Walsh, when he was in love with Clarissa,
and there was that dreadful, ridiculous scene over Richard Dalloway at
lunch. She had called Richard "Wickham." Why not call Richard
"Wickham"? Clarissa had flared up! and indeed they had never seen each
other since, she and Clarissa, not more than half a dozen times perhaps
in the last ten years. And Peter Walsh had gone off to India, and she had
heard vaguely that he had made an unhappy marriage, and she didn't
know whether he had any children, and she couldn't ask him, for he had
changed. He was rather shrivelled-looking, but kinder, she felt, and she
had a real affection for him, for he was connected with her youth, and
she still had a little Emily Brontë he had given her, and he was to write,
surely? In those days he was to write.
"Have you written?" she asked him, spreading her hand, her firm and
shapely hand, on her knee in a way he recalled.
"Not a word!" said Peter Walsh, and she laughed.
She was still attractive, still a personage, Sally Seton. But who was this
Rosseter? He wore two camellias on his wedding day—that was all Peter
knew of him. "They have myriads of servants, miles of conservatories,"
Clarissa wrote; something like that. Sally owned it with a shout of
laughter.
"Yes, I have ten thousand a year"—whether before the tax was paid or
after, she couldn't remember, for her husband, "whom you must meet,"
she said, "whom you would like," she said, did all that for her.
And Sally used to be in rags and tatters. She had pawned her
grandmother's ring which Marie Antoinette had given her great-grand-
father to come to Bourton.
Oh yes, Sally remembered; she had it still, a ruby ring which Marie
Antoinette had given her great-grandfather. She never had a penny to
her name in those days, and going to Bourton always meant some fright-
ful pinch. But going to Bourton had meant so much to her—had kept her
sane, she believed, so unhappy had she been at home. But that was all a
thing of the past—all over now, she said. And Mr. Parry was dead; and
Miss Parry was still alive. Never had he had such a shock in his life! said
Peter. He had been quite certain she was dead. And the marriage had
been, Sally supposed, a success? And that very handsome, very self-pos-
sessed young woman was Elizabeth, over there, by the curtains, in red.
(She was like a poplar, she was like a river, she was like a hyacinth,
Willie Titcomb was thinking. Oh how much nicer to be in the country
and do what she liked! She could hear her poor dog howling, Elizabeth
was certain.) She was not a bit like Clarissa, Peter Walsh said."Oh, Clarissa!" said Sally.
What Sally felt was simply this. She had owed Clarissa an enormous
amount. They had been friends, not acquaintances, friends, and she still
saw Clarissa all in white going about the house with her hands full of
flowers—to this day tobacco plants made her think of Bourton. But—did
Peter understand?—she lacked something. Lacked what was it? She had
charm; she had extraordinary charm. But to be frank (and she felt that
Peter was an old friend, a real friend—did absence matter? did distance
matter? She had often wanted to write to him, but torn it up, yet felt he
understood, for people understand without things being said, as one
realises growing old, and old she was, had been that afternoon to see her
sons at Eton, where they had the mumps), to be quite frank then, how
could Clarissa have done it?—married Richard Dalloway? a sportsman, a
man who cared only for dogs. Literally, when he came into the room he
smelt of the stables. And then all this? She waved her hand.
Hugh Whitbread it was, strolling past in his white waistcoat, dim, fat,
blind, past everything he looked, except self-esteem and comfort.
"He's not going to recognise us," said Sally, and really she hadn't the
courage—so that was Hugh! the admirable Hugh!
"And what does he do?" she asked Peter.
He blacked the King's boots or counted bottles at Windsor, Peter told
her. Peter kept his sharp tongue still! But Sally must be frank, Peter said.
That kiss now, Hugh's.
On the lips, she assured him, in the smoking-room one evening. She
went straight to Clarissa in a rage. Hugh didn't do such things! Clarissa
said, the admirable Hugh! Hugh's socks were without exception the
most beautiful she had ever seen—and now his evening dress. Perfect!
And had he children?
"Everybody in the room has six sons at Eton," Peter told her, except
himself. He, thank God, had none. No sons, no daughters, no wife. Well,
he didn't seem to mind, said Sally. He looked younger, she thought, than
any of them.
But it had been a silly thing to do, in many ways, Peter said, to marry
like that; "a perfect goose she was," he said, but, he said, "we had a splen-
did time of it," but how could that be? Sally wondered; what did he
mean? and how odd it was to know him and yet not know a single thing
that had happened to him. And did he say it out of pride? Very likely,
for after all it must be galling for him (though he was an oddity, a sort of
sprite, not at all an ordinary man), it must be lonely at his age to have no
home, nowhere to go to. But he must stay with them for weeks and weeks. Of course he would; he would love to stay with them, and that
was how it came out. All these years the Dalloways had never been once.
Time after time they had asked them. Clarissa (for it was Clarissa of
course) would not come. For, said Sally, Clarissa was at heart a
snob—one had to admit it, a snob. And it was that that was between
them, she was convinced. Clarissa thought she had married beneath her,
her husband being—she was proud of it—a miner's son. Every penny
they had he had earned. As a little boy (her voice trembled) he had car-
ried great sacks.
(And so she would go on, Peter felt, hour after hour; the miner's son;
people thought she had married beneath her; her five sons; and what
was the other thing—plants, hydrangeas, syringas, very, very rare hibis-
cus lilies that never grow north of the Suez Canal, but she, with one
gardener in a suburb near Manchester, had beds of them, positively
beds! Now all that Clarissa had escaped, unmaternal as she was.)
A snob was she? Yes, in many ways. Where was she, all this time? It
was getting late.
"Yet," said Sally, "when I heard Clarissa was giving a party, I felt I
couldn't not come—must see her again (and I'm staying in Victoria
Street, practically next door). So I just came without an invitation. But,"
she whispered, "tell me, do. Who is this?"
It was Mrs. Hilbery, looking for the door. For how late it was getting!
And, she murmured, as the night grew later, as people went, one found
old friends; quiet nooks and corners; and the loveliest views. Did they
know, she asked, that they were surrounded by an enchanted garden?
Lights and trees and wonderful gleaming lakes and the sky. Just a few
fairy lamps, Clarissa Dalloway had said, in the back garden! But she was
a magician! It was a park… . And she didn't know their names, but
friends she knew they were, friends without names, songs without
words, always the best. But there were so many doors, such unexpected
places, she could not find her way.
"Old Mrs. Hilbery," said Peter; but who was that? that lady standing
by the curtain all the evening, without speaking? He knew her face; con-
nected her with Bourton. Surely she used to cut up underclothes at the
large table in the window? Davidson, was that her name?
"Oh, that is Ellie Henderson," said Sally. Clarissa was really very hard
on her. She was a cousin, very poor. Clarissa was hard on people.
She was rather, said Peter. Yet, said Sally, in her emotional way, with a
rush of that enthusiasm which Peter used to love her for, yet dreaded a
little now, so effusive she might become—how generous to her friendsClarissa was! and what a rare quality one found it, and how sometimes
at night or on Christmas Day, when she counted up her blessings, she
put that friendship first. They were young; that was it. Clarissa was
pure-hearted; that was it. Peter would think her sentimental. So she was.
For she had come to feel that it was the only thing worth saying—what
one felt. Cleverness was silly. One must say simply what one felt.
"But I do not know," said Peter Walsh, "what I feel."
Poor Peter, thought Sally. Why did not Clarissa come and talk to
them? That was what he was longing for. She knew it. All the time he
was thinking only of Clarissa, and was fidgeting with his knife.
He had not found life simple, Peter said. His relations with Clarissa
had not been simple. It had spoilt his life, he said. (They had been so in-
timate—he and Sally Seton, it was absurd not to say it.) One could not be
in love twice, he said. And what could she say? Still, it is better to have
loved (but he would think her sentimental—he used to be so sharp). He
must come and stay with them in Manchester. That is all very true, he
said. All very true. He would love to come and stay with them, directly
he had done what he had to do in London.
And Clarissa had cared for him more than she had ever cared for
Richard. Sally was positive of that.
"No, no, no!" said Peter (Sally should not have said that—she went too
far). That good fellow—there he was at the end of the room, holding
forth, the same as ever, dear old Richard. Who was he talking to? Sally
asked, that very distinguished-looking man? Living in the wilds as she
did, she had an insatiable curiosity to know who people were. But Peter
did not know. He did not like his looks, he said, probably a Cabinet Min-
ister. Of them all, Richard seemed to him the best, he said—the most
disinterested.
"But what has he done?" Sally asked. Public work, she supposed. And
were they happy together? Sally asked (she herself was extremely
happy); for, she admitted, she knew nothing about them, only jumped to
conclusions, as one does, for what can one know even of the people one
lives with every day? she asked. Are we not all prisoners? She had read a
wonderful play about a man who scratched on the wall of his cell, and
she had felt that was true of life—one scratched on the wall. Despairing
of human relationships (people were so difficult), she often went into her
garden and got from her flowers a peace which men and women never
gave her. But no; he did not like cabbages; he preferred human beings,
Peter said. Indeed, the young are beautiful, Sally said, watching Eliza-
beth cross the room. How unlike Clarissa at her age! Could he makeanything of her? She would not open her lips. Not much, not yet, Peter
admitted. She was like a lily, Sally said, a lily by the side of a pool. But
Peter did not agree that we know nothing. We know everything, he said;
at least he did.
But these two, Sally whispered, these two coming now (and really she
must go, if Clarissa did not come soon), this distinguished-looking man
and his rather common-looking wife who had been talking to
Richard—what could one know about people like that?
"That they're damnable humbugs," said Peter, looking at them casu-
ally. He made Sally laugh.
But Sir William Bradshaw stopped at the door to look at a picture. He
looked in the corner for the engraver's name. His wife looked too. Sir
William Bradshaw was so interested in art.
When one was young, said Peter, one was too much excited to know
people. Now that one was old, fifty-two to be precise (Sally was fifty-
five, in body, she said, but her heart was like a girl's of twenty); now that
one was mature then, said Peter, one could watch, one could understand,
and one did not lose the power of feeling, he said. No, that is true, said
Sally. She felt more deeply, more passionately, every year. It increased,
he said, alas, perhaps, but one should be glad of it—it went on increasing
in his experience. There was some one in India. He would like to tell
Sally about her. He would like Sally to know her. She was married, he
said. She had two small children. They must all come to Manchester, said
Sally—he must promise before they left.
There's Elizabeth, he said, she feels not half what we feel, not yet. But,
said Sally, watching Elizabeth go to her father, one can see they are de-
voted to each other. She could feel it by the way Elizabeth went to her
father.
For her father had been looking at her, as he stood talking to the Brad-
shaws, and he had thought to himself, Who is that lovely girl? And sud-
denly he realised that it was his Elizabeth, and he had not recognised
her, she looked so lovely in her pink frock! Elizabeth had felt him look-
ing at her as she talked to Willie Titcomb. So she went to him and they
stood together, now that the party was almost over, looking at the people
going, and the rooms getting emptier and emptier, with things scattered
on the floor. Even Ellie Henderson was going, nearly last of all, though
no one had spoken to her, but she had wanted to see everything, to tell
Edith. And Richard and Elizabeth were rather glad it was over, but
Richard was proud of his daughter. And he had not meant to tell her, but
he could not help telling her. He had looked at her, he said, and he hadwondered, Who is that lovely girl? and it was his daughter! That did
make her happy. But her poor dog was howling.
"Richard has improved. You are right," said Sally. "I shall go and talk
to him. I shall say goodnight. What does the brain matter," said Lady
Rosseter, getting up, "compared with the heart?"
"I will come," said Peter, but he sat on for a moment. What is this ter-
ror? what is this ecstasy? he thought to himself. What is it that fills me
with extraordinary excitement?
It is Clarissa, he said.
For there she was.
*THE END*
