Mrs. Dalloway
all sorts of little things besides--Mrs. Marsham, Ellie Henderson,
glasses for ices--all sorts of little things came flooding and lapping
and dancing in on the wake of that solemn stroke which lay flat like
a bar of gold on the sea. Mrs. Marsham, Ellie Henderson, glasses for
ices. She must telephone now at once.
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
resemble 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.
Whittaker had told her, with that violent grudge against the world
which had scorned her, sneered at her, cast her off, beginning with
this indignity--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, except 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; vanquish; have faith in God. Mr. Whittaker had
said she was there for a purpose. 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 Kilman
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
Kilman 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 fireplace 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 Kilman 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 terrible together; 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 breakfast in bed
every day; Lucy carried it up; and she liked old women because 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
bearing, 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 absolutely 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 her degree. 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
mother” 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
petticoat, and she lost her way, and was hemmed in by trunks specially
prepared for taking to India; next got among the accouchement sets, and
baby linen; through all the commodities of the world, perishable and
permanent, hams, drugs, flowers, stationery, variously smelling, now
sweet, now sour she lurched; saw herself thus lurching with her hat
askew, very red in the face, full length in a looking-glass; and at
last came out into the street.
The tower of Westminster Cathedral rose in front of her, the habitation
of God. In the midst of the traffic, there was the habitation of
God. Doggedly she set off with her parcel to that other sanctuary,
the Abbey, where, raising her hands in a tent before her face, she
sat beside those driven into shelter too; the variously assorted
worshippers, now divested of social rank, almost of sex, as they raised
their hands before their faces; but once they removed them, instantly
reverent, middle class, English men and women, some of them desirous of
seeing the wax works.
But Miss Kilman held her tent before her face. Now she was deserted;
now rejoined. New worshippers came in from the street to replace the
strollers, and still, as people gazed round and shuffled past the tomb
of the Unknown Warrior, still she barred her eyes with her fingers and
tried in this double darkness, for the light in the Abbey was bodiless,
to aspire above the vanities, the desires, the commodities, to rid
herself both of hatred and of love. Her hands twitched. She seemed
to struggle. Yet to others God was accessible and the path to Him
smooth. Mr. Fletcher, retired, of the Treasury, Mrs. Gorham, widow of
the famous K.C., approached Him simply, and having done their praying,
leant back, enjoyed the music (the organ pealed sweetly), and saw Miss
Kilman at the end of the row, praying, praying, and, being still on the
threshold of their underworld, thought of her sympathetically as a soul
haunting the same territory; a soul cut out of immaterial substance;
not a woman, a soul.
But Mr. Fletcher had to go. He had to pass her, and being himself neat
as a new pin, could not help being a little distressed by the poor
lady’s disorder; her hair down; her parcel on the floor. She did not
at once let him pass. But, as he stood gazing about him, at the white