Mrs Dalloway (Part III), by Virginia Woolf (1882-1941).
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Parte III.
"¿Qué están mirando?", dijo Clarissa Dalloway a la criada que abrió su puerta.
El vestíbulo de la casa estaba fresco como una bóveda. La Sra. Dalloway se llevó la mano a los ojos y, cuando la criada cerró la puerta y oyó el susurro de las faldas de Lucy, se sintió como una monja que ha renunciado al mundo y siente a su alrededor los velos familiares y la respuesta a antiguas devociones. La cocinera silbaba en la cocina. La Sra. Dalloway oyó el clic de la máquina de escribir. Era su vida, e inclinando la cabeza sobre la mesa del vestíbulo, se doblegó bajo la influencia, se sintió bendecida y purificada, y diciendo para sí misma, mientras tomaba el bloc con el mensaje telefónico, cómo momentos como este son brotes en el árbol de la vida, flores de la oscuridad, pensó (como si una hermosa rosa hubiera florecido solo para sus ojos); ni por un momento creyó en Dios; pero más aún, pensó, tomando el bloc, hay que retribuir en la vida cotidiana a los sirvientes, sí, a los perros y a los canarios, sobre todo a Richard, su marido, que era la base de todo ello: de los alegres sonidos, de las luces verdes, incluso del silbido de la cocinera, pues la Sra. Walker era irlandesa y silbaba todo el día; hay que retribuir desde este depósito secreto de momentos exquisitos, pensó, levantando el bloc, mientras Lucy estaba parada a su lado, tratando de explicarle lo de "el Sr. Dalloway, señora," leyó Clarissa en el bloc del teléfono: "Lady Bruton desea saber si el Sr. Dalloway almorzará con ella hoy".
''Señora, el Sr. Dalloway me dijo que le dijera que almorzaría fuera.''
''¡Querido!'' dijo Clarissa, y Lucy compartió lo que quería decir con su decepción (pero no el dolor); sintió la concordia entre ellos, entendió la indirecta; pensó en cómo ama la alta sociedad; doró su propio futuro con calma; y tomando la sombrilla de la señora Dalloway, la manejó como un arma sagrada que una diosa, tras haberse comportado honorablemente en el campo de batalla, abandona,
"No teman más", dijo Clarissa. No teman más el calor del sol; porque la conmoción de que lady Bruton invitara a Richard a comer sin ella hizo temblar el momento en que se había quedado, como una planta en el lecho del río siente el choque de un remo que pasa y se estremece: así se mecía: así se estremecía.
Millicent Bruton, cuyo almuerzo se decía que era extraordinariamente divertido, no la había invitado. Ningún celo vulgar podría separarla de Richard. Pero temía el tiempo mismo, y leía en la cara de Lady Bruton, como si hubiera sido un reloj tallado en piedra impasible, la disminución de la vida; cómo año tras año su porción se cortaba; qué poco el margen que quedaba era capaz ya de estirar, de absorber, como en los años de juventud, los colores, las sales, los tonos de la existencia, de tal manera que llenaba la habitación en la que entraba, y sentía a menudo, mientras estaba parada en el umbral de su sala de estar, titubeando un momento, un exquisito suspense, como podría permanecer un buceador antes de sumergirse mientras el mar se oscurece y se ilumina debajo de él, y las olas que amenazan con romperse, pero solo dividen suavemente su superficie, ruedan, ocultan y se enturbian al mismo tiempo que dan vuelta a las algas con perlas.
Puso el bloc en la mesa del pasillo. Comenzó a subir lentamente las escaleras, con la mano en la barandilla, como si hubiera salido de una fiesta, donde ahora esta amiga, ahora aquella, le habían traído recuerdos de su rostro, de su voz; había cerrado la puerta y salido y se había quedado sola, una figura solitaria contra la espantosa noche, o más bien, para ser precisa, contra la mirada fija de esta mañana de junio tan prosaica; suave con el resplandor de los pétalos de rosa para algunos, ella lo sabía y lo sentía, mientras se detenía junto a la ventana abierta de la escalera que dejaba percibir el golpeteo de las persianas, los ladridos de los perros, dejaba percibir, pensó, sintiéndose de repente marchita, envejecida, descorazonada, el chirrido, el soplo, el despuntar del día fuera de la casa, fuera de la ventana, fuera de su cuerpo y de su cerebro que ahora fallaba, ya que Lady Bruton, cuyas comidas se consideraban extraordinariamente divertidas, no la había invitado.
Como una monja que se retira o un niño que explora una torre, subió las escaleras, se detuvo en la ventana, llegó al baño. Había linóleo verde y un grifo que goteaba. Había un vacío en el corazón de la vida; una habitación en el ático. Las mujeres deben quitarse sus ricas vestimentas. Al mediodía deben desvestirse. Pinchó el alfiletero y dejó su sombrero con plumas amarillo sobre la cama. La sábanas estaban limpias, bien estiradas en una amplia banda blanca de lado a lado. Su cama sería cada vez más estrecha. La vela estaba medio quemada y había leído en profundidad las memorias del barón Marbot. Había leído a última hora de la noche sobre la retirada de Moscú. Porque la Cámara se reunía tanto tiempo que Richard insistió, después de su enfermedad, en que ella debía dormir tranquila. Y realmente ella prefería leer del retiro desde Moscú. Él lo sabía. Así que la habitación era un ático; la cama estrecha; y acostada allí leyendo, porque dormía mal, no podía disipar una virginidad preservada aun por el parto, que se aferraba a ella como una sábana. Hermosa de niña, de repente llegó un momento, por ejemplo en el río bajo los bosques de Clieveden, cuando por alguna contracción de este espíritu frío, ella le había fallado. Y luego en Constantinopla, una y otra vez. Podía ver lo que le faltaba. No era belleza; no era mente. Era algo central que impregnaba; algo cálido que rompía las superficies y encrespaba el frío contacto del hombre y la mujer, o de las mujeres juntas. Porque ella podía percibirlo vagamente. Se resentía, tenía un escrúpulo recogido sabe Dios dónde, o, como pensaba ella, enviado por la Naturaleza (que es invariablemente sabia); sin embargo, no podía resistirse a ceder a veces al encanto de una mujer, no de una niña, de una mujer que confesaba, como a ella le confesaban a menudo, algún rasguño, alguna locura. Y ya fuera por lástima, por su belleza, por ser mayor, o por algún accidente, como una leve fragancia o un violín en la puerta de al lado (tan extraño es el poder de los sonidos en ciertos momentos), indudablemente sentía entonces lo que sentían los hombres. Solo por un momento; pero era suficiente. Era una súbita revelación, un matiz como un rubor que uno trataba de contener y luego, a medida que se extendía, uno cedía a su expansión, y se precipitaba hacia el borde más lejano y allí temblaba y sentía que el mundo se acercaba, abultándose con algún significado asombroso, alguna presión de arrebato, que desgarraba su fina piel y brotaba y se derramaba con un alivio extraordinario sobre las grietas y las llagas. Entonces, en ese momento, ella había visto una iluminación; una cerilla ardiendo en un azafrán; un significado interno casi expresado. Pero lo cercano se alejó; lo duro se suavizó. El momento se fue. En contraste con esos momentos (también con las mujeres), se contraponían (mientras ella dejaba su sombrero) la cama y el barón Marbot y la vela a medias consumida. Acostada despierta, el suelo crujía; la casa iluminada se oscurecía de repente, y si levantaba la cabeza podía oír el chasquido del picaporte soltado con la mayor suavidad posible por Richard, que se deslizaba arriba en sus calcetines y luego, casi siempre, dejaba caer su bolsa de agua caliente y maldecía! ¡Cómo se reía!
Pero esta cuestión de amor (pensó ella, quitándose el abrigo), este enamorarse de las mujeres. Por ejemplo Sally Seton; su relación en los viejos tiempos con Sally Seton. Después de todo, ¿eso no había sido amor?
Estaba sentada en el suelo, esa fue su primera impresión de Sally, estaba sentada en el suelo con los brazos alrededor de las rodillas, fumando un cigarrillo. ¿Dónde podía haber estado? En lo de los Manning? ¿De los Kinloch-Jones? En alguna fiesta (no sabía bien dónde), porque recordaba claramente haberle preguntado al hombre con el que estaba: "¿Quién es esa?". Y él se lo había contado y le había dicho que los padres de Sally no se llevaban bien (¡qué sorpresa le había causado eso, que los padres de alguien se pelearan!). Pero toda esa noche no pudo apartar los ojos de Sally. Era una belleza extraordinaria, del tipo que más admiraba: morena, de ojos grandes, con esa cualidad que, como ella no tenía, siempre envidiaba: una especie de abandono, como si pudiera decir cualquier cosa, hacer cualquier cosa; una cualidad mucho más común en las extranjeras que en las inglesas. Sally siempre decía que tenía sangre francesa en las venas, que un antepasado suyo había estado con María Antonieta, había sido decapitado y había dejado un anillo de rubíes. Quizás aquel verano vino a quedarse en Bourton, llegando de improviso sin un penique en el bolsillo, una noche después de cenar y alterando tanto a la pobre tía Helena, hasta tal punto que nunca la perdonó. Hubo alguna pelea en casa. Ella literalmente no tenía ni un penique la noche que llegó a la casa de ellos, había empeñado un broche para poder venir. Se había ido de prisa en un arrebato. Se habían quedado sentadas, charlando casi toda la noche. Fue Sally quien la hizo sentir, por primera vez, qué protegida era la vida en Bourton. Ella no sabía nada de sexo, nada acerca de problemas sociales. Una vez había visto a un anciano que había caído muerto en un campo, había visto vacas justo después de que nacieran sus terneros. Pero a la tía Helena nunca le gustaba hablar de nada (cuando Sally le dio algo de William Morris, tenía que estar envuelto en papel marrón). Allí se quedaban sentadas, hora tras hora, hablando en su dormitorio en la parte superior de la casa, hablando de la vida, de cómo iban a reformar el mundo. Tenían la intención de fundar una sociedad para abolir la propiedad privada, y en realidad habían escrito una carta, aunque no la habían enviado. Las ideas eran de Sally, por supuesto, pero muy pronto ella estuvo tan entusiasmada, leer a Platón en la cama antes del desayuno; leer a Morris; leer a Shelley por horas.
El poder de Sally era increíble, su don, su personalidad. Su manera con las flores, por ejemplo. En Bourton siempre tenían pequeños jarrones erguidos por toda la mesa. Sally salió, recogió malvas, dalias... todo tipo de flores que nunca se habían visto juntas, les cortó las cabezas y las hizo flotar en la superficie del agua de unos cuencos. El efecto fue extraordinario... al entrar a cenar al atardecer. (Por supuesto, la tía Helena pensó que era cruel tratar así a las flores). Luego olvidó la esponja y corrió desnuda por el pasillo. La adusta anciana criada, Ellen Atkins, se quejó: "¿Y si alguno de los caballeros la hubiera visto?". Sí, ella ha sorprendido a la gente. Estaba desordenada, dijo Papa.
La cosa extraña fue, mirando atrás, la pureza, la integridad de sus sentimientos hacia Sally. No era como un sentimiento hacia un hombre. Era totalmente desinteresado, y también, tenía la calidad que solo puede existir entre mujeres, entre mujeres que acaban de crecer. Era protector, por su parte; surgió de una sensación de estar en la liga juntas, un presentimiento de algo que estaba destinado a separarlas (siempre hablaban del matrimonio como de una catástrofe), lo que llevó a esta caballerosidad, este sentimiento de protección que estaba mucho más de su lado que del de Sally. Porque en aquellos días era completamente temeraria; hacía las cosas más estúpidas por bravuconería; andaba en bicicleta alrededor del parapeto de la terraza; fumaba cigarros. Absurda, ella era... muy absurda. Pero el encanto era abrumador, al menos para ella, de modo que podía recordar estar en su dormitorio en la parte superior de la casa sosteniendo el bidón de agua caliente en las manos y diciendo en voz alta: "Ella está bajo este techo. . . . ¡Ella está bajo este techo".
No, las palabras no significaban absolutamente nada para ella ahora. Ni siquiera podía conseguir un eco de su vieja emoción. Pero recordaba cómo había sentido un escalofrío de emoción y se había peinado en una especie de éxtasis (ahora empezaba a volverle aquella vieja sensación, mientras se quitaba las horquillas, las dejaba sobre el tocador y comenzaba a peinarse), con los grajos revoloteando de arriba abajo en la luz rosada del atardecer, y al vestirse, y bajando las escaleras, y sintiendo al cruzar el vestíbulo "que si muriera ahora sería la más feliz". Esa era su sensación, la sensación de Otelo, y ella la sentía, estaba convencida, con la misma intensidad con la que Shakespeare quería que Otelo la sintiera, ¡todo porque bajaba a cenar con un vestido blanco para encontrarse con Sally Seton!
Llevaba una gasa rosa, ¿era eso posible? En cualquier caso, parecía ligera, radiante, como un pájaro o una bola de aire que hubiera volado hasta allí y se hubiera adherido por un momento a una zarza. Pero nada es tan extraño cuando una está enamorada (¿y qué era esto sino estar enamorada?) a pesar de la total indiferencia de los demás. La tía Helena se marchaba justo después de cenar; papá leía el periódico. Peter Walsh podría haber estado allí, y la anciana Srta. Cummings; Joseph Breitkopf sin duda estaba, porque venía todos los veranos, pobre anciano, durante semanas y semanas, y fingía leer en alemán con ella, pero en realidad tocaba el piano y cantaba Brahms sin voz.
Todo esto era solo un telón de fondo para Sally. Ella estaba de pie hablando junto a la chimenea, con esa hermosa voz que hacía que todo lo que decía sonara como una caricia, con papá, que había empezado a sentirse atraído más bien en contra de su voluntad (nunca superó el haberle prestado uno de sus libros y encontrarlo empapado en la terraza), cuando de repente ella dijo: "¡Qué pena estar sentados dentro!". y todos salieron a la terraza y se pusieron a pasear de un lado a otro. Peter Walsh y Joseph Breitkopf hablaron de Wagner. Ella y Sally se quedaron un poco atrás. Entonces llegó el momento más exquisito de toda su vida al pasar junto a una urna de piedra con flores en su interior. Sally se detuvo; tomó una flor; la beso en los labios. ¡Todo el mundo podría haber dado un vuelco! Los otros desaparecieron; allí se quedó sola con Sally. Y ella sintió que se le había dado un regalo, envuelto, y se le había dicho simplemente que lo guardara, que no lo mirara: ¡un diamante, algo infinitamente precioso, envuelto, que, mientras caminaban (de acá para allá, de acá para allá), descubrió, o el resplandor quemó a través, ¡la revelación, el sentimiento religioso!, cuando el anciano José y Pedro les enfrentaron: "¿Mirando las estrellas?" dijo Peter.
¡Fue como correr contra una pared de granito en la oscuridad! Fue espantoso; ¡fue horrible!
No para ella misma. Solo sentía cómo Sally ya estaba siendo atacada, maltratada; sentía su hostilidad; sus celos; su determinación de romper su amistad. Todo esto lo vio como se ve un paisaje en el destello de un relámpago, y a Sally (¡nunca la había admirado tanto!) seguir su camino valerosamente, sin doblegarse. Se rio. Ella preguntó a Joseph si le enseñaría los nombres de las estrellas, lo que le gustaba a él hacerlo en serio. Ella se quedó allí de pie: escuchó. Escuchó los nombres de las estrellas.
''¡Oh, qué horror!'' se dijo a ella misma, como si hubiera sabido todo el tiempo que algo interrumpiría, amargaría su momento de felicidad.
Sin embargo, después de todo, cuánto le debió más tarde. Siempre que ella pensaba en él, ella pensaba en sus peleas por alguna razón, porque ella quería tanto su buena opinión, tal vez. Ella le debía palabras: "sentimental," "civilizado"; comenzaban cada día de su vida como si él la protegiera. Un libro era sentimental; una actitud hacia la vida sentimental. "Sentimental", tal vez lo estaba pensando en el pasado. ¿Qué pensaría, se preguntó ella, cuando volviera?
¿Que ella se había hecho mayor? ¿Él diría eso, o ella lo vería pensando, cuando volviera, que se había hecho mayor? Era verdad. Desde que enfermó, se había vuelto casi blanca.
Al dejar el broche sobre la mesa, sintió un espasmo repentino, como si, mientras reflexionaba, las garras heladas hubieran tenido la oportunidad de clavarse en ella. No era vieja todavía. Acababa de cumplir cincuenta y dos años. Meses y meses de ello seguían intactos. ¡Junio, Julio, Agosto! Cada uno se quedaba casi entero, y como para atrapar la gota que cae, Clarissa (dirigiéndose al tocador) se sumergió en lo más profundo del momento, lo inmovilizó, allí; el momento de esta mañana de junio en el que se concentraba la presión de todas las demás mañanas, mirando el espejo, el tocador y todas las botellas de nuevo, recogiendo todo su ser en un instante (mientras miraba al espejo), viendo la delicada cara rosada de la mujer que esa misma noche iba a dar una fiesta; de Clarissa Dalloway; de ella misma.
¡Cuántos millones de veces había visto su rostro, y siempre con la misma contracción imperceptible! Frunció los labios cuando miró en el espejo. Era para dar un toque a su cara. Así era su ser: afilado; mordaz; categórico. Ese era su ser cuando algún esfuerzo, alguna llamada a que fuera ella misma, unía las partes, sólo ella sabía cuán diferentes, cuán incompatibles y compuestas para el mundo en un solo centro, un diamante, una mujer que se sentaba en su salón y constituía un punto de encuentro, un resplandor sin duda en algunas vidas aburridas, un refugio al que quizá acudían los solitarios. Había ayudado a unos jóvenes, que le estaban agradecidos; había intentado ser siempre la misma, sin mostrar nunca un signo de sus otras facetas: defectos, celos, vanidades, sospechas, como la de que lady Bruton no la invitara a almorzar, lo cual, pensó (peinándose por fin), ¡es una completa bajeza! Ahora, ¿dónde estaba su vestido?
Sus vestidos de noche colgaban en el armario. Clarissa, hundiendo la mano en la suavidad, desprendió con cuidado el vestido verde y lo llevó hasta la ventana. Lo había rasgado. Alguien había pisado la falda. Había sentido que cedía en la fiesta de la embajada, arriba, entre los pliegues. Bajo la luz artificial, el verde brillaba, pero ahora, bajo el sol, había perdido su color. Lo arreglaría. Sus criadas tenían demasiado que hacer. Se lo pondría esa noche. Llevaría sus sedas, sus tijeras, su... ¿qué era?... su dedal, por supuesto, al salón, porque también tenía que escribir y asegurarse de que todo estuviera más o menos en orden.
Extraño, pensó, deteniéndose en el rellano y reuniendo esa forma de diamante, esa persona solitaria, ¡qué extraño es cómo una señora sabe el momento exacto, el estado exacto de su casa! Por el hueco de la escalera subían sonidos débiles en espirales; el roce de una mopa; repiqueteos; golpes; un ruido fuerte cuando se abrió la puerta principal; una voz repitiendo un mensaje en el sótano; el tintineo de la plata en una bandeja; cubiertos limpios para la fiesta. Todo era para la fiesta.
(Y Lucy, entrando en el salón con la bandeja en la mano, puso los candelabros gigantes sobre la repisa de la chimenea, el cofre de plata en el centro y giró el delfín de cristal hacia el reloj. Vendrían; estarían de pie; damas y caballeros hablarían con esos tonos afectados que ella podía imitar. De todos, su señora era la más encantadora: señora de la plata, del lino, de la porcelana, porque el sol, la plata, las puertas fuera de sus bisagras, los hombres de Rumpelmayer, le daban una sensación de haber logrado algo, mientras colocaba el cortapapeles sobre la mesa con marquetería. ¡Mirad! ¡Mirad! dijo ella, hablando a sus amigas en la panadería, donde ella había prestado servicio por primera vez en Caterham, mirando con curiosidad a través del cristal. Ella era Lady Angela, asistiendo a la princesa María, cuando entró la señora Dalloway).
''Oh Lucy'', dijo ella, ''¡La plata queda muy bien!''
''Y ahora'', dijo girando el delfín de cristal para que quede recto, '' le ha gustado la obra de teatro de anoche?'' ''Oh, tenían que salir antes del final!'' ella dijo. ''Tenían que volver a las diez'' dijo ella. ''Entonces no saben lo que ha ocurrido'', dijo ella. "Eso sí parece mala suerte", dijo ella (porque sus criadas se quedaban más tarde, si se lo pedían). "Eso sí parece una pena", dijo, tomando el viejo cojín de aspecto raído del medio del sofá y poniéndolo en los brazos de Lucy; le dio un pequeño empujón y gritó: "¡Llévatelo! ¡Dalo a la Sra. Walker con mis cumplidos! ¡Llévatelo!", gritó.
Y Lucy se detuvo en la puerta del salón, sosteniendo el cojín, y dijo, muy tímidamente, sonrojándose un poco: "¿No podría ayudarla a arreglar ese vestido?".
Pero, se dijo la Sra.Dalloway, ella ya tenía bastante con lo suyo, más que suficiente sin necesidad de eso.
"Pero gracias, Lucy, oh, gracias", dijo la señora Dalloway, y gracias, gracias, siguió diciendo (sentándose en el sofá con el vestido sobre las rodillas, las tijeras y las sedas), gracias, gracias, siguió diciendo con gratitud a sus sirvientes en general por ayudarla a ser así, a ser lo que quería, amable y generosa. A sus sirvientes les caía bien. Y luego este vestido suyo... ¿dónde estaba el desgarro? y ahora había que enhebrar la aguja. Era uno de sus vestidos favoritos, uno de los de Sally Parker, casi el último que hizo, desgraciadamente, porque ahora Sally se había jubilado y vivía en Ealing, y si alguna vez tengo un momento, pensó Clarissa (pero nunca más volvería a tener un momento), iré a verla a Ealing. Porque ella era un personaje, pensó Clarissa, una verdadera artista. Ella pensaba en pequeñas cosas raras; pero sus vestidos nunca parecieron extraños. Era posible llevarlos en Hatfield; en Buckingham Palace. Ella los habia llevado en Hatfield; al Palacio de Buckingham.
Se quedó tranquila, quieta, contenta, mientras su aguja, dibujando la seda suavemente hasta su suave pausa, recogía los pliegues verdes y los unía, muy ligeramente, al cinturón Así que en un día de verano las olas se acumulan, se desequilibran y caen; y el mundo entero parece decir ''eso es todo'' más y más lentamente, hasta que incluso el corazón del cuerpo que yace al sol en la playa dice también: «Eso es todo». No tema más, dice el corazón. No teman más, dice el corazón, confiando su carga a algún mar, que suspira colectivamente por todos los dolores, y renueva, comienza, recoge, suelta. Y el cuerpo solo escucha a la abeja que pasa; la ola rompiendo; el perro ladrando, lejos, ladrando sin parar.
"¡Cielos,el timbre de la puerta principal!" exclamó Clarissa, deteniendo su aguja. Despierta, ella escuchó.
"La Sra. Dalloway consentirá en verme", dijo el anciano en el pasillo. ´"Oh, sí, ella me recibirá", repitió, apartando a Lucy con mucha amabilidad y subiendo las escaleras muy rápidamente. "Sí, sí, sí", murmuraba mientras subía corriendo las escaleras. "Ella me verá. Después de cinco años en la India, Clarissa me verá".
"¿Quién puede...? ¿Qué puede?", preguntó la Sra. Dalloway (pensando que era indignante que la interrumpieran a las once de la mañana del día en que daba una fiesta), al oír unos pasos en la escalera. Oyó una mano en la puerta. Trató de ocultar el vestido, como una virgen protegiendo su castidad, respetando la privacidad. Ahora el pomo de latón se deslizó. Ahora la puerta se abrió, y entró....¡por un momento no podía recordar su nombre! estaba ¡ tan sorprendida de verle, tan féliz, tan tímida, tan completamente sorprendida de que Peter Walsh viniera a verla inesperadamente por la mañana! (Ella no había leído su carta.)
"Y, ¿cómo está?" dijo Peter Walsh, temblando positivamente; tomando sus dos manos; besando las dos manos. Se ha hecho mayor, pensó, sentandose. No le diré nada al respecto, pensó, porque se ha hecho mayor. Me está mirando, pensó, con un repentino bochorno, aunque le había besado las manos. Metiendo la mano en su bolsillo, sacó un cuchillo grande y abrió la hoja a mediados.
Exactamente el mismo, pensó Clarissa; la misma mirada extraña; el mismo traje a cuadros; su rostro está un poco demacrado, quizás un poco más delgado, más seco, pero se ve muy bien y está exactamente igual.
"¡Qué divino volver a verte!", exclamó ella. Él tenía su cuchillo en la mano. Es tan propio de él, pensó ella.
He had only reached town last night, he said; would have to go down into the country at once; and how was everything, how was everybody--Richard? Elizabeth?
"And what's all this?" he said, tilting his pen-knife towards her green dress.
He's very well dressed, thought Clarissa; yet he always criticises me.
Here she is mending her dress; mending her dress as usual, he thought; here she's been sitting all the time I've been in India; mending her dress; playing about; going to parties; running to the House and back and all that, he thought, growing more and more irritated, more and more agitated, for there's nothing in the world so bad for some women as marriage, he thought; and politics; and having a Conservative husband, like the admirable Richard. So it is, so it is, he thought, shutting his knife with a snap.
"Richard's very well. Richard's at a Committee," said Clarissa.
And she opened her scissors, and said, did he mind her just finishing what she was doing to her dress, for they had a party that night?
"Which I shan't ask you to," she said. "My dear Peter!" she said.
But it was delicious to hear her say that--my dear Peter! Indeed, it was all so delicious--the silver, the chairs; all so delicious!
Why wouldn't she ask him to her party? he asked.
Now of course, thought Clarissa, he's enchanting! perfectly enchanting! Now I remember how impossible it was ever to make up my mind--and why did I make up my mind--not to marry him? she wondered, that awful summer?
"But it's so extraordinary that you should have come this morning!" she cried, putting her hands, one on top of another, down on her dress.
"Do you remember," she said, "how the blinds used to flap at Bourton?"
"They did," he said; and he remembered breakfasting alone, very awkwardly, with her father; who had died; and he had not written to Clarissa. But he had never got on well with old Parry, that querulous, weak-kneed old man, Clarissa's father, Justin Parry.
"I often wish I'd got on better with your father," he said.
"But he never liked any one who--our friends," said Clarissa; and could have bitten her tongue for thus reminding Peter that he had wanted to marry her.
Of course I did, thought Peter; it almost broke my heart too, he thought; and was overcome with his own grief, which rose like a moon looked at from a terrace, ghastly beautiful with light from the sunken day. I was more unhappy than I've ever been since, he thought. And as if in truth he were sitting there on the terrace he edged a little towards Clarissa; put his hand out; raised it; let it fall. There above them it hung, that moon. She too seemed to be sitting with him on the terrace, in the moonlight.
"Herbert has it now," she said. "I never go there now," she said.
Then, just as happens on a terrace in the moonlight, when one person begins to feel ashamed that he is already bored, and yet as the other sits silent, very quiet, sadly looking at the moon, does not like to speak, moves his foot, clears his throat, notices some iron scroll on a table leg, stirs a leaf, but says nothing--so Peter Walsh did now. For why go back like this to the past? he thought. Why make him think of it again? Why make him suffer, when she had tortured him so infernally? Why?
"Do you remember the lake?" she said, in an abrupt voice, under the pressure of an emotion which caught her heart, made the muscles of her throat stiff, and contracted her lips in a spasm as she said "lake." For she was a child, throwing bread to the ducks, between her parents, and at the same time a grown woman coming to her parents who stood by the lake, holding her life in her arms which, as she neared them, grew larger and larger in her arms, until it became a whole life, a complete life, which she put down by them and said, "This is what I have made of it! This!" And what had she made of it? What, indeed? sitting there sewing this morning with Peter.
She looked at Peter Walsh; her look, passing through all that time and that emotion, reached him doubtfully; settled on him tearfully; and rose and fluttered away, as a bird touches a branch and rises and flutters away. Quite simply she wiped her eyes.
"Yes," said Peter. "Yes, yes, yes," he said, as if she drew up to the surface something which positively hurt him as it rose. Stop! Stop! he wanted to cry. For he was not old; his life was not over; not by any means. He was only just past fifty. Shall I tell her, he thought, or not? He would like to make a clean breast of it all. But she is too cold, he thought; sewing, with her scissors; Daisy would look ordinary beside Clarissa. And she would think me a failure, which I am in their sense, he thought; in the Dalloways' sense. Oh yes, he had no doubt about that; he was a failure, compared with all this--the inlaid table, the mounted paper-knife, the dolphin and the candlesticks, the chair-covers and the old valuable English tinted prints--he was a failure! I detest the smugness of the whole affair, he thought; Richard's doing, not Clarissa's; save that she married him. (Here Lucy came into the room, carrying silver, more silver, but charming, slender, graceful she looked, he thought, as she stooped to put it down.) And this has been going on all the time! he thought; week after week; Clarissa's life; while I--he thought; and at once everything seemed to radiate from him; journeys; rides; quarrels; adventures; bridge parties; love affairs; work; work, work! and he took out his knife quite openly--his old horn-handled knife which Clarissa could swear he had had these thirty years--and clenched his fist upon it.
What an extraordinary habit that was, Clarissa thought; always playing with a knife. Always making one feel, too, frivolous; empty-minded; a mere silly chatterbox, as he used. But I too, she thought, and, taking up her needle, summoned, like a Queen whose guards have fallen asleep and left her unprotected (she had been quite taken aback by this visit--it had upset her) so that any one can stroll in and have a look at her where she lies with the brambles curving over her, summoned to her help the things she did; the things she liked; her husband; Elizabeth; her self, in short, which Peter hardly knew now, all to come about her and beat off the enemy.
"Well, and what's happened to you?" she said. So before a battle begins, the horses paw the ground; toss their heads; the light shines on their flanks; their necks curve. So Peter Walsh and Clarissa, sitting side by side on the blue sofa, challenged each other. His powers chafed and tossed in him. He assembled from different quarters all sorts of things; praise; his career at Oxford; his marriage, which she knew nothing whatever about; how he had loved; and altogether done his job.
"Millions of things!" he exclaimed, and, urged by the assembly of powers which were now charging this way and that and giving him the feeling at once frightening and extremely exhilarating of being rushed through the air on the shoulders of people he could no longer see, he raised his hands to his forehead.
Clarissa sat very upright; drew in her breath.
"I am in love," he said, not to her however, but to some one raised up in the dark so that you could not touch her but must lay your garland down on the grass in the dark.
"In love," he repeated, now speaking rather dryly to Clarissa Dalloway; "in love with a girl in India." He had deposited his garland. Clarissa could make what she would of it.
"In love!" she said. That he at his age should be sucked under in his little bow-tie by that monster! And there's no flesh on his neck; his hands are red; and he's six months older than I am! her eye flashed back to her; but in her heart she felt, all the same, he is in love. He has that, she felt; he is in love.
But the indomitable egotism which for ever rides down the hosts opposed to it, the river which says on, on, on; even though, it admits, there may be no goal for us whatever, still on, on; this indomitable egotism charged her cheeks with colour; made her look very young; very pink; very bright-eyed as she sat with her dress upon her knee, and her needle held to the end of green silk, trembling a little. He was in love! Not with her. With some younger woman, of course.
"And who is she?" she asked.
Now this statue must be brought from its height and set down between them.
"A married woman, unfortunately," he said; "the wife of a Major in the Indian Army."
And with a curious ironical sweetness he smiled as he placed her in this ridiculous way before Clarissa.
(All the same, he is in love, thought Clarissa.)
"She has," he continued, very reasonably, "two small children; a boy and a girl; and I have come over to see my lawyers about the divorce."
There they are! he thought. Do what you like with them, Clarissa! There they are! And second by second it seemed to him that the wife of the Major in the Indian Army (his Daisy) and her two small children became more and more lovely as Clarissa looked at them; as if he had set light to a grey pellet on a plate and there had risen up a lovely tree in the brisk sea-salted air of their intimacy (for in some ways no one understood him, felt with him, as Clarissa did)--their exquisite intimacy.
She flattered him; she fooled him, thought Clarissa; shaping the woman, the wife of the Major in the Indian Army, with three strokes of a knife. What a waste! What a folly! All his life long Peter had been fooled like that; first getting sent down from Oxford; next marrying the girl on the boat going out to India; now the wife of a Major in the Indian Army--thank Heaven she had refused to marry him! Still, he was in love; her old friend, her dear Peter, he was in love.
"But what are you going to do?" she asked him. Oh the lawyers and solicitors, Messrs. Hooper and Grateley of Lincoln's Inn, they were going to do it, he said. And he actually pared his nails with his pocket-knife.
For Heaven's sake, leave your knife alone! she cried to herself in irrepressible irritation; it was his silly unconventionality, his weakness; his lack of the ghost of a notion what any one else was feeling that annoyed her, had always annoyed her; and now at his age, how silly!
I know all that, Peter thought; I know what I'm up against, he thought, running his finger along the blade of his knife, Clarissa and Dalloway and all the rest of them; but I'll show Clarissa--and then to his utter surprise, suddenly thrown by those uncontrollable forces thrown through the air, he burst into tears; wept; wept without the least shame, sitting on the sofa, the tears running down his cheeks.
And Clarissa had leant forward, taken his hand, drawn him to her, kissed him,--actually had felt his face on hers before she could down the brandishing of silver flashing--plumes like pampas grass in a tropic gale in her breast, which, subsiding, left her holding his hand, patting his knee and, feeling as she sat back extraordinarily at her ease with him and light-hearted, all in a clap it came over her, If I had married him, this gaiety would have been mine all day!
It was all over for her. The sheet was stretched and the bed narrow. She had gone up into the tower alone and left them blackberrying in the sun. The door had shut, and there among the dust of fallen plaster and the litter of birds' nests how distant the view had looked, and the sounds came thin and chill (once on Leith Hill, she remembered), and Richard, Richard! she cried, as a sleeper in the night starts and stretches a hand in the dark for help. Lunching with Lady Bruton, it came back to her. He has left me; I am alone for ever, she thought, folding her hands upon her knee.
Peter Walsh had got up and crossed to the window and stood with his back to her, flicking a bandanna handkerchief from side to side. Masterly and dry and desolate he looked, his thin shoulder-blades lifting his coat slightly; blowing his nose violently. Take me with you, Clarissa thought impulsively, as if he were starting directly upon some great voyage; and then, next moment, it was as if the five acts of a play that had been very exciting and moving were now over and she had lived a lifetime in them and had run away, had lived with Peter, and it was now over.
Now it was time to move, and, as a woman gathers her things together, her cloak, her gloves, her opera-glasses, and gets up to go out of the theatre into the street, she rose from the sofa and went to Peter.
And it was awfully strange, he thought, how she still had the power, as she came tinkling, rustling, still had the power as she came across the room, to make the moon, which he detested, rise at Bourton on the terrace in the summer sky.
"Tell me," he said, seizing her by the shoulders. "Are you happy, Clarissa? Does Richard--" The door opened.
"Here is my Elizabeth," said Clarissa, emotionally, histrionically, perhaps.
"How d'y do?" said Elizabeth coming forward.
The sound of Big Ben striking the half-hour struck out between them with extraordinary vigour, as if a young man, strong, indifferent, inconsiderate, were swinging dumb-bells this way and that.
"Hullo, Elizabeth!" cried Peter, stuffing his handkerchief into his pocket, going quickly to her, saying "Good-bye, Clarissa" without looking at her, leaving the room quickly, and running downstairs and opening the hall door.
"Peter! Peter!" cried Clarissa, following him out on to the landing. "My party to-night! Remember my party to-night!" she cried, having to raise her voice against the roar of the open air, and, overwhelmed by the traffic and the sound of all the clocks striking, her voice crying "Remember my party to-night!" sounded frail and thin and very far away as Peter Walsh shut the door.
unit 1
Part III.
1 Translations, 2 Upvotes, Last Activity 1 week, 3 days ago
unit 2
"What are they looking at?"
1 Translations, 2 Upvotes, Last Activity 1 week, 3 days ago
unit 3
said Clarissa Dalloway to the maid who opened her door.
1 Translations, 2 Upvotes, Last Activity 1 week, 3 days ago
unit 4
The hall of the house was cool as a vault.
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unit 6
The cook whistled in the kitchen.
1 Translations, 2 Upvotes, Last Activity 1 week, 3 days ago
unit 7
She heard the click of the typewriter.
1 Translations, 2 Upvotes, Last Activity 1 week, 3 days ago
unit 9
"Mr. Dalloway, ma'am, told me to tell you he would be lunching out."
1 Translations, 2 Upvotes, Last Activity 1 week, 3 days ago
unit 10
"Dear!"
1 Translations, 1 Upvotes, Last Activity 1 week, 3 days ago
unit 12
"Fear no more," said Clarissa.
1 Translations, 1 Upvotes, Last Activity 1 week, 2 days ago
unit 14
unit 15
No vulgar jealousy could separate her from Richard.
2 Translations, 3 Upvotes, Last Activity 1 week, 1 day ago
unit 17
She put the pad on the hall table.
1 Translations, 2 Upvotes, Last Activity 1 week, 2 days ago
unit 20
There was the green linoleum and a tap dripping.
1 Translations, 2 Upvotes, Last Activity 1 week, 2 days ago
unit 21
There was an emptiness about the heart of life; an attic room.
1 Translations, 2 Upvotes, Last Activity 1 week, 2 days ago
unit 22
Women must put off their rich apparel.
1 Translations, 2 Upvotes, Last Activity 1 week, 2 days ago
unit 23
At midday they must disrobe.
1 Translations, 2 Upvotes, Last Activity 1 week, 2 days ago
unit 24
She pierced the pincushion and laid her feathered yellow hat on the bed.
1 Translations, 2 Upvotes, Last Activity 1 week, 2 days ago
unit 25
The sheets were clean, tight stretched in a broad white band from side to side.
1 Translations, 2 Upvotes, Last Activity 1 week, 2 days ago
unit 26
Narrower and narrower would her bed be.
1 Translations, 1 Upvotes, Last Activity 1 week, 2 days ago
unit 27
The candle was half burnt down and she had read deep in Baron Marbot's Memoirs.
1 Translations, 2 Upvotes, Last Activity 1 week, 1 day ago
unit 28
She had read late at night of the retreat from Moscow.
2 Translations, 2 Upvotes, Last Activity 1 week, 1 day ago
unit 30
And really she preferred to read of the retreat from Moscow.
1 Translations, 2 Upvotes, Last Activity 1 week, 1 day ago
unit 31
He knew it.
1 Translations, 2 Upvotes, Last Activity 1 week, 1 day ago
unit 34
And then at Constantinople, and again and again.
1 Translations, 2 Upvotes, Last Activity 1 week, 1 day ago
unit 35
She could see what she lacked.
1 Translations, 2 Upvotes, Last Activity 1 week, 1 day ago
unit 36
It was not beauty; it was not mind.
1 Translations, 2 Upvotes, Last Activity 1 week, 1 day ago
unit 38
For that she could dimly perceive.
1 Translations, 2 Upvotes, Last Activity 1 week, 1 day ago
unit 41
Only for a moment; but it was enough.
1 Translations, 2 Upvotes, Last Activity 1 week, 1 day ago
unit 44
But the close withdrew; the hard softened.
1 Translations, 2 Upvotes, Last Activity 1 week ago
unit 45
It was over--the moment.
1 Translations, 2 Upvotes, Last Activity 1 week ago
unit 48
How she laughed!
1 Translations, 2 Upvotes, Last Activity 1 week ago
unit 50
Take Sally Seton; her relation in the old days with Sally Seton.
1 Translations, 2 Upvotes, Last Activity 1 week ago
unit 51
Had not that, after all, been love?
2 Translations, 1 Upvotes, Last Activity 1 week ago
unit 53
Where could it have been?
3 Translations, 1 Upvotes, Last Activity 6 days, 2 hours ago
unit 54
The Mannings?
2 Translations, 2 Upvotes, Last Activity 6 days, 18 hours ago
unit 55
The Kinloch-Jones's?
2 Translations, 2 Upvotes, Last Activity 1 week ago
unit 58
But all that evening she could not take her eyes off Sally.
1 Translations, 2 Upvotes, Last Activity 1 week ago
unit 62
There had been some quarrel at home.
1 Translations, 2 Upvotes, Last Activity 6 days, 14 hours ago
unit 63
She literally hadn't a penny that night when she came to them--had pawned a brooch to come down.
1 Translations, 2 Upvotes, Last Activity 6 days, 14 hours ago
unit 64
She had rushed off in a passion.
2 Translations, 2 Upvotes, Last Activity 6 days, 2 hours ago
unit 65
They sat up till all hours of the night talking.
2 Translations, 2 Upvotes, Last Activity 6 days, 2 hours ago
unit 66
Sally it was who made her feel, for the first time, how sheltered the life at Bourton was.
2 Translations, 2 Upvotes, Last Activity 6 days, 2 hours ago
unit 67
She knew nothing about sex--nothing about social problems.
2 Translations, 2 Upvotes, Last Activity 6 days, 2 hours ago
unit 73
Sally's power was amazing, her gift, her personality.
1 Translations, 2 Upvotes, Last Activity 6 days, 18 hours ago
unit 74
There was her way with flowers, for instance.
2 Translations, 1 Upvotes, Last Activity 6 days, 2 hours ago
unit 75
At Bourton they always had stiff little vases all the way down the table.
1 Translations, 2 Upvotes, Last Activity 6 days, 18 hours ago
unit 77
The effect was extraordinary--coming in to dinner in the sunset.
1 Translations, 2 Upvotes, Last Activity 6 days, 14 hours ago
unit 78
(Of course Aunt Helena thought it wicked to treat flowers like that.)
1 Translations, 2 Upvotes, Last Activity 6 days, 14 hours ago
unit 79
Then she forgot her sponge, and ran along the passage naked.
1 Translations, 2 Upvotes, Last Activity 6 days, 14 hours ago
unit 80
unit 81
Indeed she did shock people.
1 Translations, 2 Upvotes, Last Activity 6 days, 1 hour ago
unit 82
She was untidy, Papa said.
2 Translations, 1 Upvotes, Last Activity 5 days, 14 hours ago
unit 83
The strange thing, on looking back, was the purity, the integrity, of her feeling for Sally.
1 Translations, 2 Upvotes, Last Activity 5 days, 14 hours ago
unit 84
It was not like one's feeling for a man.
1 Translations, 2 Upvotes, Last Activity 5 days, 14 hours ago
unit 88
Absurd, she was--very absurd.
1 Translations, 1 Upvotes, Last Activity 6 days, 1 hour ago
unit 90
.
1 Translations, 1 Upvotes, Last Activity 6 days, 1 hour ago
unit 91
.
1 Translations, 1 Upvotes, Last Activity 6 days, 1 hour ago
unit 92
.
1 Translations, 1 Upvotes, Last Activity 6 days, 1 hour ago
unit 93
She is beneath this roof!"
1 Translations, 1 Upvotes, Last Activity 6 days, 1 hour ago
unit 94
No, the words meant absolutely nothing to her now.
1 Translations, 1 Upvotes, Last Activity 6 days, 1 hour ago
unit 95
She could not even get an echo of her old emotion.
1 Translations, 1 Upvotes, Last Activity 6 days, 1 hour ago
unit 98
She was wearing pink gauze--was that possible?
1 Translations, 2 Upvotes, Last Activity 5 days, 14 hours ago
unit 100
But nothing is so strange when one is in love (and what was this except being in love?)
1 Translations, 2 Upvotes, Last Activity 5 days, 14 hours ago
unit 101
as the complete indifference of other people.
1 Translations, 2 Upvotes, Last Activity 5 days, 14 hours ago
unit 102
Aunt Helena just wandered off after dinner; Papa read the paper.
1 Translations, 2 Upvotes, Last Activity 5 days, 14 hours ago
unit 104
All this was only a background for Sally.
1 Translations, 2 Upvotes, Last Activity 5 days, 14 hours ago
unit 106
and they all went out on to the terrace and walked up and down.
1 Translations, 2 Upvotes, Last Activity 5 days, 14 hours ago
unit 107
Peter Walsh and Joseph Breitkopf went on about Wagner.
1 Translations, 2 Upvotes, Last Activity 4 days, 14 hours ago
unit 108
She and Sally fell a little behind.
1 Translations, 2 Upvotes, Last Activity 4 days, 14 hours ago
unit 109
Then came the most exquisite moment of her whole life passing a stone urn with flowers in it.
2 Translations, 1 Upvotes, Last Activity 4 days, 14 hours ago
unit 110
Sally stopped; picked a flower; kissed her on the lips.
1 Translations, 0 Upvotes, Last Activity 4 days, 14 hours ago
unit 111
The whole world might have turned upside down!
1 Translations, 2 Upvotes, Last Activity 4 days, 14 hours ago
unit 112
The others disappeared; there she was alone with Sally.
1 Translations, 2 Upvotes, Last Activity 4 days, 14 hours ago
unit 114
said Peter.
2 Translations, 2 Upvotes, Last Activity 4 days, 1 hour ago
unit 115
It was like running one's face against a granite wall in the darkness!
2 Translations, 1 Upvotes, Last Activity 4 days, 1 hour ago
unit 116
It was shocking; it was horrible!
1 Translations, 2 Upvotes, Last Activity 4 days, 18 hours ago
unit 117
Not for herself.
1 Translations, 2 Upvotes, Last Activity 4 days, 14 hours ago
unit 120
gallantly taking her way unvanquished.
1 Translations, 2 Upvotes, Last Activity 4 days, 14 hours ago
unit 121
She laughed.
1 Translations, 2 Upvotes, Last Activity 3 days, 3 hours ago
unit 122
unit 123
She stood there: she listened.
1 Translations, 2 Upvotes, Last Activity 3 days, 14 hours ago
unit 124
She heard the names of the stars.
2 Translations, 1 Upvotes, Last Activity 3 days, 14 hours ago
unit 125
"Oh this horror!"
1 Translations, 2 Upvotes, Last Activity 3 days, 14 hours ago
unit 127
Yet, after all, how much she owed to him later.
2 Translations, 1 Upvotes, Last Activity 3 days, 3 hours ago
unit 130
A book was sentimental; an attitude to life sentimental.
1 Translations, 2 Upvotes, Last Activity 3 days, 18 hours ago
unit 131
"Sentimental," perhaps she was to be thinking of the past.
1 Translations, 2 Upvotes, Last Activity 3 days, 18 hours ago
unit 132
What would he think, she wondered, when he came back?
1 Translations, 2 Upvotes, Last Activity 3 days, 18 hours ago
unit 133
That she had grown older?
2 Translations, 1 Upvotes, Last Activity 3 days, 3 hours ago
unit 134
Would he say that, or would she see him thinking when he came back, that she had grown older?
1 Translations, 2 Upvotes, Last Activity 3 days, 18 hours ago
unit 135
It was true.
1 Translations, 2 Upvotes, Last Activity 3 days, 14 hours ago
unit 136
Since her illness she had turned almost white.
1 Translations, 2 Upvotes, Last Activity 3 days, 14 hours ago
unit 138
She was not old yet.
1 Translations, 2 Upvotes, Last Activity 3 days, 14 hours ago
unit 139
She had just broken into her fifty-second year.
1 Translations, 2 Upvotes, Last Activity 3 days, 14 hours ago
unit 140
Months and months of it were still untouched.
1 Translations, 2 Upvotes, Last Activity 2 days, 13 hours ago
unit 141
June, July, August!
4 Translations, 3 Upvotes, Last Activity 1 day, 3 hours ago
unit 143
How many million times she had seen her face, and always with the same imperceptible contraction!
2 Translations, 1 Upvotes, Last Activity 2 days, 3 hours ago
unit 144
She pursed her lips when she looked in the glass.
1 Translations, 1 Upvotes, Last Activity 3 days, 2 hours ago
unit 145
It was to give her face point.
2 Translations, 1 Upvotes, Last Activity 2 days, 3 hours ago
unit 146
That was her self--pointed; dartlike; definite.
2 Translations, 1 Upvotes, Last Activity 2 days, 3 hours ago
unit 148
Now, where was her dress?
1 Translations, 2 Upvotes, Last Activity 2 days, 18 hours ago
unit 149
Her evening dresses hung in the cupboard.
1 Translations, 2 Upvotes, Last Activity 2 days, 18 hours ago
unit 151
She had torn it.
1 Translations, 2 Upvotes, Last Activity 2 days, 18 hours ago
unit 152
Some one had trod on the skirt.
1 Translations, 2 Upvotes, Last Activity 2 days, 18 hours ago
unit 153
She had felt it give at the Embassy party at the top among the folds.
1 Translations, 2 Upvotes, Last Activity 2 days, 13 hours ago
unit 154
By artificial light the green shone, but lost its colour now in the sun.
1 Translations, 2 Upvotes, Last Activity 2 days, 13 hours ago
unit 155
She would mend it.
1 Translations, 2 Upvotes, Last Activity 2 days, 13 hours ago
unit 156
Her maids had too much to do.
1 Translations, 2 Upvotes, Last Activity 2 days, 13 hours ago
unit 157
She would wear it to-night.
1 Translations, 2 Upvotes, Last Activity 2 days, 13 hours ago
unit 161
All was for the party.
1 Translations, 2 Upvotes, Last Activity 2 days, 13 hours ago
unit 165
Behold!
1 Translations, 1 Upvotes, Last Activity 2 days, 3 hours ago
unit 166
Behold!
1 Translations, 1 Upvotes, Last Activity 2 days, 3 hours ago
unit 168
She was Lady Angela, attending Princess Mary, when in came Mrs.
2 Translations, 1 Upvotes, Last Activity 1 day, 3 hours ago
unit 169
Dalloway.)
1 Translations, 2 Upvotes, Last Activity 2 days, 3 hours ago
unit 170
"Oh Lucy," she said, "the silver does look nice!"
1 Translations, 2 Upvotes, Last Activity 1 day, 13 hours ago
unit 172
"Oh, they had to go before the end!"
1 Translations, 2 Upvotes, Last Activity 1 day, 14 hours ago
unit 173
she said.
1 Translations, 2 Upvotes, Last Activity 1 day, 14 hours ago
unit 174
"They had to be back at ten!"
1 Translations, 2 Upvotes, Last Activity 1 day, 14 hours ago
unit 175
she said.
1 Translations, 2 Upvotes, Last Activity 1 day, 14 hours ago
unit 176
"So they don't know what happened," she said.
2 Translations, 2 Upvotes, Last Activity 1 day, 3 hours ago
unit 177
unit 179
Give it to Mrs. Walker with my compliments!
1 Translations, 2 Upvotes, Last Activity 1 day, 18 hours ago
unit 180
Take it away!"
1 Translations, 2 Upvotes, Last Activity 1 day, 18 hours ago
unit 181
she cried.
1 Translations, 2 Upvotes, Last Activity 1 day, 18 hours ago
unit 185
Her servants liked her.
1 Translations, 2 Upvotes, Last Activity 1 day, 13 hours ago
unit 186
And then this dress of hers--where was the tear?
1 Translations, 2 Upvotes, Last Activity 1 day, 13 hours ago
unit 187
and now her needle to be threaded.
1 Translations, 2 Upvotes, Last Activity 1 day, 13 hours ago
unit 189
For she was a character, thought Clarissa, a real artist.
1 Translations, 2 Upvotes, Last Activity 15 hours ago
unit 190
She thought of little out-of-the-way things; yet her dresses were never queer.
3 Translations, 2 Upvotes, Last Activity 3 hours ago
unit 191
You could wear them at Hatfield; at Buckingham Palace.
2 Translations, 2 Upvotes, Last Activity 3 hours ago
unit 192
She had worn them at Hatfield; at Buckingham Palace.
1 Translations, 2 Upvotes, Last Activity 15 hours ago
unit 195
Fear no more, says the heart.
1 Translations, 2 Upvotes, Last Activity 15 hours ago
unit 198
"Heavens, the front-door bell!"
1 Translations, 2 Upvotes, Last Activity 18 hours ago
unit 199
exclaimed Clarissa, staying her needle.
1 Translations, 2 Upvotes, Last Activity 18 hours ago
unit 200
Roused, she listened.
2 Translations, 3 Upvotes, Last Activity 3 hours ago
unit 201
"Mrs. Dalloway will see me," said the elderly man in the hall.
1 Translations, 2 Upvotes, Last Activity 18 hours ago
unit 203
"Yes, yes, yes," he muttered as he ran upstairs.
1 Translations, 1 Upvotes, Last Activity 18 hours ago
unit 204
"She will see me.
1 Translations, 1 Upvotes, Last Activity 18 hours ago
unit 205
After five years in India, Clarissa will see me."
1 Translations, 1 Upvotes, Last Activity 18 hours ago
unit 207
She heard a hand upon the door.
1 Translations, 1 Upvotes, Last Activity 2 hours ago
unit 208
She made to hide her dress, like a virgin protecting chastity, respecting privacy.
3 Translations, 1 Upvotes, Last Activity 2 hours ago
unit 209
Now the brass knob slipped.
1 Translations, 1 Upvotes, Last Activity 2 hours ago
unit 212
(She had not read his letter.)
1 Translations, 1 Upvotes, Last Activity 2 hours ago
unit 213
"And how are you?"
1 Translations, 1 Upvotes, Last Activity 2 hours ago
unit 214
unit 215
She's grown older, he thought, sitting down.
1 Translations, 0 Upvotes, Last Activity 2 hours ago
unit 216
I shan't tell her anything about it, he thought, for she's grown older.
1 Translations, 1 Upvotes, Last Activity 2 hours ago
unit 220
"How heavenly it is to see you again!"
1 Translations, 0 Upvotes, Last Activity 2 hours ago
unit 221
she exclaimed.
1 Translations, 0 Upvotes, Last Activity 2 hours ago
unit 222
He had his knife out.
1 Translations, 0 Upvotes, Last Activity 2 hours ago
unit 223
That's so like him, she thought.
1 Translations, 0 Upvotes, Last Activity 2 hours ago
unit 225
Elizabeth?
0 Translations, 0 Upvotes, Last Activity None
unit 226
"And what's all this?"
0 Translations, 0 Upvotes, Last Activity None
unit 227
he said, tilting his pen-knife towards her green dress.
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unit 228
He's very well dressed, thought Clarissa; yet he always criticises me.
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unit 230
So it is, so it is, he thought, shutting his knife with a snap.
0 Translations, 0 Upvotes, Last Activity None
unit 231
"Richard's very well.
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unit 232
Richard's at a Committee," said Clarissa.
0 Translations, 0 Upvotes, Last Activity None
unit 234
"Which I shan't ask you to," she said.
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unit 235
"My dear Peter!"
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unit 236
she said.
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unit 237
But it was delicious to hear her say that--my dear Peter!
0 Translations, 0 Upvotes, Last Activity None
unit 238
unit 239
Why wouldn't she ask him to her party?
0 Translations, 0 Upvotes, Last Activity None
unit 240
he asked.
0 Translations, 0 Upvotes, Last Activity None
unit 241
Now of course, thought Clarissa, he's enchanting!
0 Translations, 0 Upvotes, Last Activity None
unit 242
perfectly enchanting!
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unit 244
she wondered, that awful summer?
0 Translations, 0 Upvotes, Last Activity None
unit 245
"But it's so extraordinary that you should have come this morning!"
0 Translations, 0 Upvotes, Last Activity None
unit 246
she cried, putting her hands, one on top of another, down on her dress.
0 Translations, 0 Upvotes, Last Activity None
unit 247
"Do you remember," she said, "how the blinds used to flap at Bourton?"
0 Translations, 0 Upvotes, Last Activity None
unit 250
"I often wish I'd got on better with your father," he said.
0 Translations, 0 Upvotes, Last Activity None
unit 253
I was more unhappy than I've ever been since, he thought.
0 Translations, 0 Upvotes, Last Activity None
unit 255
There above them it hung, that moon.
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unit 256
She too seemed to be sitting with him on the terrace, in the moonlight.
0 Translations, 0 Upvotes, Last Activity None
unit 257
"Herbert has it now," she said.
0 Translations, 0 Upvotes, Last Activity None
unit 258
"I never go there now," she said.
0 Translations, 0 Upvotes, Last Activity None
unit 260
For why go back like this to the past?
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unit 261
he thought.
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unit 262
Why make him think of it again?
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unit 263
Why make him suffer, when she had tortured him so infernally?
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unit 264
Why?
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unit 265
"Do you remember the lake?"
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unit 268
This!"
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unit 269
And what had she made of it?
0 Translations, 0 Upvotes, Last Activity None
unit 270
What, indeed?
0 Translations, 0 Upvotes, Last Activity None
unit 271
sitting there sewing this morning with Peter.
0 Translations, 0 Upvotes, Last Activity None
unit 273
Quite simply she wiped her eyes.
0 Translations, 0 Upvotes, Last Activity None
unit 274
"Yes," said Peter.
0 Translations, 0 Upvotes, Last Activity None
unit 276
Stop!
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unit 277
Stop!
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unit 278
he wanted to cry.
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unit 279
For he was not old; his life was not over; not by any means.
0 Translations, 0 Upvotes, Last Activity None
unit 280
He was only just past fifty.
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unit 281
Shall I tell her, he thought, or not?
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unit 282
He would like to make a clean breast of it all.
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unit 288
And this has been going on all the time!
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unit 294
"Well, and what's happened to you?"
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unit 295
she said.
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unit 298
His powers chafed and tossed in him.
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unit 300
"Millions of things!"
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unit 302
Clarissa sat very upright; drew in her breath.
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unit 305
He had deposited his garland.
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unit 306
Clarissa could make what she would of it.
0 Translations, 0 Upvotes, Last Activity None
unit 307
"In love!"
0 Translations, 0 Upvotes, Last Activity None
unit 308
she said.
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unit 312
He has that, she felt; he is in love.
0 Translations, 0 Upvotes, Last Activity None
unit 314
He was in love!
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unit 315
Not with her.
0 Translations, 0 Upvotes, Last Activity None
unit 316
With some younger woman, of course.
0 Translations, 0 Upvotes, Last Activity None
unit 317
"And who is she?"
0 Translations, 0 Upvotes, Last Activity None
unit 318
she asked.
0 Translations, 0 Upvotes, Last Activity None
unit 319
unit 322
(All the same, he is in love, thought Clarissa.)
0 Translations, 0 Upvotes, Last Activity None
unit 324
There they are!
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unit 325
he thought.
0 Translations, 0 Upvotes, Last Activity None
unit 326
Do what you like with them, Clarissa!
0 Translations, 0 Upvotes, Last Activity None
unit 327
There they are!
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unit 330
What a waste!
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unit 331
What a folly!
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unit 333
Still, he was in love; her old friend, her dear Peter, he was in love.
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unit 334
"But what are you going to do?"
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unit 335
she asked him.
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unit 337
And he actually pared his nails with his pocket-knife.
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unit 338
For Heaven's sake, leave your knife alone!
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unit 342
It was all over for her.
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unit 343
The sheet was stretched and the bed narrow.
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unit 344
unit 347
Lunching with Lady Bruton, it came back to her.
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unit 354
"Tell me," he said, seizing her by the shoulders.
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unit 355
"Are you happy, Clarissa?
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unit 356
Does Richard--" The door opened.
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unit 357
unit 358
"How d'y do?"
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unit 359
said Elizabeth coming forward.
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unit 361
"Hullo, Elizabeth!"
0 Translations, 0 Upvotes, Last Activity None
unit 363
"Peter!
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unit 364
Peter!"
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unit 365
cried Clarissa, following him out on to the landing.
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unit 366
"My party to-night!
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unit 367
Remember my party to-night!"
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unit 369
sounded frail and thin and very far away as Peter Walsh shut the door.
0 Translations, 0 Upvotes, Last Activity 2 months, 2 weeks ago

Ubicación de los capítulos:
Part I: https://translatihan.com/couples/en-es/articles/5219/
Part II: https://translatihan.com/couples/en-es/articles/5220/
Part III: https://translatihan.com/couples/en-es/articles/5221/
Part IV: https://translatihan.com/couples/en-es/articles/5222/
Part V: https://translatihan.com/couples/en-es/articles/5223/
Part VI: https://translatihan.com/couples/en-es/articles/5224/
Part VII: https://translatihan.com/couples/en-es/articles/5225/
Part VIII/VIII: https://translatihan.com/couples/en-es/articles/5226/

by soybeba 2 months, 2 weeks ago

Part III.
"What are they looking at?" said Clarissa Dalloway to the maid who opened her door.
The hall of the house was cool as a vault. Mrs. Dalloway raised her hand to her eyes, and, as the maid shut the door to, and she heard the swish of Lucy's skirts, she felt like a nun who has left the world and feels fold round her the familiar veils and the response to old devotions. The cook whistled in the kitchen. She heard the click of the typewriter. It was her life, and, bending her head over the hall table, she bowed beneath the influence, felt blessed and purified, saying to herself, as she took the pad with the telephone message on it, how moments like this are buds on the tree of life, flowers of darkness they are, she thought (as if some lovely rose had blossomed for her eyes only); not for a moment did she believe in God; but all the more, she thought, taking up the pad, must one repay in daily life to servants, yes, to dogs and canaries, above all to Richard her husband, who was the foundation of it--of the gay sounds, of the green lights, of the cook even whistling, for Mrs. Walker was Irish and whistled all day long--one must pay back from this secret deposit of exquisite moments, she thought, lifting the pad, while Lucy stood by her, trying to explain how
"Mr. Dalloway, ma'am"--
Clarissa read on the telephone pad, "Lady Bruton wishes to know if Mr. Dalloway will lunch with her to-day."
"Mr. Dalloway, ma'am, told me to tell you he would be lunching out."
"Dear!" said Clarissa, and Lucy shared as she meant her to her disappointment (but not the pang); felt the concord between them; took the hint; thought how the gentry love; gilded her own future with calm; and, taking Mrs. Dalloway's parasol, handled it like a sacred weapon which a Goddess, having acquitted herself honourably in the field of battle, sheds, and placed it in the umbrella stand.
"Fear no more," said Clarissa. Fear no more the heat o' the sun; for the shock of Lady Bruton asking Richard to lunch without her made the moment in which she had stood shiver, as a plant on the river-bed feels the shock of a passing oar and shivers: so she rocked: so she shivered.
Millicent Bruton, whose lunch parties were said to be extraordinarily amusing, had not asked her. No vulgar jealousy could separate her from Richard. But she feared time itself, and read on Lady Bruton's face, as if it had been a dial cut in impassive stone, the dwindling of life; how year by year her share was sliced; how little the margin that remained was capable any longer of stretching, of absorbing, as in the youthful years, the colours, salts, tones of existence, so that she filled the room she entered, and felt often as she stood hesitating one moment on the threshold of her drawing-room, an exquisite suspense, such as might stay a diver before plunging while the sea darkens and brightens beneath him, and the waves which threaten to break, but only gently split their surface, roll and conceal and encrust as they just turn over the weeds with pearl.
She put the pad on the hall table. She began to go slowly upstairs, with her hand on the bannisters, as if she had left a party, where now this friend now that had flashed back her face, her voice; had shut the door and gone out and stood alone, a single figure against the appalling night, or rather, to be accurate, against the stare of this matter-of-fact June morning; soft with the glow of rose petals for some, she knew, and felt it, as she paused by the open staircase window which let in blinds flapping, dogs barking, let in, she thought, feeling herself suddenly shrivelled, aged, breastless, the grinding, blowing, flowering of the day, out of doors, out of the window, out of her body and brain which now failed, since Lady Bruton, whose lunch parties were said to be extraordinarily amusing, had not asked her.
Like a nun withdrawing, or a child exploring a tower, she went upstairs, paused at the window, came to the bathroom. There was the green linoleum and a tap dripping. There was an emptiness about the heart of life; an attic room. Women must put off their rich apparel. At midday they must disrobe. She pierced the pincushion and laid her feathered yellow hat on the bed. The sheets were clean, tight stretched in a broad white band from side to side. Narrower and narrower would her bed be. The candle was half burnt down and she had read deep in Baron Marbot's Memoirs. She had read late at night of the retreat from Moscow. For the House sat so long that Richard insisted, after her illness, that she must sleep undisturbed. And really she preferred to read of the retreat from Moscow. He knew it. So the room was an attic; the bed narrow; and lying there reading, for she slept badly, she could not dispel a virginity preserved through childbirth which clung to her like a sheet. Lovely in girlhood, suddenly there came a moment--for example on the river beneath the woods at Clieveden--when, through some contraction of this cold spirit, she had failed him. And then at Constantinople, and again and again. She could see what she lacked. It was not beauty; it was not mind. It was something central which permeated; something warm which broke up surfaces and rippled the cold contact of man and woman, or of women together. For that she could dimly perceive. She resented it, had a scruple picked up Heaven knows where, or, as she felt, sent by Nature (who is invariably wise); yet she could not resist sometimes yielding to the charm of a woman, not a girl, of a woman confessing, as to her they often did, some scrape, some folly. And whether it was pity, or their beauty, or that she was older, or some accident--like a faint scent, or a violin next door (so strange is the power of sounds at certain moments), she did undoubtedly then feel what men felt. Only for a moment; but it was enough. It was a sudden revelation, a tinge like a blush which one tried to check and then, as it spread, one yielded to its expansion, and rushed to the farthest verge and there quivered and felt the world come closer, swollen with some astonishing significance, some pressure of rapture, which split its thin skin and gushed and poured with an extraordinary alleviation over the cracks and sores! Then, for that moment, she had seen an illumination; a match burning in a crocus; an inner meaning almost expressed. But the close withdrew; the hard softened. It was over--the moment. Against such moments (with women too) there contrasted (as she laid her hat down) the bed and Baron Marbot and the candle half-burnt. Lying awake, the floor creaked; the lit house was suddenly darkened, and if she raised her head she could just hear the click of the handle released as gently as possible by Richard, who slipped upstairs in his socks and then, as often as not, dropped his hot-water bottle and swore! How she laughed!
But this question of love (she thought, putting her coat away), this falling in love with women. Take Sally Seton; her relation in the old days with Sally Seton. Had not that, after all, been love?
She sat on the floor--that was her first impression of Sally--she sat on the floor with her arms round her knees, smoking a cigarette. Where could it have been? The Mannings? The Kinloch-Jones's? At some party (where, she could not be certain), for she had a distinct recollection of saying to the man she was with, "Who is that?" And he had told her, and said that Sally's parents did not get on (how that shocked her--that one's parents should quarrel!). But all that evening she could not take her eyes off Sally. It was an extraordinary beauty of the kind she most admired, dark, large-eyed, with that quality which, since she hadn't got it herself, she always envied--a sort of abandonment, as if she could say anything, do anything; a quality much commoner in foreigners than in Englishwomen. Sally always said she had French blood in her veins, an ancestor had been with Marie Antoinette, had his head cut off, left a ruby ring. Perhaps that summer she came to stay at Bourton, walking in quite unexpectedly without a penny in her pocket, one night after dinner, and upsetting poor Aunt Helena to such an extent that she never forgave her. There had been some quarrel at home. She literally hadn't a penny that night when she came to them--had pawned a brooch to come down. She had rushed off in a passion. They sat up till all hours of the night talking. Sally it was who made her feel, for the first time, how sheltered the life at Bourton was. She knew nothing about sex--nothing about social problems. She had once seen an old man who had dropped dead in a field--she had seen cows just after their calves were born. But Aunt Helena never liked discussion of anything (when Sally gave her William Morris, it had to be wrapped in brown paper). There they sat, hour after hour, talking in her bedroom at the top of the house, talking about life, how they were to reform the world. They meant to found a society to abolish private property, and actually had a letter written, though not sent out. The ideas were Sally's, of course--but very soon she was just as excited--read Plato in bed before breakfast; read Morris; read Shelley by the hour.
Sally's power was amazing, her gift, her personality. There was her way with flowers, for instance. At Bourton they always had stiff little vases all the way down the table. Sally went out, picked hollyhocks, dahlias--all sorts of flowers that had never been seen together--cut their heads off, and made them swim on the top of water in bowls. The effect was extraordinary--coming in to dinner in the sunset. (Of 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 was giving a party), hearing a step on the stairs. She heard a hand upon the door. She made to hide her dress, like a virgin protecting chastity, respecting privacy. Now the brass knob slipped. Now the door opened, and in came--for a single second she could not remember what he was called! so surprised she was to see him, so glad, so shy, so utterly taken aback to have Peter Walsh come to her unexpectedly in the morning! (She had not read his letter.)
"And how are you?" said Peter Walsh, positively trembling; taking both her hands; kissing both her hands. She's grown older, he thought, sitting down. I shan't tell her anything about it, he thought, for she's grown older. She's looking at me, he thought, a sudden embarrassment coming over him, though he had kissed her hands. Putting his hand into his pocket, he took out a large pocket-knife and half opened the blade.
Exactly the same, thought Clarissa; the same queer look; the same check suit; a little out of the straight his face is, a little thinner, dryer, perhaps, but he looks awfully well, and just the same.
"How heavenly it is to see you again!" she exclaimed. He had his knife out. That's so like him, she thought.
He had only reached town last night, he said; would have to go down into the country at once; and how was everything, how was everybody--Richard? Elizabeth?
"And what's all this?" he said, tilting his pen-knife towards her green dress.
He's very well dressed, thought Clarissa; yet he always criticises me.
Here she is mending her dress; mending her dress as usual, he thought; here she's been sitting all the time I've been in India; mending her dress; playing about; going to parties; running to the House and back and all that, he thought, growing more and more irritated, more and more agitated, for there's nothing in the world so bad for some women as marriage, he thought; and politics; and having a Conservative husband, like the admirable Richard. So it is, so it is, he thought, shutting his knife with a snap.
"Richard's very well. Richard's at a Committee," said Clarissa.
And she opened her scissors, and said, did he mind her just finishing what she was doing to her dress, for they had a party that night?
"Which I shan't ask you to," she said. "My dear Peter!" she said.
But it was delicious to hear her say that--my dear Peter! Indeed, it was all so delicious--the silver, the chairs; all so delicious!
Why wouldn't she ask him to her party? he asked.
Now of course, thought Clarissa, he's enchanting! perfectly enchanting! Now I remember how impossible it was ever to make up my mind--and why did I make up my mind--not to marry him? she wondered, that awful summer?
"But it's so extraordinary that you should have come this morning!" she cried, putting her hands, one on top of another, down on her dress.
"Do you remember," she said, "how the blinds used to flap at Bourton?"
"They did," he said; and he remembered breakfasting alone, very awkwardly, with her father; who had died; and he had not written to Clarissa. But he had never got on well with old Parry, that querulous, weak-kneed old man, Clarissa's father, Justin Parry.
"I often wish I'd got on better with your father," he said.
"But he never liked any one who--our friends," said Clarissa; and could have bitten her tongue for thus reminding Peter that he had wanted to marry her.
Of course I did, thought Peter; it almost broke my heart too, he thought; and was overcome with his own grief, which rose like a moon looked at from a terrace, ghastly beautiful with light from the sunken day. I was more unhappy than I've ever been since, he thought. And as if in truth he were sitting there on the terrace he edged a little towards Clarissa; put his hand out; raised it; let it fall. There above them it hung, that moon. She too seemed to be sitting with him on the terrace, in the moonlight.
"Herbert has it now," she said. "I never go there now," she said.
Then, just as happens on a terrace in the moonlight, when one person begins to feel ashamed that he is already bored, and yet as the other sits silent, very quiet, sadly looking at the moon, does not like to speak, moves his foot, clears his throat, notices some iron scroll on a table leg, stirs a leaf, but says nothing--so Peter Walsh did now. For why go back like this to the past? he thought. Why make him think of it again? Why make him suffer, when she had tortured him so infernally? Why?
"Do you remember the lake?" she said, in an abrupt voice, under the pressure of an emotion which caught her heart, made the muscles of her throat stiff, and contracted her lips in a spasm as she said "lake." For she was a child, throwing bread to the ducks, between her parents, and at the same time a grown woman coming to her parents who stood by the lake, holding her life in her arms which, as she neared them, grew larger and larger in her arms, until it became a whole life, a complete life, which she put down by them and said, "This is what I have made of it! This!" And what had she made of it? What, indeed? sitting there sewing this morning with Peter.
She looked at Peter Walsh; her look, passing through all that time and that emotion, reached him doubtfully; settled on him tearfully; and rose and fluttered away, as a bird touches a branch and rises and flutters away. Quite simply she wiped her eyes.
"Yes," said Peter. "Yes, yes, yes," he said, as if she drew up to the surface something which positively hurt him as it rose. Stop! Stop! he wanted to cry. For he was not old; his life was not over; not by any means. He was only just past fifty. Shall I tell her, he thought, or not? He would like to make a clean breast of it all. But she is too cold, he thought; sewing, with her scissors; Daisy would look ordinary beside Clarissa. And she would think me a failure, which I am in their sense, he thought; in the Dalloways' sense. Oh yes, he had no doubt about that; he was a failure, compared with all this--the inlaid table, the mounted paper-knife, the dolphin and the candlesticks, the chair-covers and the old valuable English tinted prints--he was a failure! I detest the smugness of the whole affair, he thought; Richard's doing, not Clarissa's; save that she married him. (Here Lucy came into the room, carrying silver, more silver, but charming, slender, graceful she looked, he thought, as she stooped to put it down.) And this has been going on all the time! he thought; week after week; Clarissa's life; while I--he thought; and at once everything seemed to radiate from him; journeys; rides; quarrels; adventures; bridge parties; love affairs; work; work, work! and he took out his knife quite openly--his old horn-handled knife which Clarissa could swear he had had these thirty years--and clenched his fist upon it.
What an extraordinary habit that was, Clarissa thought; always playing with a knife. Always making one feel, too, frivolous; empty-minded; a mere silly chatterbox, as he used. But I too, she thought, and, taking up her needle, summoned, like a Queen whose guards have fallen asleep and left her unprotected (she had been quite taken aback by this visit--it had upset her) so that any one can stroll in and have a look at her where she lies with the brambles curving over her, summoned to her help the things she did; the things she liked; her husband; Elizabeth; her self, in short, which Peter hardly knew now, all to come about her and beat off the enemy.
"Well, and what's happened to you?" she said. So before a battle begins, the horses paw the ground; toss their heads; the light shines on their flanks; their necks curve. So Peter Walsh and Clarissa, sitting side by side on the blue sofa, challenged each other. His powers chafed and tossed in him. He assembled from different quarters all sorts of things; praise; his career at Oxford; his marriage, which she knew nothing whatever about; how he had loved; and altogether done his job.
"Millions of things!" he exclaimed, and, urged by the assembly of powers which were now charging this way and that and giving him the feeling at once frightening and extremely exhilarating of being rushed through the air on the shoulders of people he could no longer see, he raised his hands to his forehead.
Clarissa sat very upright; drew in her breath.
"I am in love," he said, not to her however, but to some one raised up in the dark so that you could not touch her but must lay your garland down on the grass in the dark.
"In love," he repeated, now speaking rather dryly to Clarissa Dalloway; "in love with a girl in India." He had deposited his garland. Clarissa could make what she would of it.
"In love!" she said. That he at his age should be sucked under in his little bow-tie by that monster! And there's no flesh on his neck; his hands are red; and he's six months older than I am! her eye flashed back to her; but in her heart she felt, all the same, he is in love. He has that, she felt; he is in love.
But the indomitable egotism which for ever rides down the hosts opposed to it, the river which says on, on, on; even though, it admits, there may be no goal for us whatever, still on, on; this indomitable egotism charged her cheeks with colour; made her look very young; very pink; very bright-eyed as she sat with her dress upon her knee, and her needle held to the end of green silk, trembling a little. He was in love! Not with her. With some younger woman, of course.
"And who is she?" she asked.
Now this statue must be brought from its height and set down between them.
"A married woman, unfortunately," he said; "the wife of a Major in the Indian Army."
And with a curious ironical sweetness he smiled as he placed her in this ridiculous way before Clarissa.
(All the same, he is in love, thought Clarissa.)
"She has," he continued, very reasonably, "two small children; a boy and a girl; and I have come over to see my lawyers about the divorce."
There they are! he thought. Do what you like with them, Clarissa! There they are! And second by second it seemed to him that the wife of the Major in the Indian Army (his Daisy) and her two small children became more and more lovely as Clarissa looked at them; as if he had set light to a grey pellet on a plate and there had risen up a lovely tree in the brisk sea-salted air of their intimacy (for in some ways no one understood him, felt with him, as Clarissa did)--their exquisite intimacy.
She flattered him; she fooled him, thought Clarissa; shaping the woman, the wife of the Major in the Indian Army, with three strokes of a knife. What a waste! What a folly! All his life long Peter had been fooled like that; first getting sent down from Oxford; next marrying the girl on the boat going out to India; now the wife of a Major in the Indian Army--thank Heaven she had refused to marry him! Still, he was in love; her old friend, her dear Peter, he was in love.
"But what are you going to do?" she asked him. Oh the lawyers and solicitors, Messrs. Hooper and Grateley of Lincoln's Inn, they were going to do it, he said. And he actually pared his nails with his pocket-knife.
For Heaven's sake, leave your knife alone! she cried to herself in irrepressible irritation; it was his silly unconventionality, his weakness; his lack of the ghost of a notion what any one else was feeling that annoyed her, had always annoyed her; and now at his age, how silly!
I know all that, Peter thought; I know what I'm up against, he thought, running his finger along the blade of his knife, Clarissa and Dalloway and all the rest of them; but I'll show Clarissa--and then to his utter surprise, suddenly thrown by those uncontrollable forces thrown through the air, he burst into tears; wept; wept without the least shame, sitting on the sofa, the tears running down his cheeks.
And Clarissa had leant forward, taken his hand, drawn him to her, kissed him,--actually had felt his face on hers before she could down the brandishing of silver flashing--plumes like pampas grass in a tropic gale in her breast, which, subsiding, left her holding his hand, patting his knee and, feeling as she sat back extraordinarily at her ease with him and light-hearted, all in a clap it came over her, If I had married him, this gaiety would have been mine all day!
It was all over for her. The sheet was stretched and the bed narrow. She had gone up into the tower alone and left them blackberrying in the sun. The door had shut, and there among the dust of fallen plaster and the litter of birds' nests how distant the view had looked, and the sounds came thin and chill (once on Leith Hill, she remembered), and Richard, Richard! she cried, as a sleeper in the night starts and stretches a hand in the dark for help. Lunching with Lady Bruton, it came back to her. He has left me; I am alone for ever, she thought, folding her hands upon her knee.
Peter Walsh had got up and crossed to the window and stood with his back to her, flicking a bandanna handkerchief from side to side. Masterly and dry and desolate he looked, his thin shoulder-blades lifting his coat slightly; blowing his nose violently. Take me with you, Clarissa thought impulsively, as if he were starting directly upon some great voyage; and then, next moment, it was as if the five acts of a play that had been very exciting and moving were now over and she had lived a lifetime in them and had run away, had lived with Peter, and it was now over.
Now it was time to move, and, as a woman gathers her things together, her cloak, her gloves, her opera-glasses, and gets up to go out of the theatre into the street, she rose from the sofa and went to Peter.
And it was awfully strange, he thought, how she still had the power, as she came tinkling, rustling, still had the power as she came across the room, to make the moon, which he detested, rise at Bourton on the terrace in the summer sky.
"Tell me," he said, seizing her by the shoulders. "Are you happy, Clarissa? Does Richard--"
The door opened.
"Here is my Elizabeth," said Clarissa, emotionally, histrionically, perhaps.
"How d'y do?" said Elizabeth coming forward.
The sound of Big Ben striking the half-hour struck out between them with extraordinary vigour, as if a young man, strong, indifferent, inconsiderate, were swinging dumb-bells this way and that.
"Hullo, Elizabeth!" cried Peter, stuffing his handkerchief into his pocket, going quickly to her, saying "Good-bye, Clarissa" without looking at her, leaving the room quickly, and running downstairs and opening the hall door.
"Peter! Peter!" cried Clarissa, following him out on to the landing. "My party to-night! Remember my party to-night!" she cried, having to raise her voice against the roar of the open air, and, overwhelmed by the traffic and the sound of all the clocks striking, her voice crying "Remember my party to-night!" sounded frail and thin and very far away as Peter Walsh shut the door.