Mrs. Dalloway
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,
happier, 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 to-morrow. 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. Inevitably 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, remembering 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. Villains there must be, and God knows
the rascals who get hanged for battering 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 presumably for some piece of servility.
She had her toadies, minor officials in Government offices who ran
about putting through little jobs on her behalf, 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, prancing,
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 seducer; 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
gesture, by the raising of one foreleg and the toss of the antlers,
“the Approach of the Stranger”--all his activities, dining out, racing,
were founded 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 impossible 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 reassure 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
moderation; 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
curtains. 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 the church 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.