Mrs. Dalloway
should I suffer? she was asking, as she walked down the broad path. No;
I can’t stand it any longer, she was saying, having left Septimus, who
wasn’t Septimus any longer, to say hard, cruel, wicked things, to talk
to himself, to talk to a dead man, on the seat over there; when the
child ran full tilt into her, fell flat, and burst out crying.
That was comforting rather. She stood her upright, dusted her frock,
kissed her.
But for herself she had done nothing wrong; she had loved Septimus; she
had been happy; she had had a beautiful home, and there her sisters
lived still, making hats. Why should _she_ suffer?
The child ran straight back to its nurse, and Rezia saw her scolded,
comforted, taken up by the nurse who put down her knitting, and the
kind-looking man gave her his watch to blow open to comfort her--but
why should _she_ be exposed? Why not left in Milan? Why tortured? Why?
Slightly waved by tears the broad path, the nurse, the man in grey,
the perambulator, rose and fell before her eyes. To be rocked by this
malignant torturer was her lot. But why? She was like a bird sheltering
under the thin hollow of a leaf, who blinks at the sun when the leaf
moves; starts at the crack of a dry twig. She was exposed; she was
surrounded by the enormous trees, vast clouds of an indifferent world,
exposed; tortured; and why should she suffer? Why?
She frowned; she stamped her foot. She must go back again to Septimus
since it was almost time for them to be going to Sir William Bradshaw.
She must go back and tell him, go back to him sitting there on the
green chair under the tree, talking to himself, or to that dead man
Evans, whom she had only seen once for a moment in the shop. He had
seemed a nice quiet man; a great friend of Septimus’s, and he had been
killed in the War. But such things happen to every one. Every one has
friends who were killed in the War. Every one gives up something when
they marry. She had given up her home. She had come to live here, in
this awful city. But Septimus let himself think about horrible things,
as she could too, if she tried. He had grown stranger and stranger.
He said people were talking behind the bedroom walls. Mrs. Filmer
thought it odd. He saw things too--he had seen an old woman’s head
in the middle of a fern. Yet he could be happy when he chose. They
went to Hampton Court on top of a bus, and they were perfectly happy.
All the little red and yellow flowers were out on the grass, like
floating lamps he said, and talked and chattered and laughed, making
up stories. Suddenly he said, “Now we will kill ourselves,” when they
were standing by the river, and he looked at it with a look which she
had seen in his eyes when a train went by, or an omnibus--a look as if
something fascinated him; and she felt he was going from her and she
caught him by the arm. But going home he was perfectly quiet--perfectly
reasonable. He would argue with her about killing themselves; and
explain how wicked people were; how he could see them making up lies as
they passed in the street. He knew all their thoughts, he said; he knew
everything. He knew the meaning of the world, he said.
Then when they got back he could hardly walk. He lay on the sofa and
made her hold his hand to prevent him from falling down, down, he
cried, into the flames! and saw faces laughing at him, calling him
horrible disgusting names, from the walls, and hands pointing round
the screen. Yet they were quite alone. But he began to talk aloud,
answering people, arguing, laughing, crying, getting very excited and
making her write things down. Perfect nonsense it was; about death;
about Miss Isabel Pole. She could stand it no longer. She would go back.
She was close to him now, could see him staring at the sky, muttering,
clasping his hands. Yet Dr. Holmes said there was nothing the matter
with him. What then had happened--why had he gone, then, why, when she
sat by him, did he start, frown at her, move away, and point at her
hand, take her hand, look at it terrified?
Was it that she had taken off her wedding ring? “My hand has grown so
thin,” she said. “I have put it in my purse,” she told him.
He dropped her hand. Their marriage was over, he thought, with agony,
with relief. The rope was cut; he mounted; he was free, as it was
decreed that he, Septimus, the lord of men, should be free; alone
(since his wife had thrown away her wedding ring; since she had left
him), he, Septimus, was alone, called forth in advance of the mass of
men to hear the truth, to learn the meaning, which now at last, after
all the toils of civilisation--Greeks, Romans, Shakespeare, Darwin,
and now himself--was to be given whole to.... “To whom?” he asked
aloud. “To the Prime Minister,” the voices which rustled above his head
replied. The supreme secret must be told to the Cabinet; first that
trees are alive; next there is no crime; next love, universal love,
he muttered, gasping, trembling, painfully drawing out these profound
truths which needed, so deep were they, so difficult, an immense effort
to speak out, but the world was entirely changed by them for ever.
No crime; love; he repeated, fumbling for his card and pencil, when
a Skye terrier snuffed his trousers and he started in an agony of
fear. It was turning into a man! He could not watch it happen! It was
horrible, terrible to see a dog become a man! At once the dog trotted
away.
Heaven was divinely merciful, infinitely benignant. It spared him,
pardoned his weakness. But what was the scientific explanation (for one
must be scientific above all things)? Why could he see through bodies,
see into the future, when dogs will become men? It was the heat wave
presumably, operating upon a brain made sensitive by eons of evolution.
Scientifically speaking, the flesh was melted off the world. His body
was macerated until only the nerve fibres were left. It was spread
like a veil upon a rock.
He lay back in his chair, exhausted but upheld. He lay resting,
waiting, before he again interpreted, with effort, with agony, to
mankind. He lay very high, on the back of the world. The earth thrilled
beneath him. Red flowers grew through his flesh; their stiff leaves
rustled by his head. Music began clanging against the rocks up here.
It is a motor horn down in the street, he muttered; but up here it
cannoned from rock to rock, divided, met in shocks of sound which rose
in smooth columns (that music should be visible was a discovery) and
became an anthem, an anthem twined round now by a shepherd boy’s piping
(That’s an old man playing a penny whistle by the public-house, he
muttered) which, as the boy stood still came bubbling from his pipe,
and then, as he climbed higher, made its exquisite plaint while the
traffic passed beneath. This boy’s elegy is played among the traffic,
thought Septimus. Now he withdraws up into the snows, and roses hang
about him--the thick red roses which grow on my bedroom wall, he
reminded himself. The music stopped. He has his penny, he reasoned it
out, and has gone on to the next public-house.
But he himself remained high on his rock, like a drowned sailor on a
rock. I leant over the edge of the boat and fell down, he thought. I
went under the sea. I have been dead, and yet am now alive, but let me
rest still; he begged (he was talking to himself again--it was awful,
awful!); and as, before waking, the voices of birds and the sound of
wheels chime and chatter in a queer harmony, grow louder and louder and
the sleeper feels himself drawing to the shores of life, so he felt
himself drawing towards life, the sun growing hotter, cries sounding
louder, something tremendous about to happen.
He had only to open his eyes; but a weight was on them; a fear. He
strained; he pushed; he looked; he saw Regent’s Park before him. Long
streamers of sunlight fawned at his feet. The trees waved, brandished.
We welcome, the world seemed to say; we accept; we create. Beauty, the
world seemed to say. And as if to prove it (scientifically) wherever
he looked at the houses, at the railings, at the antelopes stretching
over the palings, beauty sprang instantly. To watch a leaf quivering
in the rush of air was an exquisite joy. Up in the sky swallows
swooping, swerving, flinging themselves in and out, round and round,
yet always with perfect control as if elastics held them; and the flies
rising and falling; and the sun spotting now this leaf, now that, in
mockery, dazzling it with soft gold in pure good temper; and now and
again some chime (it might be a motor horn) tinkling divinely on the
grass stalks--all of this, calm and reasonable as it was, made out of
ordinary things as it was, was the truth now; beauty, that was the
truth now. Beauty was everywhere.
“It is time,” said Rezia.
The word “time” split its husk; poured its riches over him; and from
his lips fell like shells, like shavings from a plane, without his
making them, hard, white, imperishable words, and flew to attach
themselves to their places in an ode to Time; an immortal ode to
Time. He sang. Evans answered from behind the tree. The dead were in
Thessaly, Evans sang, among the orchids. There they waited till the War
was over, and now the dead, now Evans himself--
“For God’s sake don’t come!” Septimus cried out. For he could not look
upon the dead.
But the branches parted. A man in grey was actually walking towards
them. It was Evans! But no mud was on him; no wounds; he was not
changed. I must tell the whole world, Septimus cried, raising his hand
(as the dead man in the grey suit came nearer), raising his hand like
some colossal figure who has lamented the fate of man for ages in
the desert alone with his hands pressed to his forehead, furrows of
despair on his cheeks, and now sees light on the desert’s edge which
broadens and strikes the iron-black figure (and Septimus half rose from
his chair), and with legions of men prostrate behind him he, the giant
mourner, receives for one moment on his face the whole--
“But I am so unhappy, Septimus,” said Rezia trying to make him sit down.
The millions lamented; for ages they had sorrowed. He would turn round,
he would tell them in a few moments, only a few moments more, of this
relief, of this joy, of this astonishing revelation--
“The time, Septimus,” Rezia repeated. “What is the time?”
He was talking, he was starting, this man must notice him. He was
looking at them.
“I will tell you the time,” said Septimus, very slowly, very drowsily,
smiling mysteriously. As he sat smiling at the dead man in the grey
suit the quarter struck--the quarter to twelve.
And that is being young, Peter Walsh thought as he passed them. To be
having an awful scene--the poor girl looked absolutely desperate--in
the middle of the morning. But what was it about, he wondered, what
had the young man in the overcoat been saying to her to make her look
like that; what awful fix had they got themselves into, both to look
so desperate as that on a fine summer morning? The amusing thing about
coming back to England, after five years, was the way it made, anyhow
the first days, things stand out as if one had never seen them before;
lovers squabbling under a tree; the domestic family life of the parks.
Never had he seen London look so enchanting--the softness of the
distances; the richness; the greenness; the civilisation, after India,
he thought, strolling across the grass.
This susceptibility to impressions had been his undoing no doubt.
Still at his age he had, like a boy or a girl even, these alternations
of mood; good days, bad days, for no reason whatever, happiness from
a pretty face, downright misery at the sight of a frump. After India
of course one fell in love with every woman one met. There was a