Mrs. Dalloway
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 would look over the edge of the sofa down into the sea.
Or he was hearing music. 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 Septimus, who had fought, who was brave, crying. And
he would lie listening 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
gramophone 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 assured 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
together, 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 woman
looked like a pig at a fair. (Nobody ever made her laugh as Septimus
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 was
finished--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
fingers. “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.
Always 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.
Surrey 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 the cries 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
pronounced 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, exposed
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
coal-scuttle, 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
English, 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 family even were not the same. Being older than she was and
being so clever--how serious he was, wanting her to read Shakespeare
before she could even read a child’s story in English!--being so much
more experienced, 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