Mrs. Dalloway
course Aunt Helena thought it wicked to treat flowers like that.) Then
she forgot her sponge, and ran along the passage naked. That grim old
housemaid, Ellen Atkins, went about grumbling--“Suppose any of the
gentlemen had seen?” Indeed she did shock people. She was untidy, Papa
said.
The strange thing, on looking back, was the purity, the integrity,
of her feeling for Sally. It was not like one’s feeling for a man.
It was completely disinterested, and besides, it had a quality which
could only exist between women, between women just grown up. It was
protective, on her side; sprang from a sense of being in league
together, a presentiment of something that was bound to part them
(they spoke of marriage always as a catastrophe), which led to this
chivalry, this protective feeling which was much more on her side
than Sally’s. For in those days she was completely reckless; did the
most idiotic things out of bravado; bicycled round the parapet on the
terrace; smoked cigars. Absurd, she was--very absurd. But the charm
was overpowering, to her at least, so that she could remember standing
in her bedroom at the top of the house holding the hot-water can in her
hands and saying aloud, “She is beneath this roof.... She is beneath
this roof!”
No, the words meant absolutely nothing to her now. She could not even
get an echo of her old emotion. But she could remember going cold
with excitement, and doing her hair in a kind of ecstasy (now the old
feeling began to come back to her, as she took out her hairpins, laid
them on the dressing-table, began to do her hair), with the rooks
flaunting up and down in the pink evening light, and dressing, and
going downstairs, and feeling as she crossed the hall “if it were now
to die ’twere now to be most happy.” That was her feeling--Othello’s
feeling, and she felt it, she was convinced, as strongly as Shakespeare
meant Othello to feel it, all because she was coming down to dinner in
a white frock to meet Sally Seton!
She was wearing pink gauze--was that possible? She _seemed_, anyhow,
all light, glowing, like some bird or air ball that has flown in,
attached itself for a moment to a bramble. But nothing is so strange
when one is in love (and what was this except being in love?) as the
complete indifference of other people. Aunt Helena just wandered off
after dinner; Papa read the paper. Peter Walsh might have been there,
and old Miss Cummings; Joseph Breitkopf certainly was, for he came
every summer, poor old man, for weeks and weeks, and pretended to read
German with her, but really played the piano and sang Brahms without
any voice.
All this was only a background for Sally. She stood by the fireplace
talking, in that beautiful voice which made everything she said sound
like a caress, to Papa, who had begun to be attracted rather against
his will (he never got over lending her one of his books and finding
it soaked on the terrace), when suddenly she said, “What a shame to
sit indoors!” and they all went out on to the terrace and walked up
and down. Peter Walsh and Joseph Breitkopf went on about Wagner. She
and Sally fell a little behind. Then came the most exquisite moment of
her whole life passing a stone urn with flowers in it. Sally stopped;
picked a flower; kissed her on the lips. The whole world might have
turned upside down! The others disappeared; there she was alone with
Sally. And she felt that she had been given a present, wrapped up,
and told just to keep it, not to look at it--a diamond, something
infinitely precious, wrapped up, which, as they walked (up and down,
up and down), she uncovered, or the radiance burnt through, the
revelation, the religious feeling!--when old Joseph and Peter faced
them:
“Star-gazing?” said Peter.
It was like running one’s face against a granite wall in the darkness!
It was shocking; it was horrible!
Not for herself. She felt only how Sally was being mauled already,
maltreated; she felt his hostility; his jealousy; his determination
to break into their companionship. All this she saw as one sees a
landscape in a flash of lightning--and Sally (never had she admired her
so much!) gallantly taking her way unvanquished. She laughed. She made
old Joseph tell her the names of the stars, which he liked doing very
seriously. She stood there: she listened. She heard the names of the
stars.
“Oh this horror!” she said to herself, as if she had known all along
that something would interrupt, would embitter her moment of happiness.
Yet, after all, how much she owed to him later. Always when she
thought of him she thought of their quarrels for some reason--because
she wanted his good opinion so much, perhaps. She owed him words:
“sentimental,” “civilised”; they started up every day of her life
as if he guarded her. A book was sentimental; an attitude to life
sentimental. “Sentimental,” perhaps she was to be thinking of the past.
What would he think, she wondered, when he came back?
That she had grown older? Would he say that, or would she see him
thinking when he came back, that she had grown older? It was true.
Since her illness she had turned almost white.
Laying her brooch on the table, she had a sudden spasm, as if, while
she mused, the icy claws had had the chance to fix in her. She was
not old yet. She had just broken into her fifty-second year. Months
and months of it were still untouched. June, July, August! Each still
remained almost whole, and, as if to catch the falling drop, Clarissa
(crossing to the dressing-table) plunged into the very heart of the
moment, transfixed it, there--the moment of this June morning on which
was the pressure of all the other mornings, seeing the glass, the
dressing-table, and all the bottles afresh, collecting the whole of her
at one point (as she looked into the glass), seeing the delicate pink
face of the woman who was that very night to give a party; of Clarissa
Dalloway; of herself.
How many million times she had seen her face, and always with the same
imperceptible contraction! She pursed her lips when she looked in the
glass. It was to give her face point. That was her self--pointed;
dartlike; definite. That was her self when some effort, some call
on her to be her self, drew the parts together, she alone knew how
different, how incompatible and composed so for the world only into
one centre, one diamond, one woman who sat in her drawing-room and
made a meeting-point, a radiancy no doubt in some dull lives, a refuge
for the lonely to come to, perhaps; she had helped young people, who
were grateful to her; had tried to be the same always, never showing
a sign of all the other sides of her--faults, jealousies, vanities,
suspicions, like this of Lady Bruton not asking her to lunch; which,
she thought (combing her hair finally), is utterly base! Now, where was
her dress?
Her evening dresses hung in the cupboard. Clarissa, plunging her hand
into the softness, gently detached the green dress and carried it
to the window. She had torn it. Some one had trod on the skirt. She
had felt it give at the Embassy party at the top among the folds.
By artificial light the green shone, but lost its colour now in the
sun. She would mend it. Her maids had too much to do. She would wear
it to-night. She would take her silks, her scissors, her--what was
it?--her thimble, of course, down into the drawing-room, for she must
also write, and see that things generally were more or less in order.
Strange, she thought, pausing on the landing, and assembling that
diamond shape, that single person, strange how a mistress knows the
very moment, the very temper of her house! Faint sounds rose in spirals
up the well of the stairs; the swish of a mop; tapping; knocking; a
loudness when the front door opened; a voice repeating a message in the
basement; the chink of silver on a tray; clean silver for the party.
All was for the party.
(And Lucy, coming into the drawing-room with her tray held out, put
the giant candlesticks on the mantelpiece, the silver casket in the
middle, turned the crystal dolphin towards the clock. They would
come; they would stand; they would talk in the mincing tones which
she could imitate, ladies and gentlemen. Of all, her mistress was
loveliest--mistress of silver, of linen, of china, for the sun, the
silver, doors off their hinges, Rumpelmayer’s men, gave her a sense, as
she laid the paper-knife on the inlaid table, of something achieved.
Behold! Behold! she said, speaking to her old friends in the baker’s
shop, where she had first seen service at Caterham, prying into the
glass. She was Lady Angela, attending Princess Mary, when in came Mrs.
Dalloway.)
“Oh Lucy,” she said, “the silver does look nice!”
“And how,” she said, turning the crystal dolphin to stand straight,
“how did you enjoy the play last night?” “Oh, they had to go before
the end!” she said. “They had to be back at ten!” she said. “So they
don’t know what happened,” she said. “That does seem hard luck,” she
said (for her servants stayed later, if they asked her). “That does
seem rather a shame,” she said, taking the old bald-looking cushion in
the middle of the sofa and putting it in Lucy’s arms, and giving her a
little push, and crying:
“Take it away! Give it to Mrs. Walker with my compliments! Take it
away!” she cried.
And Lucy stopped at the drawing-room door, holding the cushion, and
said, very shyly, turning a little pink, Couldn’t she help to mend that
dress?
But, said Mrs. Dalloway, she had enough on her hands already, quite
enough of her own to do without that.
“But, thank you, Lucy, oh, thank you,” said Mrs. Dalloway, and thank
you, thank you, she went on saying (sitting down on the sofa with her
dress over her knees, her scissors, her silks), thank you, thank you,
she went on saying in gratitude to her servants generally for helping
her to be like this, to be what she wanted, gentle, generous-hearted.
Her servants liked her. And then this dress of hers--where was the
tear? and now her needle to be threaded. This was a favourite dress,
one of Sally Parker’s, the last almost she ever made, alas, for Sally
had now retired, living at Ealing, and if ever I have a moment, thought
Clarissa (but never would she have a moment any more), I shall go and
see her at Ealing. For she was a character, thought Clarissa, a real
artist. She thought of little out-of-the-way things; yet her dresses
were never queer. You could wear them at Hatfield; at Buckingham
Palace. She had worn them at Hatfield; at Buckingham Palace.
Quiet descended on her, calm, content, as her needle, drawing the silk
smoothly to its gentle pause, collected the green folds together and
attached them, very lightly, to the belt. So on a summer’s day waves
collect, overbalance, and fall; collect and fall; and the whole world
seems to be saying “that is all” more and more ponderously, until even
the heart in the body which lies in the sun on the beach says too,
That is all. Fear no more, says the heart. Fear no more, says the
heart, committing its burden to some sea, which sighs collectively for
all sorrows, and renews, begins, collects, lets fall. And the body
alone listens to the passing bee; the wave breaking; the dog barking,
far away barking and barking.
“Heavens, the front-door bell!” exclaimed Clarissa, staying her needle.
Roused, she listened.
“Mrs. Dalloway will see me,” said the elderly man in the hall. “Oh yes,
she will see _me_,” he repeated, putting Lucy aside very benevolently,
and running upstairs ever so quickly. “Yes, yes, yes,” he muttered as
he ran upstairs. “She will see me. After five years in India, Clarissa
will see me.”
“Who can--what can,” asked Mrs. Dalloway (thinking it was outrageous
to be interrupted at eleven o’clock on the morning of the day she