Mrs Dalloway (Part V), by Virginia Woolf (1882-1941).
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PARTIE V C'était horrible, criait-il, horrible, horrible !
Malgré tout, le soleil était brûlant. Malgré tout, on tourne la page. Malgré tout, la vie fait se succéder les jours aux jours Pourtant, tout en bâillant et en recommençant à regarder autour de lui (Regent's Park avait très peu changé depuis son enfance, à l'exception des écureuils) il pensa qu'il y avait sans doute des compensations... et lorsque la petite Elise Mitchell, qui ramassait des cailloux pour les ajouter à la collection que son frère et elle constituaient sur la cheminée de leur chambre d'enfant, déposa sa poignée de cailloux sur les genoux de la nourrice et repartit en courant à toute vitesse pour percuter les jambes d'une dame, Peter Walsh éclata de rire.
Mais Lucrezia Warren Smith se disait : « C'est injuste ; pourquoi devrais-je souffrir ? » Elle se posait la question tout en descendant la large allée. Non, je ne peux plus supporter tout cela, se disait-elle après avoir laissé Septimus, qui n'était plus son Septimus, en train de raconter des choses dures, cruelles, méchantes, en train de parler tout seul ou de parler à un mort, assis là-bas ; c'est alors que la petite fille la bouscula, tomba par terre et éclata en sanglots.
C'était plutôt réconfortant. Elle la releva, épousseta sa robe et l'embrassa.
Elle n'avait rien à se reprocher ; elle avait adoré Septimus, elle avait été heureuse, elle avait eu une maison magnifique et ses sœurs y vivaient toujours, fabriquant des chapeaux. Pourquoi devrait-elle souffrir ?
L'enfant courut directement vers sa nourrice, et Rezia la vit se faire gronder, consoler, prendre dans les bras par la nounou qui posa son tricot, et l'homme à l'air gentil, afin de la réconforter, lui donna sa montre pour qu'elle l'ouvre en soufflant dessus... mais elle, pourquoi devrait-elle être ainsi livrée à elle-même ? Pourquoi n'était-elle pas restée à Milan ? Pourquoi cette torture ? Pourquoi ?
Légèrement brouillés par les larmes, la large allée, la nourrice, l'homme en gris, le landau, se levaient et s'abaissaient devant ses yeux. Être tourmentée par ce bourreau malveillant était son cruel destin. Mais pourquoi ? Elle était comme un oiseau réfugié sous le creux d'une feuille, qui cligne des yeux au soleil lorsque celle-ci s'agite et qui tressaille au moindre craquement d'une brindille sèche. Elle était livrée à elle-même, entourée d'arbres immenses, de vastes nuages d'un monde indifférent, livrée à elle-même, torturée ; pourquoi devrait-elle souffrir ? Pourquoi ?
Elle fronça les sourcils ; elle tapa du pied. Elle devait retourner auprès de Septimus, car il était presque l'heure pour eux d'aller chez Sir William Bradshaw. Elle devait retourner le lui dire, retourner vers lui, assis là-bas, sur la chaise verte sous l'arbre, parlant tout seul ou à ce camarade mort, Evans, qu'elle n'avait vu qu'une seule fois, brièvement, dans la boutique. Il semblait être gentil et discret, un grand ami de Septimus : il avait été tué pendant la guerre. Mais ce genre de choses arrive à tout le monde. Tout le monde a des amis qui ont été tués pendant la guerre. Tout le monde fait des renoncements lorsqu'il se marie. Elle avait renoncé à la maison de ses parents. Elle était venue vivre ici, dans cette horrible ville. Mais Septimus se laissait aller à penser à des choses épouvantables, comme elle aussi aurait pu le faire, si elle essayait. Il était devenu de plus en plus étrange. Il disait que des gens parlaient derrière les murs de sa chambre. Mrs Filmer trouvait cela bizarre. Il voyait des choses aussi, il avait vu la tête d'une vieille femme au milieu des fougères. Cependant, il pouvait être heureux quand il le décidait. Lorsqu'ils s'étaient rendus à Hampton Court dans un bus à impériale, ils avaient été parfaitement heureux. Toutes les petites fleurs rouges et jaunes sortaient de la pelouse comme des lampes flottantes racontait-il, et il parlait, bavardait et riait en imaginant des histoires. Puis il avait dit soudain : « Maintenant nous allons nous tuer », alors qu'ils étaient au bord de la rivière qu'il fixait avec un regard qu'elle avait déjà remarqué au passage d'un train ou d'un omnibus, un regard comme hypnotisé ; et elle sentit qu'il s'éloignait d'elle, alors elle lui saisit le bras. Mais sur le chemin du retour, il fut parfaitement calme, tout à fait raisonnable. Il discutait du suicide avec elle et lui expliquait à quel point les gens étaient méchants, comment il pouvait les voir inventer des mensonges lorsqu'ils passaient dans la rue. Il disait qu'il connaissait toutes leurs pensées, qu'il savait tout. Il disait qu'il connaissait le sens du monde
De retour chez eux, il pouvait à peine marcher. Il s'allongea sur le canapé et lui demanda en criant de lui tenir la main pour l'empêcher de tomber, de tomber dans les flammes ! il voyait des visages qui se moquaient de lui, lui lançant des insultes horribles et répugnantes depuis les murs, et des mains qui le montraient du doigt derrière les rideaux. Pourtant, ils étaient tout à fait seuls. Mais il se mit à parler à voix haute, à répondre aux voix, à discuter, à rire, à pleurer, à s'exciter et à demander à son épouse d'écrire des choses. Elles étaient d'une absurdité totale ; à propos de la mort ; à propos de Miss Isabel Pole. Rezia n'en pouvait plus. Elle voulait retourner chez elle.
Elle était maintenant à côté de lui ; elle pouvait le voir fixer le ciel, marmonner, se tordre les mains. Pourtant, le Dr Holmes affirmait qu'il n'avait aucun problème. Alors, que s'était-il passé, pourquoi était-il ailleurs, pourquoi, quand elle s'était assise près de lui, avait-il sursauté, froncé les sourcils, s'était-il éloigné et avait-il montré du doigt sa main, saisi cette main et l'avait regardée avec horreur ?
Était-ce parce qu'elle avait ôté son alliance ? — Ma main est devenue si fine, expliqua-t-elle. Je l'ai rangée dans mon porte-monnaie, lui dit-elle.
Il lâcha sa main. Leur mariage était fichu, pensa-t-il avec tourment, avec soulagement. Le lien était rompu ; il s'éloignait ; il était libre, car il avait été décrété que lui, Septimus, le seigneur des hommes, devait être libéré ; seul (puisque sa femme avait jeté son alliance ; puisqu'elle l'avait quitté), lui, Septimus, était seul, désigné entre les hommes pour entendre la vérité, apprendre la signification, qui maintenant enfin, après tous les efforts de la civilisation - Grecs, Romains, Shakespeare, Darwin, et maintenant lui-même - allait lui être révélée dans son intégralité. . . . — À qui ? demanda-t-il à voix haute. — Au Premier ministre, répondirent les voix qui murmuraient au-dessus de sa tête. Le secret suprême doit être révélé au Cabinet : d'abord, que les arbres sont vivants ; ensuite, qu'il n'y a pas de crime ; puis, l'amour, l'amour universel, murmura-t-il, haletant, tremblant, formulant péniblement ces vérités profondes qui, tellement profondes et difficiles, exigeaient un effort immense pour être énoncées, alors qu'elles avaient bouleversé le monde à jamais.
Pas de crime ; l'amour ; répéta-t-il farfouillant dans sa poche à la recherche d'un carton et de son crayon, lorsqu'un Skye terrier vint renifler son pantalon ce qui le fit sursauter de terreur. Le chien se muait en homme ! Il ne pouvait supporter cette vision ! C'était horrible, épouvantable, de voir un chien devenir un humain ! Aussitôt, le chien s'éloigna en trottinant.
Le ciel était divinement miséricordieux, infiniment bienveillant. Il l'épargnait, il lui pardonnait sa faiblesse. Mais quelle était l'explication scientifique (car il faut être scientifique avant tout) ? Pourquoi était-il capable de voir à travers les corps, de voir le futur, quand les chiens se transformaient en hommes ? C'était sûrement à cause de la canicule, agissant sur un cerveau devenu sensible par des lustres d'évolution. Scientifiquement parlant, la chair avait subitement disparu de notre monde. Son corps fut mis à macérer jusqu'à ce qu'il ne restât plus que les fibres nerveuses. Il était étendu comme une voile sur un rocher.
Il s'adossa à son fauteuil, épuisé mais soulagé. Il se reposait, attendait avant de recommencer à interpeller l'humanité, avec effort, avec angoisse. Il était perché très très haut... sur le dos du monde. La Terre vibrait sous ses pieds. Des fleurs rouges poussaient à travers sa chair ; leurs feuilles, dures, bruissaient près de sa tête. Ici, de la musique commençait à résonner contre les rochers. — C'est un klaxon dans la rue, marmonnait-il. Mais ici, le son rebondissait d'un rocher à l'autre, se divisait, se rejoignait en chocs sonores qui s'élevaient en colonnes régulières (il découvrit alors que la musique pouvait être visible) et se transformaient en hymne ; un hymne désormais entrelacé avec les notes de la flûte d'un jeune berger. — C'est un vieil homme qui joue du pipeau pour un penny près du pub, marmonnait-il encore. Alors que le garçon restait immobile, l'hymne jaillissait de sa flûte ; puis il grimpa plus haut et poussa son exquis chant plaintif, tandis que, en contrebas, la circulation passait. Ce garçon joue son élégie au milieu de la circulation, pensa Septimus. À présent il s'éloignait dans les neiges, et des roses pendaient autour de lui... les grosses roses rouges qui poussaient sur le mur de ma chambre, se souvint-il. La musique cessa. Il a son penny, en conclut-il, et il est allé le dépenser au bar du coin.
Mais lui-même restait en haut de son rocher, comme un marin naufragé s'accroche à un écueil. Je me suis penché au bord du bateau et je suis tombé, pensa-t-il. Je me suis enfoncé sous les eaux. J'ai été mort, et pourtant je suis maintenant en vie, mais laissez-moi me reposer encore ; il suppliait (il se parlait de nouveau à lui-même... c'était horrible, horrible !) Et comme, avant de se réveiller, le chant des oiseaux et le bruit des roues résonnent et jasent dans une étrange harmonie, devenant de plus en plus forts, et que le dormeur se sent attiré vers les rivages de la vie, il se sentait lui-même attiré vers la vie, le soleil devenant plus chaud, les cris plus forts, quelque chose d'extraordinaire étant sur le point de se produire.
Il lui suffisait d'ouvrir les yeux, mais un poids pesait sur ses paupières : une peur. Il fit un effort, insista, ouvrit les yeux et vit Regent's Park qui s'étendait devant lui. De longs rayons de soleil caressaient ses pieds. Les arbres ondulaient, se balançaient. Le monde semblait dire : « Nous accueillons ; nous acceptons ; nous créons. La beauté ! » Et comme pour le prouver (scientifiquement), partout où il posait son regard : sur les maisons, les grilles, les antilopes qui étiraient leur cou par-dessus les palissades, la beauté jaillissait instantanément. Regarder une feuille vibrer sous l'effet du vent était un plaisir exquis. Haut dans le ciel, les hirondelles plongent, virevoltent, se jettent dans le vide et en remontent, tournoyant sans cesse, mais toujours avec un contrôle parfait, comme si des élastiques les retenaient ; les mouches s'élèvent et redescendent ; le soleil éclaire tantôt cette feuille, tantôt celle-là, comme pour se moquer, les éblouissant de son or doux, dans une humeur purement joyeuse ; et de temps à autre, un son cristallin (peut-être celui d'un klaxon) résonne divinement sur les brins d'herbe...Tout cela, aussi calme et raisonnable que cela puisse paraître, aussi ordinaire que cela puisse paraître, était désormais la vérité : la beauté, voilà ce qui était désormais la vérité. La beauté était partout.
Il est temps, dit Rezia.
Le mot « temps » brisa sa coque, déversa ses trésors sur lui, et de ses lèvres tombèrent, comme des écaillures, comme des copeaux de bois, sans qu'il les ait prononcés, des mots durs, cristallins, impérissables, qui s'envolèrent pour venir se fixer à leur place dans une ode au Temps, une ode immortelle au Temps. Il se mit à chanter. Evans répondit de derrière l'arbre. Les morts étaient en Thessalie, chantait Evans, parmi les orchidées. C'est là qu'ils attendaient que la guerre se termine, et maintenant la mort, maintenant la mort d'Evans... — Pour l'amour de Dieu, ne vous approchez pas ! s'écria Septimus. Car il ne pourrait supporter la vue d'un mort.
Mais les branches s'écartèrent. Un homme en gris marchait vers eux. C'était Evans ! Mais il n'avait pas de boue sur lui, aucune blessure ; il n'avait pas changé. Je dois l'annoncer au monde entier, s'écria Septimus en agitant la main (alors que le mort en costume gris s'approchait), levant la main comme une figure colossale qui aurait déploré le sort de l'humanité pendant des siècles dans le désert, seul, les mains appuyées contre son front, les joues creusées par le désespoir, et qui aperçoit maintenant une lumière à l'orée du désert qui s'élargit et frappe la silhouette noire comme le fer (et Septimus se leva à demi de sa chaise), et avec des légions d'hommes prosternés derrière lui, le géant portant deuil, reçut pendant un instant sur son visage tout... — Mais je suis si malheureuse, Septimus, dit Rezia en essayant de le faire se rasseoir.
La foule immense se lamentait ; depuis des siècles, ces êtres étaient envahis par le chagrin. Il se retournerait, il leur parlerait dans quelques instants, quelques instants seulement, de ce soulagement, de cette joie, de cette révélation étonnante... — L'heure, Septimus », répéta Rezia. — Quelle heure est-il ?
Il parlait, il tressaillait, cet homme devait le remarquer. Il les regardait.
— Je vais te dire l'heure, répliqua Septimus, très lentement, d'une voix très endormie, en souriant mystérieusement. Alors qu'il était assis, souriant au mort en costume gris, la cloche sonna trois quarts, il était midi moins le quart.
Et c'est ça être jeune, pensa Peter Walsh en passant devant eux. Avoir une scène horrible en pleine matinée, la pauvre fille avait l'air totalement désespérée. Mais de quoi était-il question, se demanda Peter, qu'avait pu lui dire le jeune homme en pardessus pour qu'elle fasse une mine pareille ; quelle affreuse décision avaient-ils prise pour sembler tous les deux aussi désespérés par une si belle matinée d'été ? Ce qui était amusant dans mon retour en Angleterre après cinq ans, c'est que, les premiers jours, tout m'apparaissait nouveau, comme si je n'avais jamais rien vu auparavant : les amoureux qui se disputaient sous un arbre... la vie familiale dans les parcs... En foulant les gazons, il pensait qu'il n'avait jamais vu Londres aussi enchanteresse, ni ses paysages si doux, si riches, si verts, ni la nation si civilisée... tout cela après les Indes.
Cette sensibilité aux impressions avait sans aucun doute causé sa perte. Même à son âge, il avait ces sautes d'humeur propres aux adolescents des deux sexes : de bons jours, de mauvais jours... et ce sans raison apparente, le bonheur devant un joli visage, la tristesse à la vue d'une femme mal fagotée. Après les Indes, bien sûr, on tombait amoureux de toutes les femmes qu'on rencontrait. Il y avait chez elles une certaine fraîcheur ; même les plus pauvres s'habillaient mieux qu'il y a cinq ans, c'était certain ; et à ses yeux, la mode n'avait jamais été aussi seyante : les longues capes noires, la minceur, l'élégance, et puis cette délicieuse habitude, apparemment généralisée, de se maquiller. Toutes les femmes, même les plus respectables, étaient resplendissantes, les joues poudrées de rose, les lèvres colorées et impeccablement ourlées, des boucles noires d'encre ; c'était la mode, partout ; assurément, un changement avait eu lieu. Qu'en pensaient les jeunes gens ? se demanda Peter Walsh.
Ces cinq années, de 1918 à 1923, avaient dû être, à son avis, extrêmement importantes. Les gens semblaient différents. De même que les journaux. Il y avait par exemple ce journaliste dans l'un des hebdomadaires les plus respectables qui écrivait, sans gêne aucune, à propos des toilettes. Cela n'aurait pas pu se produire il y a dix ans : écrire sans ambages à propos des toilettes dans un hebdomadaire respectable. Sans compter celles qui, aux yeux de tous, sortent leur rouge à lèvres ou leur houpette pour se remaquiller. Sur le bateau du retour il y avait bon nombre de jeunes gens et de jeunes filles (il se souvenait particulièrement de Betty et de Bertie) qui se comportaient sans la moindre gêne ; la vieille mère, assise, jetait un œil sur eux tout en tricotant, affichant un calme olympien. La fille s'arrêtait et se repoudrait le bout du nez devant n'importe qui. Et ils n'étaient pas fiancés ; ils avaient juste pris du bon temps ; aucun sentiment l'un pour l'autre. Un caractère bien trempé... cette Betty Machin-chose... et du meilleur acier. À trente ans, elle ferait une excellente épouse. Elle se marierait quand cela lui conviendrait, épouserait un homme riche et vivrait dans une belle demeure près de Manchester.
Mais qui donc avait fait cela ? se demanda Peter Walsh en tournant dans Broad Walk... épouser un homme riche et vivre dans une grande maison près de Manchester ? Quelqu'un qui lui avait récemment écrit une longue lettre dithyrambique au sujet des « hortensias bleus ». C'est en voyant des hortensias bleus qu'elle... Sally Seton... avait tout naturellement pensé à lui. C'était Sally Seton, la dernière personne au monde dont on aurait imaginé qu'elle se marierait à un homme riche et vivrait dans une grande demeure près de Manchester, la sauvage, l'audacieuse et romantique Sally !
Mais de tout cet ancien groupe d'amies de Clarissa — les Whitbread, les Kinderley, les Cunningham, les Kinloch-Jones — Sally était sûrement la mieux. Elle essayait tout le temps de prendre les choses du bon côté. Elle voyait tout de même clair dans le jeu de Hugh Whitbread, l'admirable Hugh, alors que Clarissa et les autres étaient à ses pieds.
« Les Whitbread ? » Il l'entendait encore prononcer ces mots. « Que sont les Wihtbread ? Des marchands de charbon. De respectables commerçants. »
Hugh, elle le détestait pour une raison qui lui échappait. Elle disait qu'il ne pensait qu'à sa propre apparence. Il aurait dû être duc. Il était certain qu'il épouserait l'une des princesses royales. Et bien sûr, parmi toutes les personnes que Hugh avait rencontrées, c'était pour les aristocrates britanniques qu'il éprouvait le respect le plus extraordinaire, le plus naturel et le plus absolu. Même Clarissa devait en convenir. Oh, mais c'était un tel amour, et si altruiste... Il avait renoncé à la chasse pour faire plaisir à sa vieille mère... Il se souvenait des anniversaires de ses tantes, etc.
Sally, il fallait lui en rendre justice, avait compris tout cela. L'un de ses souvenirs les plus marquants pour lui était une dispute qui avait éclaté un dimanche matin à Bourton, au sujet des droits des femmes — sujet antédiluvien —, lorsque Sally avait soudain perdu son sang-froid et avait lancé à Hugh qu'il incarnait tout ce qu'il y avait de plus détestable dans la petite bourgeoisie britannique. Elle lui avait affirmé qu'elle le tenait pour responsable de la situation de « ces pauvres filles de Piccadilly »... Hugh, le parfait gentleman, le pauvre Hugh ! Jamais un homme n'avait eu l'air aussi horrifié ! Elle avait fait exprès, avait-elle avoué après coup (car ils avaient l'habitude de se retrouver dans le potager pour comparer leurs impressions). « Il n'a rien lu, n'a pensé à rien, n'a rien ressenti », pouvait-il l'entendre dire avec emphase, d'une voix qui portait beaucoup plus loin qu'elle ne le pensait. Elle ajoutait que les palefreniers avaient une vie plus animée que celle de Hugh, que c'était l'exemple parfait du type issu d'une école privée, qu'aucun pays excepté l'Angleterre ne pouvait avoir produit un type comme lui. Elle était vraiment méchante, je ne sais pas pourquoi ; elle lui en voulait. Il s'était passé quelque chose – il avait oublié quoi – dans le fumoir. L'avait-il insultée... embrassée ? Incroyable ! Bien sûr personne ne croyait un instant que Hugh en fût capable. Qui aurait pu ? Embrasser Sally dans le fumoir ! Si c'eût été une certaine Edith ou Lady Violet, peut-être ; mais pas cette petite canaille de Sally, sans le sou, dont les parents flambaient à Monte-Carlo. De toutes les personnes qu'il avait rencontrées, Hugh était le plus snob, le plus obséquieux... Non, il ne rampait pas exactement. Il était trop maniéré pour cela. Valet de première classe était la comparaison évidente : quelqu'un qui marchait derrière pour porter les valises, à qui on pouvait confier l'envoi de télégrammes, indispensable aux maîtresses de maison. Et il avait trouvé chaussure à son pied : il avait épousé l'honorable Evelyn, obtenu un petit poste à la Cour, s'occupait des caves du roi, astiquait les boucles des chaussures impériales, se promenait en culottes bouffantes et col en dentelle. Comme la vie est cruelle ! Un petit emploi à la Cour !
Il avait épousé cette lady, l'honorable Evelyn, et il pensait, en regardant les maisons pompeuses qui surplombaient le parc, qu'ils vivaient dans les environs, car il avait déjeuné une fois dans une maison qui, comme tout ce que possédait Hugh, avait quelque chose qu'aucune autre maison ne pouvait avoir : des armoires à linge, peut-être. Il fallait aller les regarder, passer beaucoup de temps à admirer tout ce qui s'y trouvait : armoires à linge, taies d'oreiller, vieux meubles en chêne et les tableaux que Hugh avait achetés pour une bouchée de pain. Mais Mrs Hugh vendait parfois la mèche. C'était une de ces petites femmes insignifiantes, semblables à des souris, qui admirent les grands hommes. Elle était presque insignifiante. Puis, soudainement, elle disait quelque chose de tout à fait inattendu... quelque chose d'incisif. Il lui restait peut-être quelques vestiges du grand monde. Les vapeurs de charbon étaient trop fortes pour elle... cela rendait l'atmosphère irrespirable. Ainsi vivaient-ils, avec leurs armoires à linge, leurs vieux maîtres et leurs taies d'oreillers bordées de dentelles, avec une rente d'environ cinq ou dix mille livres par an, pendant que lui, qui avait deux ans de plus que Hugh, quémandait un emploi.
À cinquante-trois ans, il devait venir leur demander de lui trouver une place de secrétaire ou de professeur de latin auprès de jeunes garçons, ou de le mettre à disposition d'un mandarin dans un ministère — quelque chose qui lui rapporterait cinq cents livres par an — car s'il épousait Daisy, même avec sa pension, ils ne pourraient jamais faire avec moins. Whitbread pourrait probablement le faire ; ou Dalloway. Il n'avait pas de scrupules à demander à Dalloway. C'était un type bien : un peu limité, un peu épais, certes, mais un chic type. Quoi qu'il entreprît, il agissait de façon détachée, de manière sensée, sans un brin d'imagination, sans une étincelle de génie, mais avec la gentillesse déconcertante qui le caractérisait. Il aurait dû être propriétaire terrien... il perdait son temps en politique. Il se sentait à l'aise à l'extérieur, avec les chevaux et les chiens ; par exemple, il se montra particulièrement efficace lorsque le grand chien au poil hirsute de Clarissa se retrouva pris dans un piège et eut la patte à moitié arrachée. Clarissa manqua de tourner de l'œil, mais Dalloway s'occupa de tout : il banda la patte, fabriqua des attelles et conseilla à Clarissa de ne pas se comporter comme une idiote. C'était peut-être pour cela qu'elle l'aimait... c'était peut-être ce dont elle avait besoin. — Voyons, ma chère, ne soyez pas stupide. Tenez ceci, aller me chercher ça... tout en parlant au chien comme s'il se fût agi d'un être humain.
Quant à la poésie... comment pouvait-elle gober toutes ces âneries ? Comment put-elle le laisser pérorer sur Shakespeare ? Richard Dalloway se redressa et, campé sur ses deux jambes, déclara très sérieusement qu'aucun homme respectable ne devrait lire les sonnets de Shakespeare, car cela revenait à écouter aux portes (sans compter qu'il désapprouvait cette relation). Un homme respectable ne devrait pas permettre à sa femme de rendre visite à la sœur d'une veuve. In-cro-ya-ble ! La seule chose à faire fut de lui lancer des dragées... c'était pendant le dîner. Mais Clarissa gobait tout cela ; elle trouvait cela très honnête de sa part, très indépendant ; Dieu sait pourtant si elle ne le considérait pas comme l'esprit le plus original qu'elle eût jamais rencontré !
C'était l'un des points communs entre Sally et lui. Il y avait un jardin dans lequel ils avaient l'habitude de se promener, un endroit clos, avec des rosiers et des choux-fleurs géants. Il se souvenait de Sally cueillant une rose, s'arrêtant pour s'émerveiller devant la beauté des feuilles de chou au clair de lune (c'était extraordinaire comme tout cela lui revenait en mémoire, des choses auxquelles il n'avait plus pensé depuis des années), tandis qu'elle le suppliait, en riant bien sûr, d'enlever Clarissa, de la sauver des Hugh, des Dalloway et de tous les autres « gentlemen parfaits » qui « étoufferaient son âme » ( à l'époque elle écrivait des pages et des pages de poésie), la réduiraient à un simple rôle de maîtresse de maison et encourageraient son goût pour les mondanités. Mais il faut rendre justice à Clarissa. Elle n'allait pas épouser Hugh en fin de compte. Elle savait pertinemment bien ce qu'elle voulait. Ses émotions n'étaient que superficielles. Au fond, elle était très perspicace... bien meilleure juge des caractères que Sally, par exemple, et malgré tout cela, purement féminine, avec ce don extraordinaire, propre aux femmes, de pouvoir créer son propre univers où qu'elle se trouvât. Elle entrait dans une pièce ; elle se tenait là — comme il l'avait souvent vue —, dans l'encadrement d'une porte, entourée de nombreuses personnes. Mais c'était de Clarissa dont on se souvenait. Non qu'elle fût remarquable, loin d'être belle, elle n'avait rien de pittoresque, ne disait jamais rien de particulièrement intelligent, mais elle était là, tout simplement.
Non, non, non ! Il n'était plus amoureux d'elle ! C'était cela seulement qu'il ressentait, après l'avoir vue ce matin-là, au milieu de ses ciseaux et soieries, se préparant pour la fête, incapable qu'il était de se détacher de son image qui lui revenait sans cesse, comme un somnambule qui se cognerait contre lui dans une voiture de chemin de fer ; ce n'était pas être amoureux, bien sûr ; c'était penser à elle, la critiquer, recommencer, après trente ans, à essayer de l'expliquer. Les points les plus évidents en elle, c'étaient sa mondanité, avoir une place dans la bonne société, réussir dans la vie — ce qui, dans un certain sens, est tout à fait exact — ; elle le lui avait confié. (Vous pouviez toujours lui faire reconnaître la vérité si vous vous en donniez la peine ; elle était honnête.) Ce qu'elle dirait, c'est qu'elle détestait les vieux croûtons, les ringards, comme lui sans doute ; qu'elle pensait que les gens n'avaient pas le droit de traînasser, les mains dans les poches ; qu'ils devaient faire quelque chose, être quelqu'un ; et que ces personnages pontifiants, ces duchesses, ces vieilles comtesses que l'on croisait dans son salon, aussi éloignés qu'il les trouvât de tout ce qui comptait vraiment, représentaient quelque chose de réel pour elle. Lady Bexborough, déclara-t-elle un jour, se tenait droite (tout comme Clarissa elle-même ; jamais avachie, toujours droite comme un i, un peu rigide en fait). Elle disait qu'elles avaient une sorte de courage auquel elle accordait de plus en plus d'importance avec le temps. Dans tout ceci, il y avait une grande influence de Dalloway, bien sûr, ainsi qu'une part importante de sens civique, d'empire britannique, de réforme tarifaire, d'esprit de classe dirigeante qu'elle avait cultivée en elle, comme le voulait la tendance. Avec deux fois plus de bon sens, elle avait dû lire des choses dans son regard... une des tragédies de la vie conjugale. Avec son esprit bien à elle, elle ne cessait de citer Richard — comme si l'on ne pouvait pas connaître exactement les pensées de Richard en lisant l'édition matinale du Morning Post ! Ces fêtes, par exemple, étaient toutes pour lui, ou pour l'idée qu'elle se faisait de lui (pour rendre justice à Richard, il aurait été plus heureux à jouer les fermiers sur ses terres dans le Norfolk). Elle faisait de son salon une sorte de lieu de rencontre ; elle avait le don pour cela. Maintes et maintes fois, il l'avait vue s'intéresser à quelque jeune homme mal dégrossi, le modeler, l'éveiller puis le lancer dans le monde. Évidemment, un nombre impressionnant de personnes complètement inintéressantes lui collaient aux basques. Mais des gens originaux et inattendus apparaissaient, parfois un artiste, parfois un écrivain : drôles de paroissiens au milieu de cette atmosphère. Et derrière tout cela existait un réseau de visiteurs laissant des cartes, aimables avec les gens, tourbillonnant autour de chacun avec des bouquets de fleurs, de petits cadeaux : untel se rendait en France et il lui fallait un coussin d'air... Toute cette agitation demandait une énergie incroyable, mais c'était la vie des femmes de son monde et Clarissa s'y épanouissait avec naturel et sincérité.
Bizarrement, c'était l'une des personnes les plus sceptiques qu'il eût jamais rencontrées ; et peut-être (c'était une théorie qu'il avait développée pour expliquer son caractère, si transparent à certains égards, si trouble à d'autres) se disait-elle : « Puisque nous sommes une race condamnée, enchaînée à un navire en train de couler (ses lectures favorites lorsqu'elle était jeune fille étaient Huxley et Tyndall qui affectionnaient ces métaphores nautiques), puisque tout cela n'est qu'une mauvaise plaisanterie, assumons au moins notre part, atténuons les souffrances de nos compagnons d'infortune (Huxley encore), décorons le donjon avec des fleurs et des coussins d'air ; soyons aussi décents que possible. Ces crapules, les Dieux, n'en feraient pas qu'à leur tête... son idée étant que les Dieux, qui ne perdaient jamais une occasion de blesser, de contrarier et de gâcher la vie des humains, seraient tout à fait dépités, tout de même, que vous vous comportiez comme une dame de qualité. Cette période débuta juste après la mort de Sylvia... cet horrible drame. Voir sa propre sœur mourir sous ses yeux — une jeune fille à l'aube de la vie, la plus douée de toutes, comme le disait toujours Clarissa —, tuée par la chute d'un arbre (tout cela à cause de l'imprudence de Justin Parry), suffisait à vous rendre amer. Plus tard, elle fut probablement moins catégorique ; elle pensa que Dieu n'existait pas ; il n'y avait personne à blâmer et elle développa en elle cette religion des gens qui ne croient pas en Dieu mais qui répandent le bien autour d'eux par bonté.
Et bien entendu, elle appréciait énormément la vie. It was her nature to enjoy (though goodness only knows, she had her reserves; it was a mere sketch, he often felt, that even he, after all these years, could make of Clarissa). Anyhow there was no bitterness in her; none of that sense of moral virtue which is so repulsive in good women. She enjoyed practically everything. If you walked with her in Hyde Park now it was a bed of tulips, now a child in a perambulator, now some absurd little drama she made up on the spur of the moment. (Very likely, she would have talked to those lovers, if she had thought them unhappy.) She had a sense of comedy that was really exquisite, but she needed people, always people, to bring it out, with the inevitable result that she frittered her time away, lunching, dining, giving these incessant parties of hers, talking nonsense, sayings things she didn't mean, blunting the edge of her mind, losing her discrimination. There she would sit at the head of the table taking infinite pains with some old buffer who might be useful to Dalloway--they knew the most appalling bores in Europe--or in came Elizabeth and everything must give way to her. She was at a High School, at the inarticulate stage last time he was over, a round-eyed, pale-faced girl, with nothing of her mother in her, a silent stolid creature, who took it all as a matter of course, let her mother make a fuss of her, and then said "May I go now?" like a child of four; going off, Clarissa explained, with that mixture of amusement and pride which Dalloway himself seemed to rouse in her, to play hockey. And now Elizabeth was "out," presumably; thought him an old fogy, laughed at her mother's friends. Ah well, so be it. The compensation of growing old, Peter Walsh thought, coming out of Regent's Park, and holding his hat in hand, was simply this; that the passions remain as strong as ever, but one has gained--at last!--the power which adds the supreme flavour to existence,--the power of taking hold of experience, of turning it round, slowly, in the light.
A terrible confession it was (he put his hat on again), but now, at the age of fifty-three one scarcely needed people any more. Life itself, every moment of it, every drop of it, here, this instant, now, in the sun, in Regent's Park, was enough. Too much indeed. A whole lifetime was too short to bring out, now that one had acquired the power, the full flavour; to extract every ounce of pleasure, every shade of meaning; which both were so much more solid than they used to be, so much less personal. It was impossible that he should ever suffer again as Clarissa had made him suffer. For hours at a time (pray God that one might say these things without being overheard! ), for hours and days he never thought of Daisy.
Could it be that he was in love with her then, remembering the misery, the torture, the extraordinary passion of those days? It was a different thing altogether--a much pleasanter thing--the truth being, of course, that now she was in love with him. And that perhaps was the reason why, when the ship actually sailed, he felt an extraordinary relief, wanted nothing so much as to be alone; was annoyed to find all her little attentions--cigars, notes, a rug for the voyage--in his cabin. Every one if they were honest would say the same; one doesn't want people after fifty; one doesn't want to go on telling women they are pretty; that's what most men of fifty would say, Peter Walsh thought, if they were honest.
But then these astonishing accesses of emotion--bursting into tears this morning, what was all that about? What could Clarissa have thought of him? thought him a fool presumably, not for the first time. It was jealousy that was at the bottom of it--jealousy which survives every other passion of mankind, Peter Walsh thought, holding his pocket-knife at arm's length. She had been meeting Major Orde, Daisy said in her last letter; said it on purpose he knew; said it to make him jealous; he could see her wrinkling her forehead as she wrote, wondering what she could say to hurt him; and yet it made no difference; he was furious! All this pother of coming to England and seeing lawyers wasn't to marry her, but to prevent her from marrying anybody else. That was what tortured him, that was what came over him when he saw Clarissa so calm, so cold, so intent on her dress or whatever it was; realising what she might have spared him, what she had reduced him to--a whimpering, snivelling old ass. But women, he thought, shutting his pocket-knife, don't know what passion is. They don't know the meaning of it to men. Clarissa was as cold as an icicle. There she would sit on the sofa by his side, let him take her hand, give him one kiss--Here he was at the crossing.
A sound interrupted him; a frail quivering sound, a voice bubbling up without direction, vigour, beginning or end, running weakly and shrilly and with an absence of all human meaning into: ee um fah um so foo swee too eem oo-- the voice of no age or sex, the voice of an ancient spring spouting from the earth; which issued, just opposite Regent's Park Tube station from a tall quivering shape, like a funnel, like a rusty pump, like a wind-beaten tree for ever barren of leaves which lets the wind run up and down its branches singing: ee um fah um so foo swee too eem oo, and rocks and creaks and moans in the eternal breeze.
Through all ages--when the pavement was grass, when it was swamp, through the age of tusk and mammoth, through the age of silent sunrise, the battered woman--for she wore a skirt--with her right hand exposed, her left clutching at her side, stood singing of love--love which has lasted a million years, she sang, love which prevails, and millions of years ago, her lover, who had been dead these centuries, had walked, she crooned, with her in May; but in the course of ages, long as summer days, and flaming, she remembered, with nothing but red asters, he had gone; death's enormous sickle had swept those tremendous hills, and when at last she laid her hoary and immensely aged head on the earth, now become a mere cinder of ice, she implored the Gods to lay by her side a bunch of purple-heather, there on her high burial place which the last rays of the last sun caressed; for then the pageant of the universe would be over.
As the ancient song bubbled up opposite Regent's Park Tube station still the earth seemed green and flowery; still, though it issued from so rude a mouth, a mere hole in the earth, muddy too, matted with root fibres and tangled grasses, still the old bubbling burbling song, soaking through the knotted roots of infinite ages, and skeletons and treasure, streamed away in rivulets over the pavement and all along the Marylebone Road, and down towards Euston, fertilising, leaving a damp stain.
Still remembering how once in some primeval May she had walked with her lover, this rusty pump, this battered old woman with one hand exposed for coppers the other clutching her side, would still be there in ten million years, remembering how once she had walked in May, where the sea flows now, with whom it did not matter--he was a man, oh yes, a man who had loved her. But the passage of ages had blurred the clarity of that ancient May day; the bright petalled flowers were hoar and silver frosted; and she no longer saw, when she implored him (as she did now quite clearly) "look in my eyes with thy sweet eyes intently," she no longer saw brown eyes, black whiskers or sunburnt face but only a looming shape, a shadow shape, to which, with the bird-like freshness of the very aged she still twittered "give me your hand and let me press it gently" (Peter Walsh couldn't help giving the poor creature a coin as he stepped into his taxi), "and if some one should see, what matter they?" she demanded; and her fist clutched at her side, and she smiled, pocketing her shilling, and all peering inquisitive eyes seemed blotted out, and the passing generations--the pavement was crowded with bustling middle-class people--vanished, like leaves, to be trodden under, to be soaked and steeped and made mould of by that eternal spring-- ee um fah um so foo swee too eem oo, "Poor old woman," said Rezia Warren Smith, waiting to cross.
Oh poor old wretch!
Suppose it was a wet night? Suppose one's father, or somebody who had known one in better days had happened to pass, and saw one standing there in the gutter? And where did she sleep at night?
Cheerfully, almost gaily, the invincible thread of sound wound up into the air like the smoke from a cottage chimney, winding up clean beech trees and issuing in a tuft of blue smoke among the topmost leaves. "And if some one should see, what matter they?"
Since she was so unhappy, for weeks and weeks now, Rezia had given meanings to things that happened, almost felt sometimes that she must stop people in the street, if they looked good, kind people, just to say to them "I am unhappy"; and this old woman singing in the street "if some one should see, what matter they?" made her suddenly quite sure that everything was going to be right. They were going to Sir William Bradshaw; she thought his name sounded nice; he would cure Septimus at once. And then there was a brewer's cart, and the grey horses had upright bristles of straw in their tails; there were newspaper placards. It was a silly, silly dream, being unhappy.
So they crossed, Mr. and Mrs. Septimus Warren Smith, and was there, after all, anything to draw attention to them, anything to make a passer-by suspect here is a young man who carries in him the greatest message in the world, and is, moreover, the happiest man in the world, and the most miserable? Perhaps they walked more slowly than other people, and there was something hesitating, trailing, in the man's walk, but what more natural for a clerk, who has not been in the West End on a weekday at this hour for years, than to keep looking at the sky, looking at this, that and the other, as if Portland Place were a room he had come into when the family are away, the chandeliers being hung in holland bags, and the caretaker, as she lets in long shafts of dusty light upon deserted, queer-looking armchairs, lifting one corner of the long blinds, explains to the visitors what a wonderful place it is; how wonderful, but at the same time, he thinks, as he looks at chairs and tables, how strange.
To look at, he might have been a clerk, but of the better sort; for he wore brown boots; his hands were educated; so, too, his profile--his angular, big-nosed, intelligent, sensitive profile; but not his lips altogether, for they were loose; and his eyes (as eyes tend to be), eyes merely; hazel, large; so that he was, on the whole, a border case, neither one thing nor the other, might end with a house at Purley and a motor car, or continue renting apartments in back streets all his life; one of those half-educated, self-educated men whose education is all learnt from books borrowed from public libraries, read in the evening after the day's work, on the advice of well-known authors consulted by letter.
As for the other experiences, the solitary ones, which people go through alone, in their bedrooms, in their offices, walking the fields and the streets of London, he had them; had left home, a mere boy, because of his mother; she lied; because he came down to tea for the fiftieth time with his hands unwashed; because he could see no future for a poet in Stroud; and so, making a confidant of his little sister, had gone to London leaving an absurd note behind him, such as great men have written, and the world has read later when the story of their struggles has become famous.
London has swallowed up many millions of young men called Smith; thought nothing of fantastic Christian names like Septimus with which their parents have thought to distinguish them. Lodging off the Euston Road, there were experiences, again experiences, such as change a face in two years from a pink innocent oval to a face lean, contracted, hostile. But of all this what could the most observant of friends have said except what a gardener says when he opens the conservatory door in the morning and finds a new blossom on his plant:--It has flowered; flowered from vanity, ambition, idealism, passion, loneliness, courage, laziness, the usual seeds, which all muddled up (in a room off the Euston Road), made him shy, and stammering, made him anxious to improve himself, made him fall in love with Miss Isabel Pole, lecturing in the Waterloo Road upon Shakespeare.
Was he not like Keats? she asked; and reflected how she might give him a taste of Antony and Cleopatra and the rest; lent him books; wrote him scraps of letters; and lit in him such a fire as burns only once in a lifetime, without heat, flickering a red gold flame infinitely ethereal and insubstantial over Miss Pole; Antony and Cleopatra; and the Waterloo Road. He thought her beautiful, believed her impeccably wise; dreamed of her, wrote poems to her, which, ignoring the subject, she corrected in red ink; he saw her, one summer evening, walking in a green dress in a square. "It has flowered," the gardener might have said, had he opened the door; had he come in, that is to say, any night about this time, and found him writing; found him tearing up his writing; found him finishing a masterpiece at three o'clock in the morning and running out to pace the streets, and visiting churches, and fasting one day, drinking another, devouring Shakespeare, Darwin, The History of Civilisation, and Bernard Shaw.
Something was up, Mr. Brewer knew; Mr. Brewer, managing clerk at Sibleys and Arrowsmiths, auctioneers, valuers, land and estate agents; something was up, he thought, and, being paternal with his young men, and thinking very highly of Smith's abilities, and prophesying that he would, in ten or fifteen years, succeed to the leather arm-chair in the inner room under the skylight with the deed-boxes round him, "if he keeps his health," said Mr. Brewer, and that was the danger--he looked weakly; advised football, invited him to supper and was seeing his way to consider recommending a rise of salary, when something happened which threw out many of Mr. Brewer's calculations, took away his ablest young fellows, and eventually, so prying and insidious were the fingers of the European War, smashed a plaster cast of Ceres, ploughed a hole in the geranium beds, and utterly ruined the cook's nerves at Mr. Brewer's establishment at Muswell Hill.
Septimus was one of the first to volunteer. He went to France to save an England which consisted almost entirely of Shakespeare's plays and Miss Isabel Pole in a green dress walking in a square. There in the trenches the change which Mr. Brewer desired when he advised football was produced instantly; he developed manliness; he was promoted; he drew the attention, indeed the affection of his officer, Evans by name. It was a case of two dogs playing on a hearth-rug; one worrying a paper screw, snarling, snapping, giving a pinch, now and then, at the old dog's ear; the other lying somnolent, blinking at the fire, raising a paw, turning and growling good-temperedly. They had to be together, share with each other, fight with each other, quarrel with each other. But when Evans (Rezia who had only seen him once called him "a quiet man," a sturdy red-haired man, undemonstrative in the company of women), when Evans was killed, just before the Armistice, in Italy, Septimus, far from showing any emotion or recognising that here was the end of a friendship, congratulated himself upon feeling very little and very reasonably. The War had taught him. It was sublime. He had gone through the whole show, friendship, European War, death, had won promotion, was still under thirty and was bound to survive. He was right there. The last shells missed him. He watched them explode with indifference. When peace came he was in Milan, billeted in the house of an innkeeper with a courtyard, flowers in tubs, little tables in the open, daughters making hats, and to Lucrezia, the younger daughter, he became engaged one evening when the panic was on him--that he could not feel.
For now that it was all over, truce signed, and the dead buried, he had, especially in the evening, these sudden thunder-claps of fear. He could not feel. As he opened the door of the room where the Italian girls sat making hats, he could see them; could hear them; they were rubbing wires among coloured beads in saucers; they were turning buckram shapes this way and that; the table was all strewn with feathers, spangles, silks, ribbons; scissors were rapping on the table; but something failed him; he could not feel. Still, scissors rapping, girls laughing, hats being made protected him; he was assured of safety; he had a refuge. But he could not sit there all night. There were moments of waking in the early morning. The bed was falling; he was falling. Oh for the scissors and the lamplight and the buckram shapes! He asked Lucrezia to marry him, the younger of the two, the gay, the frivolous, with those little artist's fingers that she would hold up and say "It is all in them." Silk, feathers, what not were alive to them.
"It is the hat that matters most," she would say, when they walked out together. Every hat that passed, she would examine; and the cloak and the dress and the way the woman held herself. Ill-dressing, over-dressing she stigmatised, not savagely, rather with impatient movements of the hands, like those of a painter who puts from him some obvious well-meant glaring imposture; and then, generously, but always critically, she would welcome a shopgirl who had turned her little bit of stuff gallantly, or praise, wholly, with enthusiastic and professional understanding, a French lady descending from her carriage, in chinchilla, robes, pearls.
"Beautiful!" she would murmur, nudging Septimus, that he might see. But beauty was behind a pane of glass. Even taste (Rezia liked ices, chocolates, sweet things) had no relish to him. He put down his cup on the little marble table. He looked at people outside; happy they seemed, collecting in the middle of the street, shouting, laughing, squabbling over nothing. But he could not taste, he could not feel. In the tea-shop among the tables and the chattering waiters the appalling fear came over him--he could not feel. He could reason; he could read, Dante for example, quite easily ("Septimus, do put down your book," said Rezia, gently shutting the Inferno), he could add up his bill; his brain was perfect; it must be the fault of the world then--that he could not feel.
"The English are so silent," Rezia said. She liked it, she said. She respected these Englishmen, and wanted to see London, and the English horses, and the tailor-made suits, and could remember hearing how wonderful the shops were, from an Aunt who had married and lived in Soho.
It might be possible, Septimus thought, looking at England from the train window, as they left Newhaven; it might be possible that the world itself is without meaning.
At the office they advanced him to a post of considerable responsibility. They were proud of him; he had won crosses. "You have done your duty; it is up to us--" began Mr. Brewer; and could not finish, so pleasurable was his emotion. They took admirable lodgings off the Tottenham Court Road.
Here he opened Shakespeare once more. That boy's business of the intoxication of language--Antony and Cleopatra--had shrivelled utterly. How Shakespeare loathed humanity--the putting on of clothes, the getting of children, the sordidity of the mouth and the belly! This was now revealed to Septimus; the message hidden in the beauty of words. The secret signal which one generation passes, under disguise, to the next is loathing, hatred, despair. Dante the same. Aeschylus (translated) the same. There Rezia sat at the table trimming hats. She trimmed hats for Mrs. Filmer's friends; she trimmed hats by the hour. She looked pale, mysterious, like a lily, drowned, under water, he thought.
"The English are so serious," she would say, putting her arms round Septimus, her cheek against his.
Love between man and woman was repulsive to Shakespeare. The business of copulation was filth to him before the end. But, Rezia said, she must have children. They had been married five years.
They went to the Tower together; to the Victoria and Albert Museum; stood in the crowd to see the King open Parliament. And there were the shops--hat shops, dress shops, shops with leather bags in the window, where she would stand staring. But she must have a boy.
She must have a son like Septimus, she said. But nobody could be like Septimus; so gentle; so serious; so clever. Could she not read Shakespeare too? Was Shakespeare a difficult author? she asked.
One cannot bring children into a world like this. One cannot perpetuate suffering, or increase the breed of these lustful animals, who have no lasting emotions, but only whims and vanities, eddying them now this way, now that.
He watched her snip, shape, as one watches a bird hop, flit in the grass, without daring to move a finger. For the truth is (let her ignore it) that human beings have neither kindness, nor faith, nor charity beyond what serves to increase the pleasure of the moment. They hunt in packs. Their packs scour the desert and vanish screaming into the wilderness. They desert the fallen. They are plastered over with grimaces. There was Brewer at the office, with his waxed moustache, coral tie-pin, white slip, and pleasurable emotions--all coldness and clamminess within,--his geraniums ruined in the War--his cook's nerves destroyed; or Amelia What'shername, handing round cups of tea punctually at five--a leering, sneering obscene little harpy; and the Toms and Berties in their starched shirt fronts oozing thick drops of vice. They never saw him drawing pictures of them naked at their antics in his notebook. In the street, vans roared past him; brutality blared out on placards; men were trapped in mines; women burnt alive; and once a maimed file of lunatics being exercised or displayed for the diversion of the populace (who laughed aloud), ambled and nodded and grinned past him, in the Tottenham Court Road, each half apologetically, yet triumphantly, inflicting his hopeless woe. And would he go mad?
At tea Rezia told him that Mrs. Filmer's daughter was expecting a baby. She could not grow old and have no children! She was very lonely, she was very unhappy! She cried for the first time since they were married. Far away he heard her sobbing; he heard it accurately, he noticed it distinctly; he compared it to a piston thumping. But he felt nothing.
His wife was crying, and he felt nothing; only each time she sobbed in this profound, this silent, this hopeless way, he descended another step into the pit.
At last, with a melodramatic gesture which he assumed mechanically and with complete consciousness of its insincerity, he dropped his head on his hands. Now he had surrendered; now other people must help him. People must be sent for. He gave in.
Nothing could rouse him. Rezia put him to bed. She sent for a doctor--Mrs. Filmer's Dr. Holmes. Dr. Holmes examined him. There was nothing whatever the matter, said Dr. Holmes. Oh, what a relief! What a kind man, what a good man! thought Rezia. When he felt like that he went to the Music Hall, said Dr. Holmes. He took a day off with his wife and played golf. Why not try two tabloids of bromide dissolved in a glass of water at bedtime? These old Bloomsbury houses, said Dr. Holmes, tapping the wall, are often full of very fine panelling, which the landlords have the folly to paper over. Only the other day, visiting a patient, Sir Somebody Something in Bedford Square-- So there was no excuse; nothing whatever the matter, except the sin for which human nature had condemned him to death; that he did not feel. He had not cared when Evans was killed; that was worst; but all the other crimes raised their heads and shook their fingers and jeered and sneered over the rail of the bed in the early hours of the morning at the prostrate body which lay realising its degradation; how he had married his wife without loving her; had lied to her; seduced her; outraged Miss Isabel Pole, and was so pocked and marked with vice that women shuddered when they saw him in the street. The verdict of human nature on such a wretch was death.
Dr. Holmes came again. Large, fresh coloured, handsome, flicking his boots, looking in the glass, he brushed it all aside--headaches, sleeplessness, fears, dreams--nerve symptoms and nothing more, he said. If Dr. Holmes found himself even half a pound below eleven stone six, he asked his wife for another plate of porridge at breakfast. (Rezia would learn to cook porridge.) But, he continued, health is largely a matter in our own control. Throw yourself into outside interests; take up some hobby. He opened Shakespeare--Antony and Cleopatra; pushed Shakespeare aside. Some hobby, said Dr. Holmes, for did he not owe his own excellent health (and he worked as hard as any man in London) to the fact that he could always switch off from his patients on to old furniture? And what a very pretty comb, if he might say so, Mrs. Warren Smith was wearing!
When the damned fool came again, Septimus refused to see him. Did he indeed? said Dr. Holmes, smiling agreeably. Really he had to give that charming little lady, Mrs. Smith, a friendly push before he could get past her into her husband's bedroom.
"So you're in a funk," he said agreeably, sitting down by his patient's side. He had actually talked of killing himself to his wife, quite a girl, a foreigner, wasn't she? Didn't that give her a very odd idea of English husbands? Didn't one owe perhaps a duty to one's wife? Wouldn't it be better to do something instead of lying in bed? For he had had forty years' experience behind him; and Septimus could take Dr. Holmes's word for it--there was nothing whatever the matter with him. And next time Dr. Holmes came he hoped to find Smith out of bed and not making that charming little lady his wife anxious about him.
Human nature, in short, was on him--the repulsive brute, with the blood-red nostrils. Holmes was on him. Dr. Holmes came quite regularly every day. Once you stumble, Septimus wrote on the back of a postcard, human nature is on you. Holmes is on you. Their only chance was to escape, without letting Holmes know; to Italy--anywhere, anywhere, away from Dr. Holmes.
But Rezia could not understand him. Dr. Holmes was such a kind man. He was so interested in Septimus. He only wanted to help them, he said. He had four little children and he had asked her to tea, she told Septimus.
So he was deserted. The whole world was clamouring: Kill yourself, kill yourself, for our sakes. But why should he kill himself for their sakes? Food was pleasant; the sun hot; and this killing oneself, how does one set about it, with a table knife, uglily, with floods of blood,--by sucking a gaspipe? He was too weak; he could scarcely raise his hand. Besides, now that he was quite alone, condemned, deserted, as those who are about to die are alone, there was a luxury in it, an isolation full of sublimity; a freedom which the attached can never know. Holmes had won of course; the brute with the red nostrils had won. But even Holmes himself could not touch this last relic straying on the edge of the world, this outcast, who gazed back at the inhabited regions, who lay, like a drowned sailor, on the shore of the world.
It was at that moment (Rezia gone shopping) that the great revelation took place. A voice spoke from behind the screen. Evans was speaking. The dead were with him.
"Evans, Evans!" he cried.
Mr. Smith was talking aloud to himself, Agnes the servant girl cried to Mrs. Filmer in the kitchen. "Evans, Evans," he had said as she brought in the tray. She jumped, she did. She scuttled downstairs.
And Rezia came in, with her flowers, and walked across the room, and put the roses in a vase, upon which the sun struck directly, and it went laughing, leaping round the room.
She had had to buy the roses, Rezia said, from a poor man in the street. But they were almost dead already, she said, arranging the roses.
So there was a man outside; Evans presumably; and the roses, which Rezia said were half dead, had been picked by him in the fields of Greece. "Communication is health; communication is happiness, communication--" he muttered.
"What are you saying, Septimus?" Rezia asked, wild with terror, for he was talking to himself.
She sent Agnes running for Dr. Holmes. Her husband, she said, was mad. He scarcely knew her.
"You brute! You brute!" cried Septimus, seeing human nature, that is Dr. Holmes, enter the room.
"Now what's all this about?" said Dr. Holmes in the most amiable way in the world. "Talking nonsense to frighten your wife?" But he would give him something to make him sleep. And if they were rich people, said Dr. Holmes, looking ironically round the room, by all means let them go to Harley Street; if they had no confidence in him, said Dr. Holmes, looking not quite so kind.
It was precisely twelve o'clock; twelve by Big Ben; whose stroke was wafted over the northern part of London; blent with that of other clocks, mixed in a thin ethereal way with the clouds and wisps of smoke, and died up there among the seagulls--twelve o'clock struck as Clarissa Dalloway laid her green dress on her bed, and the Warren Smiths walked down Harley Street. Twelve was the hour of their appointment. Probably, Rezia thought, that was Sir William Bradshaw's house with the grey motor car in front of it. The leaden circles dissolved in the air.
Indeed it was--Sir William Bradshaw's motor car; low, powerful, grey with plain initials' interlocked on the panel, as if the pomps of heraldry were incongruous, this man being the ghostly helper, the priest of science; and, as the motor car was grey, so to match its sober suavity, grey furs, silver grey rugs were heaped in it, to keep her ladyship warm while she waited. For often Sir William would travel sixty miles or more down into the country to visit the rich, the afflicted, who could afford the very large fee which Sir William very properly charged for his advice. Her ladyship waited with the rugs about her knees an hour or more, leaning back, thinking sometimes of the patient, sometimes, excusably, of the wall of gold, mounting minute by minute while she waited; the wall of gold that was mounting between them and all shifts and anxieties (she had borne them bravely; they had had their struggles) until she felt wedged on a calm ocean, where only spice winds blow; respected, admired, envied, with scarcely anything left to wish for, though she regretted her stoutness; large dinner-parties every Thursday night to the profession; an occasional bazaar to be opened; Royalty greeted; too little time, alas, with her husband, whose work grew and grew; a boy doing well at Eton; she would have liked a daughter too; interests she had, however, in plenty; child welfare; the after-care of the epileptic, and photography, so that if there was a church building, or a church decaying, she bribed the sexton, got the key and took photographs, which were scarcely to be distinguished from the work of professionals, while she waited.
Sir William himself was no longer young. He had worked very hard; he had won his position by sheer ability (being the son of a shopkeeper); loved his profession; made a fine figurehead at ceremonies and spoke well--all of which had by the time he was knighted given him a heavy look, a weary look (the stream of patients being so incessant, the responsibilities and privileges of his profession so onerous), which weariness, together with his grey hairs, increased the extraordinary distinction of his presence and gave him the reputation (of the utmost importance in dealing with nerve cases) not merely of lightning skill, and almost infallible accuracy in diagnosis but of sympathy; tact; understanding of the human soul. He could see the first moment they came into the room (the Warren Smiths they were called); he was certain directly he saw the man; it was a case of extreme gravity. It was a case of complete breakdown--complete physical and nervous breakdown, with every symptom in an advanced stage, he ascertained in two or three minutes (writing answers to questions, murmured discreetly, on a pink card).
How long had Dr. Holmes been attending him?
Six weeks.
Prescribed a little bromide? Said there was nothing the matter? Ah yes (those general practitioners! thought Sir William. It took half his time to undo their blunders. Some were irreparable).
"You served with great distinction in the War?"
The patient repeated the word "war" interrogatively.
He was attaching meanings to words of a symbolical kind. A serious symptom, to be noted on the card.
"The War?" the patient asked. The European War--that little shindy of schoolboys with gunpowder? Had he served with distinction? He really forgot. In the War itself he had failed.
"Yes, he served with the greatest distinction," Rezia assured the doctor; "he was promoted."
"And they have the very highest opinion of you at your office?" Sir William murmured, glancing at Mr. Brewer's very generously worded letter. "So that you have nothing to worry you, no financial anxiety, nothing?"
He had committed an appalling crime and been condemned to death by human nature.
"I have--I have," he began, "committed a crime--" "He has done nothing wrong whatever," Rezia assured the doctor. If Mr. Smith would wait, said Sir William, he would speak to Mrs. Smith in the next room. Her husband was very seriously ill, Sir William said. Did he threaten to kill himself?
Oh, he did, she cried. But he did not mean it, she said. Of course not. It was merely a question of rest, said Sir William; of rest, rest, rest; a long rest in bed. There was a delightful home down in the country where her husband would be perfectly looked after. Away from her? she asked. Unfortunately, yes; the people we care for most are not good for us when we are ill. But he was not mad, was he? Sir William said he never spoke of "madness"; he called it not having a sense of proportion. But her husband did not like doctors. He would refuse to go there. Shortly and kindly Sir William explained to her the state of the case. He had threatened to kill himself. There was no alternative. It was a question of law. He would lie in bed in a beautiful house in the country. The nurses were admirable. Sir William would visit him once a week. If Mrs. Warren Smith was quite sure she had no more questions to ask--he never hurried his patients--they would return to her husband. She had nothing more to ask--not of Sir William.
So they returned to the most exalted of mankind; the criminal who faced his judges; the victim exposed on the heights; the fugitive; the drowned sailor; the poet of the immortal ode; the Lord who had gone from life to death; to Septimus Warren Smith, who sat in the arm-chair under the skylight staring at a photograph of Lady Bradshaw in Court dress, muttering messages about beauty.
"We have had our little talk," said Sir William.
"He says you are very, very ill," Rezia cried.
"We have been arranging that you should go into a home," said Sir William.
"One of Holmes's homes?" sneered Septimus.
The fellow made a distasteful impression. For there was in Sir William, whose father had been a tradesman, a natural respect for breeding and clothing, which shabbiness nettled; again, more profoundly, there was in Sir William, who had never had time for reading, a grudge, deeply buried, against cultivated people who came into his room and intimated that doctors, whose profession is a constant strain upon all the highest faculties, are not educated men.
"One of my homes, Mr. Warren Smith," he said, "where we will teach you to rest."
And there was just one thing more.
He was quite certain that when Mr. Warren Smith was well he was the last man in the world to frighten his wife. But he had talked of killing himself.
"We all have our moments of depression," said Sir William.
Once you fall, Septimus repeated to himself, human nature is on you. Holmes and Bradshaw are on you. They scour the desert. They fly screaming into the wilderness. The rack and the thumbscrew are applied. Human nature is remorseless.
"Impulses came upon him sometimes?" Sir William asked, with his pencil on a pink card.
That was his own affair, said Septimus.
"Nobody lives for himself alone," said Sir William, glancing at the photograph of his wife in Court dress.
"And you have a brilliant career before you," said Sir William. There was Mr. Brewer's letter on the table. "An exceptionally brilliant career."
But if he confessed? If he communicated? Would they let him off then, his torturers?
"I--I--" he stammered.
But what was his crime? He could not remember it.
"Yes?" Sir William encouraged him. (But it was growing late.)
Love, trees, there is no crime--what was his message?
He could not remember it.
"I--I--" Septimus stammered.
"Try to think as little about yourself as possible," said Sir William kindly. Really, he was not fit to be about.
Was there anything else they wished to ask him? Sir William would make all arrangements (he murmured to Rezia) and he would let her know between five and six that evening he murmured.
"Trust everything to me," he said, and dismissed them.
Never, never had Rezia felt such agony in her life! She had asked for help and been deserted! He had failed them! Sir William Bradshaw was not a nice man.
The upkeep of that motor car alone must cost him quite a lot, said Septimus, when they got out into the street.
She clung to his arm. They had been deserted.
But what more did she want?
unit 1
Part V. It was awful, he cried, awful, awful!
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unit 2
Still, the sun was hot.
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unit 3
Still, one got over things.
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unit 4
Still, life had a way of adding day to day.
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unit 6
Peter Walsh laughed out.
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unit 7
But Lucrezia Warren Smith was saying to herself, It's wicked; why should I suffer?
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unit 8
she was asking, as she walked down the broad path.
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unit 10
That was comforting rather.
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unit 11
She stood her upright, dusted her frock, kissed her.
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unit 13
Why should she suffer?
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unit 15
Why not left in Milan?
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unit 16
Why tortured?
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unit 17
Why?
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unit 19
To be rocked by this malignant torturer was her lot.
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unit 20
But why?
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unit 23
Why?
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unit 24
She frowned; she stamped her foot.
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unit 27
He had seemed a nice quiet man; a great friend of Septimus's, and he had been killed in the War.
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unit 28
But such things happen to every one.
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unit 29
Every one has friends who were killed in the War.
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unit 30
Every one gives up something when they marry.
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unit 31
She had given up her home.
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unit 32
She had come to live here, in this awful city.
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unit 33
But Septimus let himself think about horrible things, as she could too, if she tried.
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unit 34
He had grown stranger and stranger.
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unit 35
He said people were talking behind the bedroom walls.
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unit 36
Mrs. Filmer thought it odd.
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unit 37
He saw things too--he had seen an old woman's head in the middle of a fern.
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unit 38
Yet he could be happy when he chose.
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unit 39
They went to Hampton Court on top of a bus, and they were perfectly happy.
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unit 42
But going home he was perfectly quiet--perfectly reasonable.
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unit 44
He knew all their thoughts, he said; he knew everything.
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unit 45
He knew the meaning of the world, he said.
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unit 46
Then when they got back he could hardly walk.
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unit 49
Yet they were quite alone.
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unit 51
Perfect nonsense it was; about death; about Miss Isabel Pole.
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unit 52
She could stand it no longer.
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unit 53
She would go back.
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unit 54
She was close to him now, could see him staring at the sky, muttering, clasping his hands.
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unit 55
Yet Dr. Holmes said there was nothing the matter with him.
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unit 57
Was it that she had taken off her wedding ring?
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unit 58
"My hand has grown so thin," she said.
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unit 59
"I have put it in my purse," she told him.
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unit 60
He dropped her hand.
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unit 61
Their marriage was over, he thought, with agony, with relief.
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unit 63
.
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unit 64
.
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.
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unit 66
"To whom?"
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unit 67
he asked aloud.
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unit 68
"To the Prime Minister," the voices which rustled above his head replied.
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unit 71
It was turning into a man!
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unit 72
He could not watch it happen!
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unit 73
It was horrible, terrible to see a dog become a man!
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unit 74
At once the dog trotted away.
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unit 75
Heaven was divinely merciful, infinitely benignant.
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unit 76
It spared him, pardoned his weakness.
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unit 77
But what was the scientific explanation (for one must be scientific above all things)?
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unit 78
Why could he see through bodies, see into the future, when dogs will become men?
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unit 79
It was the heat wave presumably, operating upon a brain made sensitive by eons of evolution.
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unit 80
Scientifically speaking, the flesh was melted off the world.
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unit 81
His body was macerated until only the nerve fibres were left.
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unit 82
It was spread like a veil upon a rock.
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unit 83
He lay back in his chair, exhausted but upheld.
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unit 84
He lay resting, waiting, before he again interpreted, with effort, with agony, to mankind.
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unit 85
He lay very high, on the back of the world.
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unit 86
The earth thrilled beneath him.
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unit 87
Red flowers grew through his flesh; their stiff leaves rustled by his head.
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unit 88
Music began clanging against the rocks up here.
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unit 90
This boy's elegy is played among the traffic, thought Septimus.
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unit 92
The music stopped.
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unit 93
He has his penny, he reasoned it out, and has gone on to the next public-house.
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unit 94
But he himself remained high on his rock, like a drowned sailor on a rock.
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unit 95
I leant over the edge of the boat and fell down, he thought.
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unit 96
I went under the sea.
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unit 99
He had only to open his eyes; but a weight was on them; a fear.
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unit 100
He strained; he pushed; he looked; he saw Regent's Park before him.
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unit 101
Long streamers of sunlight fawned at his feet.
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unit 102
The trees waved, brandished.
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unit 103
We welcome, the world seemed to say; we accept; we create.
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unit 104
Beauty, the world seemed to say.
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unit 106
To watch a leaf quivering in the rush of air was an exquisite joy.
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unit 108
Beauty was everywhere.
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unit 109
"It is time," said Rezia.
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unit 111
He sang.
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unit 112
Evans answered from behind the tree.
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unit 113
The dead were in Thessaly, Evans sang, among the orchids.
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unit 115
Septimus cried out.
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unit 116
For he could not look upon the dead.
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unit 117
But the branches parted.
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unit 118
A man in grey was actually walking towards them.
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unit 119
It was Evans!
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unit 120
But no mud was on him; no wounds; he was not changed.
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unit 122
The millions lamented; for ages they had sorrowed.
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unit 124
"What is the time?"
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unit 125
He was talking, he was starting, this man must notice him.
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unit 126
He was looking at them.
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unit 129
And that is being young, Peter Walsh thought as he passed them.
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unit 134
This susceptibility to impressions had been his undoing no doubt.
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unit 136
After India of course one fell in love with every woman one met.
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unit 139
What did the young people think about?
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unit 140
Peter Walsh asked himself.
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unit 141
Those five years--1918 to 1923--had been, he suspected, somehow very important.
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unit 142
People looked different.
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unit 143
Newspapers seemed different.
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unit 146
And then this taking out a stick of rouge, or a powder-puff and making up in public.
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unit 148
The girl would stand still and powder her nose in front of every one.
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unit 149
And they weren't engaged; just having a good time; no feelings hurt on either side.
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unit 150
As hard as nails she was--Betty What'shername--; but a thorough good sort.
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unit 152
Who was it now who had done that?
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unit 154
Somebody who had written him a long, gushing letter quite lately about "blue hydrangeas."
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unit 155
unit 158
She tried to get hold of things by the right end anyhow.
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unit 160
"The Whitbreads?"
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unit 161
he could hear her saying.
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unit 162
"Who are the Whitbreads?
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unit 163
Coal merchants.
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unit 164
Respectable tradespeople."
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unit 165
Hugh she detested for some reason.
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unit 166
He thought of nothing but his own appearance, she said.
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unit 167
He ought to have been a Duke.
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unit 168
He would be certain to marry one of the Royal Princesses.
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unit 170
Even Clarissa had to own that.
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unit 172
Sally, to do her justice, saw through all that.
1 Translations, 2 Upvotes, Last Activity 1 week, 3 days ago
unit 177
The stable boys had more life in them than Hugh, she said.
1 Translations, 2 Upvotes, Last Activity 1 week, 3 days ago
unit 178
He was a perfect specimen of the public school type, she said.
1 Translations, 2 Upvotes, Last Activity 1 week, 3 days ago
unit 179
No country but England could have produced him.
1 Translations, 2 Upvotes, Last Activity 1 week, 3 days ago
unit 180
She was really spiteful, for some reason; had some grudge against him.
3 Translations, 3 Upvotes, Last Activity 1 week, 2 days ago
unit 181
Something had happened--he forgot what--in the smoking-room.
1 Translations, 2 Upvotes, Last Activity 1 week, 2 days ago
unit 182
He had insulted her--kissed her?
1 Translations, 2 Upvotes, Last Activity 1 week, 2 days ago
unit 183
Incredible!
1 Translations, 2 Upvotes, Last Activity 1 week, 2 days ago
unit 184
Nobody believed a word against Hugh of course.
1 Translations, 2 Upvotes, Last Activity 1 week, 2 days ago
unit 185
Who could?
1 Translations, 2 Upvotes, Last Activity 1 week, 2 days ago
unit 186
Kissing Sally in the smoking-room!
1 Translations, 2 Upvotes, Last Activity 1 week, 2 days ago
unit 189
He was too much of a prig for that.
1 Translations, 2 Upvotes, Last Activity 1 week, 2 days ago
unit 192
How remorseless life is!
1 Translations, 2 Upvotes, Last Activity 1 week, 2 days ago
unit 193
A little job at Court!
1 Translations, 2 Upvotes, Last Activity 1 week, 2 days ago
unit 196
But Mrs. Hugh sometimes gave the show away.
1 Translations, 2 Upvotes, Last Activity 1 week, 2 days ago
unit 197
She was one of those obscure mouse-like little women who admire big men.
1 Translations, 2 Upvotes, Last Activity 1 week, 2 days ago
unit 198
She was almost negligible.
1 Translations, 2 Upvotes, Last Activity 1 week, 2 days ago
unit 199
Then suddenly she would say something quite unexpected--something sharp.
1 Translations, 2 Upvotes, Last Activity 1 week, 2 days ago
unit 200
She had the relics of the grand manner perhaps.
1 Translations, 2 Upvotes, Last Activity 1 week, 1 day ago
unit 201
The steam coal was a little too strong for her--it made the atmosphere thick.
1 Translations, 2 Upvotes, Last Activity 1 week, 1 day ago
unit 204
Whitbread could do it presumably; or Dalloway.
1 Translations, 2 Upvotes, Last Activity 1 week ago
unit 205
He didn't mind what he asked Dalloway.
1 Translations, 2 Upvotes, Last Activity 1 week ago
unit 208
He ought to have been a country gentleman--he was wasted on politics.
1 Translations, 2 Upvotes, Last Activity 1 week ago
unit 210
That was what she liked him for perhaps--that was what she needed.
1 Translations, 2 Upvotes, Last Activity 1 week ago
unit 211
"Now, my dear, don't be a fool.
1 Translations, 2 Upvotes, Last Activity 1 week ago
unit 212
unit 213
But how could she swallow all that stuff about poetry?
1 Translations, 2 Upvotes, Last Activity 1 week ago
unit 214
How could she let him hold forth about Shakespeare?
1 Translations, 2 Upvotes, Last Activity 1 week ago
unit 216
No decent man ought to let his wife visit a deceased wife's sister.
1 Translations, 2 Upvotes, Last Activity 1 week ago
unit 217
Incredible!
1 Translations, 2 Upvotes, Last Activity 1 week ago
unit 218
The only thing to do was to pelt him with sugared almonds--it was at dinner.
1 Translations, 2 Upvotes, Last Activity 1 week ago
unit 220
That was one of the bonds between Sally and himself.
1 Translations, 2 Upvotes, Last Activity 1 week ago
unit 222
But one must do Clarissa justice.
1 Translations, 2 Upvotes, Last Activity 6 days, 1 hour ago
unit 223
She wasn't going to marry Hugh anyhow.
1 Translations, 2 Upvotes, Last Activity 6 days, 1 hour ago
unit 224
She had a perfectly clear notion of what she wanted.
1 Translations, 2 Upvotes, Last Activity 6 days, 1 hour ago
unit 225
Her emotions were all on the surface.
1 Translations, 2 Upvotes, Last Activity 6 days, 1 hour ago
unit 228
But it was Clarissa one remembered.
1 Translations, 2 Upvotes, Last Activity 6 days ago
unit 230
No, no, no!
1 Translations, 2 Upvotes, Last Activity 6 days ago
unit 231
He was not in love with her any more!
1 Translations, 2 Upvotes, Last Activity 6 days ago
unit 234
(You could always get her to own up if you took the trouble; she was honest.)
1 Translations, 2 Upvotes, Last Activity 4 days, 5 hours ago
unit 237
She said they had a kind of courage which the older she grew the more she respected.
1 Translations, 2 Upvotes, Last Activity 4 days, 5 hours ago
unit 239
With twice his wits, she had to see things through his eyes--one of the tragedies of married life.
1 Translations, 1 Upvotes, Last Activity 3 days, 10 hours ago
unit 242
She made her drawing-room a sort of meeting-place; she had a genius for it.
1 Translations, 2 Upvotes, Last Activity 3 days, 4 hours ago
unit 244
Infinite numbers of dull people conglomerated round her of course.
1 Translations, 2 Upvotes, Last Activity 1 day, 10 hours ago
unit 249
That phase came directly after Sylvia's death--that horrible affair.
1 Translations, 1 Upvotes, Last Activity 12 hours ago
unit 252
And of course she enjoyed life immensely.
1 Translations, 1 Upvotes, Last Activity 2 hours ago
unit 255
She enjoyed practically everything.
0 Translations, 0 Upvotes, Last Activity None
unit 263
Ah well, so be it.
0 Translations, 0 Upvotes, Last Activity None
unit 267
Too much indeed.
0 Translations, 0 Upvotes, Last Activity None
unit 271
), for hours and days he never thought of Daisy.
0 Translations, 0 Upvotes, Last Activity None
unit 277
What could Clarissa have thought of him?
0 Translations, 0 Upvotes, Last Activity None
unit 278
thought him a fool presumably, not for the first time.
0 Translations, 0 Upvotes, Last Activity None
unit 283
unit 284
They don't know the meaning of it to men.
0 Translations, 0 Upvotes, Last Activity None
unit 285
Clarissa was as cold as an icicle.
0 Translations, 0 Upvotes, Last Activity None
unit 293
Oh poor old wretch!
0 Translations, 0 Upvotes, Last Activity None
unit 294
Suppose it was a wet night?
0 Translations, 0 Upvotes, Last Activity None
unit 296
And where did she sleep at night?
0 Translations, 0 Upvotes, Last Activity None
unit 298
"And if some one should see, what matter they?"
0 Translations, 0 Upvotes, Last Activity None
unit 300
made her suddenly quite sure that everything was going to be right.
0 Translations, 0 Upvotes, Last Activity None
unit 303
It was a silly, silly dream, being unhappy.
0 Translations, 0 Upvotes, Last Activity None
unit 311
Was he not like Keats?
0 Translations, 0 Upvotes, Last Activity None
unit 315
Something was up, Mr.
0 Translations, 0 Upvotes, Last Activity None
unit 316
Brewer knew; Mr.
0 Translations, 0 Upvotes, Last Activity None
unit 320
Brewer's establishment at Muswell Hill.
0 Translations, 0 Upvotes, Last Activity None
unit 321
Septimus was one of the first to volunteer.
0 Translations, 0 Upvotes, Last Activity None
unit 323
There in the trenches the change which Mr.
0 Translations, 0 Upvotes, Last Activity None
unit 328
The War had taught him.
0 Translations, 0 Upvotes, Last Activity None
unit 329
It was sublime.
0 Translations, 0 Upvotes, Last Activity None
unit 331
He was right there.
0 Translations, 0 Upvotes, Last Activity None
unit 332
The last shells missed him.
0 Translations, 0 Upvotes, Last Activity None
unit 333
He watched them explode with indifference.
0 Translations, 0 Upvotes, Last Activity None
unit 336
He could not feel.
0 Translations, 0 Upvotes, Last Activity None
unit 339
But he could not sit there all night.
0 Translations, 0 Upvotes, Last Activity None
unit 340
There were moments of waking in the early morning.
0 Translations, 0 Upvotes, Last Activity None
unit 341
The bed was falling; he was falling.
0 Translations, 0 Upvotes, Last Activity None
unit 342
Oh for the scissors and the lamplight and the buckram shapes!
0 Translations, 0 Upvotes, Last Activity None
unit 344
Silk, feathers, what not were alive to them.
0 Translations, 0 Upvotes, Last Activity None
unit 348
"Beautiful!"
0 Translations, 0 Upvotes, Last Activity None
unit 349
she would murmur, nudging Septimus, that he might see.
0 Translations, 0 Upvotes, Last Activity None
unit 350
But beauty was behind a pane of glass.
0 Translations, 0 Upvotes, Last Activity None
unit 351
unit 352
He put down his cup on the little marble table.
0 Translations, 0 Upvotes, Last Activity None
unit 354
But he could not taste, he could not feel.
0 Translations, 0 Upvotes, Last Activity None
unit 357
"The English are so silent," Rezia said.
0 Translations, 0 Upvotes, Last Activity None
unit 358
She liked it, she said.
0 Translations, 0 Upvotes, Last Activity None
unit 361
unit 362
They were proud of him; he had won crosses.
0 Translations, 0 Upvotes, Last Activity None
unit 363
"You have done your duty; it is up to us--" began Mr.
0 Translations, 0 Upvotes, Last Activity None
unit 364
Brewer; and could not finish, so pleasurable was his emotion.
0 Translations, 0 Upvotes, Last Activity None
unit 365
They took admirable lodgings off the Tottenham Court Road.
0 Translations, 0 Upvotes, Last Activity None
unit 366
Here he opened Shakespeare once more.
0 Translations, 0 Upvotes, Last Activity None
unit 369
unit 371
Dante the same.
0 Translations, 0 Upvotes, Last Activity None
unit 372
Aeschylus (translated) the same.
0 Translations, 0 Upvotes, Last Activity None
unit 373
There Rezia sat at the table trimming hats.
0 Translations, 0 Upvotes, Last Activity None
unit 374
unit 375
unit 377
Love between man and woman was repulsive to Shakespeare.
0 Translations, 0 Upvotes, Last Activity None
unit 378
The business of copulation was filth to him before the end.
0 Translations, 0 Upvotes, Last Activity None
unit 379
But, Rezia said, she must have children.
0 Translations, 0 Upvotes, Last Activity None
unit 380
They had been married five years.
0 Translations, 0 Upvotes, Last Activity None
unit 383
But she must have a boy.
0 Translations, 0 Upvotes, Last Activity None
unit 384
She must have a son like Septimus, she said.
0 Translations, 0 Upvotes, Last Activity None
unit 385
But nobody could be like Septimus; so gentle; so serious; so clever.
0 Translations, 0 Upvotes, Last Activity None
unit 386
Could she not read Shakespeare too?
0 Translations, 0 Upvotes, Last Activity None
unit 387
Was Shakespeare a difficult author?
0 Translations, 0 Upvotes, Last Activity None
unit 388
she asked.
0 Translations, 0 Upvotes, Last Activity None
unit 389
One cannot bring children into a world like this.
0 Translations, 0 Upvotes, Last Activity None
unit 393
They hunt in packs.
0 Translations, 0 Upvotes, Last Activity None
unit 394
Their packs scour the desert and vanish screaming into the wilderness.
0 Translations, 0 Upvotes, Last Activity None
unit 395
They desert the fallen.
0 Translations, 0 Upvotes, Last Activity None
unit 396
They are plastered over with grimaces.
0 Translations, 0 Upvotes, Last Activity None
unit 400
And would he go mad?
0 Translations, 0 Upvotes, Last Activity None
unit 401
At tea Rezia told him that Mrs. Filmer's daughter was expecting a baby.
0 Translations, 0 Upvotes, Last Activity None
unit 402
She could not grow old and have no children!
0 Translations, 0 Upvotes, Last Activity None
unit 403
She was very lonely, she was very unhappy!
0 Translations, 0 Upvotes, Last Activity None
unit 404
She cried for the first time since they were married.
0 Translations, 0 Upvotes, Last Activity None
unit 406
But he felt nothing.
0 Translations, 0 Upvotes, Last Activity None
unit 409
Now he had surrendered; now other people must help him.
0 Translations, 0 Upvotes, Last Activity None
unit 410
People must be sent for.
0 Translations, 0 Upvotes, Last Activity None
unit 411
He gave in.
0 Translations, 0 Upvotes, Last Activity None
unit 412
Nothing could rouse him.
0 Translations, 0 Upvotes, Last Activity None
unit 413
Rezia put him to bed.
0 Translations, 0 Upvotes, Last Activity None
unit 414
She sent for a doctor--Mrs. Filmer's Dr. Holmes.
0 Translations, 0 Upvotes, Last Activity None
unit 415
Dr. Holmes examined him.
0 Translations, 0 Upvotes, Last Activity None
unit 416
There was nothing whatever the matter, said Dr. Holmes.
0 Translations, 0 Upvotes, Last Activity None
unit 417
Oh, what a relief!
0 Translations, 0 Upvotes, Last Activity None
unit 418
What a kind man, what a good man!
0 Translations, 0 Upvotes, Last Activity None
unit 419
thought Rezia.
0 Translations, 0 Upvotes, Last Activity None
unit 420
When he felt like that he went to the Music Hall, said Dr. Holmes.
0 Translations, 0 Upvotes, Last Activity None
unit 421
He took a day off with his wife and played golf.
0 Translations, 0 Upvotes, Last Activity None
unit 422
unit 426
The verdict of human nature on such a wretch was death.
0 Translations, 0 Upvotes, Last Activity None
unit 427
Dr. Holmes came again.
0 Translations, 0 Upvotes, Last Activity None
unit 430
(Rezia would learn to cook porridge.)
0 Translations, 0 Upvotes, Last Activity None
unit 431
But, he continued, health is largely a matter in our own control.
0 Translations, 0 Upvotes, Last Activity None
unit 432
Throw yourself into outside interests; take up some hobby.
0 Translations, 0 Upvotes, Last Activity None
unit 433
He opened Shakespeare--Antony and Cleopatra; pushed Shakespeare aside.
0 Translations, 0 Upvotes, Last Activity None
unit 436
When the damned fool came again, Septimus refused to see him.
0 Translations, 0 Upvotes, Last Activity None
unit 437
Did he indeed?
0 Translations, 0 Upvotes, Last Activity None
unit 438
said Dr. Holmes, smiling agreeably.
0 Translations, 0 Upvotes, Last Activity None
unit 440
unit 442
Didn't that give her a very odd idea of English husbands?
0 Translations, 0 Upvotes, Last Activity None
unit 443
Didn't one owe perhaps a duty to one's wife?
0 Translations, 0 Upvotes, Last Activity None
unit 444
Wouldn't it be better to do something instead of lying in bed?
0 Translations, 0 Upvotes, Last Activity None
unit 448
Holmes was on him.
0 Translations, 0 Upvotes, Last Activity None
unit 449
Dr. Holmes came quite regularly every day.
0 Translations, 0 Upvotes, Last Activity None
unit 451
Holmes is on you.
0 Translations, 0 Upvotes, Last Activity None
unit 453
But Rezia could not understand him.
0 Translations, 0 Upvotes, Last Activity None
unit 454
Dr. Holmes was such a kind man.
0 Translations, 0 Upvotes, Last Activity None
unit 455
He was so interested in Septimus.
0 Translations, 0 Upvotes, Last Activity None
unit 456
He only wanted to help them, he said.
0 Translations, 0 Upvotes, Last Activity None
unit 457
unit 458
So he was deserted.
0 Translations, 0 Upvotes, Last Activity None
unit 459
unit 460
But why should he kill himself for their sakes?
0 Translations, 0 Upvotes, Last Activity None
unit 462
He was too weak; he could scarcely raise his hand.
0 Translations, 0 Upvotes, Last Activity None
unit 464
Holmes had won of course; the brute with the red nostrils had won.
0 Translations, 0 Upvotes, Last Activity None
unit 467
A voice spoke from behind the screen.
0 Translations, 0 Upvotes, Last Activity None
unit 468
Evans was speaking.
0 Translations, 0 Upvotes, Last Activity None
unit 469
The dead were with him.
0 Translations, 0 Upvotes, Last Activity None
unit 470
"Evans, Evans!"
0 Translations, 0 Upvotes, Last Activity None
unit 471
he cried.
0 Translations, 0 Upvotes, Last Activity None
unit 473
"Evans, Evans," he had said as she brought in the tray.
0 Translations, 0 Upvotes, Last Activity None
unit 474
She jumped, she did.
0 Translations, 0 Upvotes, Last Activity None
unit 475
She scuttled downstairs.
0 Translations, 0 Upvotes, Last Activity None
unit 477
She had had to buy the roses, Rezia said, from a poor man in the street.
0 Translations, 0 Upvotes, Last Activity None
unit 478
But they were almost dead already, she said, arranging the roses.
0 Translations, 0 Upvotes, Last Activity None
unit 481
"What are you saying, Septimus?"
0 Translations, 0 Upvotes, Last Activity None
unit 482
Rezia asked, wild with terror, for he was talking to himself.
0 Translations, 0 Upvotes, Last Activity None
unit 483
She sent Agnes running for Dr. Holmes.
0 Translations, 0 Upvotes, Last Activity None
unit 484
Her husband, she said, was mad.
0 Translations, 0 Upvotes, Last Activity None
unit 485
He scarcely knew her.
0 Translations, 0 Upvotes, Last Activity None
unit 486
"You brute!
0 Translations, 0 Upvotes, Last Activity None
unit 487
You brute!"
0 Translations, 0 Upvotes, Last Activity None
unit 488
cried Septimus, seeing human nature, that is Dr. Holmes, enter the room.
0 Translations, 0 Upvotes, Last Activity None
unit 489
"Now what's all this about?"
0 Translations, 0 Upvotes, Last Activity None
unit 490
said Dr. Holmes in the most amiable way in the world.
0 Translations, 0 Upvotes, Last Activity None
unit 491
"Talking nonsense to frighten your wife?"
0 Translations, 0 Upvotes, Last Activity None
unit 492
But he would give him something to make him sleep.
0 Translations, 0 Upvotes, Last Activity None
unit 495
Twelve was the hour of their appointment.
0 Translations, 0 Upvotes, Last Activity None
unit 497
The leaden circles dissolved in the air.
0 Translations, 0 Upvotes, Last Activity None
unit 501
Sir William himself was no longer young.
0 Translations, 0 Upvotes, Last Activity None
unit 505
How long had Dr. Holmes been attending him?
0 Translations, 0 Upvotes, Last Activity None
unit 506
Six weeks.
0 Translations, 0 Upvotes, Last Activity None
unit 507
Prescribed a little bromide?
0 Translations, 0 Upvotes, Last Activity None
unit 508
Said there was nothing the matter?
0 Translations, 0 Upvotes, Last Activity None
unit 509
Ah yes (those general practitioners!
0 Translations, 0 Upvotes, Last Activity None
unit 510
thought Sir William.
0 Translations, 0 Upvotes, Last Activity None
unit 511
It took half his time to undo their blunders.
0 Translations, 0 Upvotes, Last Activity None
unit 512
Some were irreparable).
0 Translations, 0 Upvotes, Last Activity None
unit 513
"You served with great distinction in the War?"
0 Translations, 0 Upvotes, Last Activity None
unit 514
The patient repeated the word "war" interrogatively.
0 Translations, 0 Upvotes, Last Activity None
unit 515
He was attaching meanings to words of a symbolical kind.
0 Translations, 0 Upvotes, Last Activity None
unit 516
A serious symptom, to be noted on the card.
0 Translations, 0 Upvotes, Last Activity None
unit 517
"The War?"
0 Translations, 0 Upvotes, Last Activity None
unit 518
the patient asked.
0 Translations, 0 Upvotes, Last Activity None
unit 519
The European War--that little shindy of schoolboys with gunpowder?
0 Translations, 0 Upvotes, Last Activity None
unit 520
Had he served with distinction?
0 Translations, 0 Upvotes, Last Activity None
unit 521
He really forgot.
0 Translations, 0 Upvotes, Last Activity None
unit 522
In the War itself he had failed.
0 Translations, 0 Upvotes, Last Activity None
unit 524
"And they have the very highest opinion of you at your office?"
0 Translations, 0 Upvotes, Last Activity None
unit 525
Sir William murmured, glancing at Mr.
0 Translations, 0 Upvotes, Last Activity None
unit 526
Brewer's very generously worded letter.
0 Translations, 0 Upvotes, Last Activity None
unit 527
"So that you have nothing to worry you, no financial anxiety, nothing?"
0 Translations, 0 Upvotes, Last Activity None
unit 531
Her husband was very seriously ill, Sir William said.
0 Translations, 0 Upvotes, Last Activity None
unit 532
Did he threaten to kill himself?
0 Translations, 0 Upvotes, Last Activity None
unit 533
Oh, he did, she cried.
0 Translations, 0 Upvotes, Last Activity None
unit 534
But he did not mean it, she said.
0 Translations, 0 Upvotes, Last Activity None
unit 535
Of course not.
0 Translations, 0 Upvotes, Last Activity None
unit 538
Away from her?
0 Translations, 0 Upvotes, Last Activity None
unit 539
she asked.
0 Translations, 0 Upvotes, Last Activity None
unit 541
But he was not mad, was he?
0 Translations, 0 Upvotes, Last Activity None
unit 543
But her husband did not like doctors.
0 Translations, 0 Upvotes, Last Activity None
unit 544
He would refuse to go there.
0 Translations, 0 Upvotes, Last Activity None
unit 545
Shortly and kindly Sir William explained to her the state of the case.
0 Translations, 0 Upvotes, Last Activity None
unit 546
He had threatened to kill himself.
0 Translations, 0 Upvotes, Last Activity None
unit 547
There was no alternative.
0 Translations, 0 Upvotes, Last Activity None
unit 548
It was a question of law.
0 Translations, 0 Upvotes, Last Activity None
unit 549
He would lie in bed in a beautiful house in the country.
0 Translations, 0 Upvotes, Last Activity None
unit 550
The nurses were admirable.
0 Translations, 0 Upvotes, Last Activity None
unit 551
Sir William would visit him once a week.
0 Translations, 0 Upvotes, Last Activity None
unit 553
She had nothing more to ask--not of Sir William.
0 Translations, 0 Upvotes, Last Activity None
unit 555
"We have had our little talk," said Sir William.
0 Translations, 0 Upvotes, Last Activity None
unit 556
"He says you are very, very ill," Rezia cried.
0 Translations, 0 Upvotes, Last Activity None
unit 557
unit 558
"One of Holmes's homes?"
0 Translations, 0 Upvotes, Last Activity None
unit 559
sneered Septimus.
0 Translations, 0 Upvotes, Last Activity None
unit 560
The fellow made a distasteful impression.
0 Translations, 0 Upvotes, Last Activity None
unit 563
And there was just one thing more.
0 Translations, 0 Upvotes, Last Activity None
unit 565
But he had talked of killing himself.
0 Translations, 0 Upvotes, Last Activity None
unit 566
"We all have our moments of depression," said Sir William.
0 Translations, 0 Upvotes, Last Activity None
unit 567
Once you fall, Septimus repeated to himself, human nature is on you.
0 Translations, 0 Upvotes, Last Activity None
unit 568
Holmes and Bradshaw are on you.
0 Translations, 0 Upvotes, Last Activity None
unit 569
They scour the desert.
0 Translations, 0 Upvotes, Last Activity None
unit 570
They fly screaming into the wilderness.
0 Translations, 0 Upvotes, Last Activity None
unit 571
The rack and the thumbscrew are applied.
0 Translations, 0 Upvotes, Last Activity None
unit 572
Human nature is remorseless.
0 Translations, 0 Upvotes, Last Activity None
unit 573
"Impulses came upon him sometimes?"
0 Translations, 0 Upvotes, Last Activity None
unit 574
Sir William asked, with his pencil on a pink card.
0 Translations, 0 Upvotes, Last Activity None
unit 575
That was his own affair, said Septimus.
0 Translations, 0 Upvotes, Last Activity None
unit 577
"And you have a brilliant career before you," said Sir William.
0 Translations, 0 Upvotes, Last Activity None
unit 578
There was Mr.
0 Translations, 0 Upvotes, Last Activity None
unit 579
Brewer's letter on the table.
0 Translations, 0 Upvotes, Last Activity None
unit 580
"An exceptionally brilliant career."
0 Translations, 0 Upvotes, Last Activity None
unit 581
But if he confessed?
0 Translations, 0 Upvotes, Last Activity None
unit 582
If he communicated?
0 Translations, 0 Upvotes, Last Activity None
unit 583
Would they let him off then, his torturers?
0 Translations, 0 Upvotes, Last Activity None
unit 584
"I--I--" he stammered.
0 Translations, 0 Upvotes, Last Activity None
unit 585
But what was his crime?
0 Translations, 0 Upvotes, Last Activity None
unit 586
He could not remember it.
0 Translations, 0 Upvotes, Last Activity None
unit 587
"Yes?"
0 Translations, 0 Upvotes, Last Activity None
unit 588
Sir William encouraged him.
0 Translations, 0 Upvotes, Last Activity None
unit 589
(But it was growing late.)
0 Translations, 0 Upvotes, Last Activity None
unit 590
Love, trees, there is no crime--what was his message?
0 Translations, 0 Upvotes, Last Activity None
unit 591
He could not remember it.
0 Translations, 0 Upvotes, Last Activity None
unit 592
"I--I--" Septimus stammered.
0 Translations, 0 Upvotes, Last Activity None
unit 593
unit 594
Really, he was not fit to be about.
0 Translations, 0 Upvotes, Last Activity None
unit 595
Was there anything else they wished to ask him?
0 Translations, 0 Upvotes, Last Activity None
unit 597
"Trust everything to me," he said, and dismissed them.
0 Translations, 0 Upvotes, Last Activity None
unit 598
Never, never had Rezia felt such agony in her life!
0 Translations, 0 Upvotes, Last Activity None
unit 599
She had asked for help and been deserted!
0 Translations, 0 Upvotes, Last Activity None
unit 600
He had failed them!
0 Translations, 0 Upvotes, Last Activity None
unit 601
Sir William Bradshaw was not a nice man.
0 Translations, 0 Upvotes, Last Activity None
unit 603
She clung to his arm.
0 Translations, 0 Upvotes, Last Activity None
unit 604
They had been deserted.
0 Translations, 0 Upvotes, Last Activity None
unit 605
But what more did she want?
0 Translations, 0 Upvotes, Last Activity None

Part V.
It was awful, he cried, awful, awful!
Still, the sun was hot. Still, one got over things. Still, life had a way of adding day to day. Still, he thought, yawning and beginning to take notice--Regent's Park had changed very little since he was a boy, except for the squirrels--still, presumably there were compensations--when little Elise Mitchell, who had been picking up pebbles to add to the pebble collection which she and her brother were making on the nursery mantelpiece, plumped her handful down on the nurse's knee and scudded off again full tilt into a lady's legs. Peter Walsh laughed out.
But Lucrezia Warren Smith was saying to herself, It's wicked; why should I suffer? she was asking, as she walked down the broad path. No; I can't stand it any longer, she was saying, having left Septimus, who wasn't Septimus any longer, to say hard, cruel, wicked things, to talk to himself, to talk to a dead man, on the seat over there; when the child ran full tilt into her, fell flat, and burst out crying.
That was comforting rather. She stood her upright, dusted her frock, kissed her.
But for herself she had done nothing wrong; she had loved Septimus; she had been happy; she had had a beautiful home, and there her sisters lived still, making hats. Why should she suffer?
The child ran straight back to its nurse, and Rezia saw her scolded, comforted, taken up by the nurse who put down her knitting, and the kind-looking man gave her his watch to blow open to comfort her--but why should she be exposed? Why not left in Milan? Why tortured? Why?
Slightly waved by tears the broad path, the nurse, the man in grey, the perambulator, rose and fell before her eyes. To be rocked by this malignant torturer was her lot. But why? She was like a bird sheltering under the thin hollow of a leaf, who blinks at the sun when the leaf moves; starts at the crack of a dry twig. She was exposed; she was surrounded by the enormous trees, vast clouds of an indifferent world, exposed; tortured; and why should she suffer? Why?
She frowned; she stamped her foot. She must go back again to Septimus since it was almost time for them to be going to Sir William Bradshaw. She must go back and tell him, go back to him sitting there on the green chair under the tree, talking to himself, or to that dead man Evans, whom she had only seen once for a moment in the shop. He had seemed a nice quiet man; a great friend of Septimus's, and he had been killed in the War. But such things happen to every one. Every one has friends who were killed in the War. Every one gives up something when they marry. She had given up her home. She had come to live here, in this awful city. But Septimus let himself think about horrible things, as she could too, if she tried. He had grown stranger and stranger. He said people were talking behind the bedroom walls. Mrs. Filmer thought it odd. He saw things too--he had seen an old woman's head in the middle of a fern. Yet he could be happy when he chose. They went to Hampton Court on top of a bus, and they were perfectly happy. All the little red and yellow flowers were out on the grass, like floating lamps he said, and talked and chattered and laughed, making up stories. Suddenly he said, "Now we will kill ourselves," when they were standing by the river, and he looked at it with a look which she had seen in his eyes when a train went by, or an omnibus--a look as if something fascinated him; and she felt he was going from her and she caught him by the arm. But going home he was perfectly quiet--perfectly reasonable. He would argue with her about killing themselves; and explain how wicked people were; how he could see them making up lies as they passed in the street. He knew all their thoughts, he said; he knew everything. He knew the meaning of the world, he said.
Then when they got back he could hardly walk. He lay on the sofa and made her hold his hand to prevent him from falling down, down, he cried, into the flames! and saw faces laughing at him, calling him horrible disgusting names, from the walls, and hands pointing round the screen. Yet they were quite alone. But he began to talk aloud, answering people, arguing, laughing, crying, getting very excited and making her write things down. Perfect nonsense it was; about death; about Miss Isabel Pole. She could stand it no longer. She would go back.
She was close to him now, could see him staring at the sky, muttering, clasping his hands. Yet Dr. Holmes said there was nothing the matter with him. What then had happened--why had he gone, then, why, when she sat by him, did he start, frown at her, move away, and point at her hand, take her hand, look at it terrified?
Was it that she had taken off her wedding ring? "My hand has grown so thin," she said. "I have put it in my purse," she told him.
He dropped her hand. Their marriage was over, he thought, with agony, with relief. The rope was cut; he mounted; he was free, as it was decreed that he, Septimus, the lord of men, should be free; alone (since his wife had thrown away her wedding ring; since she had left him), he, Septimus, was alone, called forth in advance of the mass of men to hear the truth, to learn the meaning, which now at last, after all the toils of civilisation--Greeks, Romans, Shakespeare, Darwin, and now himself--was to be given whole to. . . . "To whom?" he asked aloud. "To the Prime Minister," the voices which rustled above his head replied. The supreme secret must be told to the Cabinet; first that trees are alive; next there is no crime; next love, universal love, he muttered, gasping, trembling, painfully drawing out these profound truths which needed, so deep were they, so difficult, an immense effort to speak out, but the world was entirely changed by them for ever.
No crime; love; he repeated, fumbling for his card and pencil, when a Skye terrier snuffed his trousers and he started in an agony of fear. It was turning into a man! He could not watch it happen! It was horrible, terrible to see a dog become a man! At once the dog trotted away.
Heaven was divinely merciful, infinitely benignant. It spared him, pardoned his weakness. But what was the scientific explanation (for one must be scientific above all things)? Why could he see through bodies, see into the future, when dogs will become men? It was the heat wave presumably, operating upon a brain made sensitive by eons of evolution. Scientifically speaking, the flesh was melted off the world. His body was macerated until only the nerve fibres were left. It was spread like a veil upon a rock.
He lay back in his chair, exhausted but upheld. He lay resting, waiting, before he again interpreted, with effort, with agony, to mankind. He lay very high, on the back of the world. The earth thrilled beneath him. Red flowers grew through his flesh; their stiff leaves rustled by his head. Music began clanging against the rocks up here. It is a motor horn down in the street, he muttered; but up here it cannoned from rock to rock, divided, met in shocks of sound which rose in smooth columns (that music should be visible was a discovery) and became an anthem, an anthem twined round now by a shepherd boy's piping (That's an old man playing a penny whistle by the public-house, he muttered) which, as the boy stood still came bubbling from his pipe, and then, as he climbed higher, made its exquisite plaint while the traffic passed beneath. This boy's elegy is played among the traffic, thought Septimus. Now he withdraws up into the snows, and roses hang about him--the thick red roses which grow on my bedroom wall, he reminded himself. The music stopped. He has his penny, he reasoned it out, and has gone on to the next public-house.
But he himself remained high on his rock, like a drowned sailor on a rock. I leant over the edge of the boat and fell down, he thought. I went under the sea. I have been dead, and yet am now alive, but let me rest still; he begged (he was talking to himself again--it was awful, awful!); and as, before waking, the voices of birds and the sound of wheels chime and chatter in a queer harmony, grow louder and louder and the sleeper feels himself drawing to the shores of life, so he felt himself drawing towards life, the sun growing hotter, cries sounding louder, something tremendous about to happen.
He had only to open his eyes; but a weight was on them; a fear. He strained; he pushed; he looked; he saw Regent's Park before him. Long streamers of sunlight fawned at his feet. The trees waved, brandished. We welcome, the world seemed to say; we accept; we create. Beauty, the world seemed to say. And as if to prove it (scientifically) wherever he looked at the houses, at the railings, at the antelopes stretching over the palings, beauty sprang instantly. To watch a leaf quivering in the rush of air was an exquisite joy. Up in the sky swallows swooping, swerving, flinging themselves in and out, round and round, yet always with perfect control as if elastics held them; and the flies rising and falling; and the sun spotting now this leaf, now that, in mockery, dazzling it with soft gold in pure good temper; and now and again some chime (it might be a motor horn) tinkling divinely on the grass stalks--all of this, calm and reasonable as it was, made out of ordinary things as it was, was the truth now; beauty, that was the truth now. Beauty was everywhere.
"It is time," said Rezia.
The word "time" split its husk; poured its riches over him; and from his lips fell like shells, like shavings from a plane, without his making them, hard, white, imperishable words, and flew to attach themselves to their places in an ode to Time; an immortal ode to Time. He sang. Evans answered from behind the tree. The dead were in Thessaly, Evans sang, among the orchids. There they waited till the War was over, and now the dead, now Evans himself--
"For God's sake don't come!" Septimus cried out. For he could not look upon the dead.
But the branches parted. A man in grey was actually walking towards them. It was Evans! But no mud was on him; no wounds; he was not changed. I must tell the whole world, Septimus cried, raising his hand (as the dead man in the grey suit came nearer), raising his hand like some colossal figure who has lamented the fate of man for ages in the desert alone with his hands pressed to his forehead, furrows of despair on his cheeks, and now sees light on the desert's edge which broadens and strikes the iron-black figure (and Septimus half rose from his chair), and with legions of men prostrate behind him he, the giant mourner, receives for one moment on his face the whole--
"But I am so unhappy, Septimus," said Rezia trying to make him sit down.
The millions lamented; for ages they had sorrowed. He would turn round, he would tell them in a few moments, only a few moments more, of this relief, of this joy, of this astonishing revelation--
"The time, Septimus," Rezia repeated. "What is the time?"
He was talking, he was starting, this man must notice him. He was looking at them.
"I will tell you the time," said Septimus, very slowly, very drowsily, smiling mysteriously. As he sat smiling at the dead man in the grey suit the quarter struck--the quarter to twelve.
And that is being young, Peter Walsh thought as he passed them. To be having an awful scene--the poor girl looked absolutely desperate--in the middle of the morning. But what was it about, he wondered, what had the young man in the overcoat been saying to her to make her look like that; what awful fix had they got themselves into, both to look so desperate as that on a fine summer morning? The amusing thing about coming back to England, after five years, was the way it made, anyhow the first days, things stand out as if one had never seen them before; lovers squabbling under a tree; the domestic family life of the parks. Never had he seen London look so enchanting--the softness of the distances; the richness; the greenness; the civilisation, after India, he thought, strolling across the grass.
This susceptibility to impressions had been his undoing no doubt. Still at his age he had, like a boy or a girl even, these alternations of mood; good days, bad days, for no reason whatever, happiness from a pretty face, downright misery at the sight of a frump. After India of course one fell in love with every woman one met. There was a freshness about them; even the poorest dressed better than five years ago surely; and to his eye the fashions had never been so becoming; the long black cloaks; the slimness; the elegance; and then the delicious and apparently universal habit of paint. Every woman, even the most respectable, had roses blooming under glass; lips cut with a knife; curls of Indian ink; there was design, art, everywhere; a change of some sort had undoubtedly taken place. What did the young people think about? Peter Walsh asked himself.
Those five years--1918 to 1923--had been, he suspected, somehow very important. People looked different. Newspapers seemed different. Now for instance there was a man writing quite openly in one of the respectable weeklies about water-closets. That you couldn't have done ten years ago--written quite openly about water-closets in a respectable weekly. And then this taking out a stick of rouge, or a powder-puff and making up in public. On board ship coming home there were lots of young men and girls--Betty and Bertie he remembered in particular--carrying on quite openly; the old mother sitting and watching them with her knitting, cool as a cucumber. The girl would stand still and powder her nose in front of every one. And they weren't engaged; just having a good time; no feelings hurt on either side. As hard as nails she was--Betty What'shername--; but a thorough good sort. She would make a very good wife at thirty--she would marry when it suited her to marry; marry some rich man and live in a large house near Manchester.
Who was it now who had done that? Peter Walsh asked himself, turning into the Broad Walk,--married a rich man and lived in a large house near Manchester? Somebody who had written him a long, gushing letter quite lately about "blue hydrangeas." It was seeing blue hydrangeas that made her think of him and the old days--Sally Seton, of course! It was Sally Seton--the last person in the world one would have expected to marry a rich man and live in a large house near Manchester, the wild, the daring, the romantic Sally!
But of all that ancient lot, Clarissa's friends--Whitbreads, Kinderleys, Cunninghams, Kinloch-Jones's--Sally was probably the best. She tried to get hold of things by the right end anyhow. She saw through Hugh Whitbread anyhow--the admirable Hugh--when Clarissa and the rest were at his feet.
"The Whitbreads?" he could hear her saying. "Who are the Whitbreads? Coal merchants. Respectable tradespeople."
Hugh she detested for some reason. He thought of nothing but his own appearance, she said. He ought to have been a Duke. He would be certain to marry one of the Royal Princesses. And of course Hugh had the most extraordinary, the most natural, the most sublime respect for the British aristocracy of any human being he had ever come across. Even Clarissa had to own that. Oh, but he was such a dear, so unselfish, gave up shooting to please his old mother--remembered his aunts' birthdays, and so on.
Sally, to do her justice, saw through all that. One of the things he remembered best was an argument one Sunday morning at Bourton about women's rights (that antediluvian topic), when Sally suddenly lost her temper, flared up, and told Hugh that he represented all that was most detestable in British middle-class life. She told him that she considered him responsible for the state of "those poor girls in Piccadilly"--Hugh, the perfect gentleman, poor Hugh!--never did a man look more horrified! She did it on purpose she said afterwards (for they used to get together in the vegetable garden and compare notes). "He's read nothing, thought nothing, felt nothing," he could hear her saying in that very emphatic voice which carried so much farther than she knew. The stable boys had more life in them than Hugh, she said. He was a perfect specimen of the public school type, she said. No country but England could have produced him. She was really spiteful, for some reason; had some grudge against him. Something had happened--he forgot what--in the smoking-room. He had insulted her--kissed her? Incredible! Nobody believed a word against Hugh of course. Who could? Kissing Sally in the smoking-room! If it had been some Honourable Edith or Lady Violet, perhaps; but not that ragamuffin Sally without a penny to her name, and a father or a mother gambling at Monte Carlo. For of all the people he had ever met Hugh was the greatest snob--the most obsequious--no, he didn't cringe exactly. He was too much of a prig for that. A first-rate valet was the obvious comparison--somebody who walked behind carrying suit cases; could be trusted to send telegrams--indispensable to hostesses. And he'd found his job--married his Honourable Evelyn; got some little post at Court, looked after the King's cellars, polished the Imperial shoe-buckles, went about in knee-breeches and lace ruffles. How remorseless life is! A little job at Court!
He had married this lady, the Honourable Evelyn, and they lived hereabouts, so he thought (looking at the pompous houses overlooking the Park), for he had lunched there once in a house which had, like all Hugh's possessions, something that no other house could possibly have--linen cupboards it might have been. You had to go and look at them--you had to spend a great deal of time always admiring whatever it was--linen cupboards, pillow-cases, old oak furniture, pictures, which Hugh had picked up for an old song. But Mrs. Hugh sometimes gave the show away. She was one of those obscure mouse-like little women who admire big men. She was almost negligible. Then suddenly she would say something quite unexpected--something sharp. She had the relics of the grand manner perhaps. The steam coal was a little too strong for her--it made the atmosphere thick. And so there they lived, with their linen cupboards and their old masters and their pillow-cases fringed with real lace at the rate of five or ten thousand a year presumably, while he, who was two years older than Hugh, cadged for a job.
At fifty-three he had to come and ask them to put him into some secretary's office, to find him some usher's job teaching little boys Latin, at the beck and call of some mandarin in an office, something that brought in five hundred a year; for if he married Daisy, even with his pension, they could never do on less. Whitbread could do it presumably; or Dalloway. He didn't mind what he asked Dalloway. He was a thorough good sort; a bit limited; a bit thick in the head; yes; but a thorough good sort. Whatever he took up he did in the same matter-of-fact sensible way; without a touch of imagination, without a spark of brilliancy, but with the inexplicable niceness of his type. He ought to have been a country gentleman--he was wasted on politics. He was at his best out of doors, with horses and dogs--how good he was, for instance, when that great shaggy dog of Clarissa's got caught in a trap and had its paw half torn off, and Clarissa turned faint and Dalloway did the whole thing; bandaged, made splints; told Clarissa not to be a fool. That was what she liked him for perhaps--that was what she needed. "Now, my dear, don't be a fool. Hold this--fetch that," all the time talking to the dog as if it were a human being.
But how could she swallow all that stuff about poetry? How could she let him hold forth about Shakespeare? Seriously and solemnly Richard Dalloway got on his hind legs and said that no decent man ought to read Shakespeare's sonnets because it was like listening at keyholes (besides the relationship was not one that he approved). No decent man ought to let his wife visit a deceased wife's sister. Incredible! The only thing to do was to pelt him with sugared almonds--it was at dinner. But Clarissa sucked it all in; thought it so honest of him; so independent of him; Heaven knows if she didn't think him the most original mind she'd ever met!
That was one of the bonds between Sally and himself. There was a garden where they used to walk, a walled-in place, with rose-bushes and giant cauliflowers--he could remember Sally tearing off a rose, stopping to exclaim at the beauty of the cabbage leaves in the moonlight (it was extraordinary how vividly it all came back to him, things he hadn't thought of for years,) while she implored him, half laughing of course, to carry off Clarissa, to save her from the Hughs and the Dalloways and all the other "perfect gentlemen" who would "stifle her soul" (she wrote reams of poetry in those days), make a mere hostess of her, encourage her worldliness. But one must do Clarissa justice. She wasn't going to marry Hugh anyhow. She had a perfectly clear notion of what she wanted. Her emotions were all on the surface. Beneath, she was very shrewd--a far better judge of character than Sally, for instance, and with it all, purely feminine; with that extraordinary gift, that woman's gift, of making a world of her own wherever she happened to be. She came into a room; she stood, as he had often seen her, in a doorway with lots of people round her. But it was Clarissa one remembered. Not that she was striking; not beautiful at all; there was nothing picturesque about her; she never said anything specially clever; there she was, however; there she was.
No, no, no! He was not in love with her any more! He only felt, after seeing her that morning, among her scissors and silks, making ready for the party, unable to get away from the thought of her; she kept coming back and back like a sleeper jolting against him in a railway carriage; which was not being in love, of course; it was thinking of her, criticising her, starting again, after thirty years, trying to explain her. The obvious thing to say of her was that she was worldly; cared too much for rank and society and getting on in the world--which was true in a sense; she had admitted it to him. (You could always get her to own up if you took the trouble; she was honest.) What she would say was that she hated frumps, fogies, failures, like himself presumably; thought people had no right to slouch about with their hands in their pockets; must do something, be something; and these great swells, these Duchesses, these hoary old Countesses one met in her drawing-room, unspeakably remote as he felt them to be from anything that mattered a straw, stood for something real to her. Lady Bexborough, she said once, held herself upright (so did Clarissa herself; she never lounged in any sense of the word; she was straight as a dart, a little rigid in fact). She said they had a kind of courage which the older she grew the more she respected. In all this there was a great deal of Dalloway, of course; a great deal of the public-spirited, British Empire, tariff-reform, governing-class spirit, which had grown on her, as it tends to do. With twice his wits, she had to see things through his eyes--one of the tragedies of married life. With a mind of her own, she must always be quoting Richard--as if one couldn't know to a tittle what Richard thought by reading the Morning Post of a morning! These parties for example were all for him, or for her idea of him (to do Richard justice he would have been happier farming in Norfolk). She made her drawing-room a sort of meeting-place; she had a genius for it. Over and over again he had seen her take some raw youth, twist him, turn him, wake him up; set him going. Infinite numbers of dull people conglomerated round her of course. But odd unexpected people turned up; an artist sometimes; sometimes a writer; queer fish in that atmosphere. And behind it all was that network of visiting, leaving cards, being kind to people; running about with bunches of flowers, little presents; So-and-so was going to France--must have an air-cushion; a real drain on her strength; all that interminable traffic that women of her sort keep up; but she did it genuinely, from a natural instinct.
Oddly enough, she was one of the most thoroughgoing sceptics he had ever met, and possibly (this was a theory he used to make up to account for her, so transparent in some ways, so inscrutable in others), possibly she said to herself, As we are a doomed race, chained to a sinking ship (her favourite reading as a girl was Huxley and Tyndall, and they were fond of these nautical metaphors), as the whole thing is a bad joke, let us, at any rate, do our part; mitigate the sufferings of our fellow-prisoners (Huxley again); decorate the dungeon with flowers and air-cushions; be as decent as we possibly can. Those ruffians, the Gods, shan't have it all their own way,--her notion being that the Gods, who never lost a chance of hurting, thwarting and spoiling human lives were seriously put out if, all the same, you behaved like a lady. That phase came directly after Sylvia's death--that horrible affair. To see your own sister killed by a falling tree (all Justin Parry's fault--all his carelessness) before your very eyes, a girl too on the verge of life, the most gifted of them, Clarissa always said, was enough to turn one bitter. Later she wasn't so positive perhaps; she thought there were no Gods; no one was to blame; and so she evolved this atheist's religion of doing good for the sake of goodness.
And of course she enjoyed life immensely. It was her nature to enjoy (though goodness only knows, she had her reserves; it was a mere sketch, he often felt, that even he, after all these years, could make of Clarissa). Anyhow there was no bitterness in her; none of that sense of moral virtue which is so repulsive in good women. She enjoyed practically everything. If you walked with her in Hyde Park now it was a bed of tulips, now a child in a perambulator, now some absurd little drama she made up on the spur of the moment. (Very likely, she would have talked to those lovers, if she had thought them unhappy.) She had a sense of comedy that was really exquisite, but she needed people, always people, to bring it out, with the inevitable result that she frittered her time away, lunching, dining, giving these incessant parties of hers, talking nonsense, sayings things she didn't mean, blunting the edge of her mind, losing her discrimination. There she would sit at the head of the table taking infinite pains with some old buffer who might be useful to Dalloway--they knew the most appalling bores in Europe--or in came Elizabeth and everything must give way to her. She was at a High School, at the inarticulate stage last time he was over, a round-eyed, pale-faced girl, with nothing of her mother in her, a silent stolid creature, who took it all as a matter of course, let her mother make a fuss of her, and then said "May I go now?" like a child of four; going off, Clarissa explained, with that mixture of amusement and pride which Dalloway himself seemed to rouse in her, to play hockey. And now Elizabeth was "out," presumably; thought him an old fogy, laughed at her mother's friends. Ah well, so be it. The compensation of growing old, Peter Walsh thought, coming out of Regent's Park, and holding his hat in hand, was simply this; that the passions remain as strong as ever, but one has gained--at last!--the power which adds the supreme flavour to existence,--the power of taking hold of experience, of turning it round, slowly, in the light.
A terrible confession it was (he put his hat on again), but now, at the age of fifty-three one scarcely needed people any more. Life itself, every moment of it, every drop of it, here, this instant, now, in the sun, in Regent's Park, was enough. Too much indeed. A whole lifetime was too short to bring out, now that one had acquired the power, the full flavour; to extract every ounce of pleasure, every shade of meaning; which both were so much more solid than they used to be, so much less personal. It was impossible that he should ever suffer again as Clarissa had made him suffer. For hours at a time (pray God that one might say these things without being overheard!), for hours and days he never thought of Daisy.
Could it be that he was in love with her then, remembering the misery, the torture, the extraordinary passion of those days? It was a different thing altogether--a much pleasanter thing--the truth being, of course, that now she was in love with him. And that perhaps was the reason why, when the ship actually sailed, he felt an extraordinary relief, wanted nothing so much as to be alone; was annoyed to find all her little attentions--cigars, notes, a rug for the voyage--in his cabin. Every one if they were honest would say the same; one doesn't want people after fifty; one doesn't want to go on telling women they are pretty; that's what most men of fifty would say, Peter Walsh thought, if they were honest.
But then these astonishing accesses of emotion--bursting into tears this morning, what was all that about? What could Clarissa have thought of him? thought him a fool presumably, not for the first time. It was jealousy that was at the bottom of it--jealousy which survives every other passion of mankind, Peter Walsh thought, holding his pocket-knife at arm's length. She had been meeting Major Orde, Daisy said in her last letter; said it on purpose he knew; said it to make him jealous; he could see her wrinkling her forehead as she wrote, wondering what she could say to hurt him; and yet it made no difference; he was furious! All this pother of coming to England and seeing lawyers wasn't to marry her, but to prevent her from marrying anybody else. That was what tortured him, that was what came over him when he saw Clarissa so calm, so cold, so intent on her dress or whatever it was; realising what she might have spared him, what she had reduced him to--a whimpering, snivelling old ass. But women, he thought, shutting his pocket-knife, don't know what passion is. They don't know the meaning of it to men. Clarissa was as cold as an icicle. There she would sit on the sofa by his side, let him take her hand, give him one kiss--Here he was at the crossing.
A sound interrupted him; a frail quivering sound, a voice bubbling up without direction, vigour, beginning or end, running weakly and shrilly and with an absence of all human meaning into:
ee um fah um so
foo swee too eem oo--
the voice of no age or sex, the voice of an ancient spring spouting from the earth; which issued, just opposite Regent's Park Tube station from a tall quivering shape, like a funnel, like a rusty pump, like a wind-beaten tree for ever barren of leaves which lets the wind run up and down its branches singing:
ee um fah um so
foo swee too eem oo,
and rocks and creaks and moans in the eternal breeze.
Through all ages--when the pavement was grass, when it was swamp, through the age of tusk and mammoth, through the age of silent sunrise, the battered woman--for she wore a skirt--with her right hand exposed, her left clutching at her side, stood singing of love--love which has lasted a million years, she sang, love which prevails, and millions of years ago, her lover, who had been dead these centuries, had walked, she crooned, with her in May; but in the course of ages, long as summer days, and flaming, she remembered, with nothing but red asters, he had gone; death's enormous sickle had swept those tremendous hills, and when at last she laid her hoary and immensely aged head on the earth, now become a mere cinder of ice, she implored the Gods to lay by her side a bunch of purple-heather, there on her high burial place which the last rays of the last sun caressed; for then the pageant of the universe would be over.
As the ancient song bubbled up opposite Regent's Park Tube station still the earth seemed green and flowery; still, though it issued from so rude a mouth, a mere hole in the earth, muddy too, matted with root fibres and tangled grasses, still the old bubbling burbling song, soaking through the knotted roots of infinite ages, and skeletons and treasure, streamed away in rivulets over the pavement and all along the Marylebone Road, and down towards Euston, fertilising, leaving a damp stain.
Still remembering how once in some primeval May she had walked with her lover, this rusty pump, this battered old woman with one hand exposed for coppers the other clutching her side, would still be there in ten million years, remembering how once she had walked in May, where the sea flows now, with whom it did not matter--he was a man, oh yes, a man who had loved her. But the passage of ages had blurred the clarity of that ancient May day; the bright petalled flowers were hoar and silver frosted; and she no longer saw, when she implored him (as she did now quite clearly) "look in my eyes with thy sweet eyes intently," she no longer saw brown eyes, black whiskers or sunburnt face but only a looming shape, a shadow shape, to which, with the bird-like freshness of the very aged she still twittered "give me your hand and let me press it gently" (Peter Walsh couldn't help giving the poor creature a coin as he stepped into his taxi), "and if some one should see, what matter they?" she demanded; and her fist clutched at her side, and she smiled, pocketing her shilling, and all peering inquisitive eyes seemed blotted out, and the passing generations--the pavement was crowded with bustling middle-class people--vanished, like leaves, to be trodden under, to be soaked and steeped and made mould of by that eternal spring--
ee um fah um so
foo swee too eem oo,
"Poor old woman," said Rezia Warren Smith, waiting to cross.
Oh poor old wretch!
Suppose it was a wet night? Suppose one's father, or somebody who had known one in better days had happened to pass, and saw one standing there in the gutter? And where did she sleep at night?
Cheerfully, almost gaily, the invincible thread of sound wound up into the air like the smoke from a cottage chimney, winding up clean beech trees and issuing in a tuft of blue smoke among the topmost leaves. "And if some one should see, what matter they?"
Since she was so unhappy, for weeks and weeks now, Rezia had given meanings to things that happened, almost felt sometimes that she must stop people in the street, if they looked good, kind people, just to say to them "I am unhappy"; and this old woman singing in the street "if some one should see, what matter they?" made her suddenly quite sure that everything was going to be right. They were going to Sir William Bradshaw; she thought his name sounded nice; he would cure Septimus at once. And then there was a brewer's cart, and the grey horses had upright bristles of straw in their tails; there were newspaper placards. It was a silly, silly dream, being unhappy.
So they crossed, Mr. and Mrs. Septimus Warren Smith, and was there, after all, anything to draw attention to them, anything to make a passer-by suspect here is a young man who carries in him the greatest message in the world, and is, moreover, the happiest man in the world, and the most miserable? Perhaps they walked more slowly than other people, and there was something hesitating, trailing, in the man's walk, but what more natural for a clerk, who has not been in the West End on a weekday at this hour for years, than to keep looking at the sky, looking at this, that and the other, as if Portland Place were a room he had come into when the family are away, the chandeliers being hung in holland bags, and the caretaker, as she lets in long shafts of dusty light upon deserted, queer-looking armchairs, lifting one corner of the long blinds, explains to the visitors what a wonderful place it is; how wonderful, but at the same time, he thinks, as he looks at chairs and tables, how strange.
To look at, he might have been a clerk, but of the better sort; for he wore brown boots; his hands were educated; so, too, his profile--his angular, big-nosed, intelligent, sensitive profile; but not his lips altogether, for they were loose; and his eyes (as eyes tend to be), eyes merely; hazel, large; so that he was, on the whole, a border case, neither one thing nor the other, might end with a house at Purley and a motor car, or continue renting apartments in back streets all his life; one of those half-educated, self-educated men whose education is all learnt from books borrowed from public libraries, read in the evening after the day's work, on the advice of well-known authors consulted by letter.
As for the other experiences, the solitary ones, which people go through alone, in their bedrooms, in their offices, walking the fields and the streets of London, he had them; had left home, a mere boy, because of his mother; she lied; because he came down to tea for the fiftieth time with his hands unwashed; because he could see no future for a poet in Stroud; and so, making a confidant of his little sister, had gone to London leaving an absurd note behind him, such as great men have written, and the world has read later when the story of their struggles has become famous.
London has swallowed up many millions of young men called Smith; thought nothing of fantastic Christian names like Septimus with which their parents have thought to distinguish them. Lodging off the Euston Road, there were experiences, again experiences, such as change a face in two years from a pink innocent oval to a face lean, contracted, hostile. But of all this what could the most observant of friends have said except what a gardener says when he opens the conservatory door in the morning and finds a new blossom on his plant:--It has flowered; flowered from vanity, ambition, idealism, passion, loneliness, courage, laziness, the usual seeds, which all muddled up (in a room off the Euston Road), made him shy, and stammering, made him anxious to improve himself, made him fall in love with Miss Isabel Pole, lecturing in the Waterloo Road upon Shakespeare.
Was he not like Keats? she asked; and reflected how she might give him a taste of Antony and Cleopatra and the rest; lent him books; wrote him scraps of letters; and lit in him such a fire as burns only once in a lifetime, without heat, flickering a red gold flame infinitely ethereal and insubstantial over Miss Pole; Antony and Cleopatra; and the Waterloo Road. He thought her beautiful, believed her impeccably wise; dreamed of her, wrote poems to her, which, ignoring the subject, she corrected in red ink; he saw her, one summer evening, walking in a green dress in a square. "It has flowered," the gardener might have said, had he opened the door; had he come in, that is to say, any night about this time, and found him writing; found him tearing up his writing; found him finishing a masterpiece at three o'clock in the morning and running out to pace the streets, and visiting churches, and fasting one day, drinking another, devouring Shakespeare, Darwin, The History of Civilisation, and Bernard Shaw.
Something was up, Mr. Brewer knew; Mr. Brewer, managing clerk at Sibleys and Arrowsmiths, auctioneers, valuers, land and estate agents; something was up, he thought, and, being paternal with his young men, and thinking very highly of Smith's abilities, and prophesying that he would, in ten or fifteen years, succeed to the leather arm-chair in the inner room under the skylight with the deed-boxes round him, "if he keeps his health," said Mr. Brewer, and that was the danger--he looked weakly; advised football, invited him to supper and was seeing his way to consider recommending a rise of salary, when something happened which threw out many of Mr. Brewer's calculations, took away his ablest young fellows, and eventually, so prying and insidious were the fingers of the European War, smashed a plaster cast of Ceres, ploughed a hole in the geranium beds, and utterly ruined the cook's nerves at Mr. Brewer's establishment at Muswell Hill.
Septimus was one of the first to volunteer. He went to France to save an England which consisted almost entirely of Shakespeare's plays and Miss Isabel Pole in a green dress walking in a square. There in the trenches the change which Mr. Brewer desired when he advised football was produced instantly; he developed manliness; he was promoted; he drew the attention, indeed the affection of his officer, Evans by name. It was a case of two dogs playing on a hearth-rug; one worrying a paper screw, snarling, snapping, giving a pinch, now and then, at the old dog's ear; the other lying somnolent, blinking at the fire, raising a paw, turning and growling good-temperedly. They had to be together, share with each other, fight with each other, quarrel with each other. But when Evans (Rezia who had only seen him once called him "a quiet man," a sturdy red-haired man, undemonstrative in the company of women), when Evans was killed, just before the Armistice, in Italy, Septimus, far from showing any emotion or recognising that here was the end of a friendship, congratulated himself upon feeling very little and very reasonably. The War had taught him. It was sublime. He had gone through the whole show, friendship, European War, death, had won promotion, was still under thirty and was bound to survive. He was right there. The last shells missed him. He watched them explode with indifference. When peace came he was in Milan, billeted in the house of an innkeeper with a courtyard, flowers in tubs, little tables in the open, daughters making hats, and to Lucrezia, the younger daughter, he became engaged one evening when the panic was on him--that he could not feel.
For now that it was all over, truce signed, and the dead buried, he had, especially in the evening, these sudden thunder-claps of fear. He could not feel. As he opened the door of the room where the Italian girls sat making hats, he could see them; could hear them; they were rubbing wires among coloured beads in saucers; they were turning buckram shapes this way and that; the table was all strewn with feathers, spangles, silks, ribbons; scissors were rapping on the table; but something failed him; he could not feel. Still, scissors rapping, girls laughing, hats being made protected him; he was assured of safety; he had a refuge. But he could not sit there all night. There were moments of waking in the early morning. The bed was falling; he was falling. Oh for the scissors and the lamplight and the buckram shapes! He asked Lucrezia to marry him, the younger of the two, the gay, the frivolous, with those little artist's fingers that she would hold up and say "It is all in them." Silk, feathers, what not were alive to them.
"It is the hat that matters most," she would say, when they walked out together. Every hat that passed, she would examine; and the cloak and the dress and the way the woman held herself. Ill-dressing, over-dressing she stigmatised, not savagely, rather with impatient movements of the hands, like those of a painter who puts from him some obvious well-meant glaring imposture; and then, generously, but always critically, she would welcome a shopgirl who had turned her little bit of stuff gallantly, or praise, wholly, with enthusiastic and professional understanding, a French lady descending from her carriage, in chinchilla, robes, pearls.
"Beautiful!" she would murmur, nudging Septimus, that he might see. But beauty was behind a pane of glass. Even taste (Rezia liked ices, chocolates, sweet things) had no relish to him. He put down his cup on the little marble table. He looked at people outside; happy they seemed, collecting in the middle of the street, shouting, laughing, squabbling over nothing. But he could not taste, he could not feel. In the tea-shop among the tables and the chattering waiters the appalling fear came over him--he could not feel. He could reason; he could read, Dante for example, quite easily ("Septimus, do put down your book," said Rezia, gently shutting the Inferno), he could add up his bill; his brain was perfect; it must be the fault of the world then--that he could not feel.
"The English are so silent," Rezia said. She liked it, she said. She respected these Englishmen, and wanted to see London, and the English horses, and the tailor-made suits, and could remember hearing how wonderful the shops were, from an Aunt who had married and lived in Soho.
It might be possible, Septimus thought, looking at England from the train window, as they left Newhaven; it might be possible that the world itself is without meaning.
At the office they advanced him to a post of considerable responsibility. They were proud of him; he had won crosses. "You have done your duty; it is up to us--" began Mr. Brewer; and could not finish, so pleasurable was his emotion. They took admirable lodgings off the Tottenham Court Road.
Here he opened Shakespeare once more. That boy's business of the intoxication of language--Antony and Cleopatra--had shrivelled utterly. How Shakespeare loathed humanity--the putting on of clothes, the getting of children, the sordidity of the mouth and the belly! This was now revealed to Septimus; the message hidden in the beauty of words. The secret signal which one generation passes, under disguise, to the next is loathing, hatred, despair. Dante the same. Aeschylus (translated) the same. There Rezia sat at the table trimming hats. She trimmed hats for Mrs. Filmer's friends; she trimmed hats by the hour. She looked pale, mysterious, like a lily, drowned, under water, he thought.
"The English are so serious," she would say, putting her arms round Septimus, her cheek against his.
Love between man and woman was repulsive to Shakespeare. The business of copulation was filth to him before the end. But, Rezia said, she must have children. They had been married five years.
They went to the Tower together; to the Victoria and Albert Museum; stood in the crowd to see the King open Parliament. And there were the shops--hat shops, dress shops, shops with leather bags in the window, where she would stand staring. But she must have a boy.
She must have a son like Septimus, she said. But nobody could be like Septimus; so gentle; so serious; so clever. Could she not read Shakespeare too? Was Shakespeare a difficult author? she asked.
One cannot bring children into a world like this. One cannot perpetuate suffering, or increase the breed of these lustful animals, who have no lasting emotions, but only whims and vanities, eddying them now this way, now that.
He watched her snip, shape, as one watches a bird hop, flit in the grass, without daring to move a finger. For the truth is (let her ignore it) that human beings have neither kindness, nor faith, nor charity beyond what serves to increase the pleasure of the moment. They hunt in packs. Their packs scour the desert and vanish screaming into the wilderness. They desert the fallen. They are plastered over with grimaces. There was Brewer at the office, with his waxed moustache, coral tie-pin, white slip, and pleasurable emotions--all coldness and clamminess within,--his geraniums ruined in the War--his cook's nerves destroyed; or Amelia What'shername, handing round cups of tea punctually at five--a leering, sneering obscene little harpy; and the Toms and Berties in their starched shirt fronts oozing thick drops of vice. They never saw him drawing pictures of them naked at their antics in his notebook. In the street, vans roared past him; brutality blared out on placards; men were trapped in mines; women burnt alive; and once a maimed file of lunatics being exercised or displayed for the diversion of the populace (who laughed aloud), ambled and nodded and grinned past him, in the Tottenham Court Road, each half apologetically, yet triumphantly, inflicting his hopeless woe. And would he go mad?
At tea Rezia told him that Mrs. Filmer's daughter was expecting a baby. She could not grow old and have no children! She was very lonely, she was very unhappy! She cried for the first time since they were married. Far away he heard her sobbing; he heard it accurately, he noticed it distinctly; he compared it to a piston thumping. But he felt nothing.
His wife was crying, and he felt nothing; only each time she sobbed in this profound, this silent, this hopeless way, he descended another step into the pit.
At last, with a melodramatic gesture which he assumed mechanically and with complete consciousness of its insincerity, he dropped his head on his hands. Now he had surrendered; now other people must help him. People must be sent for. He gave in.
Nothing could rouse him. Rezia put him to bed. She sent for a doctor--Mrs. Filmer's Dr. Holmes. Dr. Holmes examined him. There was nothing whatever the matter, said Dr. Holmes. Oh, what a relief! What a kind man, what a good man! thought Rezia. When he felt like that he went to the Music Hall, said Dr. Holmes. He took a day off with his wife and played golf. Why not try two tabloids of bromide dissolved in a glass of water at bedtime? These old Bloomsbury houses, said Dr. Holmes, tapping the wall, are often full of very fine panelling, which the landlords have the folly to paper over. Only the other day, visiting a patient, Sir Somebody Something in Bedford Square--
So there was no excuse; nothing whatever the matter, except the sin for which human nature had condemned him to death; that he did not feel. He had not cared when Evans was killed; that was worst; but all the other crimes raised their heads and shook their fingers and jeered and sneered over the rail of the bed in the early hours of the morning at the prostrate body which lay realising its degradation; how he had married his wife without loving her; had lied to her; seduced her; outraged Miss Isabel Pole, and was so pocked and marked with vice that women shuddered when they saw him in the street. The verdict of human nature on such a wretch was death.
Dr. Holmes came again. Large, fresh coloured, handsome, flicking his boots, looking in the glass, he brushed it all aside--headaches, sleeplessness, fears, dreams--nerve symptoms and nothing more, he said. If Dr. Holmes found himself even half a pound below eleven stone six, he asked his wife for another plate of porridge at breakfast. (Rezia would learn to cook porridge.) But, he continued, health is largely a matter in our own control. Throw yourself into outside interests; take up some hobby. He opened Shakespeare--Antony and Cleopatra; pushed Shakespeare aside. Some hobby, said Dr. Holmes, for did he not owe his own excellent health (and he worked as hard as any man in London) to the fact that he could always switch off from his patients on to old furniture? And what a very pretty comb, if he might say so, Mrs. Warren Smith was wearing!
When the damned fool came again, Septimus refused to see him. Did he indeed? said Dr. Holmes, smiling agreeably. Really he had to give that charming little lady, Mrs. Smith, a friendly push before he could get past her into her husband's bedroom.
"So you're in a funk," he said agreeably, sitting down by his patient's side. He had actually talked of killing himself to his wife, quite a girl, a foreigner, wasn't she? Didn't that give her a very odd idea of English husbands? Didn't one owe perhaps a duty to one's wife? Wouldn't it be better to do something instead of lying in bed? For he had had forty years' experience behind him; and Septimus could take Dr. Holmes's word for it--there was nothing whatever the matter with him. And next time Dr. Holmes came he hoped to find Smith out of bed and not making that charming little lady his wife anxious about him.
Human nature, in short, was on him--the repulsive brute, with the blood-red nostrils. Holmes was on him. Dr. Holmes came quite regularly every day. Once you stumble, Septimus wrote on the back of a postcard, human nature is on you. Holmes is on you. Their only chance was to escape, without letting Holmes know; to Italy--anywhere, anywhere, away from Dr. Holmes.
But Rezia could not understand him. Dr. Holmes was such a kind man. He was so interested in Septimus. He only wanted to help them, he said. He had four little children and he had asked her to tea, she told Septimus.
So he was deserted. The whole world was clamouring: Kill yourself, kill yourself, for our sakes. But why should he kill himself for their sakes? Food was pleasant; the sun hot; and this killing oneself, how does one set about it, with a table knife, uglily, with floods of blood,--by sucking a gaspipe? He was too weak; he could scarcely raise his hand. Besides, now that he was quite alone, condemned, deserted, as those who are about to die are alone, there was a luxury in it, an isolation full of sublimity; a freedom which the attached can never know. Holmes had won of course; the brute with the red nostrils had won. But even Holmes himself could not touch this last relic straying on the edge of the world, this outcast, who gazed back at the inhabited regions, who lay, like a drowned sailor, on the shore of the world.
It was at that moment (Rezia gone shopping) that the great revelation took place. A voice spoke from behind the screen. Evans was speaking. The dead were with him.
"Evans, Evans!" he cried.
Mr. Smith was talking aloud to himself, Agnes the servant girl cried to Mrs. Filmer in the kitchen. "Evans, Evans," he had said as she brought in the tray. She jumped, she did. She scuttled downstairs.
And Rezia came in, with her flowers, and walked across the room, and put the roses in a vase, upon which the sun struck directly, and it went laughing, leaping round the room.
She had had to buy the roses, Rezia said, from a poor man in the street. But they were almost dead already, she said, arranging the roses.
So there was a man outside; Evans presumably; and the roses, which Rezia said were half dead, had been picked by him in the fields of Greece. "Communication is health; communication is happiness, communication--" he muttered.
"What are you saying, Septimus?" Rezia asked, wild with terror, for he was talking to himself.
She sent Agnes running for Dr. Holmes. Her husband, she said, was mad. He scarcely knew her.
"You brute! You brute!" cried Septimus, seeing human nature, that is Dr. Holmes, enter the room.
"Now what's all this about?" said Dr. Holmes in the most amiable way in the world. "Talking nonsense to frighten your wife?" But he would give him something to make him sleep. And if they were rich people, said Dr. Holmes, looking ironically round the room, by all means let them go to Harley Street; if they had no confidence in him, said Dr. Holmes, looking not quite so kind.
It was precisely twelve o'clock; twelve by Big Ben; whose stroke was wafted over the northern part of London; blent with that of other clocks, mixed in a thin ethereal way with the clouds and wisps of smoke, and died up there among the seagulls--twelve o'clock struck as Clarissa Dalloway laid her green dress on her bed, and the Warren Smiths walked down Harley Street. Twelve was the hour of their appointment. Probably, Rezia thought, that was Sir William Bradshaw's house with the grey motor car in front of it. The leaden circles dissolved in the air.
Indeed it was--Sir William Bradshaw's motor car; low, powerful, grey with plain initials' interlocked on the panel, as if the pomps of heraldry were incongruous, this man being the ghostly helper, the priest of science; and, as the motor car was grey, so to match its sober suavity, grey furs, silver grey rugs were heaped in it, to keep her ladyship warm while she waited. For often Sir William would travel sixty miles or more down into the country to visit the rich, the afflicted, who could afford the very large fee which Sir William very properly charged for his advice. Her ladyship waited with the rugs about her knees an hour or more, leaning back, thinking sometimes of the patient, sometimes, excusably, of the wall of gold, mounting minute by minute while she waited; the wall of gold that was mounting between them and all shifts and anxieties (she had borne them bravely; they had had their struggles) until she felt wedged on a calm ocean, where only spice winds blow; respected, admired, envied, with scarcely anything left to wish for, though she regretted her stoutness; large dinner-parties every Thursday night to the profession; an occasional bazaar to be opened; Royalty greeted; too little time, alas, with her husband, whose work grew and grew; a boy doing well at Eton; she would have liked a daughter too; interests she had, however, in plenty; child welfare; the after-care of the epileptic, and photography, so that if there was a church building, or a church decaying, she bribed the sexton, got the key and took photographs, which were scarcely to be distinguished from the work of professionals, while she waited.
Sir William himself was no longer young. He had worked very hard; he had won his position by sheer ability (being the son of a shopkeeper); loved his profession; made a fine figurehead at ceremonies and spoke well--all of which had by the time he was knighted given him a heavy look, a weary look (the stream of patients being so incessant, the responsibilities and privileges of his profession so onerous), which weariness, together with his grey hairs, increased the extraordinary distinction of his presence and gave him the reputation (of the utmost importance in dealing with nerve cases) not merely of lightning skill, and almost infallible accuracy in diagnosis but of sympathy; tact; understanding of the human soul. He could see the first moment they came into the room (the Warren Smiths they were called); he was certain directly he saw the man; it was a case of extreme gravity. It was a case of complete breakdown--complete physical and nervous breakdown, with every symptom in an advanced stage, he ascertained in two or three minutes (writing answers to questions, murmured discreetly, on a pink card).
How long had Dr. Holmes been attending him?
Six weeks.
Prescribed a little bromide? Said there was nothing the matter? Ah yes (those general practitioners! thought Sir William. It took half his time to undo their blunders. Some were irreparable).
"You served with great distinction in the War?"
The patient repeated the word "war" interrogatively.
He was attaching meanings to words of a symbolical kind. A serious symptom, to be noted on the card.
"The War?" the patient asked. The European War--that little shindy of schoolboys with gunpowder? Had he served with distinction? He really forgot. In the War itself he had failed.
"Yes, he served with the greatest distinction," Rezia assured the doctor; "he was promoted."
"And they have the very highest opinion of you at your office?" Sir William murmured, glancing at Mr. Brewer's very generously worded letter. "So that you have nothing to worry you, no financial anxiety, nothing?"
He had committed an appalling crime and been condemned to death by human nature.
"I have--I have," he began, "committed a crime--"
"He has done nothing wrong whatever," Rezia assured the doctor. If Mr. Smith would wait, said Sir William, he would speak to Mrs. Smith in the next room. Her husband was very seriously ill, Sir William said. Did he threaten to kill himself?
Oh, he did, she cried. But he did not mean it, she said. Of course not. It was merely a question of rest, said Sir William; of rest, rest, rest; a long rest in bed. There was a delightful home down in the country where her husband would be perfectly looked after. Away from her? she asked. Unfortunately, yes; the people we care for most are not good for us when we are ill. But he was not mad, was he? Sir William said he never spoke of "madness"; he called it not having a sense of proportion. But her husband did not like doctors. He would refuse to go there. Shortly and kindly Sir William explained to her the state of the case. He had threatened to kill himself. There was no alternative. It was a question of law. He would lie in bed in a beautiful house in the country. The nurses were admirable. Sir William would visit him once a week. If Mrs. Warren Smith was quite sure she had no more questions to ask--he never hurried his patients--they would return to her husband. She had nothing more to ask--not of Sir William.
So they returned to the most exalted of mankind; the criminal who faced his judges; the victim exposed on the heights; the fugitive; the drowned sailor; the poet of the immortal ode; the Lord who had gone from life to death; to Septimus Warren Smith, who sat in the arm-chair under the skylight staring at a photograph of Lady Bradshaw in Court dress, muttering messages about beauty.
"We have had our little talk," said Sir William.
"He says you are very, very ill," Rezia cried.
"We have been arranging that you should go into a home," said Sir William.
"One of Holmes's homes?" sneered Septimus.
The fellow made a distasteful impression. For there was in Sir William, whose father had been a tradesman, a natural respect for breeding and clothing, which shabbiness nettled; again, more profoundly, there was in Sir William, who had never had time for reading, a grudge, deeply buried, against cultivated people who came into his room and intimated that doctors, whose profession is a constant strain upon all the highest faculties, are not educated men.
"One of my homes, Mr. Warren Smith," he said, "where we will teach you to rest."
And there was just one thing more.
He was quite certain that when Mr. Warren Smith was well he was the last man in the world to frighten his wife. But he had talked of killing himself.
"We all have our moments of depression," said Sir William.
Once you fall, Septimus repeated to himself, human nature is on you. Holmes and Bradshaw are on you. They scour the desert. They fly screaming into the wilderness. The rack and the thumbscrew are applied. Human nature is remorseless.
"Impulses came upon him sometimes?" Sir William asked, with his pencil on a pink card.
That was his own affair, said Septimus.
"Nobody lives for himself alone," said Sir William, glancing at the photograph of his wife in Court dress.
"And you have a brilliant career before you," said Sir William. There was Mr. Brewer's letter on the table. "An exceptionally brilliant career."
But if he confessed? If he communicated? Would they let him off then, his torturers?
"I--I--" he stammered.
But what was his crime? He could not remember it.
"Yes?" Sir William encouraged him. (But it was growing late.)
Love, trees, there is no crime--what was his message?
He could not remember it.
"I--I--" Septimus stammered.
"Try to think as little about yourself as possible," said Sir William kindly. Really, he was not fit to be about.
Was there anything else they wished to ask him? Sir William would make all arrangements (he murmured to Rezia) and he would let her know between five and six that evening he murmured.
"Trust everything to me," he said, and dismissed them.
Never, never had Rezia felt such agony in her life! She had asked for help and been deserted! He had failed them! Sir William Bradshaw was not a nice man.
The upkeep of that motor car alone must cost him quite a lot, said Septimus, when they got out into the street.
She clung to his arm. They had been deserted.
But what more did she want?