1. Translations
  2. English to Spanish
  3. Mrs Dalloway (Part VII), by Virginia Woolf (1882-1941).
en-es
Mrs Dalloway (Part VII), by Virginia Woolf (1882-1941).
Difficulty: Medium    Uploaded: 7 months ago by soybeba     Last Activity: 3 hours ago
22% Upvoted
1% Translated but not Upvoted
692 Units
23% Translated
22% Upvoted
•Parte VII.
•"¿Irás a la fiesta esta noche?" •–preguntó la señorita Kilman. •Elizabeth pensaba que acudiría, su madre quería que fuera. •"No deberías dejar que las fiestas te absorban" dijo la señorita Kilman mientras tomaba los dos últimos pedazos del éclair.
•"No me gustan mucho las fiestas", dijo Elizabeth. •La Srta Kilman abrió la boca, saliendo ligeramente su mentón, se tragó los últimos centímetros del éclair de chocolate, se limpió los dedos y bebió el té que quedaba en la taza.
•Sentía que estaba a punto de partirse en dos. •La agonía era terrible. •Si pudiera abrazarla, si pudiera estrecharla, si pudiera hacerla suya, para siempre y luego morir, eso era todo lo que quería. •Pero estar sentada aquí, incapaz de pensar en nada que decir; ver cómo Elizabeth se volvía contra ella; sentirse repulsiva incluso para ella... era demasiado; no lo podía soportar. •Los gruesos dedos se curvaron hacia adentro.
•"Nunca voy a fiestas", dijo la señorita Kilman, simplemente para evitar que Elizabeth fuera. •"La gente no me invita a fiestas" —y supo, al decirlo, que era ese egoísmo lo que la estaba llevando a la perdición; el señor Whittaker se lo había advertido; pero no podía evitarlo. •Había sufrido tan horriblemente. •"¿Por qué me deberían preguntar?" •dijo. •"Soy simple, soy infeliz". •Sabía que era estúpido. •Pero era toda aquella gente que pasaba, gente con tierras despreciándola, la que le hizo decir aquello. •Sin embargo, ella era Doris Kilman. •Tenía su carrera. •Era una mujer que había hecho su camino en el mundo. •Sus conocimientos acerca de la Historia Moderna eran mucho más que respetables.
•"No me compadezco de mí misma", dijo. •"Me compadezco..." quiso decir "de tu madre", pero no, no pudo, no a Elizabeth. •"Me dan lástima otras personas", dijo, "más lástima".
•Como una criatura tonta que ha sido llevada hasta la puerta de una verja con un propósito desconocido, y se queda quieta ahí ansiando escapar, Elizabeth Dalloway se quedó callada en su asiento. •¿Iba la señorita Kilman a decir algo más?
•"No te olvides mucho de mí", dijo Doris Kilman; su voz temblaba. •Directa hacia el final de la pradera, la tonta criatura galopó aterrada.
•La gran mano se abría y cerraba.
•Elizabeth giró la cabeza. •Llegó la camarera. •Uno tenía que pagar en el mostrador, dijo Elizabeth, y se fue, arrancándole las entrañas del cuerpo, como la señorita Kilman lo sintió, estirándolas a medida que cruzaba la habitación, y luego, con un giro final, inclinando la cabeza muy cortésmente, se fue.
•Se había ido. •La señorita Kilman permaneció sentada en la mesa entre los éclair, golpeada una, dos, tres veces por impactos de sufrimiento. •Se había ido. •La Sra. Dalloway había triunfado. •Elizabeth se había ido. •La belleza, la juventud... se habían ido.
•Así que se sentó. •Se levantó, se tambaleó entre las mesitas, balanceándose ligeramente de un lado a otro, y alguien la siguió con su enagua, y ella se perdió, y quedó rodeada por baúles especialmente preparados para llevar a la India; luego se metió entre los artículos de parto y la ropa de bebé; a través de todos los productos del mundo, perecederos y permanentes, jamones, medicamentos, flores, papeles de escribir con olores variados, ahora dulces, ahora agrios, se tambaleó; se vio a sí misma de cuerpo entero en un espejo, dando tumbos con el sombrero torcido, con la cara muy roja; y por fin salió a la calle.
•La torre de la catedral de Westminster, la morada de Dios, se alzaba ante ella. •En medio del tráfico, estaba la morada de Dios. •Obstinadamente se puso en camino con su paquete a ese otro santuario, la abadía, donde, levantando las manos en forma de tienda ante su rostro, se sentó junto a los que también eran arrojados al refugio; los diversos adoradores, ahora despojados de rango social, casi de sexo, mientras levantaban las manos ante los rostros; pero una vez que las quitaban, instantáneamente reverentes, hombres y mujeres ingleses de clase media, algunos de ellos deseosos de ver las obras de cera.
•Pero la señorita Kilman sostuvo su tienda delante de la cara. •Ahora se encontraba abandonada; ahora se había reunido de nuevo. •Desde la calle entraban nuevos fieles para sustituir a los paseantes, y aún así, mientras la gente miraba a su alrededor y pasaba junto a la tumba del Soldado Desconocido, ella seguía tapándose los ojos con los dedos e intentando, en esa doble oscuridad, pues la luz de la abadía era inmaterial, aspirar por encima de las vanidades, los deseos, las comodidades, para liberarse tanto del odio como del amor. •Sus manos se agitaron. •Pareció que le costaba mucho esfuerzo. •Pero para otros, Dios parecía accesible y el camino hacia Él era fácil. •El Sr. Fletcher, jubilado, del Tesoro, la Sra. Gorham, viuda del famoso K.C., se le acercaron simplemente, y habiendo hecho su oración, sentados, disfrutaban de la música, y vieron a la señorita Kilman al final de la fila, rezando, rezando, y, estando todavía en el umbral de su mundo subterráneo, pensaron en ella con simpatía como un alma que frecuentaba el mismo territorio; un alma cortada de la sustancia inmaterial; no una mujer, un alma.
•Pero el Sr. Fletcher tuvo que irse. •Tuvo que pasar cerca de ella, y siendo él mismo limpio como una patena, no pudo evitar estar un poco afligido por el desorden de la pobre dama; su peinado deshecho; su paquete en el suelo. •Ella no lo dejó pasar inmediatamente. •Pero, mientras el Sr. Fletcher permanecía allí de pie contemplando los mármoles blancos, los cristales grises de las ventanas y los tesoros acumulados (pues estaba muy orgulloso de la abadía) a su alrededor, le impresionaron la grandeza, robustez y poder de ella, que estaba sentada allí moviendo las rodillas de vez en cuando (tan difícil era el acercamiento a su Dios, tan duros sus deseos), tal como habían impresionado a la Sra. Dalloway (aquella tarde la Srta. Kilman no podía quitarse de la cabeza el pensamiento), •al reverendo Edward Whittaker, y a Elizabeth también.
•Y Elizabeth esperó en Victoria Street a que pasara un autobús. •Era tan agradable estar al aire libre. •Pensó que tal vez no necesitaba volver a casa todavía. •Era tan agradable estar al aire libre. •Entonces, iría con un ómnibus. •Y ya, mientras ella estaba de pie allí,en su ropa bien cortada, estaba empezando. •. •. •. •La gente empezaba a compararla con álamos, amaneceres, jacintos, cervatillos, agua corriente y lirios de jardín; y eso hacía que su vida la agobiara, porque ella prefería que la dejaran sola para hacer lo que le gustaba en el campo, pero la comparaban con lirios y tenía que ir a fiestas, y Londres era tan aburrido en comparación con estar sola en el campo con su padre y los perros.
•Los autobuses se acercaban, se detenían y se alejaban: caravanas llamativas, relucientes con barniz rojo y amarillo. •¿Pero en cuál debía subir? •No tenía preferencias. •Por supuesto, ella no se impondría. •Ella tendía a ser pasiva. •Necesitaba expresión, pero sus ojos eran bonitos, chinescos, orientales y como lo decía su madre, con esos hermosos hombros, y manteniéndose tan erguida, siempre era encantadora a la vista; y últimamente, sobre todo por las tardes, cuando le interesaba,porque nunca parecía emocionada, se veía casi hermosa, muy majestuosa, muy serena. •¿En qué estaría pensando? •Todos los hombres se enamoraban de ella, y ella estaba terriblemente aburrida. •Porque estaba empezando. •Su madre podía verlo: los cumplidos estaban empezando. •Que no le importara más, por ejemplo, la ropa... a veces preocupaba a Clarissa, pero tal vez era mejor así, con todos esos cachorros y conejillos de Indias con moquillo, y eso le daba un encanto especial. •Y ahora había esta extraña amistad con la señorita Kilman. •Bueno, pensó Clarissa alrededor de las tres de la mañana, leyendo al Baron Marbot porque no podía dormir, demuestra que tiene un corazón.
•De repente Elizabeth dio un paso y subió con habilidad al ómnibus , delante de todo el mundo. •Ella se sentó arriba. •La impetuosa criatura... un pirata... se adelantó y saltó; ella tuvo que agarrarse a la barandilla para mantener el equilibrio, pues era un pirata, temerario, sin escrúpulos, que avanzaba sin piedad, sorteando peligrosamente, arrebatando con audacia a un pasajero o ignorando a otro, colándose con arrogancia como una anguila entre ellos y luego precipitándose con insolencia con todas las velas desplegadas hacia Whitehall. •¿Y pensó Elizabeth en la pobre Srta. Kilman, que la amaba sin celos, para quien había sido un cervatillo al aire libre, una luna en un claro? •Estaba encantada de ser libre. •El aire fresco era tan delicioso. •Había estado tan sofocante en las tiendas del Ejército y la Marina. •Y ahora era como montar a caballo, correr por Whitehall; y a cada movimiento del ómnibus, el hermoso cuerpo con el abrigo color beige respondía libremente como un jinete, como el mascarón de proa de un barco, pues la brisa la despeinaba ligeramente; el calor daba a sus mejillas la palidez de la madera pintada de blanco; y sus hermosos ojos, al no tener ojos con los que encontrarse, miraban al frente, vacíos, brillantes, con la increíble inocencia de la mirada una escultura.
•Hablar de sus propios sufrimientos siempre le era difícil a la Srta. Kilman. •¿Y tenía razón? •Si se trataba de estar en comités y dar horas y horas todos los días (ella casi nunca lo vio en Londres) que ayudaban a los pobres, su padre lo hacía, Dios sabe, si eso era lo que quería decir la señorita Kilman sobre ser un cristiano; pero era tan difícil decirlo. •Oh, le gustaría ir un poco más lejos. •¿Otro penique costaba ir al Strand? •Aquí estaba otro penique entonces. •Iba a ir a Strand.
•Le gustaba la gente enferma. “Y todas las profesiones están abiertas a las mujeres de tu generación”, decía la Srta. Kilman. •Así que podría ser doctora. •Podría ser granjera. •Los animales se enferman a menudo. Podría tener mil acres y gente a su cargo. •Ella iría a verlos en sus casas. •Esto era Somerset House. •Uno podria ser un buen campesino, y eso se debería casi completamente a Somerset House, aunque curiosamente la Srta. Kilman tendría su parte en eso. •Parecía tan espléndido, tan serio, aquel gran edificio gris. •Y a ella le gustaba sentir la gente trabajando. •Le gustaban esas iglesias, como formas de papel gris, que remaban contra el flujo del Strand. •Era bastante diferente de Westminster aquí, pensó, bajando en Chancery Lane. •Era tan serio; estaba tan concurrido. •En resumen, le gustaría tener una profesión. •Se convertiría en médica, agricultora, posiblemente entraría al Parlamento, si lo considerara necesario, todo gracias al Strand.
•Los pies de aquellas personas ocupadas en sus actividades, las manos colocando piedra tras piedra, las mentes eternamente ocupadas no con charlas triviales (comparando a las mujeres con álamos, lo que era bastante emocionante, por supuesto, pero muy tonto), sino con pensamientos sobre barcos, negocios, leyes, administración, y con todo eso tan majestuoso (ella estaba en el Temple), alegre (estaba el río), piadoso (estaba la Iglesia), la hicieron decidir, dijera lo que dijera su madre, convertirse en granjera o médica. •Pero, por supuesto, era bastante perezosa.
•Y era mucho mejor no decir nada al respecto. •Parecía tan tonto. •Era el tipo de cosas que sucedían a veces, cuando uno estaba solo: edificios sin nombres de arquitectos, multitudes de personas que regresaban de la ciudad con más poder que los clérigos solteros de Kensington, que cualquiera de los libros que la Srta. Kilman le había prestado, para estimular lo que yacía dormido, torpe y tímido en el suelo arenoso de la mente para salir a la superficie, como un niño que de repente estira los brazos; era solo eso, tal vez, un suspiro, un estiramiento de los brazos, un impulso, una revelación, que tiene efectos para siempre, y luego volvió a hundirse en el suelo arenoso. •Tenía que ir a casa. •Debía ponerse elegante para cenar. •Pero ¿cuál era la hora? -- ¿dónde había un reloj?
•Miró hacia Fleet St. •Caminó un poco hacia St. Paul's, tímidamente, como alguien que se adentra de puntillas, explorando por la noche con una vela una casa desconocida, nerviosa por si el propietario abriera de repente la puerta de su dormitorio y le preguntara qué hacía allí, sin atrever a internarse en callejones extraños, calles secundarias tentadoras, como tampoco se atrevía a abrir puertas en una casa desconocida que pudieran ser puertas de dormitorios, de salones o que condujeran directamente a la despensa. •Porque ningún Dalloway bajaba a diario por el Strand; ella era una pionera, una vagabunda, aventurándose, confiando.
•En muchos sentidos, su madre pensaba que ella era extremadamente inmadura, como una niña pequeña, apegada a las muñecas, a las zapatillas viejas; una niña perfecta; y eso era encantador. •Pero luego, claro, en la familia Dalloway existía la tradición del servicio público. •Abadesas, directoras, directoras de colegio, dignatarias, en la república de las mujeres... sin ser brillantes, ninguna de ellas, eran eso. •Ella se adentró un poco más en dirección a St. Paul's. •Le gustaba la cordialidad, la hermandad, la maternidad y la fraternidad de este alboroto. •Le pareció bien. •El ruido era ensordecedor; y de repente se oyeron trompetas (los desempleados) sonando a todo volumen, entre el alboroto; música militar; como si la gente estuviera marchando; sin embargo, si hubieran estado muriendo, si alguna mujer hubiera exhalado su último aliento y quienquiera que estuviera observando, al abrir la ventana de la habitación donde ella acababa de llevar a cabo ese acto de suprema dignidad, hubiera mirado hacia Fleet Street, ese alboroto, esa música militar le habría llegado triunfante, consoladora, indiferente.
•No era consciente. •No había en ello ningún reconocimiento de una suerte o destino, y por esa misma razón, incluso para aquellos aturdidos por observar los últimos estremecimientos de conciencia en los rostros de los moribundos, era reconfortante. •El olvido de las personas podía herir, su ingratitud corroer, pero esta voz, que año trasaño fluía sin cesar, lo aceptaría todo; esta promesa, esta furgoneta, esta vida, esta procesión, los envolvería a todos y los llevaría adelante, como en la corriente turbulenta de un glaciar el hielo retiene una astilla de hueso, un pétalo azul, algunos robles, y los hace rodar.
•Pero era más tarde de lo que ella pensaba. •A su madre no le gustaría que anduviera sola por ahí así. •Volvió a lo largo del Strand.
•Una corriente de aire (a pesar del calor, soplaba bastante viento) cubrió el sol y el Strand con un fino velo negro. •Las caras se desvanecieron; los autobuses perdieron repentinamente su brillo. •Porque aunque las nubes eran de un blanco montañoso, por lo que uno podría imaginar cortar virutas duras con un hacha, con amplias laderas doradas y céspedes de celestiales jardines de placer, en sus flancos, y tenían toda la apariencia de viviendas asentadas reunidas para la conferencia de dioses sobre el mundo, había un movimiento perpetuo entre ellas. •Unos signos se intercambiaban, cuando, como para cumplir algún esquema ya planificado, ahora una cumbre disminuía, ahora un bloque entero de tamaño piramidal que había mantenido inalterablemente su puesto avanzaba hacia el medio o solemnemente llevaba la procesión a un nuevo anclaje. •Aunque las nubes parecían fijas en sus puestos, en perfecto reposo y unanimidad, nada podía ser más fresco, más libre, más superficialmente sensible que la superficie blanca como la nieve o dorada; cambiar, irse, desmantelar la solemne formación era posible de inmediato; y a pesar de la grave estabilidad, la robustez y solidez acumuladas, a veces iluminaban la tierra, otras la sumían en la oscuridad.
•Con calma y destreza, Elizabeth Dalloway subió al autobús de Westminster.
•Yendo y viniendo, señalando, indicando, de modo que la luz y la sombra que ahora tornaban gris la pared, ahora amarillo brillante los plátanos, ahora tornaban gris el Strand, ahora tornaban amarillo brillante los autobuses, Septimus Warren Smith, tumbado en el sofá del salón, con la asombrosa sensibilidad de algunos seres vivos, estaba mirando cómo se atenuaba y desaparecía el resplandor dorado sobre las rosas y sobre el papel pintado. •Allá afuera, los árboles arrastraban sus hojas como redes por las profundidades del aire; el sonido del agua estaba en la habitación y, a través de las olas, llegaban las voces de los pájaros cantando. •Todos los poderes derramaron sus tesoros sobre su cabeza, y su mano estaba allí, sobre el respaldo del sofá, tal y como la había visto yacer mientras se bañaba, flotando sobre las olas, mientras a lo lejos, en la orilla, oía ladrar a los perros, ladrar a lo lejos. •No temas más, dice el corazón en el cuerpo; no temas más.
•No temía. •En cada momento la naturaleza revelaba con algún indicio divertido como ese punto de oro que se movía por la pared, allí, allí y allí, su determinación de mostrar, agitando sus plumas, sacudiendo sus trenzas, lanzando su manto de esta manera y esa otra, hermosamente, siempre hermosamente, y muy cerca para soplar palabras de Shakespeare a través de las manos huecas.
•Rezia, sentada a la mesa retorciendo un sombrero en las manos, lo observó; lo vio sonriendo. •Él estaba feliz entonces. •Pero no podía soportar verlo sonreír. •No era el matrimonio; no era propio de un marido comportarse de forma tan extraña, estando siempre inquieto, riendo, sentado hora tras hora en silencio, o agarrándola y diciéndole que escribiera. •El cajón de la mesa estaba lleno de esos escritos; sobre la guerra; sobre Shakespeare; sobre grandes descubrimientos; sobre cómo no existe la muerte. •Últimamente él se había emocionado de repente sin motivo alguno (y tanto el Dr. Holmes como sir William Bradshaw decían que la emoción era lo peor para él), y agitaba las manos y gritaba que sabía la verdad. •¡Lo sabía todo! •Ese hombre, su amigo, que había sido asesinado, Evans, había venido, dijo. •Estaba cantando detrás de la pantalla. •Ella lo escribió tal y como él lo dijo. •Algunas cosas eran bonitas; otras, totales tonterias. •Y se paraba siempre en la mitad, cambiado de mente; quería añadir algo; escuchar algo nuevo; escuchaba con la mano levantada.
•Pero ella no escuchó nada.
•Una vez encontraron a la chocaa que limpiaba la sala leyendo un de esos papeles en ataques de risa. •Fue una terrible lástima. •Por eso hizo que Septimus gritara sobre la crueldad humana , cómo se destrozaban unos a otros. •Los caídos, dijo, los despedazan. •"Holmes is on us," he would say, and he would invent stories about Holmes; Holmes eating porridge; Holmes reading Shakespeare--making himself roar with laughter or rage, for Dr. Holmes seemed to stand for something horrible to him. •"Human nature," he called him. •Then there were the visions. •He was drowned, he used to say, and lying on a cliff with the gulls screaming over him. •He would look over the edge of the sofa down into the sea. •Or he was hearing music. •Really it was only a barrel organ or some man crying in the street. •But "Lovely!" •he used to cry, and the tears would run down his cheeks, which was to her the most dreadful thing of all, to see a man like Septimus, who had fought, who was brave, crying. •And he would lie listening until suddenly he would cry that he was falling down, down into the flames! •Actually she would look for flames, it was so vivid. •But there was nothing. •They were alone in the room. •It was a dream, she would tell him and so quiet him at last, but sometimes she was frightened too. •She sighed as she sat sewing.
•Her sigh was tender and enchanting, like the wind outside a wood in the evening. •Now she put down her scissors; now she turned to take something from the table. •A little stir, a little crinkling, a little tapping built up something on the table there, where she sat sewing. •Through his eyelashes he could see her blurred outline; her little black body; her face and hands; her turning movements at the table, as she took up a reel, or looked (she was apt to lose things) for her silk. •She was making a hat for Mrs. Filmer's married daughter, whose name was--he had forgotten her name.
•"What is the name of Mrs. Filmer's married daughter?" •he asked.
•"Mrs. Peters," said Rezia. •She was afraid it was too small, she said, holding it before her. •Mrs. Peters was a big woman; but she did not like her. •It was only because Mrs. Filmer had been so good to them. •"She gave me grapes this morning," she said--that Rezia wanted to do something to show that they were grateful. •She had come into the room the other evening and found Mrs. Peters, who thought they were out, playing the gramophone.
•"Was it true?" •he asked. •She was playing the gramophone? •Yes; she had told him about it at the time; she had found Mrs. Peters playing the gramophone.
•He began, very cautiously, to open his eyes, to see whether a gramophone was really there. •But real things--real things were too exciting. •He must be cautious. •He would not go mad. •First he looked at the fashion papers on the lower shelf, then, gradually at the gramophone with the green trumpet. •Nothing could be more exact. •And so, gathering courage, he looked at the sideboard; the plate of bananas; the engraving of Queen Victoria and the Prince Consort; at the mantelpiece, with the jar of roses. •None of these things moved. •All were still; all were real.
•"She is a woman with a spiteful tongue," said Rezia.
•"What does Mr. Peters do?" •Septimus asked.
•"Ah," said Rezia, trying to remember. •She thought Mrs. Filmer had said that he travelled for some company. •"Just now he is in Hull," she said.
•"Just now!" •She said that with her Italian accent. •She said that herself. •He shaded his eyes so that he might see only a little of her face at a time, first the chin, then the nose, then the forehead, in case it were deformed, or had some terrible mark on it. •But no, there she was, perfectly natural, sewing, with the pursed lips that women have, the set, the melancholy expression, when sewing. •But there was nothing terrible about it, he assured himself, looking a second time, a third time at her face, her hands, for what was frightening or disgusting in her as she sat there in broad daylight, sewing? •Mrs. Peters had a spiteful tongue. •Mr. Peters was in Hull. •Why then rage and prophesy? •Why fly scourged and outcast? •Why be made to tremble and sob by the clouds? •Why seek truths and deliver messages when Rezia sat sticking pins into the front of her dress, and Mr. Peters was in Hull? •Miracles, revelations, agonies, loneliness, falling through the sea, down, down into the flames, all were burnt out, for he had a sense, as he watched Rezia trimming the straw hat for Mrs. Peters, of a coverlet of flowers.
•"It's too small for Mrs. Peters," said Septimus.
•For the first time for days he was speaking as he used to do! •Of course it was--absurdly small, she said. •But Mrs. Peters had chosen it.
•He took it out of her hands. •He said it was an organ grinder's monkey's hat.
•How it rejoiced her that! •Not for weeks had they laughed like this together, poking fun privately like married people. •What she meant was that if Mrs. Filmer had come in, or Mrs. Peters or anybody they would not have understood what she and Septimus were laughing at.
•"There," she said, pinning a rose to one side of the hat. •Never had she felt so happy! •Never in her life!
•But that was still more ridiculous, Septimus said. •Now the poor woman looked like a pig at a fair. •(Nobody ever made her laugh as Septimus did.)
•What had she got in her work-box? •She had ribbons and beads, tassels, artificial flowers. •She tumbled them out on the table. •He began putting odd colours together--for though he had no fingers, could not even do up a parcel, he had a wonderful eye, and often he was right, sometimes absurd, of course, but sometimes wonderfully right.
•"She shall have a beautiful hat!" •he murmured, taking up this and that, Rezia kneeling by his side, looking over his shoulder. •Now it was finished--that is to say the design; she must stitch it together. •But she must be very, very careful, he said, to keep it just as he had made it.
•So she sewed. •When she sewed, he thought, she made a sound like a kettle on the hob; bubbling, murmuring, always busy, her strong little pointed fingers pinching and poking; her needle flashing straight. •The sun might go in and out, on the tassels, on the wall-paper, but he would wait, he thought, stretching out his feet, looking at his ringed sock at the end of the sofa; he would wait in this warm place, this pocket of still air, which one comes on at the edge of a wood sometimes in the evening, when, because of a fall in the ground, or some arrangement of the trees (one must be scientific above all, scientific), warmth lingers, and the air buffets the cheek like the wing of a bird.
•"There it is," said Rezia, twirling Mrs. Peters' hat on the tips of her fingers. •"That'll do for the moment. •Later . •. •." •her sentence bubbled away drip, drip, drip, like a contented tap left running.
•It was wonderful. •Never had he done anything which made him feel so proud. •It was so real, it was so substantial, Mrs. Peters' hat.
•"Just look at it," he said.
•Yes, it would always make her happy to see that hat. •He had become himself then, he had laughed then. •They had been alone together. •Always she would like that hat.
•He told her to try it on.
•"But I must look so queer!" •she cried, running over to the glass and looking first this side then that. •Then she snatched it off again, for there was a tap at the door. •Could it be Sir William Bradshaw? •Had he sent already?
•No! •it was only the small girl with the evening paper.
•What always happened, then happened--what happened every night of their lives. •The small girl sucked her thumb at the door; Rezia went down on her knees; Rezia cooed and kissed; Rezia got a bag of sweets out of the table drawer. •For so it always happened. •First one thing, then another. •So she built it up, first one thing and then another. •Dancing, skipping, round and round the room they went. •He took the paper. •Surrey was all out, he read. •There was a heat wave. •Rezia repeated: Surrey was all out. •There was a heat wave, making it part of the game she was playing with Mrs. Filmer's grandchild, both of them laughing, chattering at the same time, at their game. •He was very tired. •He was very happy. •He would sleep. •He shut his eyes. •But directly he saw nothing the sounds of the game became fainter and stranger and sounded like the cries of people seeking and not finding, and passing further and further away. •They had lost him!
•He started up in terror. •What did he see? •The plate of bananas on the sideboard. •Nobody was there (Rezia had taken the child to its mother. •It was bedtime). •That was it: to be alone forever. •That was the doom pronounced in Milan when he came into the room and saw them cutting out buckram shapes with their scissors; to be alone forever.
•He was alone with the sideboard and the bananas. •He was alone, exposed on this bleak eminence, stretched out--but not on a hill-top; not on a crag; on Mrs. Filmer's sitting-room sofa. •As for the visions, the faces, the voices of the dead, where were they? •There was a screen in front of him, with black bulrushes and blue swallows. •Where he had once seen mountains, where he had seen faces, where he had seen beauty, there was a screen.
•"Evans!" •he cried. •There was no answer. •A mouse had squeaked, or a curtain rustled. •Those were the voices of the dead. •The screen, the coalscuttle, the sideboard remained to him. •Let him then face the screen, the coal-scuttle and the sideboard . •. •. •but Rezia burst into the room chattering.
•Some letter had come. •Everybody's plans were changed. •Mrs. Filmer would not be able to go to Brighton after all. •There was no time to let Mrs. Williams know, and really Rezia thought it very, very annoying, when she caught sight of the hat and thought . •. •. •perhaps . •. •. •she . •. •. •might just make a little. •. •. •. •Her voice died out in contented melody.
•"Ah, damn!" •she cried (it was a joke of theirs, her swearing), the needle had broken. •Hat, child, Brighton, needle. •She built it up; first one thing, then another, she built it up, sewing.
•She wanted him to say whether by moving the rose she had improved the hat. •She sat on the end of the sofa.
•They were perfectly happy now, she said, suddenly, putting the hat down. •For she could say anything to him now. •She could say whatever came into her head. •That was almost the first thing she had felt about him, that night in the café when he had come in with his English friends. •He had come in, rather shyly, looking round him, and his hat had fallen when he hung it up. •That she could remember. •She knew he was English, though not one of the large Englishmen her sister admired, for he was always thin; but he had a beautiful fresh colour; and with his big nose, his bright eyes, his way of sitting a little hunched made her think, she had often told him, of a young hawk, that first evening she saw him, when they were playing dominoes, and he had come in--of a young hawk; but with her he was always very gentle. •She had never seen him wild or drunk, only suffering sometimes through this terrible war, but even so, when she came in, he would put it all away. •Anything, anything in the whole world, any little bother with her work, anything that struck her to say she would tell him, and he understood at once. •Her own family even were not the same. •Being older than she was and being so clever--how serious he was, wanting her to read Shakespeare before she could even read a child's story in English!--being so much more experienced, he could help her. •And she too could help him.
•But this hat now. •And then (it was getting late) Sir William Bradshaw.
•She held her hands to her head, waiting for him to say did he like the hat or not, and as she sat there, waiting, looking down, he could feel her mind, like a bird, falling from branch to branch, and always alighting, quite rightly; he could follow her mind, as she sat there in one of those loose lax poses that came to her naturally and, if he should say anything, at once she smiled, like a bird alighting with all its claws firm upon the bough.
•But he remembered Bradshaw said, "The people we are most fond of are not good for us when we are ill." Bradshaw said, he must be taught to rest. •Bradshaw said they must be separated.
•"Must," "must," why "must"? •What power had Bradshaw over him? •"What right has Bradshaw to say 'must' to me?" •he demanded.
•"It is because you talked of killing yourself," said Rezia. •(Mercifully, she could now say anything to Septimus.)
•So he was in their power! •Holmes and Bradshaw were on him! •The brute with the red nostrils was snuffing into every secret place! •"Must" it could say! •Where were his papers? •the things he had written?
•She brought him his papers, the things he had written, things she had written for him. •She tumbled them out on to the sofa. •They looked at them together. •Diagrams, designs, little men and women brandishing sticks for arms, with wings--were they?--on their backs; circles traced round shillings and sixpences--the suns and stars; zigzagging precipices with mountaineers ascending roped together, exactly like knives and forks; sea pieces with little faces laughing out of what might perhaps be waves: the map of the world. •Burn them! •he cried. •Now for his writings; how the dead sing behind rhododendron bushes; odes to Time; conversations with Shakespeare; Evans, Evans, Evans--his messages from the dead; do not cut down trees; tell the Prime Minister. •Universal love: the meaning of the world. •Burn them! •he cried.
•But Rezia laid her hands on them. •Some were very beautiful, she thought. •She would tie them up (for she had no envelope) with a piece of silk.
•Even if they took him, she said, she would go with him. •They could not separate them against their wills, she said.
•Shuffling the edges straight, she did up the papers, and tied the parcel almost without looking, sitting beside him, he thought, as if all her petals were about her. •She was a flowering tree; and through her branches looked out the face of a lawgiver, who had reached a sanctuary where she feared no one; not Holmes; not Bradshaw; a miracle, a triumph, the last and greatest. •Staggering he saw her mount the appalling staircase, laden with Holmes and Bradshaw, men who never weighed less than eleven stone six, who sent their wives to Court, men who made ten thousand a year and talked of proportion; who different in their verdicts (for Holmes said one thing, Bradshaw another), yet judges they were; who mixed the vision and the sideboard; saw nothing clear, yet ruled, yet inflicted. •"Must" they said. •Over them she triumphed.
•"There!" •she said. •The papers were tied up. •No one should get at them. •She would put them away.
•And, she said, nothing should separate them. •She sat down beside him and called him by the name of that hawk or crow which being malicious and a great destroyer of crops was precisely like him. •No one could separate them, she said.
•Then she got up to go into the bedroom to pack their things, but hearing voices downstairs and thinking that Dr. Holmes had perhaps called, ran down to prevent him coming up.
•Septimus could hear her talking to Holmes on the staircase.
•"My dear lady, I have come as a friend," Holmes was saying.
•"No. •I will not allow you to see my husband," she said.
•He could see her, like a little hen, with her wings spread barring his passage. •But Holmes persevered.
•"My dear lady, allow me . •. •." •Holmes said, putting her aside (Holmes was a powerfully built man).
•Holmes was coming upstairs. •Holmes would burst open the door. •Holmes would say "In a funk, eh?" •Holmes would get him. •But no; not Holmes; not Bradshaw. •Getting up rather unsteadily, hopping indeed from foot to foot, he considered Mrs. Filmer's nice clean bread knife with "Bread" carved on the handle. •Ah, but one mustn't spoil that. •The gas fire? •But it was too late now. •Holmes was coming. •Razors he might have got, but Rezia, who always did that sort of thing, had packed them. •There remained only the window, the large Bloomsbury-lodging house window, the tiresome, the troublesome, and rather melodramatic business of opening the window and throwing himself out. •It was their idea of tragedy, not his or Rezia's (for she was with him). •Holmes and Bradshaw like that sort of thing. •(He sat on the sill.) •But he would wait till the very last moment. •He did not want to die. •Life was good. •The sun hot. •Only human beings--what did they want? •Coming down the staircase opposite an old man stopped and stared at him. •Holmes was at the door. •"I'll give it you!" •he cried, and flung himself vigorously, violently down on to Mrs. Filmer's area railings.
•"The coward!" •cried Dr. Holmes, bursting the door open. •Rezia ran to the window, she saw; she understood. •Dr. Holmes and Mrs. Filmer collided with each other. •Mrs. Filmer flapped her apron and made her hide her eyes in the bedroom. •There was a great deal of running up and down stairs. •Dr. Holmes came in--white as a sheet, shaking all over, with a glass in his hand. •She must be brave and drink something, he said (What was it? •Something sweet), for her husband was horribly mangled, would not recover consciousness, she must not see him, must be spared as much as possible, would have the inquest to go through, poor young woman. •Who could have foretold it? •A sudden impulse, no one was in the least to blame (he told Mrs. Filmer). •And why the devil he did it, Dr. Holmes could not conceive.
•It seemed to her as she drank the sweet stuff that she was opening long windows, stepping out into some garden. •But where? •The clock was striking--one, two, three: how sensible the sound was; compared with all this thumping and whispering; like Septimus himself. •She was falling asleep. •But the clock went on striking, four, five, six and Mrs. Filmer waving her apron (they wouldn't bring the body in here, would they?) •seemed part of that garden; or a flag. •She had once seen a flag slowly rippling out from a mast when she stayed with her aunt at Venice. •Men killed in battle were thus saluted, and Septimus had been through the War. •Of her memories, most were happy.
•She put on her hat, and ran through cornfields--where could it have been?--on to some hill, somewhere near the sea, for there were ships, gulls, butterflies; they sat on a cliff. •In London too, there they sat, and, half dreaming, came to her through the bedroom door, rain falling, whisperings, stirrings among dry corn, the caress of the sea, as it seemed to her, hollowing them in its arched shell and murmuring to her laid on shore, strewn she felt, like flying flowers over some tomb.
•"He is dead," she said, smiling at the poor old woman who guarded her with her honest light-blue eyes fixed on the door. •(They wouldn't bring him in here, would they?) •But Mrs. Filmer pooh-poohed. •Oh no, oh no! •They were carrying him away now. •Ought she not to be told? •Married people ought to be together, Mrs. Filmer thought. •But they must do as the doctor said.
•"Let her sleep," said Dr. Holmes, feeling her pulse. •She saw the large outline of his body standing dark against the window. •So that was Dr. Holmes.
•One of the triumphs of civilisation, Peter Walsh thought. •It is one of the triumphs of civilisation, as the light high bell of the ambulance sounded. •Swiftly, cleanly the ambulance sped to the hospital, having picked up instantly, humanely, some poor devil; some one hit on the head, struck down by disease, knocked over perhaps a minute or so ago at one of these crossings, as might happen to oneself. •That was civilisation. •It struck him coming back from the East--the efficiency, the organisation, the communal spirit of London. •Every cart or carriage of its own accord drew aside to let the ambulance pass. •Perhaps it was morbid; or was it not touching rather, the respect which they showed this ambulance with its victim inside--busy men hurrying home yet instantly bethinking them as it passed of some wife; or presumably how easily it might have been them there, stretched on a shelf with a doctor and a nurse. •. •. •. •Ah, but thinking became morbid, sentimental, directly one began conjuring up doctors, dead bodies; a little glow of pleasure, a sort of lust too over the visual impression warned one not to go on with that sort of thing any more--fatal to art, fatal to friendship. •True. •And yet, thought Peter Walsh, as the ambulance turned the corner though the light high bell could be heard down the next street and still farther as it crossed the Tottenham Court Road, chiming constantly, it is the privilege of loneliness; in privacy one may do as one chooses. •One might weep if no one saw. •It had been his undoing--this susceptibility--in Anglo-Indian society; not weeping at the right time, or laughing either. •I have that in me, he thought standing by the pillar-box, which could now dissolve in tears. •Why, Heaven knows. •Beauty of some sort probably, and the weight of the day, which beginning with that visit to Clarissa had exhausted him with its heat, its intensity, and the drip, drip, of one impression after another down into that cellar where they stood, deep, dark, and no one would ever know. •Partly for that reason, its secrecy, complete and inviolable, he had found life like an unknown garden, full of turns and corners, surprising, yes; really it took one's breath away, these moments; there coming to him by the pillar-box opposite the British Museum one of them, a moment, in which things came together; this ambulance; and life and death. •It was as if he were sucked up to some very high roof by that rush of emotion and the rest of him, like a white shell-sprinkled beach, left bare. •It had been his undoing in Anglo-Indian society--this susceptibility.
•Clarissa once, going on top of an omnibus with him somewhere, Clarissa superficially at least, so easily moved, now in despair, now in the best of spirits, all aquiver in those days and such good company, spotting queer little scenes, names, people from the top of a bus, for they used to explore London and bring back bags full of treasures from the Caledonian market--Clarissa had a theory in those days--they had heaps of theories, always theories, as young people have. •It was to explain the feeling they had of dissatisfaction; not knowing people; not being known. •For how could they know each other? •You met every day; then not for six months, or years. •It was unsatisfactory, they agreed, how little one knew people. •But she said, sitting on the bus going up Shaftesbury Avenue, she felt herself everywhere; not "here, here, here"; and she tapped the back of the seat; but everywhere. •She waved her hand, going up Shaftesbury Avenue. •She was all that. •So that to know her, or any one, one must seek out the people who completed them; even the places. •Odd affinities she had with people she had never spoken to, some woman in the street, some man behind a counter--even trees, or barns. •It ended in a transcendental theory which, with her horror of death, allowed her to believe, or say that she believed (for all her scepticism), that since our apparitions, the part of us which appears, are so momentary compared with the other, the unseen part of us, which spreads wide, the unseen might survive, be recovered somehow attached to this person or that, or even haunting certain places after death . •. •. •perhaps--perhaps.
•Looking back over that long friendship of almost thirty years her theory worked to this extent. •Brief, broken, often painful as their actual meetings had been what with his absences and interruptions (this morning, for instance, in came Elizabeth, like a long-legged colt, handsome, dumb, just as he was beginning to talk to Clarissa) the effect of them on his life was immeasurable. •There was a mystery about it. •You were given a sharp, acute, uncomfortable grain--the actual meeting; horribly painful as often as not; yet in absence, in the most unlikely places, it would flower out, open, shed its scent, let you touch, taste, look about you, get the whole feel of it and understanding, after years of lying lost. •Thus she had come to him; on board ship; in the Himalayas; suggested by the oddest things (so Sally Seton, generous, enthusiastic goose! •thought of him when she saw blue hydrangeas). •She had influenced him more than any person he had ever known. •And always in this way coming before him without his wishing it, cool, lady-like, critical; or ravishing, romantic, recalling some field or English harvest. •He saw her most often in the country, not in London. •One scene after another at Bourton. •. •. •.
•He had reached his hotel. •He crossed the hall, with its mounds of reddish chairs and sofas, its spike-leaved, withered-looking plants. •He got his key off the hook. •The young lady handed him some letters. •He went upstairs--he saw her most often at Bourton, in the late summer, when he stayed there for a week, or fortnight even, as people did in those days. •First on top of some hill there she would stand, hands clapped to her hair, her cloak blowing out, pointing, crying to them--she saw the Severn beneath. •Or in a wood, making the kettle boil--very ineffective with her fingers; the smoke curtseying, blowing in their faces; her little pink face showing through; begging water from an old woman in a cottage, who came to the door to watch them go. •They walked always; the others drove. •She was bored driving, disliked all animals, except that dog. •They tramped miles along roads. •She would break off to get her bearings, pilot him back across country; and all the time they argued, discussed poetry, discussed people, discussed politics (she was a Radical then); never noticing a thing except when she stopped, cried out at a view or a tree, and made him look with her; and so on again, through stubble fields, she walking ahead, with a flower for her aunt, never tired of walking for all her delicacy; to drop down on Bourton in the dusk. •Then, after dinner, old Breitkopf would open the piano and sing without any voice, and they would lie sunk in arm-chairs, trying not to laugh, but always breaking down and laughing, laughing--laughing at nothing. •Breitkopf was supposed not to see. •And then in the morning, flirting up and down like a wagtail in front of the house. •. •. •.
•Oh it was a letter from her! •This blue envelope; that was her hand. •And he would have to read it. •Here was another of those meetings, bound to be painful! •To read her letter needed the devil of an effort. •"How heavenly it was to see him. •She must tell him that." •That was all.
•But it upset him. •It annoyed him. •He wished she hadn't written it. •Coming on top of his thoughts, it was like a nudge in the ribs. •Why couldn't she let him be? •After all, she had married Dalloway, and lived with him in perfect happiness all these years.
•These hotels are not consoling places. •Far from it. •Any number of people had hung up their hats on those pegs. •Even the flies, if you thought of it, had settled on other people's noses. •As for the cleanliness which hit him in the face, it wasn't cleanliness, so much as bareness, frigidity; a thing that had to be. •Some arid matron made her rounds at dawn sniffing, peering, causing blue-nosed maids to scour, for all the world as if the next visitor were a joint of meat to be served on a perfectly clean platter. •For sleep, one bed; for sitting in, one armchair; for cleaning one's teeth and shaving one's chin, one tumbler, one looking-glass. •Books, letters, dressing-gown, slipped about on the impersonality of the horsehair like incongruous impertinences. •And it was Clarissa's letter that made him see all this. •"Heavenly to see you. •She must say so!" •He folded the paper; pushed it away; nothing would induce him to read it again!
•To get that letter to him by six o'clock she must have sat down and written it directly he left her; stamped it; sent somebody to the post. •It was, as people say, very like her. •She was upset by his visit. •She had felt a great deal; had for a moment, when she kissed his hand, regretted, envied him even, remembered possibly (for he saw her look it) something he had said--how they would change the world if she married him perhaps; whereas, it was this; it was middle age; it was mediocrity; then forced herself with her indomitable vitality to put all that aside, there being in her a thread of life which for toughness, endurance, power to overcome obstacles, and carry her triumphantly through he had never known the like of. •Yes; but there would come a reaction directly he left the room. •She would be frightfully sorry for him; she would think what in the world she could do to give him pleasure (short always of the one thing) and he could see her with the tears running down her cheeks going to her writing-table and dashing off that one line which he was to find greeting him. •. •. •. •"Heavenly to see you!" •And she meant it.
•Peter Walsh had now unlaced his boots.
•But it would not have been a success, their marriage. •The other thing, after all, came so much more naturally.
•It was odd; it was true; lots of people felt it. •Peter Walsh, who had done just respectably, filled the usual posts adequately, was liked, but thought a little cranky, gave himself airs--it was odd that he should have had, especially now that his hair was grey, a contented look; a look of having reserves. •It was this that made him attractive to women who liked the sense that he was not altogether manly. •There was something unusual about him, or something behind him. •It might be that he was bookish--never came to see you without taking up the book on the table (he was now reading, with his bootlaces trailing on the floor); or that he was a gentleman, which showed itself in the way he knocked the ashes out of his pipe, and in his manners of course to women. •For it was very charming and quite ridiculous how easily some girl without a grain of sense could twist him round her finger. •But at her own risk. •That is to say, though he might be ever so easy, and indeed with his gaiety and good-breeding fascinating to be with, it was only up to a point. •She said something--no, no; he saw through that. •He wouldn't stand that--no, no. •Then he could shout and rock and hold his sides together over some joke with men. •He was the best judge of cooking in India. •He was a man. •But not the sort of man one had to respect--which was a mercy; not like Major Simmons, for instance; not in the least like that, Daisy thought, when, in spite of her two small children, she used to compare them.
•He pulled off his boots. •He emptied his pockets. •Out came with his pocket-knife a snapshot of Daisy on the verandah; Daisy all in white, with a fox-terrier on her knee; very charming, very dark; the best he had ever seen of her. •It did come, after all so naturally; so much more naturally than Clarissa. •No fuss. •No bother. •No finicking and fidgeting. •All plain sailing. •And the dark, adorably pretty girl on the verandah exclaimed (he could hear her). •Of course, of course she would give him everything! •she cried (she had no sense of discretion) everything he wanted! •she cried, running to meet him, whoever might be looking. •And she was only twenty-four. •And she had two children. •Well, well!
•Well indeed he had got himself into a mess at his age. •And it came over him when he woke in the night pretty forcibly. •Suppose they did marry? •For him it would be all very well, but what about her? •Mrs. Burgess, a good sort and no chatterbox, in whom he had confided, thought this absence of his in England, ostensibly to see lawyers might serve to make Daisy reconsider, think what it meant. •It was a question of her position, Mrs. Burgess said; the social barrier; giving up her children. •She'd be a widow with a past one of these days, draggling about in the suburbs, or more likely, indiscriminate (you know, she said, what such women get like, with too much paint). •But Peter Walsh pooh-poohed all that. •He didn't mean to die yet. •Anyhow she must settle for herself; judge for herself, he thought, padding about the room in his socks, smoothing out his dress-shirt, for he might go to Clarissa's party, or he might go to one of the Halls, or he might settle in and read an absorbing book written by a man he used to know at Oxford. •And if he did retire, that's what he'd do--write books. •He would go to Oxford and poke about in the Bodleian. •Vainly the dark, adorably pretty girl ran to the end of the terrace; vainly waved her hand; vainly cried she didn't care a straw what people said. •There he was, the man she thought the world of, the perfect gentleman, the fascinating, the distinguished (and his age made not the least difference to her), padding about a room in an hotel in Bloomsbury, shaving, washing, continuing, as he took up cans, put down razors, to poke about in the Bodleian, and get at the truth about one or two little matters that interested him. •And he would have a chat with whoever it might be, and so come to disregard more and more precise hours for lunch, and miss engagements, and when Daisy asked him, as she would, for a kiss, a scene, fail to come up to the scratch (though he was genuinely devoted to her)--in short it might be happier, as Mrs. Burgess said, that she should forget him, or merely remember him as he was in August 1922, like a figure standing at the cross roads at dusk, which grows more and more remote as the dog-cart spins away, carrying her securely fastened to the back seat, though her arms are outstretched, and as she sees the figure dwindle and disappear still she cries out how she would do anything in the world, anything, anything, anything. •. •. •.
•He never knew what people thought. •It became more and more difficult for him to concentrate. •He became absorbed; he became busied with his own concerns; now surly, now gay; dependent on women, absent-minded, moody, less and less able (so he thought as he shaved) to understand why Clarissa couldn't simply find them a lodging and be nice to Daisy; introduce her. •And then he could just--just do what? •just haunt and hover (he was at the moment actually engaged in sorting out various keys, papers), swoop and taste, be alone, in short, sufficient to himself; and yet nobody of course was more dependent upon others (he buttoned his waistcoat); it had been his undoing. •He could not keep out of smoking-rooms, liked colonels, liked golf, liked bridge, and above all women's society, and the fineness of their companionship, and their faithfulness and audacity and greatness in loving which though it had its drawbacks seemed to him (and the dark, adorably pretty face was on top of the envelopes) so wholly admirable, so splendid a flower to grow on the crest of human life, and yet he could not come up to the scratch, being always apt to see round things (Clarissa had sapped something in him permanently), and to tire very easily of mute devotion and to want variety in love, though it would make him furious if Daisy loved anybody else, furious! •for he was jealous, uncontrollably jealous by temperament. •He suffered tortures! •But where was his knife; his watch; his seals, his note-case, and Clarissa's letter which he would not read again but liked to think of, and Daisy's photograph? •And now for dinner.
•They were eating.
•Sitting at little tables round vases, dressed or not dressed, with their shawls and bags laid beside them, with their air of false composure, for they were not used to so many courses at dinner, and confidence, for they were able to pay for it, and strain, for they had been running about London all day shopping, sightseeing; and their natural curiosity, for they looked round and up as the nice-looking gentleman in horn-rimmed spectacles came in, and their good nature, for they would have been glad to do any little service, such as lend a time-table or impart useful information, and their desire, pulsing in them, tugging at them subterraneously, somehow to establish connections if it were only a birthplace (Liverpool, for example) in common or friends of the same name; with their furtive glances, odd silences, and sudden withdrawals into family jocularity and isolation; there they sat eating dinner when Mr. Walsh came in and took his seat at a little table by the curtain.
•It was not that he said anything, for being solitary he could only address himself to the waiter; it was his way of looking at the menu, of pointing his forefinger to a particular wine, of hitching himself up to the table, of addressing himself seriously, not gluttonously to dinner, that won him their respect; which, having to remain unexpressed for the greater part of the meal, flared up at the table where the Morrises sat when Mr. Walsh was heard to say at the end of the meal, "Bartlett pears." •Why he should have spoken so moderately yet firmly, with the air of a disciplinarian well within his rights which are founded upon justice, neither young Charles Morris, nor old Charles, neither Miss Elaine nor Mrs. Morris knew. •But when he said, "Bartlett pears," sitting alone at his table, they felt that he counted on their support in some lawful demand; was champion of a cause which immediately became their own, so that their eyes met his eyes sympathetically, and when they all reached the smoking-room simultaneously, a little talk between them became inevitable.
•It was not very profound--only to the effect that London was crowded; had changed in thirty years; that Mr. Morris preferred Liverpool; that Mrs. Morris had been to the Westminster flower-show, and that they had all seen the Prince of Wales. •Yet, thought Peter Walsh, no family in the world can compare with the Morrises; none whatever; and their relations to each other are perfect, and they don't care a hang for the upper classes, and they like what they like, and Elaine is training for the family business, and the boy has won a scholarship at Leeds, and the old lady (who is about his own age) has three more children at home; and they have two motor cars, but Mr. Morris still mends the boots on Sunday: it is superb, it is absolutely superb, thought Peter Walsh, swaying a little backwards and forwards with his liqueur glass in his hand among the hairy red chairs and ash-trays, feeling very well pleased with himself, for the Morrises liked him. •Yes, they liked a man who said, "Bartlett pears." •They liked him, he felt.
•He would go to Clarissa's party. •(The Morrises moved off; but they would meet again.) •He would go to Clarissa's party, because he wanted to ask Richard what they were doing in India--the conservative duffers. •And what's being acted? •And music. •. •. •. •Oh yes, and mere gossip.
•For this is the truth about our soul, he thought, our self, who fish-like inhabits deep seas and plies among obscurities threading her way between the boles of giant weeds, over sun-flickered spaces and on and on into gloom, cold, deep, inscrutable; suddenly she shoots to the surface and sports on the wind-wrinkled waves; that is, has a positive need to brush, scrape, kindle herself, gossiping. •What did the Government mean--Richard Dalloway would know--to do about India?
•Since it was a very hot night and the paper boys went by with placards proclaiming in huge red letters that there was a heat-wave, wicker chairs were placed on the hotel steps and there, sipping, smoking, detached gentlemen sat. •Peter Walsh sat there. •One might fancy that day, the London day, was just beginning. •Like a woman who had slipped off her print dress and white apron to array herself in blue and pearls, the day changed, put off stuff, took gauze, changed to evening, and with the same sigh of exhilaration that a woman breathes, tumbling petticoats on the floor, it too shed dust, heat, colour; the traffic thinned; motor cars, tinkling, darting, succeeded the lumber of vans; and here and there among the thick foliage of the squares an intense light hung. •I resign, the evening seemed to say, as it paled and faded above the battlements and prominences, moulded, pointed, of hotel, flat, and block of shops, I fade, she was beginning, I disappear, but London would have none of it, and rushed her bayonets into the sky, pinioned her, constrained her to partnership in her revelry.
•For the great revolution of Mr. Willett's summer time had taken place since Peter Walsh's last visit to England. •The prolonged evening was new to him. •It was inspiriting, rather. •For as the young people went by with their despatch-boxes, awfully glad to be free, proud too, dumbly, of stepping this famous pavement, joy of a kind, cheap, tinselly, if you like, but all the same rapture, flushed their faces. •They dressed well too; pink stockings; pretty shoes. •They would now have two hours at the pictures. •It sharpened, it refined them, the yellow-blue evening light; and on the leaves in the square shone lurid, livid--they looked as if dipped in sea water--the foliage of a submerged city. •He was astonished by the beauty; it was encouraging too, for where the returned Anglo-Indian sat by rights (he knew crowds of them) in the Oriental Club biliously summing up the ruin of the world, here was he, as young as ever; envying young people their summer time and the rest of it, and more than suspecting from the words of a girl, from a housemaid's laughter--intangible things you couldn't lay your hands on--that shift in the whole pyramidal accumulation which in his youth had seemed immovable. •On top of them it had pressed; weighed them down, the women especially, like those flowers Clarissa's Aunt Helena used to press between sheets of grey blotting-paper with Littré's dictionary on top, sitting under the lamp after dinner. •She was dead now. •He had heard of her, from Clarissa, losing the sight of one eye. •It seemed so fitting--one of nature's masterpieces--that old Miss Parry should turn to glass. •She would die like some bird in a frost gripping her perch. •She belonged to a different age, but being so entire, so complete, would always stand up on the horizon, stone-white, eminent, like a lighthouse marking some past stage on this adventurous, long, long voyage, this interminable (he felt for a copper to buy a paper and read about Surrey and Yorkshire--he had held out that copper millions of times. •Surrey was all out once more)--this interminable life. •But cricket was no mere game. •Cricket was important. •He could never help reading about cricket. •He read the scores in the stop press first, then how it was a hot day; then about a murder case. •Having done things millions of times enriched them, though it might be said to take the surface off. •The past enriched, and experience, and having cared for one or two people, and so having acquired the power which the young lack, of cutting short, doing what one likes, not caring a rap what people say and coming and going without any very great expectations (he left his paper on the table and moved off), which however (and he looked for his hat and coat) was not altogether true of him, not to-night, for here he was starting to go to a party, at his age, with the belief upon him that he was about to have an experience. •But what?
•Beauty anyhow. •Not the crude beauty of the eye. •It was not beauty pure and simple--Bedford Place leading into Russell Square. •It was straightness and emptiness of course; the symmetry of a corridor; but it was also windows lit up, a piano, a gramophone sounding; a sense of pleasure-making hidden, but now and again emerging when, through the uncurtained window, the window left open, one saw parties sitting over tables, young people slowly circling, conversations between men and women, maids idly looking out (a strange comment theirs, when work was done), stockings drying on top ledges, a parrot, a few plants. •Absorbing, mysterious, of infinite richness, this life. •And in the large square where the cabs shot and swerved so quick, there were loitering couples, dallying, embracing, shrunk up under the shower of a tree; that was moving; so silent, so absorbed, that one passed, discreetly, timidly, as if in the presence of some sacred ceremony to interrupt which would have been impious. •That was interesting. •And so on into the flare and glare.
•His light overcoat blew open, he stepped with indescribable idiosyncrasy, lent a little forward, tripped, with his hands behind his back and his eyes still a little hawklike; he tripped through London, towards Westminster, observing.
•Was everybody dining out, then? •Doors were being opened here by a footman to let issue a high-stepping old dame, in buckled shoes, with three purple ostrich feathers in her hair. •Doors were being opened for ladies wrapped like mummies in shawls with bright flowers on them, ladies with bare heads. •And in respectable quarters with stucco pillars through small front gardens lightly swathed with combs in their hair (having run up to see the children), women came; men waited for them, with their coats blowing open, and the motor started. •Everybody was going out. •What with these doors being opened, and the descent and the start, it seemed as if the whole of London were embarking in little boats moored to the bank, tossing on the waters, as if the whole place were floating off in carnival. •And Whitehall was skated over, silver beaten as it was, skated over by spiders, and there was a sense of midges round the arc lamps; it was so hot that people stood about talking. •And here in Westminster was a retired Judge, presumably, sitting four square at his house door dressed all in white. •An Anglo-Indian presumably.
•And here a shindy of brawling women, drunken women; here only a policeman and looming houses, high houses, domed houses, churches, parliaments, and the hoot of a steamer on the river, a hollow misty cry. •But it was her street, this, Clarissa's; cabs were rushing round the corner, like water round the piers of a bridge, drawn together, it seemed to him because they bore people going to her party, Clarissa's party.
•The cold stream of visual impressions failed him now as if the eye were a cup that overflowed and let the rest run down its china walls unrecorded. •The brain must wake now. •The body must contract now, entering the house, the lighted house, where the door stood open, where the motor cars were standing, and bright women descending: the soul must brave itself to endure. •He opened the big blade of his pocket-knife.
unit 1
Part VII.
1 Translations, 4 Upvotes, Last Activity 3 weeks, 4 days ago
Translate
unit 2
"Are you going to the party to-night?"
2 Translations, 5 Upvotes, Last Activity 3 weeks, 4 days ago
Translate
unit 3
Miss Kilman said.
1 Translations, 4 Upvotes, Last Activity 3 weeks, 4 days ago
Translate
unit 4
Elizabeth supposed she was going; her mother wanted her to go.
1 Translations, 3 Upvotes, Last Activity 1 month ago
Translate
unit 5
She must not let parties absorb her, Miss Kilman said, fingering the last two inches of a chocolate éclair.
2 Translations, 5 Upvotes, Last Activity 1 week, 5 days ago
Translate
unit 6
She did not much like parties, Elizabeth said.
2 Translations, 4 Upvotes, Last Activity 1 month ago
Translate
unit 7
Miss Kilman opened her mouth, slightly projected her chin, and swallowed down the last inches of the chocolate éclair, then wiped her fingers, and washed the tea round in her cup.
2 Translations, 1 Upvotes, Last Activity 1 week, 2 days ago
Translate
unit 8
She was about to split asunder, she felt.
1 Translations, 2 Upvotes, Last Activity 1 week, 3 days ago
Translate
unit 9
The agony was so terrific.
1 Translations, 2 Upvotes, Last Activity 1 week, 3 days ago
Translate
unit 10
If she could grasp her, if she could clasp her, if she could make her hers absolutely and forever and then die; that was all she wanted.
2 Translations, 2 Upvotes, Last Activity 1 week, 3 days ago
Translate
unit 11
But to sit here, unable to think of anything to say; to see Elizabeth turning against her; to be felt repulsive even by her--it was too much; she could not stand it.
1 Translations, 4 Upvotes, Last Activity 1 week, 4 days ago
Translate
unit 12
The thick fingers curled inwards.
1 Translations, 4 Upvotes, Last Activity 1 week, 4 days ago
Translate
unit 13
"I never go to parties," said Miss Kilman, just to keep Elizabeth from going.
1 Translations, 4 Upvotes, Last Activity 1 week, 4 days ago
Translate
unit 14
"People don't ask me to parties"--and she knew as she said it that it was this egotism that was her undoing; Mr. Whittaker had warned her; but she could not help it.
1 Translations, 4 Upvotes, Last Activity 1 week, 4 days ago
Translate
unit 15
She had suffered so horribly.
1 Translations, 4 Upvotes, Last Activity 1 week, 4 days ago
Translate
unit 16
"Why should they ask me?"
1 Translations, 3 Upvotes, Last Activity 1 week, 4 days ago
Translate
unit 17
she said.
1 Translations, 4 Upvotes, Last Activity 1 week, 4 days ago
Translate
unit 18
"I'm plain, I'm unhappy."
1 Translations, 4 Upvotes, Last Activity 1 week, 4 days ago
Translate
unit 19
She knew it was idiotic.
1 Translations, 4 Upvotes, Last Activity 1 week, 4 days ago
Translate
unit 20
But it was all those people passing--people with parcels who despised her, who made her say it.
1 Translations, 3 Upvotes, Last Activity 1 week, 4 days ago
Translate
unit 21
However, she was Doris Kilman.
1 Translations, 4 Upvotes, Last Activity 1 week, 4 days ago
Translate
unit 22
She had her degree.
1 Translations, 3 Upvotes, Last Activity 1 week, 4 days ago
Translate
unit 23
She was a woman who had made her way in the world.
1 Translations, 4 Upvotes, Last Activity 1 week, 4 days ago
Translate
unit 24
Her knowledge of modern history was more than respectable.
1 Translations, 4 Upvotes, Last Activity 1 week, 4 days ago
Translate
unit 25
"I don't pity myself," she said.
1 Translations, 4 Upvotes, Last Activity 1 week, 4 days ago
Translate
unit 26
"I pity"--she meant to say "your mother" but no, she could not, not to Elizabeth.
1 Translations, 4 Upvotes, Last Activity 1 week, 4 days ago
Translate
unit 27
"I pity other people," she said, "more."
1 Translations, 4 Upvotes, Last Activity 1 week, 4 days ago
Translate
unit 28
Like some dumb creature who has been brought up to a gate for an unknown purpose, and stands there longing to gallop away, Elizabeth Dalloway sat silent.
1 Translations, 2 Upvotes, Last Activity 1 week, 4 days ago
Translate
unit 29
Was Miss Kilman going to say anything more?
1 Translations, 3 Upvotes, Last Activity 1 week, 4 days ago
Translate
unit 30
"Don't quite forget me," said Doris Kilman; her voice quivered.
1 Translations, 2 Upvotes, Last Activity 1 week, 4 days ago
Translate
unit 31
Right away to the end of the field the dumb creature galloped in terror.
2 Translations, 3 Upvotes, Last Activity 1 week, 4 days ago
Translate
unit 32
The great hand opened and shut.
1 Translations, 2 Upvotes, Last Activity 1 week, 4 days ago
Translate
unit 33
Elizabeth turned her head.
1 Translations, 3 Upvotes, Last Activity 1 week, 4 days ago
Translate
unit 34
The waitress came.
1 Translations, 3 Upvotes, Last Activity 1 week, 4 days ago
Translate
unit 35
One had to pay at the desk, Elizabeth said, and went off, drawing out, so Miss Kilman felt, the very entrails in her body, stretching them as she crossed the room, and then, with a final twist, bowing her head very politely, she went.
2 Translations, 2 Upvotes, Last Activity 1 week, 3 days ago
Translate
unit 36
She had gone.
1 Translations, 3 Upvotes, Last Activity 1 week, 4 days ago
Translate
unit 37
Miss Kilman sat at the marble table among the éclairs, stricken once, twice, thrice by shocks of suffering.
1 Translations, 3 Upvotes, Last Activity 1 week, 4 days ago
Translate
unit 38
She had gone.
1 Translations, 3 Upvotes, Last Activity 1 week, 4 days ago
Translate
unit 39
Mrs. Dalloway had triumphed.
1 Translations, 3 Upvotes, Last Activity 1 week, 4 days ago
Translate
unit 40
Elizabeth had gone.
1 Translations, 3 Upvotes, Last Activity 1 week, 4 days ago
Translate
unit 41
Beauty had gone, youth had gone.
1 Translations, 3 Upvotes, Last Activity 1 week, 4 days ago
Translate
unit 42
So she sat.
1 Translations, 3 Upvotes, Last Activity 1 week, 4 days ago
Translate
unit 43
She got up, blundered off among the little tables, rocking slightly from side to side, and somebody came after her with her petticoat, and she lost her way, and was hemmed in by trunks specially prepared for taking to India; next got among the accouchement sets, and baby linen; through all the commodities of the world, perishable and permanent, hams, drugs, flowers, stationery, variously smelling, now sweet, now sour she lurched; saw herself thus lurching with her hat askew, very red in the face, full length in a looking-glass; and at last came out into the street.
1 Translations, 2 Upvotes, Last Activity 1 week, 3 days ago
Translate
unit 44
The tower of Westminster Cathedral rose in front of her, the habitation of God.
2 Translations, 1 Upvotes, Last Activity 1 week, 3 days ago
Translate
unit 45
In the midst of the traffic, there was the habitation of God.
1 Translations, 2 Upvotes, Last Activity 1 week, 3 days ago
Translate
unit 46
Doggedly she set off with her parcel to that other sanctuary, the Abbey, where, raising her hands in a tent before her face, she sat beside those driven into shelter too; the variously assorted worshippers, now divested of social rank, almost of sex, as they raised their hands before their faces; but once they removed them, instantly reverent, middle class, English men and women, some of them desirous of seeing the wax works.
2 Translations, 2 Upvotes, Last Activity 1 week, 2 days ago
Translate
unit 47
But Miss Kilman held her tent before her face.
1 Translations, 2 Upvotes, Last Activity 1 week, 2 days ago
Translate
unit 48
Now she was deserted; now rejoined.
1 Translations, 2 Upvotes, Last Activity 1 week, 3 days ago
Translate
unit 49
New worshippers came in from the street to replace the strollers, and still, as people gazed round and shuffled past the tomb of the Unknown Warrior, still she barred her eyes with her fingers and tried in this double darkness, for the light in the Abbey was bodiless, to aspire above the vanities, the desires, the commodities, to rid herself both of hatred and of love.
1 Translations, 2 Upvotes, Last Activity 1 week, 3 days ago
Translate
unit 50
Her hands twitched.
1 Translations, 2 Upvotes, Last Activity 1 week, 2 days ago
Translate
unit 51
She seemed to struggle.
1 Translations, 2 Upvotes, Last Activity 1 week, 2 days ago
Translate
unit 52
Yet to others God was accessible and the path to Him smooth.
1 Translations, 2 Upvotes, Last Activity 1 week, 2 days ago
Translate
unit 53
Mr. Fletcher, retired, of the Treasury, Mrs. Gorham, widow of the famous K.C., approached Him simply, and having done their praying, leant back, enjoyed the music (the organ pealed sweetly), and saw Miss Kilman at the end of the row, praying, praying, and, being still on the threshold of their underworld, thought of her sympathetically as a soul haunting the same territory; a soul cut out of immaterial substance; not a woman, a soul.
2 Translations, 1 Upvotes, Last Activity 1 week, 1 day ago
Translate
unit 54
But Mr. Fletcher had to go.
1 Translations, 2 Upvotes, Last Activity 1 week, 2 days ago
Translate
unit 55
He had to pass her, and being himself neat as a new pin, could not help being a little distressed by the poor lady's disorder; her hair down; her parcel on the floor.
2 Translations, 1 Upvotes, Last Activity 1 week, 1 day ago
Translate
unit 56
She did not at once let him pass.
2 Translations, 1 Upvotes, Last Activity 1 week, 1 day ago
Translate
unit 57
But, as he stood gazing about him, at the white marbles, grey window panes, and accumulated treasures (for he was extremely proud of the Abbey), her largeness, robustness, and power as she sat there shifting her knees from time to time (it was so rough the approach to her God--so tough her desires) impressed him, as they had impressed Mrs. Dalloway (she could not get the thought of her out of her mind that afternoon), the Rev.
1 Translations, 2 Upvotes, Last Activity 1 week, 2 days ago
Translate
unit 58
Edward Whittaker, and Elizabeth too.
1 Translations, 2 Upvotes, Last Activity 1 week, 2 days ago
Translate
unit 59
And Elizabeth waited in Victoria Street for an omnibus.
1 Translations, 2 Upvotes, Last Activity 1 week, 2 days ago
Translate
unit 60
It was so nice to be out of doors.
1 Translations, 2 Upvotes, Last Activity 1 week, 2 days ago
Translate
unit 61
She thought perhaps she need not go home just yet.
1 Translations, 2 Upvotes, Last Activity 1 week, 2 days ago
Translate
unit 62
It was so nice to be out in the air.
1 Translations, 2 Upvotes, Last Activity 1 week, 1 day ago
Translate
unit 63
So she would get on to an omnibus.
2 Translations, 2 Upvotes, Last Activity 1 week ago
Translate
unit 64
And already, even as she stood there, in her very well cut clothes, it was beginning.
2 Translations, 2 Upvotes, Last Activity 1 week ago
Translate
unit 65
.
1 Translations, 2 Upvotes, Last Activity 1 week ago
Translate
unit 66
.
1 Translations, 1 Upvotes, Last Activity 1 week, 1 day ago
Translate
unit 67
.
1 Translations, 1 Upvotes, Last Activity 1 week, 1 day ago
Translate
unit 68
People were beginning to compare her to poplar trees, early dawn, hyacinths, fawns, running water, and garden lilies; and it made her life a burden to her, for she so much preferred being left alone to do what she liked in the country, but they would compare her to lilies, and she had to go to parties, and London was so dreary compared with being alone in the country with her father and the dogs.
1 Translations, 2 Upvotes, Last Activity 1 week ago
Translate
unit 69
Buses swooped, settled, were off--garish caravans, glistening with red and yellow varnish.
1 Translations, 2 Upvotes, Last Activity 1 week ago
Translate
unit 70
But which should she get on to?
1 Translations, 2 Upvotes, Last Activity 1 week ago
Translate
unit 71
She had no preferences.
1 Translations, 2 Upvotes, Last Activity 1 week ago
Translate
unit 72
Of course, she would not push her way.
1 Translations, 2 Upvotes, Last Activity 1 week ago
Translate
unit 73
She inclined to be passive.
1 Translations, 2 Upvotes, Last Activity 1 week ago
Translate
unit 74
It was expression she needed, but her eyes were fine, Chinese, oriental, and, as her mother said, with such nice shoulders and holding herself so straight, she was always charming to look at; and lately, in the evening especially, when she was interested, for she never seemed excited, she looked almost beautiful, very stately, very serene.
2 Translations, 2 Upvotes, Last Activity 6 days, 16 hours ago
Translate
unit 75
What could she be thinking?
1 Translations, 2 Upvotes, Last Activity 6 days, 7 hours ago
Translate
unit 76
Every man fell in love with her, and she was really awfully bored.
1 Translations, 2 Upvotes, Last Activity 6 days, 7 hours ago
Translate
unit 77
For it was beginning.
1 Translations, 2 Upvotes, Last Activity 6 days, 7 hours ago
Translate
unit 78
Her mother could see that--the compliments were beginning.
1 Translations, 2 Upvotes, Last Activity 6 days, 7 hours ago
Translate
unit 79
That she did not care more about it--for instance for her clothes--sometimes worried Clarissa, but perhaps it was as well with all those puppies and guinea pigs about having distemper, and it gave her a charm.
1 Translations, 2 Upvotes, Last Activity 6 days, 7 hours ago
Translate
unit 80
And now there was this odd friendship with Miss Kilman.
1 Translations, 2 Upvotes, Last Activity 6 days, 15 hours ago
Translate
unit 81
Well, thought Clarissa about three o'clock in the morning, reading Baron Marbot for she could not sleep, it proves she has a heart.
2 Translations, 1 Upvotes, Last Activity 5 days, 16 hours ago
Translate
unit 82
Suddenly Elizabeth stepped forward and most competently boarded the omnibus, in front of everybody.
2 Translations, 2 Upvotes, Last Activity 5 days, 16 hours ago
Translate
unit 83
She took a seat on top.
1 Translations, 2 Upvotes, Last Activity 6 days ago
Translate
unit 84
The impetuous creature--a pirate--started forward, sprang away; she had to hold the rail to steady herself, for a pirate it was, reckless, unscrupulous, bearing down ruthlessly, circumventing dangerously, boldly snatching a passenger, or ignoring a passenger, squeezing eel-like and arrogant in between, and then rushing insolently all sails spread up Whitehall.
1 Translations, 2 Upvotes, Last Activity 6 days ago
Translate
unit 85
And did Elizabeth give one thought to poor Miss Kilman who loved her without jealousy, to whom she had been a fawn in the open, a moon in a glade?
1 Translations, 2 Upvotes, Last Activity 6 days ago
Translate
unit 86
She was delighted to be free.
1 Translations, 2 Upvotes, Last Activity 6 days ago
Translate
unit 87
The fresh air was so delicious.
1 Translations, 2 Upvotes, Last Activity 6 days ago
Translate
unit 88
It had been so stuffy in the Army and Navy Stores.
1 Translations, 2 Upvotes, Last Activity 6 days ago
Translate
unit 89
And now it was like riding, to be rushing up Whitehall; and to each movement of the omnibus the beautiful body in the fawn-coloured coat responded freely like a rider, like the figure-head of a ship, for the breeze slightly disarrayed her; the heat gave her cheeks the pallor of white painted wood; and her fine eyes, having no eyes to meet, gazed ahead, blank, bright, with the staring incredible innocence of sculpture.
1 Translations, 2 Upvotes, Last Activity 6 days ago
Translate
unit 90
It was always talking about her own sufferings that made Miss Kilman so difficult.
2 Translations, 2 Upvotes, Last Activity 4 days, 16 hours ago
Translate
unit 91
And was she right?
1 Translations, 2 Upvotes, Last Activity 4 days, 23 hours ago
Translate
unit 92
If it was being on committees and giving up hours and hours every day (she hardly ever saw him in London) that helped the poor, her father did that, goodness knows,--if that was what Miss Kilman meant about being a Christian; but it was so difficult to say.
2 Translations, 1 Upvotes, Last Activity 4 days, 16 hours ago
Translate
unit 93
Oh, she would like to go a little further.
1 Translations, 2 Upvotes, Last Activity 5 days, 7 hours ago
Translate
unit 94
Another penny was it to the Strand?
1 Translations, 2 Upvotes, Last Activity 5 days, 7 hours ago
Translate
unit 95
Here was another penny then.
1 Translations, 2 Upvotes, Last Activity 5 days, 7 hours ago
Translate
unit 96
She would go up the Strand.
1 Translations, 2 Upvotes, Last Activity 4 days, 23 hours ago
Translate
unit 97
She liked people who were ill. And every profession is open to the women of your generation, said Miss Kilman.
1 Translations, 2 Upvotes, Last Activity 4 days, 23 hours ago
Translate
unit 98
So she might be a doctor.
1 Translations, 2 Upvotes, Last Activity 4 days, 16 hours ago
Translate
unit 99
She might be a farmer.
1 Translations, 2 Upvotes, Last Activity 4 days, 23 hours ago
Translate
unit 100
Animals are often ill. She might own a thousand acres and have people under her.
1 Translations, 2 Upvotes, Last Activity 4 days, 23 hours ago
Translate
unit 101
She would go and see them in their cottages.
1 Translations, 2 Upvotes, Last Activity 4 days ago
Translate
unit 102
This was Somerset House.
2 Translations, 2 Upvotes, Last Activity 3 days, 16 hours ago
Translate
unit 103
One might be a very good farmer--and that, strangely enough though Miss Kilman had her share in it, was almost entirely due to Somerset House.
2 Translations, 2 Upvotes, Last Activity 3 days, 16 hours ago
Translate
unit 104
It looked so splendid, so serious, that great grey building.
1 Translations, 2 Upvotes, Last Activity 4 days ago
Translate
unit 105
And she liked the feeling of people working.
1 Translations, 2 Upvotes, Last Activity 4 days ago
Translate
unit 106
She liked those churches, like shapes of grey paper, breasting the stream of the Strand.
1 Translations, 1 Upvotes, Last Activity 4 days, 15 hours ago
Translate
unit 107
It was quite different here from Westminster, she thought, getting off at Chancery Lane.
1 Translations, 1 Upvotes, Last Activity 4 days, 15 hours ago
Translate
unit 108
It was so serious; it was so busy.
1 Translations, 1 Upvotes, Last Activity 4 days, 15 hours ago
Translate
unit 109
In short, she would like to have a profession.
1 Translations, 1 Upvotes, Last Activity 4 days, 15 hours ago
Translate
unit 110
She would become a doctor, a farmer, possibly go into Parliament, if she found it necessary, all because of the Strand.
1 Translations, 1 Upvotes, Last Activity 4 days ago
Translate
unit 111
The feet of those people busy about their activities, hands putting stone to stone, minds eternally occupied not with trivial chatterings (comparing women to poplars--which was rather exciting, of course, but very silly), but with thoughts of ships, of business, of law, of administration, and with it all so stately (she was in the Temple), gay (there was the river), pious (there was the Church), made her quite determined, whatever her mother might say, to become either a farmer or a doctor.
1 Translations, 1 Upvotes, Last Activity 4 days ago
Translate
unit 112
But she was, of course, rather lazy.
1 Translations, 1 Upvotes, Last Activity 4 days ago
Translate
unit 113
And it was much better to say nothing about it.
1 Translations, 1 Upvotes, Last Activity 4 days ago
Translate
unit 114
It seemed so silly.
1 Translations, 1 Upvotes, Last Activity 4 days ago
Translate
unit 115
It was the sort of thing that did sometimes happen, when one was alone--buildings without architects' names, crowds of people coming back from the city having more power than single clergymen in Kensington, than any of the books Miss Kilman had lent her, to stimulate what lay slumbrous, clumsy, and shy on the mind's sandy floor to break surface, as a child suddenly stretches its arms; it was just that, perhaps, a sigh, a stretch of the arms, an impulse, a revelation, which has its effects for ever, and then down again it went to the sandy floor.
1 Translations, 1 Upvotes, Last Activity 4 days ago
Translate
unit 116
She must go home.
1 Translations, 2 Upvotes, Last Activity 3 days, 7 hours ago
Translate
unit 117
She must dress for dinner.
1 Translations, 2 Upvotes, Last Activity 3 days, 7 hours ago
Translate
unit 118
But what was the time?--where was a clock?
1 Translations, 2 Upvotes, Last Activity 3 days, 7 hours ago
Translate
unit 119
She looked up Fleet Street.
1 Translations, 2 Upvotes, Last Activity 3 days, 4 hours ago
Translate
unit 120
She walked just a little way towards St. Paul's, shyly, like some one penetrating on tiptoe, exploring a strange house by night with a candle, on edge lest the owner should suddenly fling wide his bedroom door and ask her business, nor did she dare wander off into queer alleys, tempting bye-streets, any more than in a strange house open doors which might be bedroom doors, or sitting-room doors, or lead straight to the larder.
1 Translations, 2 Upvotes, Last Activity 3 days, 4 hours ago
Translate
unit 121
For no Dalloways came down the Strand daily; she was a pioneer, a stray, venturing, trusting.
1 Translations, 2 Upvotes, Last Activity 3 days, 4 hours ago
Translate
unit 122
In many ways, her mother felt, she was extremely immature, like a child still, attached to dolls, to old slippers; a perfect baby; and that was charming.
1 Translations, 2 Upvotes, Last Activity 3 days, 4 hours ago
Translate
unit 123
But then, of course, there was in the Dalloway family the tradition of public service.
1 Translations, 2 Upvotes, Last Activity 3 days, 4 hours ago
Translate
unit 124
Abbesses, principals, head mistresses, dignitaries, in the republic of women--without being brilliant, any of them, they were that.
2 Translations, 1 Upvotes, Last Activity 1 day, 19 hours ago
Translate
unit 125
She penetrated a little further in the direction of St. Paul's.
1 Translations, 1 Upvotes, Last Activity 2 days, 17 hours ago
Translate
unit 126
She liked the geniality, sisterhood, motherhood, brotherhood of this uproar.
1 Translations, 1 Upvotes, Last Activity 2 days, 17 hours ago
Translate
unit 127
It seemed to her good.
1 Translations, 2 Upvotes, Last Activity 2 days, 17 hours ago
Translate
unit 128
The noise was tremendous; and suddenly there were trumpets (the unemployed) blaring, rattling about in the uproar; military music; as if people were marching; yet had they been dying--had some woman breathed her last and whoever was watching, opening the window of the room where she had just brought off that act of supreme dignity, looked down on Fleet Street, that uproar, that military music would have come triumphing up to him, consolatory, indifferent.
1 Translations, 2 Upvotes, Last Activity 2 days, 2 hours ago
Translate
unit 129
It was not conscious.
1 Translations, 2 Upvotes, Last Activity 2 days, 2 hours ago
Translate
unit 130
There was no recognition in it of one fortune, or fate, and for that very reason even to those dazed with watching for the last shivers of consciousness on the faces of the dying, consoling.
1 Translations, 2 Upvotes, Last Activity 2 days, 2 hours ago
Translate
unit 131
Forgetfulness in people might wound, their ingratitude corrode, but this voice, pouring endlessly, year in year out, would take whatever it might be; this vow; this van; this life; this procession, would wrap them all about and carry them on, as in the rough stream of a glacier the ice holds a splinter of bone, a blue petal, some oak trees, and rolls them on.
1 Translations, 2 Upvotes, Last Activity 2 days, 2 hours ago
Translate
unit 132
But it was later than she thought.
1 Translations, 2 Upvotes, Last Activity 1 day, 18 hours ago
Translate
unit 133
Her mother would not like her to be wandering off alone like this.
1 Translations, 2 Upvotes, Last Activity 1 day, 16 hours ago
Translate
unit 134
She turned back down the Strand.
1 Translations, 2 Upvotes, Last Activity 1 day, 16 hours ago
Translate
unit 135
A puff of wind (in spite of the heat, there was quite a wind) blew a thin black veil over the sun and over the Strand.
1 Translations, 2 Upvotes, Last Activity 1 day, 16 hours ago
Translate
unit 136
The faces faded; the omnibuses suddenly lost their glow.
1 Translations, 2 Upvotes, Last Activity 1 day, 16 hours ago
Translate
unit 137
For although the clouds were of mountainous white so that one could fancy hacking hard chips off with a hatchet, with broad golden slopes, lawns of celestial pleasure gardens, on their flanks, and had all the appearance of settled habitations assembled for the conference of gods above the world, there was a perpetual movement among them.
2 Translations, 2 Upvotes, Last Activity 1 day, 7 hours ago
Translate
unit 138
Signs were interchanged, when, as if to fulfil some scheme arranged already, now a summit dwindled, now a whole block of pyramidal size which had kept its station inalterably advanced into the midst or gravely led the procession to fresh anchorage.
2 Translations, 2 Upvotes, Last Activity 1 day, 7 hours ago
Translate
unit 139
Fixed though they seemed at their posts, at rest in perfect unanimity, nothing could be fresher, freer, more sensitive superficially than the snow-white or gold-kindled surface; to change, to go, to dismantle the solemn assemblage was immediately possible; and in spite of the grave fixity, the accumulated robustness and solidity, now they struck light to the earth, now darkness.
1 Translations, 2 Upvotes, Last Activity 1 day, 7 hours ago
Translate
unit 140
Calmly and competently, Elizabeth Dalloway mounted the Westminster omnibus.
1 Translations, 2 Upvotes, Last Activity 1 day, 7 hours ago
Translate
unit 141
Going and coming, beckoning, signalling, so the light and shadow which now made the wall grey, now the bananas bright yellow, now made the Strand grey, now made the omnibuses bright yellow, seemed to Septimus Warren Smith lying on the sofa in the sitting-room; watching the watery gold glow and fade with the astonishing sensibility of some live creature on the roses, on the wall-paper.
2 Translations, 1 Upvotes, Last Activity 7 hours ago
Translate
unit 142
Outside the trees dragged their leaves like nets through the depths of the air; the sound of water was in the room and through the waves came the voices of birds singing.
1 Translations, 2 Upvotes, Last Activity 21 hours ago
Translate
unit 143
Every power poured its treasures on his head, and his hand lay there on the back of the sofa, as he had seen his hand lie when he was bathing, floating, on the top of the waves, while far away on shore he heard dogs barking and barking far away.
2 Translations, 2 Upvotes, Last Activity 3 hours ago
Translate
unit 144
Fear no more, says the heart in the body; fear no more.
1 Translations, 2 Upvotes, Last Activity 3 hours ago
Translate
unit 145
He was not afraid.
1 Translations, 2 Upvotes, Last Activity 3 hours ago
Translate
unit 146
At every moment Nature signified by some laughing hint like that gold spot which went round the wall--there, there, there--her determination to show, by brandishing her plumes, shaking her tresses, flinging her mantle this way and that, beautifully, always beautifully, and standing close up to breathe through her hollowed hands Shakespeare's words, her meaning.
2 Translations, 0 Upvotes, Last Activity 3 hours ago
Translate
unit 147
Rezia, sitting at the table twisting a hat in her hands, watched him; saw him smiling.
1 Translations, 2 Upvotes, Last Activity 7 hours ago
Translate
unit 148
He was happy then.
1 Translations, 2 Upvotes, Last Activity 7 hours ago
Translate
unit 149
But she could not bear to see him smiling.
1 Translations, 2 Upvotes, Last Activity 7 hours ago
Translate
unit 150
It was not marriage; it was not being one's husband to look strange like that, always to be starting, laughing, sitting hour after hour silent, or clutching her and telling her to write.
1 Translations, 2 Upvotes, Last Activity 3 hours ago
Translate
unit 151
The table drawer was full of those writings; about war; about Shakespeare; about great discoveries; how there is no death.
1 Translations, 2 Upvotes, Last Activity 3 hours ago
Translate
unit 152
Lately he had become excited suddenly for no reason (and both Dr. Holmes and Sir William Bradshaw said excitement was the worst thing for him), and waved his hands and cried out that he knew the truth!
1 Translations, 2 Upvotes, Last Activity 3 hours ago
Translate
unit 153
He knew everything!
1 Translations, 2 Upvotes, Last Activity 3 hours ago
Translate
unit 154
That man, his friend who was killed, Evans, had come, he said.
1 Translations, 2 Upvotes, Last Activity 3 hours ago
Translate
unit 155
He was singing behind the screen.
1 Translations, 0 Upvotes, Last Activity 7 hours ago
Translate
unit 156
She wrote it down just as he spoke it.
1 Translations, 0 Upvotes, Last Activity 7 hours ago
Translate
unit 157
Some things were very beautiful; others sheer nonsense.
1 Translations, 0 Upvotes, Last Activity 7 hours ago
Translate
unit 158
And he was always stopping in the middle, changing his mind; wanting to add something; hearing something new; listening with his hand up.
1 Translations, 0 Upvotes, Last Activity 7 hours ago
Translate
unit 159
But she heard nothing.
1 Translations, 0 Upvotes, Last Activity 7 hours ago
Translate
unit 160
And once they found the girl who did the room reading one of these papers in fits of laughter.
1 Translations, 0 Upvotes, Last Activity 7 hours ago
Translate
unit 161
It was a dreadful pity.
1 Translations, 0 Upvotes, Last Activity 3 hours ago
Translate
unit 162
For that made Septimus cry out about human cruelty--how they tear each other to pieces.
1 Translations, 0 Upvotes, Last Activity 3 hours ago
Translate
unit 163
The fallen, he said, they tear to pieces.
1 Translations, 0 Upvotes, Last Activity 3 hours ago
Translate
unit 164
"Holmes is on us," he would say, and he would invent stories about Holmes; Holmes eating porridge; Holmes reading Shakespeare--making himself roar with laughter or rage, for Dr. Holmes seemed to stand for something horrible to him.
0 Translations, 0 Upvotes, Last Activity None
Translate
unit 165
"Human nature," he called him.
0 Translations, 0 Upvotes, Last Activity None
Translate
unit 166
Then there were the visions.
0 Translations, 0 Upvotes, Last Activity None
Translate
unit 167
He was drowned, he used to say, and lying on a cliff with the gulls screaming over him.
0 Translations, 0 Upvotes, Last Activity None
Translate
unit 168
He would look over the edge of the sofa down into the sea.
0 Translations, 0 Upvotes, Last Activity None
Translate
unit 169
Or he was hearing music.
0 Translations, 0 Upvotes, Last Activity None
Translate
unit 170
Really it was only a barrel organ or some man crying in the street.
0 Translations, 0 Upvotes, Last Activity None
Translate
unit 171
But "Lovely!"
0 Translations, 0 Upvotes, Last Activity None
Translate
unit 172
he used to cry, and the tears would run down his cheeks, which was to her the most dreadful thing of all, to see a man like Septimus, who had fought, who was brave, crying.
0 Translations, 0 Upvotes, Last Activity None
Translate
unit 173
And he would lie listening until suddenly he would cry that he was falling down, down into the flames!
0 Translations, 0 Upvotes, Last Activity None
Translate
unit 174
Actually she would look for flames, it was so vivid.
0 Translations, 0 Upvotes, Last Activity None
Translate
unit 175
But there was nothing.
0 Translations, 0 Upvotes, Last Activity None
Translate
unit 176
They were alone in the room.
0 Translations, 0 Upvotes, Last Activity None
Translate
unit 177
It was a dream, she would tell him and so quiet him at last, but sometimes she was frightened too.
0 Translations, 0 Upvotes, Last Activity None
Translate
unit 178
She sighed as she sat sewing.
0 Translations, 0 Upvotes, Last Activity None
Translate
unit 179
Her sigh was tender and enchanting, like the wind outside a wood in the evening.
0 Translations, 0 Upvotes, Last Activity None
Translate
unit 180
Now she put down her scissors; now she turned to take something from the table.
0 Translations, 0 Upvotes, Last Activity None
Translate
unit 181
A little stir, a little crinkling, a little tapping built up something on the table there, where she sat sewing.
0 Translations, 0 Upvotes, Last Activity None
Translate
unit 182
Through his eyelashes he could see her blurred outline; her little black body; her face and hands; her turning movements at the table, as she took up a reel, or looked (she was apt to lose things) for her silk.
0 Translations, 0 Upvotes, Last Activity None
Translate
unit 183
She was making a hat for Mrs. Filmer's married daughter, whose name was--he had forgotten her name.
0 Translations, 0 Upvotes, Last Activity None
Translate
unit 184
"What is the name of Mrs. Filmer's married daughter?"
0 Translations, 0 Upvotes, Last Activity None
Translate
unit 185
he asked.
0 Translations, 0 Upvotes, Last Activity None
Translate
unit 186
"Mrs. Peters," said Rezia.
0 Translations, 0 Upvotes, Last Activity None
Translate
unit 187
She was afraid it was too small, she said, holding it before her.
0 Translations, 0 Upvotes, Last Activity None
Translate
unit 188
Mrs. Peters was a big woman; but she did not like her.
0 Translations, 0 Upvotes, Last Activity None
Translate
unit 189
It was only because Mrs. Filmer had been so good to them.
0 Translations, 0 Upvotes, Last Activity None
Translate
unit 190
"She gave me grapes this morning," she said--that Rezia wanted to do something to show that they were grateful.
0 Translations, 0 Upvotes, Last Activity None
Translate
unit 191
She had come into the room the other evening and found Mrs. Peters, who thought they were out, playing the gramophone.
0 Translations, 0 Upvotes, Last Activity None
Translate
unit 192
"Was it true?"
0 Translations, 0 Upvotes, Last Activity None
Translate
unit 193
he asked.
0 Translations, 0 Upvotes, Last Activity None
Translate
unit 194
She was playing the gramophone?
0 Translations, 0 Upvotes, Last Activity None
Translate
unit 195
Yes; she had told him about it at the time; she had found Mrs. Peters playing the gramophone.
0 Translations, 0 Upvotes, Last Activity None
Translate
unit 196
He began, very cautiously, to open his eyes, to see whether a gramophone was really there.
0 Translations, 0 Upvotes, Last Activity None
Translate
unit 197
But real things--real things were too exciting.
0 Translations, 0 Upvotes, Last Activity None
Translate
unit 198
He must be cautious.
0 Translations, 0 Upvotes, Last Activity None
Translate
unit 199
He would not go mad.
0 Translations, 0 Upvotes, Last Activity None
Translate
unit 200
First he looked at the fashion papers on the lower shelf, then, gradually at the gramophone with the green trumpet.
0 Translations, 0 Upvotes, Last Activity None
Translate
unit 201
Nothing could be more exact.
0 Translations, 0 Upvotes, Last Activity None
Translate
unit 202
And so, gathering courage, he looked at the sideboard; the plate of bananas; the engraving of Queen Victoria and the Prince Consort; at the mantelpiece, with the jar of roses.
0 Translations, 0 Upvotes, Last Activity None
Translate
unit 203
None of these things moved.
0 Translations, 0 Upvotes, Last Activity None
Translate
unit 204
All were still; all were real.
0 Translations, 0 Upvotes, Last Activity None
Translate
unit 205
"She is a woman with a spiteful tongue," said Rezia.
0 Translations, 0 Upvotes, Last Activity None
Translate
unit 206
"What does Mr. Peters do?"
0 Translations, 0 Upvotes, Last Activity None
Translate
unit 207
Septimus asked.
0 Translations, 0 Upvotes, Last Activity None
Translate
unit 208
"Ah," said Rezia, trying to remember.
0 Translations, 0 Upvotes, Last Activity None
Translate
unit 209
She thought Mrs. Filmer had said that he travelled for some company.
0 Translations, 0 Upvotes, Last Activity None
Translate
unit 210
"Just now he is in Hull," she said.
0 Translations, 0 Upvotes, Last Activity None
Translate
unit 211
"Just now!"
0 Translations, 0 Upvotes, Last Activity None
Translate
unit 212
She said that with her Italian accent.
0 Translations, 0 Upvotes, Last Activity None
Translate
unit 213
She said that herself.
0 Translations, 0 Upvotes, Last Activity None
Translate
unit 214
He shaded his eyes so that he might see only a little of her face at a time, first the chin, then the nose, then the forehead, in case it were deformed, or had some terrible mark on it.
0 Translations, 0 Upvotes, Last Activity None
Translate
unit 215
But no, there she was, perfectly natural, sewing, with the pursed lips that women have, the set, the melancholy expression, when sewing.
0 Translations, 0 Upvotes, Last Activity None
Translate
unit 216
But there was nothing terrible about it, he assured himself, looking a second time, a third time at her face, her hands, for what was frightening or disgusting in her as she sat there in broad daylight, sewing?
0 Translations, 0 Upvotes, Last Activity None
Translate
unit 217
Mrs. Peters had a spiteful tongue.
0 Translations, 0 Upvotes, Last Activity None
Translate
unit 218
Mr. Peters was in Hull.
0 Translations, 0 Upvotes, Last Activity None
Translate
unit 219
Why then rage and prophesy?
0 Translations, 0 Upvotes, Last Activity None
Translate
unit 220
Why fly scourged and outcast?
0 Translations, 0 Upvotes, Last Activity None
Translate
unit 221
Why be made to tremble and sob by the clouds?
0 Translations, 0 Upvotes, Last Activity None
Translate
unit 222
Why seek truths and deliver messages when Rezia sat sticking pins into the front of her dress, and Mr. Peters was in Hull?
0 Translations, 0 Upvotes, Last Activity None
Translate
unit 223
Miracles, revelations, agonies, loneliness, falling through the sea, down, down into the flames, all were burnt out, for he had a sense, as he watched Rezia trimming the straw hat for Mrs. Peters, of a coverlet of flowers.
0 Translations, 0 Upvotes, Last Activity None
Translate
unit 224
"It's too small for Mrs. Peters," said Septimus.
0 Translations, 0 Upvotes, Last Activity None
Translate
unit 225
For the first time for days he was speaking as he used to do!
0 Translations, 0 Upvotes, Last Activity None
Translate
unit 226
Of course it was--absurdly small, she said.
0 Translations, 0 Upvotes, Last Activity None
Translate
unit 227
But Mrs. Peters had chosen it.
0 Translations, 0 Upvotes, Last Activity None
Translate
unit 228
He took it out of her hands.
0 Translations, 0 Upvotes, Last Activity None
Translate
unit 229
He said it was an organ grinder's monkey's hat.
0 Translations, 0 Upvotes, Last Activity None
Translate
unit 230
How it rejoiced her that!
0 Translations, 0 Upvotes, Last Activity None
Translate
unit 231
Not for weeks had they laughed like this together, poking fun privately like married people.
0 Translations, 0 Upvotes, Last Activity None
Translate
unit 232
What she meant was that if Mrs. Filmer had come in, or Mrs. Peters or anybody they would not have understood what she and Septimus were laughing at.
0 Translations, 0 Upvotes, Last Activity None
Translate
unit 233
"There," she said, pinning a rose to one side of the hat.
0 Translations, 0 Upvotes, Last Activity None
Translate
unit 234
Never had she felt so happy!
0 Translations, 0 Upvotes, Last Activity None
Translate
unit 235
Never in her life!
0 Translations, 0 Upvotes, Last Activity None
Translate
unit 236
But that was still more ridiculous, Septimus said.
0 Translations, 0 Upvotes, Last Activity None
Translate
unit 237
Now the poor woman looked like a pig at a fair.
0 Translations, 0 Upvotes, Last Activity None
Translate
unit 238
(Nobody ever made her laugh as Septimus did.)
0 Translations, 0 Upvotes, Last Activity None
Translate
unit 239
What had she got in her work-box?
0 Translations, 0 Upvotes, Last Activity None
Translate
unit 240
She had ribbons and beads, tassels, artificial flowers.
0 Translations, 0 Upvotes, Last Activity None
Translate
unit 241
She tumbled them out on the table.
0 Translations, 0 Upvotes, Last Activity None
Translate
unit 242
He began putting odd colours together--for though he had no fingers, could not even do up a parcel, he had a wonderful eye, and often he was right, sometimes absurd, of course, but sometimes wonderfully right.
0 Translations, 0 Upvotes, Last Activity None
Translate
unit 243
"She shall have a beautiful hat!"
0 Translations, 0 Upvotes, Last Activity None
Translate
unit 244
he murmured, taking up this and that, Rezia kneeling by his side, looking over his shoulder.
0 Translations, 0 Upvotes, Last Activity None
Translate
unit 245
Now it was finished--that is to say the design; she must stitch it together.
0 Translations, 0 Upvotes, Last Activity None
Translate
unit 246
But she must be very, very careful, he said, to keep it just as he had made it.
0 Translations, 0 Upvotes, Last Activity None
Translate
unit 247
So she sewed.
0 Translations, 0 Upvotes, Last Activity None
Translate
unit 248
When she sewed, he thought, she made a sound like a kettle on the hob; bubbling, murmuring, always busy, her strong little pointed fingers pinching and poking; her needle flashing straight.
0 Translations, 0 Upvotes, Last Activity None
Translate
unit 249
The sun might go in and out, on the tassels, on the wall-paper, but he would wait, he thought, stretching out his feet, looking at his ringed sock at the end of the sofa; he would wait in this warm place, this pocket of still air, which one comes on at the edge of a wood sometimes in the evening, when, because of a fall in the ground, or some arrangement of the trees (one must be scientific above all, scientific), warmth lingers, and the air buffets the cheek like the wing of a bird.
0 Translations, 0 Upvotes, Last Activity None
Translate
unit 250
"There it is," said Rezia, twirling Mrs. Peters' hat on the tips of her fingers.
0 Translations, 0 Upvotes, Last Activity None
Translate
unit 251
"That'll do for the moment.
0 Translations, 0 Upvotes, Last Activity None
Translate
unit 252
Later .
0 Translations, 0 Upvotes, Last Activity None
Translate
unit 253
.
0 Translations, 0 Upvotes, Last Activity None
Translate
unit 254
."
0 Translations, 0 Upvotes, Last Activity None
Translate
unit 255
her sentence bubbled away drip, drip, drip, like a contented tap left running.
0 Translations, 0 Upvotes, Last Activity None
Translate
unit 256
It was wonderful.
0 Translations, 0 Upvotes, Last Activity None
Translate
unit 257
Never had he done anything which made him feel so proud.
0 Translations, 0 Upvotes, Last Activity None
Translate
unit 258
It was so real, it was so substantial, Mrs. Peters' hat.
0 Translations, 0 Upvotes, Last Activity None
Translate
unit 259
"Just look at it," he said.
0 Translations, 0 Upvotes, Last Activity None
Translate
unit 260
Yes, it would always make her happy to see that hat.
0 Translations, 0 Upvotes, Last Activity None
Translate
unit 261
He had become himself then, he had laughed then.
0 Translations, 0 Upvotes, Last Activity None
Translate
unit 262
They had been alone together.
0 Translations, 0 Upvotes, Last Activity None
Translate
unit 263
Always she would like that hat.
0 Translations, 0 Upvotes, Last Activity None
Translate
unit 264
He told her to try it on.
0 Translations, 0 Upvotes, Last Activity None
Translate
unit 265
"But I must look so queer!"
0 Translations, 0 Upvotes, Last Activity None
Translate
unit 266
she cried, running over to the glass and looking first this side then that.
0 Translations, 0 Upvotes, Last Activity None
Translate
unit 267
Then she snatched it off again, for there was a tap at the door.
0 Translations, 0 Upvotes, Last Activity None
Translate
unit 268
Could it be Sir William Bradshaw?
0 Translations, 0 Upvotes, Last Activity None
Translate
unit 269
Had he sent already?
0 Translations, 0 Upvotes, Last Activity None
Translate
unit 270
No!
0 Translations, 0 Upvotes, Last Activity None
Translate
unit 271
it was only the small girl with the evening paper.
0 Translations, 0 Upvotes, Last Activity None
Translate
unit 272
What always happened, then happened--what happened every night of their lives.
0 Translations, 0 Upvotes, Last Activity None
Translate
unit 273
The small girl sucked her thumb at the door; Rezia went down on her knees; Rezia cooed and kissed; Rezia got a bag of sweets out of the table drawer.
0 Translations, 0 Upvotes, Last Activity None
Translate
unit 274
For so it always happened.
0 Translations, 0 Upvotes, Last Activity None
Translate
unit 275
First one thing, then another.
0 Translations, 0 Upvotes, Last Activity None
Translate
unit 276
So she built it up, first one thing and then another.
0 Translations, 0 Upvotes, Last Activity None
Translate
unit 277
Dancing, skipping, round and round the room they went.
0 Translations, 0 Upvotes, Last Activity None
Translate
unit 278
He took the paper.
0 Translations, 0 Upvotes, Last Activity None
Translate
unit 279
Surrey was all out, he read.
0 Translations, 0 Upvotes, Last Activity None
Translate
unit 280
There was a heat wave.
0 Translations, 0 Upvotes, Last Activity None
Translate
unit 281
Rezia repeated: Surrey was all out.
0 Translations, 0 Upvotes, Last Activity None
Translate
unit 282
There was a heat wave, making it part of the game she was playing with Mrs. Filmer's grandchild, both of them laughing, chattering at the same time, at their game.
0 Translations, 0 Upvotes, Last Activity None
Translate
unit 283
He was very tired.
0 Translations, 0 Upvotes, Last Activity None
Translate
unit 284
He was very happy.
0 Translations, 0 Upvotes, Last Activity None
Translate
unit 285
He would sleep.
0 Translations, 0 Upvotes, Last Activity None
Translate
unit 286
He shut his eyes.
0 Translations, 0 Upvotes, Last Activity None
Translate
unit 287
But directly he saw nothing the sounds of the game became fainter and stranger and sounded like the cries of people seeking and not finding, and passing further and further away.
0 Translations, 0 Upvotes, Last Activity None
Translate
unit 288
They had lost him!
0 Translations, 0 Upvotes, Last Activity None
Translate
unit 289
He started up in terror.
0 Translations, 0 Upvotes, Last Activity None
Translate
unit 290
What did he see?
0 Translations, 0 Upvotes, Last Activity None
Translate
unit 291
The plate of bananas on the sideboard.
0 Translations, 0 Upvotes, Last Activity None
Translate
unit 292
Nobody was there (Rezia had taken the child to its mother.
0 Translations, 0 Upvotes, Last Activity None
Translate
unit 293
It was bedtime).
0 Translations, 0 Upvotes, Last Activity None
Translate
unit 294
That was it: to be alone forever.
0 Translations, 0 Upvotes, Last Activity None
Translate
unit 295
That was the doom pronounced in Milan when he came into the room and saw them cutting out buckram shapes with their scissors; to be alone forever.
0 Translations, 0 Upvotes, Last Activity None
Translate
unit 296
He was alone with the sideboard and the bananas.
0 Translations, 0 Upvotes, Last Activity None
Translate
unit 297
He was alone, exposed on this bleak eminence, stretched out--but not on a hill-top; not on a crag; on Mrs. Filmer's sitting-room sofa.
0 Translations, 0 Upvotes, Last Activity None
Translate
unit 298
As for the visions, the faces, the voices of the dead, where were they?
0 Translations, 0 Upvotes, Last Activity None
Translate
unit 299
There was a screen in front of him, with black bulrushes and blue swallows.
0 Translations, 0 Upvotes, Last Activity None
Translate
unit 300
Where he had once seen mountains, where he had seen faces, where he had seen beauty, there was a screen.
0 Translations, 0 Upvotes, Last Activity None
Translate
unit 301
"Evans!"
0 Translations, 0 Upvotes, Last Activity None
Translate
unit 302
he cried.
0 Translations, 0 Upvotes, Last Activity None
Translate
unit 303
There was no answer.
0 Translations, 0 Upvotes, Last Activity None
Translate
unit 304
A mouse had squeaked, or a curtain rustled.
0 Translations, 0 Upvotes, Last Activity None
Translate
unit 305
Those were the voices of the dead.
0 Translations, 0 Upvotes, Last Activity None
Translate
unit 306
The screen, the coalscuttle, the sideboard remained to him.
0 Translations, 0 Upvotes, Last Activity None
Translate
unit 307
Let him then face the screen, the coal-scuttle and the sideboard .
0 Translations, 0 Upvotes, Last Activity None
Translate
unit 308
.
0 Translations, 0 Upvotes, Last Activity None
Translate
unit 309
.
0 Translations, 0 Upvotes, Last Activity None
Translate
unit 310
but Rezia burst into the room chattering.
0 Translations, 0 Upvotes, Last Activity None
Translate
unit 311
Some letter had come.
0 Translations, 0 Upvotes, Last Activity None
Translate
unit 312
Everybody's plans were changed.
0 Translations, 0 Upvotes, Last Activity None
Translate
unit 313
Mrs. Filmer would not be able to go to Brighton after all.
0 Translations, 0 Upvotes, Last Activity None
Translate
unit 314
There was no time to let Mrs. Williams know, and really Rezia thought it very, very annoying, when she caught sight of the hat and thought .
0 Translations, 0 Upvotes, Last Activity None
Translate
unit 315
.
0 Translations, 0 Upvotes, Last Activity None
Translate
unit 316
.
0 Translations, 0 Upvotes, Last Activity None
Translate
unit 317
perhaps .
0 Translations, 0 Upvotes, Last Activity None
Translate
unit 318
.
0 Translations, 0 Upvotes, Last Activity None
Translate
unit 319
.
0 Translations, 0 Upvotes, Last Activity None
Translate
unit 320
she .
0 Translations, 0 Upvotes, Last Activity None
Translate
unit 321
.
0 Translations, 0 Upvotes, Last Activity None
Translate
unit 322
.
0 Translations, 0 Upvotes, Last Activity None
Translate
unit 323
might just make a little.
0 Translations, 0 Upvotes, Last Activity None
Translate
unit 324
.
0 Translations, 0 Upvotes, Last Activity None
Translate
unit 325
.
0 Translations, 0 Upvotes, Last Activity None
Translate
unit 326
.
0 Translations, 0 Upvotes, Last Activity None
Translate
unit 327
Her voice died out in contented melody.
0 Translations, 0 Upvotes, Last Activity None
Translate
unit 328
"Ah, damn!"
0 Translations, 0 Upvotes, Last Activity None
Translate
unit 329
she cried (it was a joke of theirs, her swearing), the needle had broken.
0 Translations, 0 Upvotes, Last Activity None
Translate
unit 330
Hat, child, Brighton, needle.
0 Translations, 0 Upvotes, Last Activity None
Translate
unit 331
She built it up; first one thing, then another, she built it up, sewing.
0 Translations, 0 Upvotes, Last Activity None
Translate
unit 332
She wanted him to say whether by moving the rose she had improved the hat.
0 Translations, 0 Upvotes, Last Activity None
Translate
unit 333
She sat on the end of the sofa.
0 Translations, 0 Upvotes, Last Activity None
Translate
unit 334
They were perfectly happy now, she said, suddenly, putting the hat down.
0 Translations, 0 Upvotes, Last Activity None
Translate
unit 335
For she could say anything to him now.
0 Translations, 0 Upvotes, Last Activity None
Translate
unit 336
She could say whatever came into her head.
0 Translations, 0 Upvotes, Last Activity None
Translate
unit 337
That was almost the first thing she had felt about him, that night in the café when he had come in with his English friends.
0 Translations, 0 Upvotes, Last Activity None
Translate
unit 338
He had come in, rather shyly, looking round him, and his hat had fallen when he hung it up.
0 Translations, 0 Upvotes, Last Activity None
Translate
unit 339
That she could remember.
0 Translations, 0 Upvotes, Last Activity None
Translate
unit 340
She knew he was English, though not one of the large Englishmen her sister admired, for he was always thin; but he had a beautiful fresh colour; and with his big nose, his bright eyes, his way of sitting a little hunched made her think, she had often told him, of a young hawk, that first evening she saw him, when they were playing dominoes, and he had come in--of a young hawk; but with her he was always very gentle.
0 Translations, 0 Upvotes, Last Activity None
Translate
unit 341
She had never seen him wild or drunk, only suffering sometimes through this terrible war, but even so, when she came in, he would put it all away.
0 Translations, 0 Upvotes, Last Activity None
Translate
unit 342
Anything, anything in the whole world, any little bother with her work, anything that struck her to say she would tell him, and he understood at once.
0 Translations, 0 Upvotes, Last Activity None
Translate
unit 343
Her own family even were not the same.
0 Translations, 0 Upvotes, Last Activity None
Translate
unit 344
Being older than she was and being so clever--how serious he was, wanting her to read Shakespeare before she could even read a child's story in English!--being so much more experienced, he could help her.
0 Translations, 0 Upvotes, Last Activity None
Translate
unit 345
And she too could help him.
0 Translations, 0 Upvotes, Last Activity None
Translate
unit 346
But this hat now.
0 Translations, 0 Upvotes, Last Activity None
Translate
unit 347
And then (it was getting late) Sir William Bradshaw.
0 Translations, 0 Upvotes, Last Activity None
Translate
unit 348
She held her hands to her head, waiting for him to say did he like the hat or not, and as she sat there, waiting, looking down, he could feel her mind, like a bird, falling from branch to branch, and always alighting, quite rightly; he could follow her mind, as she sat there in one of those loose lax poses that came to her naturally and, if he should say anything, at once she smiled, like a bird alighting with all its claws firm upon the bough.
0 Translations, 0 Upvotes, Last Activity None
Translate
unit 349
But he remembered Bradshaw said, "The people we are most fond of are not good for us when we are ill." Bradshaw said, he must be taught to rest.
0 Translations, 0 Upvotes, Last Activity None
Translate
unit 350
Bradshaw said they must be separated.
0 Translations, 0 Upvotes, Last Activity None
Translate
unit 351
"Must," "must," why "must"?
0 Translations, 0 Upvotes, Last Activity None
Translate
unit 352
What power had Bradshaw over him?
0 Translations, 0 Upvotes, Last Activity None
Translate
unit 353
"What right has Bradshaw to say 'must' to me?"
0 Translations, 0 Upvotes, Last Activity None
Translate
unit 354
he demanded.
0 Translations, 0 Upvotes, Last Activity None
Translate
unit 355
"It is because you talked of killing yourself," said Rezia.
0 Translations, 0 Upvotes, Last Activity None
Translate
unit 356
(Mercifully, she could now say anything to Septimus.)
0 Translations, 0 Upvotes, Last Activity None
Translate
unit 357
So he was in their power!
0 Translations, 0 Upvotes, Last Activity None
Translate
unit 358
Holmes and Bradshaw were on him!
0 Translations, 0 Upvotes, Last Activity None
Translate
unit 359
The brute with the red nostrils was snuffing into every secret place!
0 Translations, 0 Upvotes, Last Activity None
Translate
unit 360
"Must" it could say!
0 Translations, 0 Upvotes, Last Activity None
Translate
unit 361
Where were his papers?
0 Translations, 0 Upvotes, Last Activity None
Translate
unit 362
the things he had written?
0 Translations, 0 Upvotes, Last Activity None
Translate
unit 363
She brought him his papers, the things he had written, things she had written for him.
0 Translations, 0 Upvotes, Last Activity None
Translate
unit 364
She tumbled them out on to the sofa.
0 Translations, 0 Upvotes, Last Activity None
Translate
unit 365
They looked at them together.
0 Translations, 0 Upvotes, Last Activity None
Translate
unit 366
Diagrams, designs, little men and women brandishing sticks for arms, with wings--were they?--on their backs; circles traced round shillings and sixpences--the suns and stars; zigzagging precipices with mountaineers ascending roped together, exactly like knives and forks; sea pieces with little faces laughing out of what might perhaps be waves: the map of the world.
0 Translations, 0 Upvotes, Last Activity None
Translate
unit 367
Burn them!
0 Translations, 0 Upvotes, Last Activity None
Translate
unit 368
he cried.
0 Translations, 0 Upvotes, Last Activity None
Translate
unit 369
Now for his writings; how the dead sing behind rhododendron bushes; odes to Time; conversations with Shakespeare; Evans, Evans, Evans--his messages from the dead; do not cut down trees; tell the Prime Minister.
0 Translations, 0 Upvotes, Last Activity None
Translate
unit 370
Universal love: the meaning of the world.
0 Translations, 0 Upvotes, Last Activity None
Translate
unit 371
Burn them!
0 Translations, 0 Upvotes, Last Activity None
Translate
unit 372
he cried.
0 Translations, 0 Upvotes, Last Activity None
Translate
unit 373
But Rezia laid her hands on them.
0 Translations, 0 Upvotes, Last Activity None
Translate
unit 374
Some were very beautiful, she thought.
0 Translations, 0 Upvotes, Last Activity None
Translate
unit 375
She would tie them up (for she had no envelope) with a piece of silk.
0 Translations, 0 Upvotes, Last Activity None
Translate
unit 376
Even if they took him, she said, she would go with him.
0 Translations, 0 Upvotes, Last Activity None
Translate
unit 377
They could not separate them against their wills, she said.
0 Translations, 0 Upvotes, Last Activity None
Translate
unit 378
Shuffling the edges straight, she did up the papers, and tied the parcel almost without looking, sitting beside him, he thought, as if all her petals were about her.
0 Translations, 0 Upvotes, Last Activity None
Translate
unit 379
She was a flowering tree; and through her branches looked out the face of a lawgiver, who had reached a sanctuary where she feared no one; not Holmes; not Bradshaw; a miracle, a triumph, the last and greatest.
0 Translations, 0 Upvotes, Last Activity None
Translate
unit 380
Staggering he saw her mount the appalling staircase, laden with Holmes and Bradshaw, men who never weighed less than eleven stone six, who sent their wives to Court, men who made ten thousand a year and talked of proportion; who different in their verdicts (for Holmes said one thing, Bradshaw another), yet judges they were; who mixed the vision and the sideboard; saw nothing clear, yet ruled, yet inflicted.
0 Translations, 0 Upvotes, Last Activity None
Translate
unit 381
"Must" they said.
0 Translations, 0 Upvotes, Last Activity None
Translate
unit 382
Over them she triumphed.
0 Translations, 0 Upvotes, Last Activity None
Translate
unit 383
"There!"
0 Translations, 0 Upvotes, Last Activity None
Translate
unit 384
she said.
0 Translations, 0 Upvotes, Last Activity None
Translate
unit 385
The papers were tied up.
0 Translations, 0 Upvotes, Last Activity None
Translate
unit 386
No one should get at them.
0 Translations, 0 Upvotes, Last Activity None
Translate
unit 387
She would put them away.
0 Translations, 0 Upvotes, Last Activity None
Translate
unit 388
And, she said, nothing should separate them.
0 Translations, 0 Upvotes, Last Activity None
Translate
unit 389
She sat down beside him and called him by the name of that hawk or crow which being malicious and a great destroyer of crops was precisely like him.
0 Translations, 0 Upvotes, Last Activity None
Translate
unit 390
No one could separate them, she said.
0 Translations, 0 Upvotes, Last Activity None
Translate
unit 391
Then she got up to go into the bedroom to pack their things, but hearing voices downstairs and thinking that Dr. Holmes had perhaps called, ran down to prevent him coming up.
0 Translations, 0 Upvotes, Last Activity None
Translate
unit 392
Septimus could hear her talking to Holmes on the staircase.
0 Translations, 0 Upvotes, Last Activity None
Translate
unit 393
"My dear lady, I have come as a friend," Holmes was saying.
0 Translations, 0 Upvotes, Last Activity None
Translate
unit 394
"No.
0 Translations, 0 Upvotes, Last Activity None
Translate
unit 395
I will not allow you to see my husband," she said.
0 Translations, 0 Upvotes, Last Activity None
Translate
unit 396
He could see her, like a little hen, with her wings spread barring his passage.
0 Translations, 0 Upvotes, Last Activity None
Translate
unit 397
But Holmes persevered.
0 Translations, 0 Upvotes, Last Activity None
Translate
unit 398
"My dear lady, allow me .
0 Translations, 0 Upvotes, Last Activity None
Translate
unit 399
.
0 Translations, 0 Upvotes, Last Activity None
Translate
unit 400
."
0 Translations, 0 Upvotes, Last Activity None
Translate
unit 401
Holmes said, putting her aside (Holmes was a powerfully built man).
0 Translations, 0 Upvotes, Last Activity None
Translate
unit 402
Holmes was coming upstairs.
0 Translations, 0 Upvotes, Last Activity None
Translate
unit 403
Holmes would burst open the door.
0 Translations, 0 Upvotes, Last Activity None
Translate
unit 404
Holmes would say "In a funk, eh?"
0 Translations, 0 Upvotes, Last Activity None
Translate
unit 405
Holmes would get him.
0 Translations, 0 Upvotes, Last Activity None
Translate
unit 406
But no; not Holmes; not Bradshaw.
0 Translations, 0 Upvotes, Last Activity None
Translate
unit 407
Getting up rather unsteadily, hopping indeed from foot to foot, he considered Mrs. Filmer's nice clean bread knife with "Bread" carved on the handle.
0 Translations, 0 Upvotes, Last Activity None
Translate
unit 408
Ah, but one mustn't spoil that.
0 Translations, 0 Upvotes, Last Activity None
Translate
unit 409
The gas fire?
0 Translations, 0 Upvotes, Last Activity None
Translate
unit 410
But it was too late now.
0 Translations, 0 Upvotes, Last Activity None
Translate
unit 411
Holmes was coming.
0 Translations, 0 Upvotes, Last Activity None
Translate
unit 412
Razors he might have got, but Rezia, who always did that sort of thing, had packed them.
0 Translations, 0 Upvotes, Last Activity None
Translate
unit 413
There remained only the window, the large Bloomsbury-lodging house window, the tiresome, the troublesome, and rather melodramatic business of opening the window and throwing himself out.
0 Translations, 0 Upvotes, Last Activity None
Translate
unit 414
It was their idea of tragedy, not his or Rezia's (for she was with him).
0 Translations, 0 Upvotes, Last Activity None
Translate
unit 415
Holmes and Bradshaw like that sort of thing.
0 Translations, 0 Upvotes, Last Activity None
Translate
unit 416
(He sat on the sill.)
0 Translations, 0 Upvotes, Last Activity None
Translate
unit 417
But he would wait till the very last moment.
0 Translations, 0 Upvotes, Last Activity None
Translate
unit 418
He did not want to die.
0 Translations, 0 Upvotes, Last Activity None
Translate
unit 419
Life was good.
0 Translations, 0 Upvotes, Last Activity None
Translate
unit 420
The sun hot.
0 Translations, 0 Upvotes, Last Activity None
Translate
unit 421
Only human beings--what did they want?
0 Translations, 0 Upvotes, Last Activity None
Translate
unit 422
Coming down the staircase opposite an old man stopped and stared at him.
0 Translations, 0 Upvotes, Last Activity None
Translate
unit 423
Holmes was at the door.
0 Translations, 0 Upvotes, Last Activity None
Translate
unit 424
"I'll give it you!"
0 Translations, 0 Upvotes, Last Activity None
Translate
unit 425
he cried, and flung himself vigorously, violently down on to Mrs. Filmer's area railings.
0 Translations, 0 Upvotes, Last Activity None
Translate
unit 426
"The coward!"
0 Translations, 0 Upvotes, Last Activity None
Translate
unit 427
cried Dr. Holmes, bursting the door open.
0 Translations, 0 Upvotes, Last Activity None
Translate
unit 428
Rezia ran to the window, she saw; she understood.
0 Translations, 0 Upvotes, Last Activity None
Translate
unit 429
Dr. Holmes and Mrs. Filmer collided with each other.
0 Translations, 0 Upvotes, Last Activity None
Translate
unit 430
Mrs. Filmer flapped her apron and made her hide her eyes in the bedroom.
0 Translations, 0 Upvotes, Last Activity None
Translate
unit 431
There was a great deal of running up and down stairs.
0 Translations, 0 Upvotes, Last Activity None
Translate
unit 432
Dr. Holmes came in--white as a sheet, shaking all over, with a glass in his hand.
0 Translations, 0 Upvotes, Last Activity None
Translate
unit 433
She must be brave and drink something, he said (What was it?
0 Translations, 0 Upvotes, Last Activity None
Translate
unit 434
Something sweet), for her husband was horribly mangled, would not recover consciousness, she must not see him, must be spared as much as possible, would have the inquest to go through, poor young woman.
0 Translations, 0 Upvotes, Last Activity None
Translate
unit 435
Who could have foretold it?
0 Translations, 0 Upvotes, Last Activity None
Translate
unit 436
A sudden impulse, no one was in the least to blame (he told Mrs. Filmer).
0 Translations, 0 Upvotes, Last Activity None
Translate
unit 437
And why the devil he did it, Dr. Holmes could not conceive.
0 Translations, 0 Upvotes, Last Activity None
Translate
unit 438
It seemed to her as she drank the sweet stuff that she was opening long windows, stepping out into some garden.
0 Translations, 0 Upvotes, Last Activity None
Translate
unit 439
But where?
0 Translations, 0 Upvotes, Last Activity None
Translate
unit 440
The clock was striking--one, two, three: how sensible the sound was; compared with all this thumping and whispering; like Septimus himself.
0 Translations, 0 Upvotes, Last Activity None
Translate
unit 441
She was falling asleep.
0 Translations, 0 Upvotes, Last Activity None
Translate
unit 442
But the clock went on striking, four, five, six and Mrs. Filmer waving her apron (they wouldn't bring the body in here, would they?)
0 Translations, 0 Upvotes, Last Activity None
Translate
unit 443
seemed part of that garden; or a flag.
0 Translations, 0 Upvotes, Last Activity None
Translate
unit 444
She had once seen a flag slowly rippling out from a mast when she stayed with her aunt at Venice.
0 Translations, 0 Upvotes, Last Activity None
Translate
unit 445
Men killed in battle were thus saluted, and Septimus had been through the War.
0 Translations, 0 Upvotes, Last Activity None
Translate
unit 446
Of her memories, most were happy.
0 Translations, 0 Upvotes, Last Activity None
Translate
unit 447
She put on her hat, and ran through cornfields--where could it have been?--on to some hill, somewhere near the sea, for there were ships, gulls, butterflies; they sat on a cliff.
0 Translations, 0 Upvotes, Last Activity None
Translate
unit 448
In London too, there they sat, and, half dreaming, came to her through the bedroom door, rain falling, whisperings, stirrings among dry corn, the caress of the sea, as it seemed to her, hollowing them in its arched shell and murmuring to her laid on shore, strewn she felt, like flying flowers over some tomb.
0 Translations, 0 Upvotes, Last Activity None
Translate
unit 449
"He is dead," she said, smiling at the poor old woman who guarded her with her honest light-blue eyes fixed on the door.
0 Translations, 0 Upvotes, Last Activity None
Translate
unit 450
(They wouldn't bring him in here, would they?)
0 Translations, 0 Upvotes, Last Activity None
Translate
unit 451
But Mrs. Filmer pooh-poohed.
0 Translations, 0 Upvotes, Last Activity None
Translate
unit 452
Oh no, oh no!
0 Translations, 0 Upvotes, Last Activity None
Translate
unit 453
They were carrying him away now.
0 Translations, 0 Upvotes, Last Activity None
Translate
unit 454
Ought she not to be told?
0 Translations, 0 Upvotes, Last Activity None
Translate
unit 455
Married people ought to be together, Mrs. Filmer thought.
0 Translations, 0 Upvotes, Last Activity None
Translate
unit 456
But they must do as the doctor said.
0 Translations, 0 Upvotes, Last Activity None
Translate
unit 457
"Let her sleep," said Dr. Holmes, feeling her pulse.
0 Translations, 0 Upvotes, Last Activity None
Translate
unit 458
She saw the large outline of his body standing dark against the window.
0 Translations, 0 Upvotes, Last Activity None
Translate
unit 459
So that was Dr. Holmes.
0 Translations, 0 Upvotes, Last Activity None
Translate
unit 460
One of the triumphs of civilisation, Peter Walsh thought.
0 Translations, 0 Upvotes, Last Activity None
Translate
unit 461
It is one of the triumphs of civilisation, as the light high bell of the ambulance sounded.
0 Translations, 0 Upvotes, Last Activity None
Translate
unit 462
Swiftly, cleanly the ambulance sped to the hospital, having picked up instantly, humanely, some poor devil; some one hit on the head, struck down by disease, knocked over perhaps a minute or so ago at one of these crossings, as might happen to oneself.
0 Translations, 0 Upvotes, Last Activity None
Translate
unit 463
That was civilisation.
0 Translations, 0 Upvotes, Last Activity None
Translate
unit 464
It struck him coming back from the East--the efficiency, the organisation, the communal spirit of London.
0 Translations, 0 Upvotes, Last Activity None
Translate
unit 465
Every cart or carriage of its own accord drew aside to let the ambulance pass.
0 Translations, 0 Upvotes, Last Activity None
Translate
unit 466
Perhaps it was morbid; or was it not touching rather, the respect which they showed this ambulance with its victim inside--busy men hurrying home yet instantly bethinking them as it passed of some wife; or presumably how easily it might have been them there, stretched on a shelf with a doctor and a nurse.
0 Translations, 0 Upvotes, Last Activity None
Translate
unit 467
.
0 Translations, 0 Upvotes, Last Activity None
Translate
unit 468
.
0 Translations, 0 Upvotes, Last Activity None
Translate
unit 469
.
0 Translations, 0 Upvotes, Last Activity None
Translate
unit 470
Ah, but thinking became morbid, sentimental, directly one began conjuring up doctors, dead bodies; a little glow of pleasure, a sort of lust too over the visual impression warned one not to go on with that sort of thing any more--fatal to art, fatal to friendship.
0 Translations, 0 Upvotes, Last Activity None
Translate
unit 471
True.
0 Translations, 0 Upvotes, Last Activity None
Translate
unit 472
And yet, thought Peter Walsh, as the ambulance turned the corner though the light high bell could be heard down the next street and still farther as it crossed the Tottenham Court Road, chiming constantly, it is the privilege of loneliness; in privacy one may do as one chooses.
0 Translations, 0 Upvotes, Last Activity None
Translate
unit 473
One might weep if no one saw.
0 Translations, 0 Upvotes, Last Activity None
Translate
unit 474
It had been his undoing--this susceptibility--in Anglo-Indian society; not weeping at the right time, or laughing either.
0 Translations, 0 Upvotes, Last Activity None
Translate
unit 475
I have that in me, he thought standing by the pillar-box, which could now dissolve in tears.
0 Translations, 0 Upvotes, Last Activity None
Translate
unit 476
Why, Heaven knows.
0 Translations, 0 Upvotes, Last Activity None
Translate
unit 477
Beauty of some sort probably, and the weight of the day, which beginning with that visit to Clarissa had exhausted him with its heat, its intensity, and the drip, drip, of one impression after another down into that cellar where they stood, deep, dark, and no one would ever know.
0 Translations, 0 Upvotes, Last Activity None
Translate
unit 478
Partly for that reason, its secrecy, complete and inviolable, he had found life like an unknown garden, full of turns and corners, surprising, yes; really it took one's breath away, these moments; there coming to him by the pillar-box opposite the British Museum one of them, a moment, in which things came together; this ambulance; and life and death.
0 Translations, 0 Upvotes, Last Activity None
Translate
unit 479
It was as if he were sucked up to some very high roof by that rush of emotion and the rest of him, like a white shell-sprinkled beach, left bare.
0 Translations, 0 Upvotes, Last Activity None
Translate
unit 480
It had been his undoing in Anglo-Indian society--this susceptibility.
0 Translations, 0 Upvotes, Last Activity None
Translate
unit 481
Clarissa once, going on top of an omnibus with him somewhere, Clarissa superficially at least, so easily moved, now in despair, now in the best of spirits, all aquiver in those days and such good company, spotting queer little scenes, names, people from the top of a bus, for they used to explore London and bring back bags full of treasures from the Caledonian market--Clarissa had a theory in those days--they had heaps of theories, always theories, as young people have.
0 Translations, 0 Upvotes, Last Activity None
Translate
unit 482
It was to explain the feeling they had of dissatisfaction; not knowing people; not being known.
0 Translations, 0 Upvotes, Last Activity None
Translate
unit 483
For how could they know each other?
0 Translations, 0 Upvotes, Last Activity None
Translate
unit 484
You met every day; then not for six months, or years.
0 Translations, 0 Upvotes, Last Activity None
Translate
unit 485
It was unsatisfactory, they agreed, how little one knew people.
0 Translations, 0 Upvotes, Last Activity None
Translate
unit 486
But she said, sitting on the bus going up Shaftesbury Avenue, she felt herself everywhere; not "here, here, here"; and she tapped the back of the seat; but everywhere.
0 Translations, 0 Upvotes, Last Activity None
Translate
unit 487
She waved her hand, going up Shaftesbury Avenue.
0 Translations, 0 Upvotes, Last Activity None
Translate
unit 488
She was all that.
0 Translations, 0 Upvotes, Last Activity None
Translate
unit 489
So that to know her, or any one, one must seek out the people who completed them; even the places.
0 Translations, 0 Upvotes, Last Activity None
Translate
unit 490
Odd affinities she had with people she had never spoken to, some woman in the street, some man behind a counter--even trees, or barns.
0 Translations, 0 Upvotes, Last Activity None
Translate
unit 491
It ended in a transcendental theory which, with her horror of death, allowed her to believe, or say that she believed (for all her scepticism), that since our apparitions, the part of us which appears, are so momentary compared with the other, the unseen part of us, which spreads wide, the unseen might survive, be recovered somehow attached to this person or that, or even haunting certain places after death .
0 Translations, 0 Upvotes, Last Activity None
Translate
unit 492
.
0 Translations, 0 Upvotes, Last Activity None
Translate
unit 493
.
0 Translations, 0 Upvotes, Last Activity None
Translate
unit 494
perhaps--perhaps.
0 Translations, 0 Upvotes, Last Activity None
Translate
unit 495
Looking back over that long friendship of almost thirty years her theory worked to this extent.
0 Translations, 0 Upvotes, Last Activity None
Translate
unit 496
Brief, broken, often painful as their actual meetings had been what with his absences and interruptions (this morning, for instance, in came Elizabeth, like a long-legged colt, handsome, dumb, just as he was beginning to talk to Clarissa) the effect of them on his life was immeasurable.
0 Translations, 0 Upvotes, Last Activity None
Translate
unit 497
There was a mystery about it.
0 Translations, 0 Upvotes, Last Activity None
Translate
unit 498
You were given a sharp, acute, uncomfortable grain--the actual meeting; horribly painful as often as not; yet in absence, in the most unlikely places, it would flower out, open, shed its scent, let you touch, taste, look about you, get the whole feel of it and understanding, after years of lying lost.
0 Translations, 0 Upvotes, Last Activity None
Translate
unit 499
Thus she had come to him; on board ship; in the Himalayas; suggested by the oddest things (so Sally Seton, generous, enthusiastic goose!
0 Translations, 0 Upvotes, Last Activity None
Translate
unit 500
thought of him when she saw blue hydrangeas).
0 Translations, 0 Upvotes, Last Activity None
Translate
unit 501
She had influenced him more than any person he had ever known.
0 Translations, 0 Upvotes, Last Activity None
Translate
unit 502
And always in this way coming before him without his wishing it, cool, lady-like, critical; or ravishing, romantic, recalling some field or English harvest.
0 Translations, 0 Upvotes, Last Activity None
Translate
unit 503
He saw her most often in the country, not in London.
0 Translations, 0 Upvotes, Last Activity None
Translate
unit 504
One scene after another at Bourton.
0 Translations, 0 Upvotes, Last Activity None
Translate
unit 505
.
0 Translations, 0 Upvotes, Last Activity None
Translate
unit 506
.
0 Translations, 0 Upvotes, Last Activity None
Translate
unit 507
.
0 Translations, 0 Upvotes, Last Activity None
Translate
unit 508
He had reached his hotel.
0 Translations, 0 Upvotes, Last Activity None
Translate
unit 509
He crossed the hall, with its mounds of reddish chairs and sofas, its spike-leaved, withered-looking plants.
0 Translations, 0 Upvotes, Last Activity None
Translate
unit 510
He got his key off the hook.
0 Translations, 0 Upvotes, Last Activity None
Translate
unit 511
The young lady handed him some letters.
0 Translations, 0 Upvotes, Last Activity None
Translate
unit 512
He went upstairs--he saw her most often at Bourton, in the late summer, when he stayed there for a week, or fortnight even, as people did in those days.
0 Translations, 0 Upvotes, Last Activity None
Translate
unit 513
First on top of some hill there she would stand, hands clapped to her hair, her cloak blowing out, pointing, crying to them--she saw the Severn beneath.
0 Translations, 0 Upvotes, Last Activity None
Translate
unit 514
Or in a wood, making the kettle boil--very ineffective with her fingers; the smoke curtseying, blowing in their faces; her little pink face showing through; begging water from an old woman in a cottage, who came to the door to watch them go.
0 Translations, 0 Upvotes, Last Activity None
Translate
unit 515
They walked always; the others drove.
0 Translations, 0 Upvotes, Last Activity None
Translate
unit 516
She was bored driving, disliked all animals, except that dog.
0 Translations, 0 Upvotes, Last Activity None
Translate
unit 517
They tramped miles along roads.
0 Translations, 0 Upvotes, Last Activity None
Translate
unit 518
She would break off to get her bearings, pilot him back across country; and all the time they argued, discussed poetry, discussed people, discussed politics (she was a Radical then); never noticing a thing except when she stopped, cried out at a view or a tree, and made him look with her; and so on again, through stubble fields, she walking ahead, with a flower for her aunt, never tired of walking for all her delicacy; to drop down on Bourton in the dusk.
0 Translations, 0 Upvotes, Last Activity None
Translate
unit 519
Then, after dinner, old Breitkopf would open the piano and sing without any voice, and they would lie sunk in arm-chairs, trying not to laugh, but always breaking down and laughing, laughing--laughing at nothing.
0 Translations, 0 Upvotes, Last Activity None
Translate
unit 520
Breitkopf was supposed not to see.
0 Translations, 0 Upvotes, Last Activity None
Translate
unit 521
And then in the morning, flirting up and down like a wagtail in front of the house.
0 Translations, 0 Upvotes, Last Activity None
Translate
unit 522
.
0 Translations, 0 Upvotes, Last Activity None
Translate
unit 523
.
0 Translations, 0 Upvotes, Last Activity None
Translate
unit 524
.
0 Translations, 0 Upvotes, Last Activity None
Translate
unit 525
Oh it was a letter from her!
0 Translations, 0 Upvotes, Last Activity None
Translate
unit 526
This blue envelope; that was her hand.
0 Translations, 0 Upvotes, Last Activity None
Translate
unit 527
And he would have to read it.
0 Translations, 0 Upvotes, Last Activity None
Translate
unit 528
Here was another of those meetings, bound to be painful!
0 Translations, 0 Upvotes, Last Activity None
Translate
unit 529
To read her letter needed the devil of an effort.
0 Translations, 0 Upvotes, Last Activity None
Translate
unit 530
"How heavenly it was to see him.
0 Translations, 0 Upvotes, Last Activity None
Translate
unit 531
She must tell him that."
0 Translations, 0 Upvotes, Last Activity None
Translate
unit 532
That was all.
0 Translations, 0 Upvotes, Last Activity None
Translate
unit 533
But it upset him.
0 Translations, 0 Upvotes, Last Activity None
Translate
unit 534
It annoyed him.
0 Translations, 0 Upvotes, Last Activity None
Translate
unit 535
He wished she hadn't written it.
0 Translations, 0 Upvotes, Last Activity None
Translate
unit 536
Coming on top of his thoughts, it was like a nudge in the ribs.
0 Translations, 0 Upvotes, Last Activity None
Translate
unit 537
Why couldn't she let him be?
0 Translations, 0 Upvotes, Last Activity None
Translate
unit 538
After all, she had married Dalloway, and lived with him in perfect happiness all these years.
0 Translations, 0 Upvotes, Last Activity None
Translate
unit 539
These hotels are not consoling places.
0 Translations, 0 Upvotes, Last Activity None
Translate
unit 540
Far from it.
0 Translations, 0 Upvotes, Last Activity None
Translate
unit 541
Any number of people had hung up their hats on those pegs.
0 Translations, 0 Upvotes, Last Activity None
Translate
unit 542
Even the flies, if you thought of it, had settled on other people's noses.
0 Translations, 0 Upvotes, Last Activity None
Translate
unit 543
As for the cleanliness which hit him in the face, it wasn't cleanliness, so much as bareness, frigidity; a thing that had to be.
0 Translations, 0 Upvotes, Last Activity None
Translate
unit 544
Some arid matron made her rounds at dawn sniffing, peering, causing blue-nosed maids to scour, for all the world as if the next visitor were a joint of meat to be served on a perfectly clean platter.
0 Translations, 0 Upvotes, Last Activity None
Translate
unit 545
For sleep, one bed; for sitting in, one armchair; for cleaning one's teeth and shaving one's chin, one tumbler, one looking-glass.
0 Translations, 0 Upvotes, Last Activity None
Translate
unit 546
Books, letters, dressing-gown, slipped about on the impersonality of the horsehair like incongruous impertinences.
0 Translations, 0 Upvotes, Last Activity None
Translate
unit 547
And it was Clarissa's letter that made him see all this.
0 Translations, 0 Upvotes, Last Activity None
Translate
unit 548
"Heavenly to see you.
0 Translations, 0 Upvotes, Last Activity None
Translate
unit 549
She must say so!"
0 Translations, 0 Upvotes, Last Activity None
Translate
unit 550
He folded the paper; pushed it away; nothing would induce him to read it again!
0 Translations, 0 Upvotes, Last Activity None
Translate
unit 551
To get that letter to him by six o'clock she must have sat down and written it directly he left her; stamped it; sent somebody to the post.
0 Translations, 0 Upvotes, Last Activity None
Translate
unit 552
It was, as people say, very like her.
0 Translations, 0 Upvotes, Last Activity None
Translate
unit 553
She was upset by his visit.
0 Translations, 0 Upvotes, Last Activity None
Translate
unit 554
She had felt a great deal; had for a moment, when she kissed his hand, regretted, envied him even, remembered possibly (for he saw her look it) something he had said--how they would change the world if she married him perhaps; whereas, it was this; it was middle age; it was mediocrity; then forced herself with her indomitable vitality to put all that aside, there being in her a thread of life which for toughness, endurance, power to overcome obstacles, and carry her triumphantly through he had never known the like of.
0 Translations, 0 Upvotes, Last Activity None
Translate
unit 555
Yes; but there would come a reaction directly he left the room.
0 Translations, 0 Upvotes, Last Activity None
Translate
unit 556
She would be frightfully sorry for him; she would think what in the world she could do to give him pleasure (short always of the one thing) and he could see her with the tears running down her cheeks going to her writing-table and dashing off that one line which he was to find greeting him.
0 Translations, 0 Upvotes, Last Activity None
Translate
unit 557
.
0 Translations, 0 Upvotes, Last Activity None
Translate
unit 558
.
0 Translations, 0 Upvotes, Last Activity None
Translate
unit 559
.
0 Translations, 0 Upvotes, Last Activity None
Translate
unit 560
"Heavenly to see you!"
0 Translations, 0 Upvotes, Last Activity None
Translate
unit 561
And she meant it.
0 Translations, 0 Upvotes, Last Activity None
Translate
unit 562
Peter Walsh had now unlaced his boots.
0 Translations, 0 Upvotes, Last Activity None
Translate
unit 563
But it would not have been a success, their marriage.
0 Translations, 0 Upvotes, Last Activity None
Translate
unit 564
The other thing, after all, came so much more naturally.
0 Translations, 0 Upvotes, Last Activity None
Translate
unit 565
It was odd; it was true; lots of people felt it.
0 Translations, 0 Upvotes, Last Activity None
Translate
unit 566
Peter Walsh, who had done just respectably, filled the usual posts adequately, was liked, but thought a little cranky, gave himself airs--it was odd that he should have had, especially now that his hair was grey, a contented look; a look of having reserves.
0 Translations, 0 Upvotes, Last Activity None
Translate
unit 567
It was this that made him attractive to women who liked the sense that he was not altogether manly.
0 Translations, 0 Upvotes, Last Activity None
Translate
unit 568
There was something unusual about him, or something behind him.
0 Translations, 0 Upvotes, Last Activity None
Translate
unit 569
It might be that he was bookish--never came to see you without taking up the book on the table (he was now reading, with his bootlaces trailing on the floor); or that he was a gentleman, which showed itself in the way he knocked the ashes out of his pipe, and in his manners of course to women.
0 Translations, 0 Upvotes, Last Activity None
Translate
unit 570
For it was very charming and quite ridiculous how easily some girl without a grain of sense could twist him round her finger.
0 Translations, 0 Upvotes, Last Activity None
Translate
unit 571
But at her own risk.
0 Translations, 0 Upvotes, Last Activity None
Translate
unit 572
That is to say, though he might be ever so easy, and indeed with his gaiety and good-breeding fascinating to be with, it was only up to a point.
0 Translations, 0 Upvotes, Last Activity None
Translate
unit 573
She said something--no, no; he saw through that.
0 Translations, 0 Upvotes, Last Activity None
Translate
unit 574
He wouldn't stand that--no, no.
0 Translations, 0 Upvotes, Last Activity None
Translate
unit 575
Then he could shout and rock and hold his sides together over some joke with men.
0 Translations, 0 Upvotes, Last Activity None
Translate
unit 576
He was the best judge of cooking in India.
0 Translations, 0 Upvotes, Last Activity None
Translate
unit 577
He was a man.
0 Translations, 0 Upvotes, Last Activity None
Translate
unit 578
But not the sort of man one had to respect--which was a mercy; not like Major Simmons, for instance; not in the least like that, Daisy thought, when, in spite of her two small children, she used to compare them.
0 Translations, 0 Upvotes, Last Activity None
Translate
unit 579
He pulled off his boots.
0 Translations, 0 Upvotes, Last Activity None
Translate
unit 580
He emptied his pockets.
0 Translations, 0 Upvotes, Last Activity None
Translate
unit 581
Out came with his pocket-knife a snapshot of Daisy on the verandah; Daisy all in white, with a fox-terrier on her knee; very charming, very dark; the best he had ever seen of her.
0 Translations, 0 Upvotes, Last Activity None
Translate
unit 582
It did come, after all so naturally; so much more naturally than Clarissa.
0 Translations, 0 Upvotes, Last Activity None
Translate
unit 583
No fuss.
0 Translations, 0 Upvotes, Last Activity None
Translate
unit 584
No bother.
0 Translations, 0 Upvotes, Last Activity None
Translate
unit 585
No finicking and fidgeting.
0 Translations, 0 Upvotes, Last Activity None
Translate
unit 586
All plain sailing.
0 Translations, 0 Upvotes, Last Activity None
Translate
unit 587
And the dark, adorably pretty girl on the verandah exclaimed (he could hear her).
0 Translations, 0 Upvotes, Last Activity None
Translate
unit 588
Of course, of course she would give him everything!
0 Translations, 0 Upvotes, Last Activity None
Translate
unit 589
she cried (she had no sense of discretion) everything he wanted!
0 Translations, 0 Upvotes, Last Activity None
Translate
unit 590
she cried, running to meet him, whoever might be looking.
0 Translations, 0 Upvotes, Last Activity None
Translate
unit 591
And she was only twenty-four.
0 Translations, 0 Upvotes, Last Activity None
Translate
unit 592
And she had two children.
0 Translations, 0 Upvotes, Last Activity None
Translate
unit 593
Well, well!
0 Translations, 0 Upvotes, Last Activity None
Translate
unit 594
Well indeed he had got himself into a mess at his age.
0 Translations, 0 Upvotes, Last Activity None
Translate
unit 595
And it came over him when he woke in the night pretty forcibly.
0 Translations, 0 Upvotes, Last Activity None
Translate
unit 596
Suppose they did marry?
0 Translations, 0 Upvotes, Last Activity None
Translate
unit 597
For him it would be all very well, but what about her?
0 Translations, 0 Upvotes, Last Activity None
Translate
unit 598
Mrs. Burgess, a good sort and no chatterbox, in whom he had confided, thought this absence of his in England, ostensibly to see lawyers might serve to make Daisy reconsider, think what it meant.
0 Translations, 0 Upvotes, Last Activity None
Translate
unit 599
It was a question of her position, Mrs. Burgess said; the social barrier; giving up her children.
0 Translations, 0 Upvotes, Last Activity None
Translate
unit 600
She'd be a widow with a past one of these days, draggling about in the suburbs, or more likely, indiscriminate (you know, she said, what such women get like, with too much paint).
0 Translations, 0 Upvotes, Last Activity None
Translate
unit 601
But Peter Walsh pooh-poohed all that.
0 Translations, 0 Upvotes, Last Activity None
Translate
unit 602
He didn't mean to die yet.
0 Translations, 0 Upvotes, Last Activity None
Translate
unit 603
Anyhow she must settle for herself; judge for herself, he thought, padding about the room in his socks, smoothing out his dress-shirt, for he might go to Clarissa's party, or he might go to one of the Halls, or he might settle in and read an absorbing book written by a man he used to know at Oxford.
0 Translations, 0 Upvotes, Last Activity None
Translate
unit 604
And if he did retire, that's what he'd do--write books.
0 Translations, 0 Upvotes, Last Activity None
Translate
unit 605
He would go to Oxford and poke about in the Bodleian.
0 Translations, 0 Upvotes, Last Activity None
Translate
unit 606
Vainly the dark, adorably pretty girl ran to the end of the terrace; vainly waved her hand; vainly cried she didn't care a straw what people said.
0 Translations, 0 Upvotes, Last Activity None
Translate
unit 607
There he was, the man she thought the world of, the perfect gentleman, the fascinating, the distinguished (and his age made not the least difference to her), padding about a room in an hotel in Bloomsbury, shaving, washing, continuing, as he took up cans, put down razors, to poke about in the Bodleian, and get at the truth about one or two little matters that interested him.
0 Translations, 0 Upvotes, Last Activity None
Translate
unit 608
And he would have a chat with whoever it might be, and so come to disregard more and more precise hours for lunch, and miss engagements, and when Daisy asked him, as she would, for a kiss, a scene, fail to come up to the scratch (though he was genuinely devoted to her)--in short it might be happier, as Mrs. Burgess said, that she should forget him, or merely remember him as he was in August 1922, like a figure standing at the cross roads at dusk, which grows more and more remote as the dog-cart spins away, carrying her securely fastened to the back seat, though her arms are outstretched, and as she sees the figure dwindle and disappear still she cries out how she would do anything in the world, anything, anything, anything.
0 Translations, 0 Upvotes, Last Activity None
Translate
unit 609
.
0 Translations, 0 Upvotes, Last Activity None
Translate
unit 610
.
0 Translations, 0 Upvotes, Last Activity None
Translate
unit 611
.
0 Translations, 0 Upvotes, Last Activity None
Translate
unit 612
He never knew what people thought.
0 Translations, 0 Upvotes, Last Activity None
Translate
unit 613
It became more and more difficult for him to concentrate.
0 Translations, 0 Upvotes, Last Activity None
Translate
unit 614
He became absorbed; he became busied with his own concerns; now surly, now gay; dependent on women, absent-minded, moody, less and less able (so he thought as he shaved) to understand why Clarissa couldn't simply find them a lodging and be nice to Daisy; introduce her.
0 Translations, 0 Upvotes, Last Activity None
Translate
unit 615
And then he could just--just do what?
0 Translations, 0 Upvotes, Last Activity None
Translate
unit 616
just haunt and hover (he was at the moment actually engaged in sorting out various keys, papers), swoop and taste, be alone, in short, sufficient to himself; and yet nobody of course was more dependent upon others (he buttoned his waistcoat); it had been his undoing.
0 Translations, 0 Upvotes, Last Activity None
Translate
unit 617
He could not keep out of smoking-rooms, liked colonels, liked golf, liked bridge, and above all women's society, and the fineness of their companionship, and their faithfulness and audacity and greatness in loving which though it had its drawbacks seemed to him (and the dark, adorably pretty face was on top of the envelopes) so wholly admirable, so splendid a flower to grow on the crest of human life, and yet he could not come up to the scratch, being always apt to see round things (Clarissa had sapped something in him permanently), and to tire very easily of mute devotion and to want variety in love, though it would make him furious if Daisy loved anybody else, furious!
0 Translations, 0 Upvotes, Last Activity None
Translate
unit 618
for he was jealous, uncontrollably jealous by temperament.
0 Translations, 0 Upvotes, Last Activity None
Translate
unit 619
He suffered tortures!
0 Translations, 0 Upvotes, Last Activity None
Translate
unit 620
But where was his knife; his watch; his seals, his note-case, and Clarissa's letter which he would not read again but liked to think of, and Daisy's photograph?
0 Translations, 0 Upvotes, Last Activity None
Translate
unit 621
And now for dinner.
0 Translations, 0 Upvotes, Last Activity None
Translate
unit 622
They were eating.
0 Translations, 0 Upvotes, Last Activity None
Translate
unit 623
Sitting at little tables round vases, dressed or not dressed, with their shawls and bags laid beside them, with their air of false composure, for they were not used to so many courses at dinner, and confidence, for they were able to pay for it, and strain, for they had been running about London all day shopping, sightseeing; and their natural curiosity, for they looked round and up as the nice-looking gentleman in horn-rimmed spectacles came in, and their good nature, for they would have been glad to do any little service, such as lend a time-table or impart useful information, and their desire, pulsing in them, tugging at them subterraneously, somehow to establish connections if it were only a birthplace (Liverpool, for example) in common or friends of the same name; with their furtive glances, odd silences, and sudden withdrawals into family jocularity and isolation; there they sat eating dinner when Mr. Walsh came in and took his seat at a little table by the curtain.
0 Translations, 0 Upvotes, Last Activity None
Translate
unit 624
It was not that he said anything, for being solitary he could only address himself to the waiter; it was his way of looking at the menu, of pointing his forefinger to a particular wine, of hitching himself up to the table, of addressing himself seriously, not gluttonously to dinner, that won him their respect; which, having to remain unexpressed for the greater part of the meal, flared up at the table where the Morrises sat when Mr. Walsh was heard to say at the end of the meal, "Bartlett pears."
0 Translations, 0 Upvotes, Last Activity None
Translate
unit 625
Why he should have spoken so moderately yet firmly, with the air of a disciplinarian well within his rights which are founded upon justice, neither young Charles Morris, nor old Charles, neither Miss Elaine nor Mrs. Morris knew.
0 Translations, 0 Upvotes, Last Activity None
Translate
unit 626
But when he said, "Bartlett pears," sitting alone at his table, they felt that he counted on their support in some lawful demand; was champion of a cause which immediately became their own, so that their eyes met his eyes sympathetically, and when they all reached the smoking-room simultaneously, a little talk between them became inevitable.
0 Translations, 0 Upvotes, Last Activity None
Translate
unit 627
It was not very profound--only to the effect that London was crowded; had changed in thirty years; that Mr. Morris preferred Liverpool; that Mrs. Morris had been to the Westminster flower-show, and that they had all seen the Prince of Wales.
0 Translations, 0 Upvotes, Last Activity None
Translate
unit 628
Yet, thought Peter Walsh, no family in the world can compare with the Morrises; none whatever; and their relations to each other are perfect, and they don't care a hang for the upper classes, and they like what they like, and Elaine is training for the family business, and the boy has won a scholarship at Leeds, and the old lady (who is about his own age) has three more children at home; and they have two motor cars, but Mr. Morris still mends the boots on Sunday: it is superb, it is absolutely superb, thought Peter Walsh, swaying a little backwards and forwards with his liqueur glass in his hand among the hairy red chairs and ash-trays, feeling very well pleased with himself, for the Morrises liked him.
0 Translations, 0 Upvotes, Last Activity None
Translate
unit 629
Yes, they liked a man who said, "Bartlett pears."
0 Translations, 0 Upvotes, Last Activity None
Translate
unit 630
They liked him, he felt.
0 Translations, 0 Upvotes, Last Activity None
Translate
unit 631
He would go to Clarissa's party.
0 Translations, 0 Upvotes, Last Activity None
Translate
unit 632
(The Morrises moved off; but they would meet again.)
0 Translations, 0 Upvotes, Last Activity None
Translate
unit 633
He would go to Clarissa's party, because he wanted to ask Richard what they were doing in India--the conservative duffers.
0 Translations, 0 Upvotes, Last Activity None
Translate
unit 634
And what's being acted?
0 Translations, 0 Upvotes, Last Activity None
Translate
unit 635
And music.
0 Translations, 0 Upvotes, Last Activity None
Translate
unit 636
.
0 Translations, 0 Upvotes, Last Activity None
Translate
unit 637
.
0 Translations, 0 Upvotes, Last Activity None
Translate
unit 638
.
0 Translations, 0 Upvotes, Last Activity None
Translate
unit 639
Oh yes, and mere gossip.
0 Translations, 0 Upvotes, Last Activity None
Translate
unit 640
For this is the truth about our soul, he thought, our self, who fish-like inhabits deep seas and plies among obscurities threading her way between the boles of giant weeds, over sun-flickered spaces and on and on into gloom, cold, deep, inscrutable; suddenly she shoots to the surface and sports on the wind-wrinkled waves; that is, has a positive need to brush, scrape, kindle herself, gossiping.
0 Translations, 0 Upvotes, Last Activity None
Translate
unit 641
What did the Government mean--Richard Dalloway would know--to do about India?
0 Translations, 0 Upvotes, Last Activity None
Translate
unit 642
Since it was a very hot night and the paper boys went by with placards proclaiming in huge red letters that there was a heat-wave, wicker chairs were placed on the hotel steps and there, sipping, smoking, detached gentlemen sat.
0 Translations, 0 Upvotes, Last Activity None
Translate
unit 643
Peter Walsh sat there.
0 Translations, 0 Upvotes, Last Activity None
Translate
unit 644
One might fancy that day, the London day, was just beginning.
0 Translations, 0 Upvotes, Last Activity None
Translate
unit 645
Like a woman who had slipped off her print dress and white apron to array herself in blue and pearls, the day changed, put off stuff, took gauze, changed to evening, and with the same sigh of exhilaration that a woman breathes, tumbling petticoats on the floor, it too shed dust, heat, colour; the traffic thinned; motor cars, tinkling, darting, succeeded the lumber of vans; and here and there among the thick foliage of the squares an intense light hung.
0 Translations, 0 Upvotes, Last Activity None
Translate
unit 646
I resign, the evening seemed to say, as it paled and faded above the battlements and prominences, moulded, pointed, of hotel, flat, and block of shops, I fade, she was beginning, I disappear, but London would have none of it, and rushed her bayonets into the sky, pinioned her, constrained her to partnership in her revelry.
0 Translations, 0 Upvotes, Last Activity None
Translate
unit 647
For the great revolution of Mr. Willett's summer time had taken place since Peter Walsh's last visit to England.
0 Translations, 0 Upvotes, Last Activity None
Translate
unit 648
The prolonged evening was new to him.
0 Translations, 0 Upvotes, Last Activity None
Translate
unit 649
It was inspiriting, rather.
0 Translations, 0 Upvotes, Last Activity None
Translate
unit 650
For as the young people went by with their despatch-boxes, awfully glad to be free, proud too, dumbly, of stepping this famous pavement, joy of a kind, cheap, tinselly, if you like, but all the same rapture, flushed their faces.
0 Translations, 0 Upvotes, Last Activity None
Translate
unit 651
They dressed well too; pink stockings; pretty shoes.
0 Translations, 0 Upvotes, Last Activity None
Translate
unit 652
They would now have two hours at the pictures.
0 Translations, 0 Upvotes, Last Activity None
Translate
unit 653
It sharpened, it refined them, the yellow-blue evening light; and on the leaves in the square shone lurid, livid--they looked as if dipped in sea water--the foliage of a submerged city.
0 Translations, 0 Upvotes, Last Activity None
Translate
unit 654
He was astonished by the beauty; it was encouraging too, for where the returned Anglo-Indian sat by rights (he knew crowds of them) in the Oriental Club biliously summing up the ruin of the world, here was he, as young as ever; envying young people their summer time and the rest of it, and more than suspecting from the words of a girl, from a housemaid's laughter--intangible things you couldn't lay your hands on--that shift in the whole pyramidal accumulation which in his youth had seemed immovable.
0 Translations, 0 Upvotes, Last Activity None
Translate
unit 655
On top of them it had pressed; weighed them down, the women especially, like those flowers Clarissa's Aunt Helena used to press between sheets of grey blotting-paper with Littré's dictionary on top, sitting under the lamp after dinner.
0 Translations, 0 Upvotes, Last Activity None
Translate
unit 656
She was dead now.
0 Translations, 0 Upvotes, Last Activity None
Translate
unit 657
He had heard of her, from Clarissa, losing the sight of one eye.
0 Translations, 0 Upvotes, Last Activity None
Translate
unit 658
It seemed so fitting--one of nature's masterpieces--that old Miss Parry should turn to glass.
0 Translations, 0 Upvotes, Last Activity None
Translate
unit 659
She would die like some bird in a frost gripping her perch.
0 Translations, 0 Upvotes, Last Activity None
Translate
unit 660
She belonged to a different age, but being so entire, so complete, would always stand up on the horizon, stone-white, eminent, like a lighthouse marking some past stage on this adventurous, long, long voyage, this interminable (he felt for a copper to buy a paper and read about Surrey and Yorkshire--he had held out that copper millions of times.
0 Translations, 0 Upvotes, Last Activity None
Translate
unit 661
Surrey was all out once more)--this interminable life.
0 Translations, 0 Upvotes, Last Activity None
Translate
unit 662
But cricket was no mere game.
0 Translations, 0 Upvotes, Last Activity None
Translate
unit 663
Cricket was important.
0 Translations, 0 Upvotes, Last Activity None
Translate
unit 664
He could never help reading about cricket.
0 Translations, 0 Upvotes, Last Activity None
Translate
unit 665
He read the scores in the stop press first, then how it was a hot day; then about a murder case.
0 Translations, 0 Upvotes, Last Activity None
Translate
unit 666
Having done things millions of times enriched them, though it might be said to take the surface off.
0 Translations, 0 Upvotes, Last Activity None
Translate
unit 667
The past enriched, and experience, and having cared for one or two people, and so having acquired the power which the young lack, of cutting short, doing what one likes, not caring a rap what people say and coming and going without any very great expectations (he left his paper on the table and moved off), which however (and he looked for his hat and coat) was not altogether true of him, not to-night, for here he was starting to go to a party, at his age, with the belief upon him that he was about to have an experience.
0 Translations, 0 Upvotes, Last Activity None
Translate
unit 668
But what?
0 Translations, 0 Upvotes, Last Activity None
Translate
unit 669
Beauty anyhow.
0 Translations, 0 Upvotes, Last Activity None
Translate
unit 670
Not the crude beauty of the eye.
0 Translations, 0 Upvotes, Last Activity None
Translate
unit 671
It was not beauty pure and simple--Bedford Place leading into Russell Square.
0 Translations, 0 Upvotes, Last Activity None
Translate
unit 672
It was straightness and emptiness of course; the symmetry of a corridor; but it was also windows lit up, a piano, a gramophone sounding; a sense of pleasure-making hidden, but now and again emerging when, through the uncurtained window, the window left open, one saw parties sitting over tables, young people slowly circling, conversations between men and women, maids idly looking out (a strange comment theirs, when work was done), stockings drying on top ledges, a parrot, a few plants.
0 Translations, 0 Upvotes, Last Activity None
Translate
unit 673
Absorbing, mysterious, of infinite richness, this life.
0 Translations, 0 Upvotes, Last Activity None
Translate
unit 674
And in the large square where the cabs shot and swerved so quick, there were loitering couples, dallying, embracing, shrunk up under the shower of a tree; that was moving; so silent, so absorbed, that one passed, discreetly, timidly, as if in the presence of some sacred ceremony to interrupt which would have been impious.
0 Translations, 0 Upvotes, Last Activity None
Translate
unit 675
That was interesting.
0 Translations, 0 Upvotes, Last Activity None
Translate
unit 676
And so on into the flare and glare.
0 Translations, 0 Upvotes, Last Activity None
Translate
unit 677
His light overcoat blew open, he stepped with indescribable idiosyncrasy, lent a little forward, tripped, with his hands behind his back and his eyes still a little hawklike; he tripped through London, towards Westminster, observing.
0 Translations, 0 Upvotes, Last Activity None
Translate
unit 678
Was everybody dining out, then?
0 Translations, 0 Upvotes, Last Activity None
Translate
unit 679
Doors were being opened here by a footman to let issue a high-stepping old dame, in buckled shoes, with three purple ostrich feathers in her hair.
0 Translations, 0 Upvotes, Last Activity None
Translate
unit 680
Doors were being opened for ladies wrapped like mummies in shawls with bright flowers on them, ladies with bare heads.
0 Translations, 0 Upvotes, Last Activity None
Translate
unit 681
And in respectable quarters with stucco pillars through small front gardens lightly swathed with combs in their hair (having run up to see the children), women came; men waited for them, with their coats blowing open, and the motor started.
0 Translations, 0 Upvotes, Last Activity None
Translate
unit 682
Everybody was going out.
0 Translations, 0 Upvotes, Last Activity None
Translate
unit 683
What with these doors being opened, and the descent and the start, it seemed as if the whole of London were embarking in little boats moored to the bank, tossing on the waters, as if the whole place were floating off in carnival.
0 Translations, 0 Upvotes, Last Activity None
Translate
unit 684
And Whitehall was skated over, silver beaten as it was, skated over by spiders, and there was a sense of midges round the arc lamps; it was so hot that people stood about talking.
0 Translations, 0 Upvotes, Last Activity None
Translate
unit 685
And here in Westminster was a retired Judge, presumably, sitting four square at his house door dressed all in white.
0 Translations, 0 Upvotes, Last Activity None
Translate
unit 686
An Anglo-Indian presumably.
0 Translations, 0 Upvotes, Last Activity None
Translate
unit 687
And here a shindy of brawling women, drunken women; here only a policeman and looming houses, high houses, domed houses, churches, parliaments, and the hoot of a steamer on the river, a hollow misty cry.
0 Translations, 0 Upvotes, Last Activity None
Translate
unit 688
But it was her street, this, Clarissa's; cabs were rushing round the corner, like water round the piers of a bridge, drawn together, it seemed to him because they bore people going to her party, Clarissa's party.
0 Translations, 0 Upvotes, Last Activity None
Translate
unit 689
The cold stream of visual impressions failed him now as if the eye were a cup that overflowed and let the rest run down its china walls unrecorded.
0 Translations, 0 Upvotes, Last Activity None
Translate
unit 690
The brain must wake now.
0 Translations, 0 Upvotes, Last Activity None
Translate
unit 691
The body must contract now, entering the house, the lighted house, where the door stood open, where the motor cars were standing, and bright women descending: the soul must brave itself to endure.
0 Translations, 0 Upvotes, Last Activity None
Translate
unit 692
He opened the big blade of his pocket-knife.
0 Translations, 0 Upvotes, Last Activity 7 months ago
Translate

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 7 months ago

Part VII.
"Are you going to the party to-night?" Miss Kilman said. Elizabeth supposed she was going; her mother wanted her to go. She must not let parties absorb her, Miss Kilman said, fingering the last two inches of a chocolate éclair.
She did not much like parties, Elizabeth said. Miss Kilman opened her mouth, slightly projected her chin, and swallowed down the last inches of the chocolate éclair, then wiped her fingers, and washed the tea round in her cup.
She was about to split asunder, she felt. The agony was so terrific. If she could grasp her, if she could clasp her, if she could make her hers absolutely and forever and then die; that was all she wanted. But to sit here, unable to think of anything to say; to see Elizabeth turning against her; to be felt repulsive even by her--it was too much; she could not stand it. The thick fingers curled inwards.
"I never go to parties," said Miss Kilman, just to keep Elizabeth from going. "People don't ask me to parties"--and she knew as she said it that it was this egotism that was her undoing; Mr. Whittaker had warned her; but she could not help it. She had suffered so horribly. "Why should they ask me?" she said. "I'm plain, I'm unhappy." She knew it was idiotic. But it was all those people passing--people with parcels who despised her, who made her say it. However, she was Doris Kilman. She had her degree. She was a woman who had made her way in the world. Her knowledge of modern history was more than respectable.
"I don't pity myself," she said. "I pity"--she meant to say "your mother" but no, she could not, not to Elizabeth. "I pity other people," she said, "more."
Like some dumb creature who has been brought up to a gate for an unknown purpose, and stands there longing to gallop away, Elizabeth Dalloway sat silent. Was Miss Kilman going to say anything more?
"Don't quite forget me," said Doris Kilman; her voice quivered. Right away to the end of the field the dumb creature galloped in terror.
The great hand opened and shut.
Elizabeth turned her head. The waitress came. One had to pay at the desk, Elizabeth said, and went off, drawing out, so Miss Kilman felt, the very entrails in her body, stretching them as she crossed the room, and then, with a final twist, bowing her head very politely, she went.
She had gone. Miss Kilman sat at the marble table among the éclairs, stricken once, twice, thrice by shocks of suffering. She had gone. Mrs. Dalloway had triumphed. Elizabeth had gone. Beauty had gone, youth had gone.
So she sat. She got up, blundered off among the little tables, rocking slightly from side to side, and somebody came after her with her petticoat, and she lost her way, and was hemmed in by trunks specially prepared for taking to India; next got among the accouchement sets, and baby linen; through all the commodities of the world, perishable and permanent, hams, drugs, flowers, stationery, variously smelling, now sweet, now sour she lurched; saw herself thus lurching with her hat askew, very red in the face, full length in a looking-glass; and at last came out into the street.
The tower of Westminster Cathedral rose in front of her, the habitation of God. In the midst of the traffic, there was the habitation of God. Doggedly she set off with her parcel to that other sanctuary, the Abbey, where, raising her hands in a tent before her face, she sat beside those driven into shelter too; the variously assorted worshippers, now divested of social rank, almost of sex, as they raised their hands before their faces; but once they removed them, instantly reverent, middle class, English men and women, some of them desirous of seeing the wax works.
But Miss Kilman held her tent before her face. Now she was deserted; now rejoined. New worshippers came in from the street to replace the strollers, and still, as people gazed round and shuffled past the tomb of the Unknown Warrior, still she barred her eyes with her fingers and tried in this double darkness, for the light in the Abbey was bodiless, to aspire above the vanities, the desires, the commodities, to rid herself both of hatred and of love. Her hands twitched. She seemed to struggle. Yet to others God was accessible and the path to Him smooth. Mr. Fletcher, retired, of the Treasury, Mrs. Gorham, widow of the famous K.C., approached Him simply, and having done their praying, leant back, enjoyed the music (the organ pealed sweetly), and saw Miss Kilman at the end of the row, praying, praying, and, being still on the threshold of their underworld, thought of her sympathetically as a soul haunting the same territory; a soul cut out of immaterial substance; not a woman, a soul.
But Mr. Fletcher had to go. He had to pass her, and being himself neat as a new pin, could not help being a little distressed by the poor lady's disorder; her hair down; her parcel on the floor. She did not at once let him pass. But, as he stood gazing about him, at the white marbles, grey window panes, and accumulated treasures (for he was extremely proud of the Abbey), her largeness, robustness, and power as she sat there shifting her knees from time to time (it was so rough the approach to her God--so tough her desires) impressed him, as they had impressed Mrs. Dalloway (she could not get the thought of her out of her mind that afternoon), the Rev. Edward Whittaker, and Elizabeth too.
And Elizabeth waited in Victoria Street for an omnibus. It was so nice to be out of doors. She thought perhaps she need not go home just yet. It was so nice to be out in the air. So she would get on to an omnibus. And already, even as she stood there, in her very well cut clothes, it was beginning. . . . People were beginning to compare her to poplar trees, early dawn, hyacinths, fawns, running water, and garden lilies; and it made her life a burden to her, for she so much preferred being left alone to do what she liked in the country, but they would compare her to lilies, and she had to go to parties, and London was so dreary compared with being alone in the country with her father and the dogs.
Buses swooped, settled, were off--garish caravans, glistening with red and yellow varnish. But which should she get on to? She had no preferences. Of course, she would not push her way. She inclined to be passive. It was expression she needed, but her eyes were fine, Chinese, oriental, and, as her mother said, with such nice shoulders and holding herself so straight, she was always charming to look at; and lately, in the evening especially, when she was interested, for she never seemed excited, she looked almost beautiful, very stately, very serene. What could she be thinking? Every man fell in love with her, and she was really awfully bored. For it was beginning. Her mother could see that--the compliments were beginning. That she did not care more about it--for instance for her clothes--sometimes worried Clarissa, but perhaps it was as well with all those puppies and guinea pigs about having distemper, and it gave her a charm. And now there was this odd friendship with Miss Kilman. Well, thought Clarissa about three o'clock in the morning, reading Baron Marbot for she could not sleep, it proves she has a heart.
Suddenly Elizabeth stepped forward and most competently boarded the omnibus, in front of everybody. She took a seat on top. The impetuous creature--a pirate--started forward, sprang away; she had to hold the rail to steady herself, for a pirate it was, reckless, unscrupulous, bearing down ruthlessly, circumventing dangerously, boldly snatching a passenger, or ignoring a passenger, squeezing eel-like and arrogant in between, and then rushing insolently all sails spread up Whitehall. And did Elizabeth give one thought to poor Miss Kilman who loved her without jealousy, to whom she had been a fawn in the open, a moon in a glade? She was delighted to be free. The fresh air was so delicious. It had been so stuffy in the Army and Navy Stores. And now it was like riding, to be rushing up Whitehall; and to each movement of the omnibus the beautiful body in the fawn-coloured coat responded freely like a rider, like the figure-head of a ship, for the breeze slightly disarrayed her; the heat gave her cheeks the pallor of white painted wood; and her fine eyes, having no eyes to meet, gazed ahead, blank, bright, with the staring incredible innocence of sculpture.
It was always talking about her own sufferings that made Miss Kilman so difficult. And was she right? If it was being on committees and giving up hours and hours every day (she hardly ever saw him in London) that helped the poor, her father did that, goodness knows,--if that was what Miss Kilman meant about being a Christian; but it was so difficult to say. Oh, she would like to go a little further. Another penny was it to the Strand? Here was another penny then. She would go up the Strand.
She liked people who were ill. And every profession is open to the women of your generation, said Miss Kilman. So she might be a doctor. She might be a farmer. Animals are often ill. She might own a thousand acres and have people under her. She would go and see them in their cottages. This was Somerset House. One might be a very good farmer--and that, strangely enough though Miss Kilman had her share in it, was almost entirely due to Somerset House. It looked so splendid, so serious, that great grey building. And she liked the feeling of people working. She liked those churches, like shapes of grey paper, breasting the stream of the Strand. It was quite different here from Westminster, she thought, getting off at Chancery Lane. It was so serious; it was so busy. In short, she would like to have a profession. She would become a doctor, a farmer, possibly go into Parliament, if she found it necessary, all because of the Strand.
The feet of those people busy about their activities, hands putting stone to stone, minds eternally occupied not with trivial chatterings (comparing women to poplars--which was rather exciting, of course, but very silly), but with thoughts of ships, of business, of law, of administration, and with it all so stately (she was in the Temple), gay (there was the river), pious (there was the Church), made her quite determined, whatever her mother might say, to become either a farmer or a doctor. But she was, of course, rather lazy.
And it was much better to say nothing about it. It seemed so silly. It was the sort of thing that did sometimes happen, when one was alone--buildings without architects' names, crowds of people coming back from the city having more power than single clergymen in Kensington, than any of the books Miss Kilman had lent her, to stimulate what lay slumbrous, clumsy, and shy on the mind's sandy floor to break surface, as a child suddenly stretches its arms; it was just that, perhaps, a sigh, a stretch of the arms, an impulse, a revelation, which has its effects for ever, and then down again it went to the sandy floor. She must go home. She must dress for dinner. But what was the time?--where was a clock?
She looked up Fleet Street. She walked just a little way towards St. Paul's, shyly, like some one penetrating on tiptoe, exploring a strange house by night with a candle, on edge lest the owner should suddenly fling wide his bedroom door and ask her business, nor did she dare wander off into queer alleys, tempting bye-streets, any more than in a strange house open doors which might be bedroom doors, or sitting-room doors, or lead straight to the larder. For no Dalloways came down the Strand daily; she was a pioneer, a stray, venturing, trusting.
In many ways, her mother felt, she was extremely immature, like a child still, attached to dolls, to old slippers; a perfect baby; and that was charming. But then, of course, there was in the Dalloway family the tradition of public service. Abbesses, principals, head mistresses, dignitaries, in the republic of women--without being brilliant, any of them, they were that. She penetrated a little further in the direction of St. Paul's. She liked the geniality, sisterhood, motherhood, brotherhood of this uproar. It seemed to her good. The noise was tremendous; and suddenly there were trumpets (the unemployed) blaring, rattling about in the uproar; military music; as if people were marching; yet had they been dying--had some woman breathed her last and whoever was watching, opening the window of the room where she had just brought off that act of supreme dignity, looked down on Fleet Street, that uproar, that military music would have come triumphing up to him, consolatory, indifferent.
It was not conscious. There was no recognition in it of one fortune, or fate, and for that very reason even to those dazed with watching for the last shivers of consciousness on the faces of the dying, consoling. Forgetfulness in people might wound, their ingratitude corrode, but this voice, pouring endlessly, year in year out, would take whatever it might be; this vow; this van; this life; this procession, would wrap them all about and carry them on, as in the rough stream of a glacier the ice holds a splinter of bone, a blue petal, some oak trees, and rolls them on.
But it was later than she thought. Her mother would not like her to be wandering off alone like this. She turned back down the Strand.
A puff of wind (in spite of the heat, there was quite a wind) blew a thin black veil over the sun and over the Strand. The faces faded; the omnibuses suddenly lost their glow. For although the clouds were of mountainous white so that one could fancy hacking hard chips off with a hatchet, with broad golden slopes, lawns of celestial pleasure gardens, on their flanks, and had all the appearance of settled habitations assembled for the conference of gods above the world, there was a perpetual movement among them. Signs were interchanged, when, as if to fulfil some scheme arranged already, now a summit dwindled, now a whole block of pyramidal size which had kept its station inalterably advanced into the midst or gravely led the procession to fresh anchorage. Fixed though they seemed at their posts, at rest in perfect unanimity, nothing could be fresher, freer, more sensitive superficially than the snow-white or gold-kindled surface; to change, to go, to dismantle the solemn assemblage was immediately possible; and in spite of the grave fixity, the accumulated robustness and solidity, now they struck light to the earth, now darkness.
Calmly and competently, Elizabeth Dalloway mounted the Westminster omnibus.
Going and coming, beckoning, signalling, so the light and shadow which now made the wall grey, now the bananas bright yellow, now made the Strand grey, now made the omnibuses bright yellow, seemed to Septimus Warren Smith lying on the sofa in the sitting-room; watching the watery gold glow and fade with the astonishing sensibility of some live creature on the roses, on the wall-paper. Outside the trees dragged their leaves like nets through the depths of the air; the sound of water was in the room and through the waves came the voices of birds singing. Every power poured its treasures on his head, and his hand lay there on the back of the sofa, as he had seen his hand lie when he was bathing, floating, on the top of the waves, while far away on shore he heard dogs barking and barking far away. Fear no more, says the heart in the body; fear no more.
He was not afraid. At every moment Nature signified by some laughing hint like that gold spot which went round the wall--there, there, there--her determination to show, by brandishing her plumes, shaking her tresses, flinging her mantle this way and that, beautifully, always beautifully, and standing close up to breathe through her hollowed hands Shakespeare's words, her meaning.
Rezia, sitting at the table twisting a hat in her hands, watched him; saw him smiling. He was happy then. But she could not bear to see him smiling. It was not marriage; it was not being one's husband to look strange like that, always to be starting, laughing, sitting hour after hour silent, or clutching her and telling her to write. The table drawer was full of those writings; about war; about Shakespeare; about great discoveries; how there is no death. Lately he had become excited suddenly for no reason (and both Dr. Holmes and Sir William Bradshaw said excitement was the worst thing for him), and waved his hands and cried out that he knew the truth! He knew everything! That man, his friend who was killed, Evans, had come, he said. He was singing behind the screen. She wrote it down just as he spoke it. Some things were very beautiful; others sheer nonsense. And he was always stopping in the middle, changing his mind; wanting to add something; hearing something new; listening with his hand up.
But she heard nothing.
And once they found the girl who did the room reading one of these papers in fits of laughter. It was a dreadful pity. For that made Septimus cry out about human cruelty--how they tear each other to pieces. The fallen, he said, they tear to pieces. "Holmes is on us," he would say, and he would invent stories about Holmes; Holmes eating porridge; Holmes reading Shakespeare--making himself roar with laughter or rage, for Dr. Holmes seemed to stand for something horrible to him. "Human nature," he called him. Then there were the visions. He was drowned, he used to say, and lying on a cliff with the gulls screaming over him. He would look over the edge of the sofa down into the sea. Or he was hearing music. Really it was only a barrel organ or some man crying in the street. But "Lovely!" he used to cry, and the tears would run down his cheeks, which was to her the most dreadful thing of all, to see a man like Septimus, who had fought, who was brave, crying. And he would lie listening until suddenly he would cry that he was falling down, down into the flames! Actually she would look for flames, it was so vivid. But there was nothing. They were alone in the room. It was a dream, she would tell him and so quiet him at last, but sometimes she was frightened too. She sighed as she sat sewing.
Her sigh was tender and enchanting, like the wind outside a wood in the evening. Now she put down her scissors; now she turned to take something from the table. A little stir, a little crinkling, a little tapping built up something on the table there, where she sat sewing. Through his eyelashes he could see her blurred outline; her little black body; her face and hands; her turning movements at the table, as she took up a reel, or looked (she was apt to lose things) for her silk. She was making a hat for Mrs. Filmer's married daughter, whose name was--he had forgotten her name.
"What is the name of Mrs. Filmer's married daughter?" he asked.
"Mrs. Peters," said Rezia. She was afraid it was too small, she said, holding it before her. Mrs. Peters was a big woman; but she did not like her. It was only because Mrs. Filmer had been so good to them. "She gave me grapes this morning," she said--that Rezia wanted to do something to show that they were grateful. She had come into the room the other evening and found Mrs. Peters, who thought they were out, playing the gramophone.
"Was it true?" he asked. She was playing the gramophone? Yes; she had told him about it at the time; she had found Mrs. Peters playing the gramophone.
He began, very cautiously, to open his eyes, to see whether a gramophone was really there. But real things--real things were too exciting. He must be cautious. He would not go mad. First he looked at the fashion papers on the lower shelf, then, gradually at the gramophone with the green trumpet. Nothing could be more exact. And so, gathering courage, he looked at the sideboard; the plate of bananas; the engraving of Queen Victoria and the Prince Consort; at the mantelpiece, with the jar of roses. None of these things moved. All were still; all were real.
"She is a woman with a spiteful tongue," said Rezia.
"What does Mr. Peters do?" Septimus asked.
"Ah," said Rezia, trying to remember. She thought Mrs. Filmer had said that he travelled for some company. "Just now he is in Hull," she said.
"Just now!" She said that with her Italian accent. She said that herself. He shaded his eyes so that he might see only a little of her face at a time, first the chin, then the nose, then the forehead, in case it were deformed, or had some terrible mark on it. But no, there she was, perfectly natural, sewing, with the pursed lips that women have, the set, the melancholy expression, when sewing. But there was nothing terrible about it, he assured himself, looking a second time, a third time at her face, her hands, for what was frightening or disgusting in her as she sat there in broad daylight, sewing? Mrs. Peters had a spiteful tongue. Mr. Peters was in Hull. Why then rage and prophesy? Why fly scourged and outcast? Why be made to tremble and sob by the clouds? Why seek truths and deliver messages when Rezia sat sticking pins into the front of her dress, and Mr. Peters was in Hull? Miracles, revelations, agonies, loneliness, falling through the sea, down, down into the flames, all were burnt out, for he had a sense, as he watched Rezia trimming the straw hat for Mrs. Peters, of a coverlet of flowers.
"It's too small for Mrs. Peters," said Septimus.
For the first time for days he was speaking as he used to do! Of course it was--absurdly small, she said. But Mrs. Peters had chosen it.
He took it out of her hands. He said it was an organ grinder's monkey's hat.
How it rejoiced her that! Not for weeks had they laughed like this together, poking fun privately like married people. What she meant was that if Mrs. Filmer had come in, or Mrs. Peters or anybody they would not have understood what she and Septimus were laughing at.
"There," she said, pinning a rose to one side of the hat. Never had she felt so happy! Never in her life!
But that was still more ridiculous, Septimus said. Now the poor woman looked like a pig at a fair. (Nobody ever made her laugh as Septimus did.)
What had she got in her work-box? She had ribbons and beads, tassels, artificial flowers. She tumbled them out on the table. He began putting odd colours together--for though he had no fingers, could not even do up a parcel, he had a wonderful eye, and often he was right, sometimes absurd, of course, but sometimes wonderfully right.
"She shall have a beautiful hat!" he murmured, taking up this and that, Rezia kneeling by his side, looking over his shoulder. Now it was finished--that is to say the design; she must stitch it together. But she must be very, very careful, he said, to keep it just as he had made it.
So she sewed. When she sewed, he thought, she made a sound like a kettle on the hob; bubbling, murmuring, always busy, her strong little pointed fingers pinching and poking; her needle flashing straight. The sun might go in and out, on the tassels, on the wall-paper, but he would wait, he thought, stretching out his feet, looking at his ringed sock at the end of the sofa; he would wait in this warm place, this pocket of still air, which one comes on at the edge of a wood sometimes in the evening, when, because of a fall in the ground, or some arrangement of the trees (one must be scientific above all, scientific), warmth lingers, and the air buffets the cheek like the wing of a bird.
"There it is," said Rezia, twirling Mrs. Peters' hat on the tips of her fingers. "That'll do for the moment. Later . . ." her sentence bubbled away drip, drip, drip, like a contented tap left running.
It was wonderful. Never had he done anything which made him feel so proud. It was so real, it was so substantial, Mrs. Peters' hat.
"Just look at it," he said.
Yes, it would always make her happy to see that hat. He had become himself then, he had laughed then. They had been alone together. Always she would like that hat.
He told her to try it on.
"But I must look so queer!" she cried, running over to the glass and looking first this side then that. Then she snatched it off again, for there was a tap at the door. Could it be Sir William Bradshaw? Had he sent already?
No! it was only the small girl with the evening paper.
What always happened, then happened--what happened every night of their lives. The small girl sucked her thumb at the door; Rezia went down on her knees; Rezia cooed and kissed; Rezia got a bag of sweets out of the table drawer. For so it always happened. First one thing, then another. So she built it up, first one thing and then another. Dancing, skipping, round and round the room they went. He took the paper. Surrey was all out, he read. There was a heat wave. Rezia repeated: Surrey was all out. There was a heat wave, making it part of the game she was playing with Mrs. Filmer's grandchild, both of them laughing, chattering at the same time, at their game. He was very tired. He was very happy. He would sleep. He shut his eyes. But directly he saw nothing the sounds of the game became fainter and stranger and sounded like the cries of people seeking and not finding, and passing further and further away. They had lost him!
He started up in terror. What did he see? The plate of bananas on the sideboard. Nobody was there (Rezia had taken the child to its mother. It was bedtime). That was it: to be alone forever. That was the doom pronounced in Milan when he came into the room and saw them cutting out buckram shapes with their scissors; to be alone forever.
He was alone with the sideboard and the bananas. He was alone, exposed on this bleak eminence, stretched out--but not on a hill-top; not on a crag; on Mrs. Filmer's sitting-room sofa. As for the visions, the faces, the voices of the dead, where were they? There was a screen in front of him, with black bulrushes and blue swallows. Where he had once seen mountains, where he had seen faces, where he had seen beauty, there was a screen.
"Evans!" he cried. There was no answer. A mouse had squeaked, or a curtain rustled. Those were the voices of the dead. The screen, the coalscuttle, the sideboard remained to him. Let him then face the screen, the coal-scuttle and the sideboard . . . but Rezia burst into the room chattering.
Some letter had come. Everybody's plans were changed. Mrs. Filmer would not be able to go to Brighton after all. There was no time to let Mrs. Williams know, and really Rezia thought it very, very annoying, when she caught sight of the hat and thought . . . perhaps . . . she . . . might just make a little. . . . Her voice died out in contented melody.
"Ah, damn!" she cried (it was a joke of theirs, her swearing), the needle had broken. Hat, child, Brighton, needle. She built it up; first one thing, then another, she built it up, sewing.
She wanted him to say whether by moving the rose she had improved the hat. She sat on the end of the sofa.
They were perfectly happy now, she said, suddenly, putting the hat down. For she could say anything to him now. She could say whatever came into her head. That was almost the first thing she had felt about him, that night in the café when he had come in with his English friends. He had come in, rather shyly, looking round him, and his hat had fallen when he hung it up. That she could remember. She knew he was English, though not one of the large Englishmen her sister admired, for he was always thin; but he had a beautiful fresh colour; and with his big nose, his bright eyes, his way of sitting a little hunched made her think, she had often told him, of a young hawk, that first evening she saw him, when they were playing dominoes, and he had come in--of a young hawk; but with her he was always very gentle. She had never seen him wild or drunk, only suffering sometimes through this terrible war, but even so, when she came in, he would put it all away. Anything, anything in the whole world, any little bother with her work, anything that struck her to say she would tell him, and he understood at once. Her own family even were not the same. Being older than she was and being so clever--how serious he was, wanting her to read Shakespeare before she could even read a child's story in English!--being so much more experienced, he could help her. And she too could help him.
But this hat now. And then (it was getting late) Sir William Bradshaw.
She held her hands to her head, waiting for him to say did he like the hat or not, and as she sat there, waiting, looking down, he could feel her mind, like a bird, falling from branch to branch, and always alighting, quite rightly; he could follow her mind, as she sat there in one of those loose lax poses that came to her naturally and, if he should say anything, at once she smiled, like a bird alighting with all its claws firm upon the bough.
But he remembered Bradshaw said, "The people we are most fond of are not good for us when we are ill." Bradshaw said, he must be taught to rest. Bradshaw said they must be separated.
"Must," "must," why "must"? What power had Bradshaw over him? "What right has Bradshaw to say 'must' to me?" he demanded.
"It is because you talked of killing yourself," said Rezia. (Mercifully, she could now say anything to Septimus.)
So he was in their power! Holmes and Bradshaw were on him! The brute with the red nostrils was snuffing into every secret place! "Must" it could say! Where were his papers? the things he had written?
She brought him his papers, the things he had written, things she had written for him. She tumbled them out on to the sofa. They looked at them together. Diagrams, designs, little men and women brandishing sticks for arms, with wings--were they?--on their backs; circles traced round shillings and sixpences--the suns and stars; zigzagging precipices with mountaineers ascending roped together, exactly like knives and forks; sea pieces with little faces laughing out of what might perhaps be waves: the map of the world. Burn them! he cried. Now for his writings; how the dead sing behind rhododendron bushes; odes to Time; conversations with Shakespeare; Evans, Evans, Evans--his messages from the dead; do not cut down trees; tell the Prime Minister. Universal love: the meaning of the world. Burn them! he cried.
But Rezia laid her hands on them. Some were very beautiful, she thought. She would tie them up (for she had no envelope) with a piece of silk.
Even if they took him, she said, she would go with him. They could not separate them against their wills, she said.
Shuffling the edges straight, she did up the papers, and tied the parcel almost without looking, sitting beside him, he thought, as if all her petals were about her. She was a flowering tree; and through her branches looked out the face of a lawgiver, who had reached a sanctuary where she feared no one; not Holmes; not Bradshaw; a miracle, a triumph, the last and greatest. Staggering he saw her mount the appalling staircase, laden with Holmes and Bradshaw, men who never weighed less than eleven stone six, who sent their wives to Court, men who made ten thousand a year and talked of proportion; who different in their verdicts (for Holmes said one thing, Bradshaw another), yet judges they were; who mixed the vision and the sideboard; saw nothing clear, yet ruled, yet inflicted. "Must" they said. Over them she triumphed.
"There!" she said. The papers were tied up. No one should get at them. She would put them away.
And, she said, nothing should separate them. She sat down beside him and called him by the name of that hawk or crow which being malicious and a great destroyer of crops was precisely like him. No one could separate them, she said.
Then she got up to go into the bedroom to pack their things, but hearing voices downstairs and thinking that Dr. Holmes had perhaps called, ran down to prevent him coming up.
Septimus could hear her talking to Holmes on the staircase.
"My dear lady, I have come as a friend," Holmes was saying.
"No. I will not allow you to see my husband," she said.
He could see her, like a little hen, with her wings spread barring his passage. But Holmes persevered.
"My dear lady, allow me . . ." Holmes said, putting her aside (Holmes was a powerfully built man).
Holmes was coming upstairs. Holmes would burst open the door. Holmes would say "In a funk, eh?" Holmes would get him. But no; not Holmes; not Bradshaw. Getting up rather unsteadily, hopping indeed from foot to foot, he considered Mrs. Filmer's nice clean bread knife with "Bread" carved on the handle. Ah, but one mustn't spoil that. The gas fire? But it was too late now. Holmes was coming. Razors he might have got, but Rezia, who always did that sort of thing, had packed them. There remained only the window, the large Bloomsbury-lodging house window, the tiresome, the troublesome, and rather melodramatic business of opening the window and throwing himself out. It was their idea of tragedy, not his or Rezia's (for she was with him). Holmes and Bradshaw like that sort of thing. (He sat on the sill.) But he would wait till the very last moment. He did not want to die. Life was good. The sun hot. Only human beings--what did they want? Coming down the staircase opposite an old man stopped and stared at him. Holmes was at the door. "I'll give it you!" he cried, and flung himself vigorously, violently down on to Mrs. Filmer's area railings.
"The coward!" cried Dr. Holmes, bursting the door open. Rezia ran to the window, she saw; she understood. Dr. Holmes and Mrs. Filmer collided with each other. Mrs. Filmer flapped her apron and made her hide her eyes in the bedroom. There was a great deal of running up and down stairs. Dr. Holmes came in--white as a sheet, shaking all over, with a glass in his hand. She must be brave and drink something, he said (What was it? Something sweet), for her husband was horribly mangled, would not recover consciousness, she must not see him, must be spared as much as possible, would have the inquest to go through, poor young woman. Who could have foretold it? A sudden impulse, no one was in the least to blame (he told Mrs. Filmer). And why the devil he did it, Dr. Holmes could not conceive.
It seemed to her as she drank the sweet stuff that she was opening long windows, stepping out into some garden. But where? The clock was striking--one, two, three: how sensible the sound was; compared with all this thumping and whispering; like Septimus himself. She was falling asleep. But the clock went on striking, four, five, six and Mrs. Filmer waving her apron (they wouldn't bring the body in here, would they?) seemed part of that garden; or a flag. She had once seen a flag slowly rippling out from a mast when she stayed with her aunt at Venice. Men killed in battle were thus saluted, and Septimus had been through the War. Of her memories, most were happy.
She put on her hat, and ran through cornfields--where could it have been?--on to some hill, somewhere near the sea, for there were ships, gulls, butterflies; they sat on a cliff. In London too, there they sat, and, half dreaming, came to her through the bedroom door, rain falling, whisperings, stirrings among dry corn, the caress of the sea, as it seemed to her, hollowing them in its arched shell and murmuring to her laid on shore, strewn she felt, like flying flowers over some tomb.
"He is dead," she said, smiling at the poor old woman who guarded her with her honest light-blue eyes fixed on the door. (They wouldn't bring him in here, would they?) But Mrs. Filmer pooh-poohed. Oh no, oh no! They were carrying him away now. Ought she not to be told? Married people ought to be together, Mrs. Filmer thought. But they must do as the doctor said.
"Let her sleep," said Dr. Holmes, feeling her pulse. She saw the large outline of his body standing dark against the window. So that was Dr. Holmes.
One of the triumphs of civilisation, Peter Walsh thought. It is one of the triumphs of civilisation, as the light high bell of the ambulance sounded. Swiftly, cleanly the ambulance sped to the hospital, having picked up instantly, humanely, some poor devil; some one hit on the head, struck down by disease, knocked over perhaps a minute or so ago at one of these crossings, as might happen to oneself. That was civilisation. It struck him coming back from the East--the efficiency, the organisation, the communal spirit of London. Every cart or carriage of its own accord drew aside to let the ambulance pass. Perhaps it was morbid; or was it not touching rather, the respect which they showed this ambulance with its victim inside--busy men hurrying home yet instantly bethinking them as it passed of some wife; or presumably how easily it might have been them there, stretched on a shelf with a doctor and a nurse. . . . Ah, but thinking became morbid, sentimental, directly one began conjuring up doctors, dead bodies; a little glow of pleasure, a sort of lust too over the visual impression warned one not to go on with that sort of thing any more--fatal to art, fatal to friendship. True. And yet, thought Peter Walsh, as the ambulance turned the corner though the light high bell could be heard down the next street and still farther as it crossed the Tottenham Court Road, chiming constantly, it is the privilege of loneliness; in privacy one may do as one chooses. One might weep if no one saw. It had been his undoing--this susceptibility--in Anglo-Indian society; not weeping at the right time, or laughing either. I have that in me, he thought standing by the pillar-box, which could now dissolve in tears. Why, Heaven knows. Beauty of some sort probably, and the weight of the day, which beginning with that visit to Clarissa had exhausted him with its heat, its intensity, and the drip, drip, of one impression after another down into that cellar where they stood, deep, dark, and no one would ever know. Partly for that reason, its secrecy, complete and inviolable, he had found life like an unknown garden, full of turns and corners, surprising, yes; really it took one's breath away, these moments; there coming to him by the pillar-box opposite the British Museum one of them, a moment, in which things came together; this ambulance; and life and death. It was as if he were sucked up to some very high roof by that rush of emotion and the rest of him, like a white shell-sprinkled beach, left bare. It had been his undoing in Anglo-Indian society--this susceptibility.
Clarissa once, going on top of an omnibus with him somewhere, Clarissa superficially at least, so easily moved, now in despair, now in the best of spirits, all aquiver in those days and such good company, spotting queer little scenes, names, people from the top of a bus, for they used to explore London and bring back bags full of treasures from the Caledonian market--Clarissa had a theory in those days--they had heaps of theories, always theories, as young people have. It was to explain the feeling they had of dissatisfaction; not knowing people; not being known. For how could they know each other? You met every day; then not for six months, or years. It was unsatisfactory, they agreed, how little one knew people. But she said, sitting on the bus going up Shaftesbury Avenue, she felt herself everywhere; not "here, here, here"; and she tapped the back of the seat; but everywhere. She waved her hand, going up Shaftesbury Avenue. She was all that. So that to know her, or any one, one must seek out the people who completed them; even the places. Odd affinities she had with people she had never spoken to, some woman in the street, some man behind a counter--even trees, or barns. It ended in a transcendental theory which, with her horror of death, allowed her to believe, or say that she believed (for all her scepticism), that since our apparitions, the part of us which appears, are so momentary compared with the other, the unseen part of us, which spreads wide, the unseen might survive, be recovered somehow attached to this person or that, or even haunting certain places after death . . . perhaps--perhaps.
Looking back over that long friendship of almost thirty years her theory worked to this extent. Brief, broken, often painful as their actual meetings had been what with his absences and interruptions (this morning, for instance, in came Elizabeth, like a long-legged colt, handsome, dumb, just as he was beginning to talk to Clarissa) the effect of them on his life was immeasurable. There was a mystery about it. You were given a sharp, acute, uncomfortable grain--the actual meeting; horribly painful as often as not; yet in absence, in the most unlikely places, it would flower out, open, shed its scent, let you touch, taste, look about you, get the whole feel of it and understanding, after years of lying lost. Thus she had come to him; on board ship; in the Himalayas; suggested by the oddest things (so Sally Seton, generous, enthusiastic goose! thought of him when she saw blue hydrangeas). She had influenced him more than any person he had ever known. And always in this way coming before him without his wishing it, cool, lady-like, critical; or ravishing, romantic, recalling some field or English harvest. He saw her most often in the country, not in London. One scene after another at Bourton. . . .
He had reached his hotel. He crossed the hall, with its mounds of reddish chairs and sofas, its spike-leaved, withered-looking plants. He got his key off the hook. The young lady handed him some letters. He went upstairs--he saw her most often at Bourton, in the late summer, when he stayed there for a week, or fortnight even, as people did in those days. First on top of some hill there she would stand, hands clapped to her hair, her cloak blowing out, pointing, crying to them--she saw the Severn beneath. Or in a wood, making the kettle boil--very ineffective with her fingers; the smoke curtseying, blowing in their faces; her little pink face showing through; begging water from an old woman in a cottage, who came to the door to watch them go. They walked always; the others drove. She was bored driving, disliked all animals, except that dog. They tramped miles along roads. She would break off to get her bearings, pilot him back across country; and all the time they argued, discussed poetry, discussed people, discussed politics (she was a Radical then); never noticing a thing except when she stopped, cried out at a view or a tree, and made him look with her; and so on again, through stubble fields, she walking ahead, with a flower for her aunt, never tired of walking for all her delicacy; to drop down on Bourton in the dusk. Then, after dinner, old Breitkopf would open the piano and sing without any voice, and they would lie sunk in arm-chairs, trying not to laugh, but always breaking down and laughing, laughing--laughing at nothing. Breitkopf was supposed not to see. And then in the morning, flirting up and down like a wagtail in front of the house. . . .
Oh it was a letter from her! This blue envelope; that was her hand. And he would have to read it. Here was another of those meetings, bound to be painful! To read her letter needed the devil of an effort. "How heavenly it was to see him. She must tell him that." That was all.
But it upset him. It annoyed him. He wished she hadn't written it. Coming on top of his thoughts, it was like a nudge in the ribs. Why couldn't she let him be? After all, she had married Dalloway, and lived with him in perfect happiness all these years.
These hotels are not consoling places. Far from it. Any number of people had hung up their hats on those pegs. Even the flies, if you thought of it, had settled on other people's noses. As for the cleanliness which hit him in the face, it wasn't cleanliness, so much as bareness, frigidity; a thing that had to be. Some arid matron made her rounds at dawn sniffing, peering, causing blue-nosed maids to scour, for all the world as if the next visitor were a joint of meat to be served on a perfectly clean platter. For sleep, one bed; for sitting in, one armchair; for cleaning one's teeth and shaving one's chin, one tumbler, one looking-glass. Books, letters, dressing-gown, slipped about on the impersonality of the horsehair like incongruous impertinences. And it was Clarissa's letter that made him see all this. "Heavenly to see you. She must say so!" He folded the paper; pushed it away; nothing would induce him to read it again!
To get that letter to him by six o'clock she must have sat down and written it directly he left her; stamped it; sent somebody to the post. It was, as people say, very like her. She was upset by his visit. She had felt a great deal; had for a moment, when she kissed his hand, regretted, envied him even, remembered possibly (for he saw her look it) something he had said--how they would change the world if she married him perhaps; whereas, it was this; it was middle age; it was mediocrity; then forced herself with her indomitable vitality to put all that aside, there being in her a thread of life which for toughness, endurance, power to overcome obstacles, and carry her triumphantly through he had never known the like of. Yes; but there would come a reaction directly he left the room. She would be frightfully sorry for him; she would think what in the world she could do to give him pleasure (short always of the one thing) and he could see her with the tears running down her cheeks going to her writing-table and dashing off that one line which he was to find greeting him. . . . "Heavenly to see you!" And she meant it.
Peter Walsh had now unlaced his boots.
But it would not have been a success, their marriage. The other thing, after all, came so much more naturally.
It was odd; it was true; lots of people felt it. Peter Walsh, who had done just respectably, filled the usual posts adequately, was liked, but thought a little cranky, gave himself airs--it was odd that he should have had, especially now that his hair was grey, a contented look; a look of having reserves. It was this that made him attractive to women who liked the sense that he was not altogether manly. There was something unusual about him, or something behind him. It might be that he was bookish--never came to see you without taking up the book on the table (he was now reading, with his bootlaces trailing on the floor); or that he was a gentleman, which showed itself in the way he knocked the ashes out of his pipe, and in his manners of course to women. For it was very charming and quite ridiculous how easily some girl without a grain of sense could twist him round her finger. But at her own risk. That is to say, though he might be ever so easy, and indeed with his gaiety and good-breeding fascinating to be with, it was only up to a point. She said something--no, no; he saw through that. He wouldn't stand that--no, no. Then he could shout and rock and hold his sides together over some joke with men. He was the best judge of cooking in India. He was a man. But not the sort of man one had to respect--which was a mercy; not like Major Simmons, for instance; not in the least like that, Daisy thought, when, in spite of her two small children, she used to compare them.
He pulled off his boots. He emptied his pockets. Out came with his pocket-knife a snapshot of Daisy on the verandah; Daisy all in white, with a fox-terrier on her knee; very charming, very dark; the best he had ever seen of her. It did come, after all so naturally; so much more naturally than Clarissa. No fuss. No bother. No finicking and fidgeting. All plain sailing. And the dark, adorably pretty girl on the verandah exclaimed (he could hear her). Of course, of course she would give him everything! she cried (she had no sense of discretion) everything he wanted! she cried, running to meet him, whoever might be looking. And she was only twenty-four. And she had two children. Well, well!
Well indeed he had got himself into a mess at his age. And it came over him when he woke in the night pretty forcibly. Suppose they did marry? For him it would be all very well, but what about her? Mrs. Burgess, a good sort and no chatterbox, in whom he had confided, thought this absence of his in England, ostensibly to see lawyers might serve to make Daisy reconsider, think what it meant. It was a question of her position, Mrs. Burgess said; the social barrier; giving up her children. She'd be a widow with a past one of these days, draggling about in the suburbs, or more likely, indiscriminate (you know, she said, what such women get like, with too much paint). But Peter Walsh pooh-poohed all that. He didn't mean to die yet. Anyhow she must settle for herself; judge for herself, he thought, padding about the room in his socks, smoothing out his dress-shirt, for he might go to Clarissa's party, or he might go to one of the Halls, or he might settle in and read an absorbing book written by a man he used to know at Oxford. And if he did retire, that's what he'd do--write books. He would go to Oxford and poke about in the Bodleian. Vainly the dark, adorably pretty girl ran to the end of the terrace; vainly waved her hand; vainly cried she didn't care a straw what people said. There he was, the man she thought the world of, the perfect gentleman, the fascinating, the distinguished (and his age made not the least difference to her), padding about a room in an hotel in Bloomsbury, shaving, washing, continuing, as he took up cans, put down razors, to poke about in the Bodleian, and get at the truth about one or two little matters that interested him. And he would have a chat with whoever it might be, and so come to disregard more and more precise hours for lunch, and miss engagements, and when Daisy asked him, as she would, for a kiss, a scene, fail to come up to the scratch (though he was genuinely devoted to her)--in short it might be happier, as Mrs. Burgess said, that she should forget him, or merely remember him as he was in August 1922, like a figure standing at the cross roads at dusk, which grows more and more remote as the dog-cart spins away, carrying her securely fastened to the back seat, though her arms are outstretched, and as she sees the figure dwindle and disappear still she cries out how she would do anything in the world, anything, anything, anything. . . .
He never knew what people thought. It became more and more difficult for him to concentrate. He became absorbed; he became busied with his own concerns; now surly, now gay; dependent on women, absent-minded, moody, less and less able (so he thought as he shaved) to understand why Clarissa couldn't simply find them a lodging and be nice to Daisy; introduce her. And then he could just--just do what? just haunt and hover (he was at the moment actually engaged in sorting out various keys, papers), swoop and taste, be alone, in short, sufficient to himself; and yet nobody of course was more dependent upon others (he buttoned his waistcoat); it had been his undoing. He could not keep out of smoking-rooms, liked colonels, liked golf, liked bridge, and above all women's society, and the fineness of their companionship, and their faithfulness and audacity and greatness in loving which though it had its drawbacks seemed to him (and the dark, adorably pretty face was on top of the envelopes) so wholly admirable, so splendid a flower to grow on the crest of human life, and yet he could not come up to the scratch, being always apt to see round things (Clarissa had sapped something in him permanently), and to tire very easily of mute devotion and to want variety in love, though it would make him furious if Daisy loved anybody else, furious! for he was jealous, uncontrollably jealous by temperament. He suffered tortures! But where was his knife; his watch; his seals, his note-case, and Clarissa's letter which he would not read again but liked to think of, and Daisy's photograph? And now for dinner.
They were eating.
Sitting at little tables round vases, dressed or not dressed, with their shawls and bags laid beside them, with their air of false composure, for they were not used to so many courses at dinner, and confidence, for they were able to pay for it, and strain, for they had been running about London all day shopping, sightseeing; and their natural curiosity, for they looked round and up as the nice-looking gentleman in horn-rimmed spectacles came in, and their good nature, for they would have been glad to do any little service, such as lend a time-table or impart useful information, and their desire, pulsing in them, tugging at them subterraneously, somehow to establish connections if it were only a birthplace (Liverpool, for example) in common or friends of the same name; with their furtive glances, odd silences, and sudden withdrawals into family jocularity and isolation; there they sat eating dinner when Mr. Walsh came in and took his seat at a little table by the curtain.
It was not that he said anything, for being solitary he could only address himself to the waiter; it was his way of looking at the menu, of pointing his forefinger to a particular wine, of hitching himself up to the table, of addressing himself seriously, not gluttonously to dinner, that won him their respect; which, having to remain unexpressed for the greater part of the meal, flared up at the table where the Morrises sat when Mr. Walsh was heard to say at the end of the meal, "Bartlett pears." Why he should have spoken so moderately yet firmly, with the air of a disciplinarian well within his rights which are founded upon justice, neither young Charles Morris, nor old Charles, neither Miss Elaine nor Mrs. Morris knew. But when he said, "Bartlett pears," sitting alone at his table, they felt that he counted on their support in some lawful demand; was champion of a cause which immediately became their own, so that their eyes met his eyes sympathetically, and when they all reached the smoking-room simultaneously, a little talk between them became inevitable.
It was not very profound--only to the effect that London was crowded; had changed in thirty years; that Mr. Morris preferred Liverpool; that Mrs. Morris had been to the Westminster flower-show, and that they had all seen the Prince of Wales. Yet, thought Peter Walsh, no family in the world can compare with the Morrises; none whatever; and their relations to each other are perfect, and they don't care a hang for the upper classes, and they like what they like, and Elaine is training for the family business, and the boy has won a scholarship at Leeds, and the old lady (who is about his own age) has three more children at home; and they have two motor cars, but Mr. Morris still mends the boots on Sunday: it is superb, it is absolutely superb, thought Peter Walsh, swaying a little backwards and forwards with his liqueur glass in his hand among the hairy red chairs and ash-trays, feeling very well pleased with himself, for the Morrises liked him. Yes, they liked a man who said, "Bartlett pears." They liked him, he felt.
He would go to Clarissa's party. (The Morrises moved off; but they would meet again.) He would go to Clarissa's party, because he wanted to ask Richard what they were doing in India--the conservative duffers. And what's being acted? And music. . . . Oh yes, and mere gossip.
For this is the truth about our soul, he thought, our self, who fish-like inhabits deep seas and plies among obscurities threading her way between the boles of giant weeds, over sun-flickered spaces and on and on into gloom, cold, deep, inscrutable; suddenly she shoots to the surface and sports on the wind-wrinkled waves; that is, has a positive need to brush, scrape, kindle herself, gossiping. What did the Government mean--Richard Dalloway would know--to do about India?
Since it was a very hot night and the paper boys went by with placards proclaiming in huge red letters that there was a heat-wave, wicker chairs were placed on the hotel steps and there, sipping, smoking, detached gentlemen sat. Peter Walsh sat there. One might fancy that day, the London day, was just beginning. Like a woman who had slipped off her print dress and white apron to array herself in blue and pearls, the day changed, put off stuff, took gauze, changed to evening, and with the same sigh of exhilaration that a woman breathes, tumbling petticoats on the floor, it too shed dust, heat, colour; the traffic thinned; motor cars, tinkling, darting, succeeded the lumber of vans; and here and there among the thick foliage of the squares an intense light hung. I resign, the evening seemed to say, as it paled and faded above the battlements and prominences, moulded, pointed, of hotel, flat, and block of shops, I fade, she was beginning, I disappear, but London would have none of it, and rushed her bayonets into the sky, pinioned her, constrained her to partnership in her revelry.
For the great revolution of Mr. Willett's summer time had taken place since Peter Walsh's last visit to England. The prolonged evening was new to him. It was inspiriting, rather. For as the young people went by with their despatch-boxes, awfully glad to be free, proud too, dumbly, of stepping this famous pavement, joy of a kind, cheap, tinselly, if you like, but all the same rapture, flushed their faces. They dressed well too; pink stockings; pretty shoes. They would now have two hours at the pictures. It sharpened, it refined them, the yellow-blue evening light; and on the leaves in the square shone lurid, livid--they looked as if dipped in sea water--the foliage of a submerged city. He was astonished by the beauty; it was encouraging too, for where the returned Anglo-Indian sat by rights (he knew crowds of them) in the Oriental Club biliously summing up the ruin of the world, here was he, as young as ever; envying young people their summer time and the rest of it, and more than suspecting from the words of a girl, from a housemaid's laughter--intangible things you couldn't lay your hands on--that shift in the whole pyramidal accumulation which in his youth had seemed immovable. On top of them it had pressed; weighed them down, the women especially, like those flowers Clarissa's Aunt Helena used to press between sheets of grey blotting-paper with Littré's dictionary on top, sitting under the lamp after dinner. She was dead now. He had heard of her, from Clarissa, losing the sight of one eye. It seemed so fitting--one of nature's masterpieces--that old Miss Parry should turn to glass. She would die like some bird in a frost gripping her perch. She belonged to a different age, but being so entire, so complete, would always stand up on the horizon, stone-white, eminent, like a lighthouse marking some past stage on this adventurous, long, long voyage, this interminable (he felt for a copper to buy a paper and read about Surrey and Yorkshire--he had held out that copper millions of times. Surrey was all out once more)--this interminable life. But cricket was no mere game. Cricket was important. He could never help reading about cricket. He read the scores in the stop press first, then how it was a hot day; then about a murder case. Having done things millions of times enriched them, though it might be said to take the surface off. The past enriched, and experience, and having cared for one or two people, and so having acquired the power which the young lack, of cutting short, doing what one likes, not caring a rap what people say and coming and going without any very great expectations (he left his paper on the table and moved off), which however (and he looked for his hat and coat) was not altogether true of him, not to-night, for here he was starting to go to a party, at his age, with the belief upon him that he was about to have an experience. But what?
Beauty anyhow. Not the crude beauty of the eye. It was not beauty pure and simple--Bedford Place leading into Russell Square. It was straightness and emptiness of course; the symmetry of a corridor; but it was also windows lit up, a piano, a gramophone sounding; a sense of pleasure-making hidden, but now and again emerging when, through the uncurtained window, the window left open, one saw parties sitting over tables, young people slowly circling, conversations between men and women, maids idly looking out (a strange comment theirs, when work was done), stockings drying on top ledges, a parrot, a few plants. Absorbing, mysterious, of infinite richness, this life. And in the large square where the cabs shot and swerved so quick, there were loitering couples, dallying, embracing, shrunk up under the shower of a tree; that was moving; so silent, so absorbed, that one passed, discreetly, timidly, as if in the presence of some sacred ceremony to interrupt which would have been impious. That was interesting. And so on into the flare and glare.
His light overcoat blew open, he stepped with indescribable idiosyncrasy, lent a little forward, tripped, with his hands behind his back and his eyes still a little hawklike; he tripped through London, towards Westminster, observing.
Was everybody dining out, then? Doors were being opened here by a footman to let issue a high-stepping old dame, in buckled shoes, with three purple ostrich feathers in her hair. Doors were being opened for ladies wrapped like mummies in shawls with bright flowers on them, ladies with bare heads. And in respectable quarters with stucco pillars through small front gardens lightly swathed with combs in their hair (having run up to see the children), women came; men waited for them, with their coats blowing open, and the motor started. Everybody was going out. What with these doors being opened, and the descent and the start, it seemed as if the whole of London were embarking in little boats moored to the bank, tossing on the waters, as if the whole place were floating off in carnival. And Whitehall was skated over, silver beaten as it was, skated over by spiders, and there was a sense of midges round the arc lamps; it was so hot that people stood about talking. And here in Westminster was a retired Judge, presumably, sitting four square at his house door dressed all in white. An Anglo-Indian presumably.
And here a shindy of brawling women, drunken women; here only a policeman and looming houses, high houses, domed houses, churches, parliaments, and the hoot of a steamer on the river, a hollow misty cry. But it was her street, this, Clarissa's; cabs were rushing round the corner, like water round the piers of a bridge, drawn together, it seemed to him because they bore people going to her party, Clarissa's party.
The cold stream of visual impressions failed him now as if the eye were a cup that overflowed and let the rest run down its china walls unrecorded. The brain must wake now. The body must contract now, entering the house, the lighted house, where the door stood open, where the motor cars were standing, and bright women descending: the soul must brave itself to endure. He opened the big blade of his pocket-knife.