Mrs. Dalloway
(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
hibiscus 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;
connected 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 friends
Clarissa 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
intimate--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
Minister. 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 Elizabeth cross the room. How unlike Clarissa at her age!
Could he make anything 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 casually.
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 devoted 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
Bradshaws, and he had thought to himself, Who is that lovely girl?
And suddenly 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 looking 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 had wondered, 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 good-night. 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
terror? 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
* * * * *
Transcriber’s note
Minor punctuation errors have been changed without notice.
Inconsistencies in hyphenation have been standardized. The
following printer errors have been changed.
=CHANGED FROM TO=
Page 159: “word poetry of herself” “word of poetry herself”
Page 248: “lent a little forward” “leant a little forward”
All other inconsistencies are as in the original.