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Mrs Dalloway (Part VII), by Virginia Woolf (1882-1941).

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

unit 1

Part VII.
1 Translations, 2 Upvotes, Last Activity 2 days, 20 hours ago

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unit 2

"Are you going to the party to-night?"
1 Translations, 2 Upvotes, Last Activity 2 days, 20 hours ago

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unit 3

Miss Kilman said.
1 Translations, 2 Upvotes, Last Activity 2 days, 20 hours ago

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unit 4

Elizabeth supposed she was going; her mother wanted her to go.
1 Translations, 2 Upvotes, Last Activity 2 days, 20 hours ago

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unit 5

She must not let parties absorb her, Miss Kilman said, fingering the last two inches of a chocolate éclair.
1 Translations, 2 Upvotes, Last Activity 2 days, 20 hours ago

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unit 6

She did not much like parties, Elizabeth said.
1 Translations, 2 Upvotes, Last Activity 2 days, 20 hours ago

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unit 7

Miss Kilman opened her mouth, slightly projected her chin, and swallowed down the last inches of the chocolate éclair, then wiped her fingers, and washed the tea round in her cup.
1 Translations, 2 Upvotes, Last Activity 2 days, 20 hours ago

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unit 8

She was about to split asunder, she felt.
1 Translations, 2 Upvotes, Last Activity 2 days, 20 hours ago

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unit 9

The agony was so terrific.
1 Translations, 2 Upvotes, Last Activity 2 days, 20 hours ago

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unit 10

If she could grasp her, if she could clasp her, if she could make her hers absolutely and forever and then die; that was all she wanted.
1 Translations, 2 Upvotes, Last Activity 2 days, 20 hours ago

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unit 11

But to sit here, unable to think of anything to say; to see Elizabeth turning against her; to be felt repulsive even by her--it was too much; she could not stand it.
1 Translations, 2 Upvotes, Last Activity 2 days, 14 hours ago

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unit 12

The thick fingers curled inwards.
1 Translations, 2 Upvotes, Last Activity 2 days, 14 hours ago

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unit 13

"I never go to parties," said Miss Kilman, just to keep Elizabeth from going.
1 Translations, 2 Upvotes, Last Activity 2 days, 14 hours ago

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unit 14

"People don't ask me to parties"--and she knew as she said it that it was this egotism that was her undoing; Mr. Whittaker had warned her; but she could not help it.
2 Translations, 2 Upvotes, Last Activity 2 days, 14 hours ago

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unit 15

She had suffered so horribly.
1 Translations, 2 Upvotes, Last Activity 2 days, 14 hours ago

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unit 16

"Why should they ask me?"
1 Translations, 2 Upvotes, Last Activity 2 days, 14 hours ago

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unit 17

she said.
1 Translations, 2 Upvotes, Last Activity 2 days, 14 hours ago

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unit 18

"I'm plain, I'm unhappy."
2 Translations, 2 Upvotes, Last Activity 2 days, 14 hours ago

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unit 19

She knew it was idiotic.
1 Translations, 2 Upvotes, Last Activity 2 days, 14 hours ago

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unit 20

But it was all those people passing--people with parcels who despised her, who made her say it.
1 Translations, 2 Upvotes, Last Activity 2 days, 14 hours ago

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unit 21

However, she was Doris Kilman.
1 Translations, 2 Upvotes, Last Activity 2 days, 14 hours ago

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unit 22

She had her degree.
1 Translations, 2 Upvotes, Last Activity 2 days, 14 hours ago

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unit 23

She was a woman who had made her way in the world.
1 Translations, 2 Upvotes, Last Activity 2 days, 14 hours ago

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unit 24

Her knowledge of modern history was more than respectable.
1 Translations, 2 Upvotes, Last Activity 2 days, 14 hours ago

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unit 25

"I don't pity myself," she said.
1 Translations, 2 Upvotes, Last Activity 2 days, 14 hours ago

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unit 26

"I pity"--she meant to say "your mother" but no, she could not, not to Elizabeth.
1 Translations, 2 Upvotes, Last Activity 2 days, 14 hours ago

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unit 27

"I pity other people," she said, "more."
1 Translations, 2 Upvotes, Last Activity 2 days, 14 hours ago

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unit 28

Like some dumb creature who has been brought up to a gate for an unknown purpose, and stands there longing to gallop away, Elizabeth Dalloway sat silent.
1 Translations, 2 Upvotes, Last Activity 2 days, 14 hours ago

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unit 29

Was Miss Kilman going to say anything more?
1 Translations, 2 Upvotes, Last Activity 2 days, 14 hours ago

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unit 30

"Don't quite forget me," said Doris Kilman; her voice quivered.
1 Translations, 2 Upvotes, Last Activity 2 days, 14 hours ago

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unit 31

Right away to the end of the field the dumb creature galloped in terror.
1 Translations, 2 Upvotes, Last Activity 2 days, 14 hours ago

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unit 32

The great hand opened and shut.
1 Translations, 2 Upvotes, Last Activity 2 days, 10 hours ago

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unit 33

Elizabeth turned her head.
1 Translations, 2 Upvotes, Last Activity 2 days, 10 hours ago

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unit 34

The waitress came.
1 Translations, 2 Upvotes, Last Activity 2 days, 10 hours ago

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unit 35

One had to pay at the desk, Elizabeth said, and went off, drawing out, so Miss Kilman felt, the very entrails in her body, stretching them as she crossed the room, and then, with a final twist, bowing her head very politely, she went.
1 Translations, 2 Upvotes, Last Activity 2 days, 10 hours ago

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unit 36

She had gone.
1 Translations, 2 Upvotes, Last Activity 2 days, 10 hours ago

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unit 37

Miss Kilman sat at the marble table among the éclairs, stricken once, twice, thrice by shocks of suffering.
1 Translations, 2 Upvotes, Last Activity 1 day, 23 hours ago

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unit 38

She had gone.
1 Translations, 2 Upvotes, Last Activity 1 day, 23 hours ago

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unit 39

Mrs. Dalloway had triumphed.
1 Translations, 2 Upvotes, Last Activity 1 day, 23 hours ago

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unit 40

Elizabeth had gone.
1 Translations, 2 Upvotes, Last Activity 1 day, 23 hours ago

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unit 41

Beauty had gone, youth had gone.
1 Translations, 2 Upvotes, Last Activity 1 day, 23 hours ago

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unit 42

So she sat.
1 Translations, 2 Upvotes, Last Activity 1 day, 23 hours ago

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unit 43

She got up, blundered off among the little tables, rocking slightly from side to side, and somebody came after her with her petticoat, and she lost her way, and was hemmed in by trunks specially prepared for taking to India; next got among the accouchement sets, and baby linen; through all the commodities of the world, perishable and permanent, hams, drugs, flowers, stationery, variously smelling, now sweet, now sour she lurched; saw herself thus lurching with her hat askew, very red in the face, full length in a looking-glass; and at last came out into the street.
2 Translations, 2 Upvotes, Last Activity 1 day, 12 hours ago

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unit 44

The tower of Westminster Cathedral rose in front of her, the habitation of God.
1 Translations, 2 Upvotes, Last Activity 1 day, 12 hours ago

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unit 45

In the midst of the traffic, there was the habitation of God.
1 Translations, 2 Upvotes, Last Activity 1 day, 12 hours ago

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unit 46

Doggedly she set off with her parcel to that other sanctuary, the Abbey, where, raising her hands in a tent before her face, she sat beside those driven into shelter too; the variously assorted worshippers, now divested of social rank, almost of sex, as they raised their hands before their faces; but once they removed them, instantly reverent, middle class, English men and women, some of them desirous of seeing the wax works.
1 Translations, 2 Upvotes, Last Activity 1 day, 12 hours ago

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unit 47

But Miss Kilman held her tent before her face.
1 Translations, 2 Upvotes, Last Activity 1 day, 12 hours ago

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unit 48

Now she was deserted; now rejoined.
1 Translations, 2 Upvotes, Last Activity 1 day, 11 hours ago

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unit 49

New worshippers came in from the street to replace the strollers, and still, as people gazed round and shuffled past the tomb of the Unknown Warrior, still she barred her eyes with her fingers and tried in this double darkness, for the light in the Abbey was bodiless, to aspire above the vanities, the desires, the commodities, to rid herself both of hatred and of love.
1 Translations, 2 Upvotes, Last Activity 1 day, 11 hours ago

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unit 50

Her hands twitched.
1 Translations, 2 Upvotes, Last Activity 1 day, 11 hours ago

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unit 51

She seemed to struggle.
1 Translations, 2 Upvotes, Last Activity 1 day, 11 hours ago

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unit 52

Yet to others God was accessible and the path to Him smooth.
1 Translations, 2 Upvotes, Last Activity 1 day, 11 hours ago

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unit 53

Mr. Fletcher, retired, of the Treasury, Mrs. Gorham, widow of the famous K.C., approached Him simply, and having done their praying, leant back, enjoyed the music (the organ pealed sweetly), and saw Miss Kilman at the end of the row, praying, praying, and, being still on the threshold of their underworld, thought of her sympathetically as a soul haunting the same territory; a soul cut out of immaterial substance; not a woman, a soul.
1 Translations, 1 Upvotes, Last Activity 23 hours ago

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unit 54

But Mr. Fletcher had to go.
1 Translations, 1 Upvotes, Last Activity 23 hours ago

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unit 55

He had to pass her, and being himself neat as a new pin, could not help being a little distressed by the poor lady's disorder; her hair down; her parcel on the floor.
2 Translations, 2 Upvotes, Last Activity 10 hours ago

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unit 56

She did not at once let him pass.
1 Translations, 1 Upvotes, Last Activity 23 hours ago

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unit 57

But, as he stood gazing about him, at the white marbles, grey window panes, and accumulated treasures (for he was extremely proud of the Abbey), her largeness, robustness, and power as she sat there shifting her knees from time to time (it was so rough the approach to her God--so tough her desires) impressed him, as they had impressed Mrs. Dalloway (she could not get the thought of her out of her mind that afternoon), the Rev.
1 Translations, 1 Upvotes, Last Activity 11 hours ago

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unit 58

Edward Whittaker, and Elizabeth too.
1 Translations, 1 Upvotes, Last Activity 11 hours ago

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unit 59

And Elizabeth waited in Victoria Street for an omnibus.
1 Translations, 1 Upvotes, Last Activity 11 hours ago

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unit 60

It was so nice to be out of doors.
1 Translations, 1 Upvotes, Last Activity 11 hours ago

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unit 61

She thought perhaps she need not go home just yet.
1 Translations, 1 Upvotes, Last Activity 11 hours ago

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unit 62

It was so nice to be out in the air.
1 Translations, 1 Upvotes, Last Activity 11 hours ago

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unit 63

So she would get on to an omnibus.
1 Translations, 1 Upvotes, Last Activity 11 hours ago

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unit 64

And already, even as she stood there, in her very well cut clothes, it was beginning.
1 Translations, 1 Upvotes, Last Activity 11 hours ago

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unit 65

.
1 Translations, 1 Upvotes, Last Activity 11 hours ago

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unit 66

.
1 Translations, 1 Upvotes, Last Activity 11 hours ago

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unit 67

.
1 Translations, 1 Upvotes, Last Activity 11 hours ago

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unit 68

People were beginning to compare her to poplar trees, early dawn, hyacinths, fawns, running water, and garden lilies; and it made her life a burden to her, for she so much preferred being left alone to do what she liked in the country, but they would compare her to lilies, and she had to go to parties, and London was so dreary compared with being alone in the country with her father and the dogs.
1 Translations, 1 Upvotes, Last Activity 11 hours ago

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unit 69

Buses swooped, settled, were off--garish caravans, glistening with red and yellow varnish.
1 Translations, 1 Upvotes, Last Activity 11 hours ago

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unit 70

But which should she get on to?
1 Translations, 1 Upvotes, Last Activity 11 hours ago

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unit 71

She had no preferences.
1 Translations, 1 Upvotes, Last Activity 11 hours ago

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unit 72

Of course, she would not push her way.
1 Translations, 1 Upvotes, Last Activity 11 hours ago

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unit 73

She inclined to be passive.
1 Translations, 1 Upvotes, Last Activity 11 hours ago

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unit 74

It was expression she needed, but her eyes were fine, Chinese, oriental, and, as her mother said, with such nice shoulders and holding herself so straight, she was always charming to look at; and lately, in the evening especially, when she was interested, for she never seemed excited, she looked almost beautiful, very stately, very serene.
1 Translations, 1 Upvotes, Last Activity 10 hours ago

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unit 75

What could she be thinking?
1 Translations, 1 Upvotes, Last Activity 10 hours ago

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unit 76

Every man fell in love with her, and she was really awfully bored.
1 Translations, 1 Upvotes, Last Activity 10 hours ago

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unit 77

For it was beginning.
1 Translations, 1 Upvotes, Last Activity 10 hours ago

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unit 78

Her mother could see that--the compliments were beginning.
1 Translations, 1 Upvotes, Last Activity 10 hours ago

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unit 79

That she did not care more about it--for instance for her clothes--sometimes worried Clarissa, but perhaps it was as well with all those puppies and guinea pigs about having distemper, and it gave her a charm.
0 Translations, 0 Upvotes, Last Activity None

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unit 80

And now there was this odd friendship with Miss Kilman.
0 Translations, 0 Upvotes, Last Activity None

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unit 81

Well, thought Clarissa about three o'clock in the morning, reading Baron Marbot for she could not sleep, it proves she has a heart.
0 Translations, 0 Upvotes, Last Activity None

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unit 82

Suddenly Elizabeth stepped forward and most competently boarded the omnibus, in front of everybody.
0 Translations, 0 Upvotes, Last Activity None

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unit 83

She took a seat on top.
0 Translations, 0 Upvotes, Last Activity None

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unit 84

The impetuous creature--a pirate--started forward, sprang away; she had to hold the rail to steady herself, for a pirate it was, reckless, unscrupulous, bearing down ruthlessly, circumventing dangerously, boldly snatching a passenger, or ignoring a passenger, squeezing eel-like and arrogant in between, and then rushing insolently all sails spread up Whitehall.
0 Translations, 0 Upvotes, Last Activity None

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unit 85

And did Elizabeth give one thought to poor Miss Kilman who loved her without jealousy, to whom she had been a fawn in the open, a moon in a glade?
0 Translations, 0 Upvotes, Last Activity None

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unit 86

She was delighted to be free.
0 Translations, 0 Upvotes, Last Activity None

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unit 87

The fresh air was so delicious.
0 Translations, 0 Upvotes, Last Activity None

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unit 88

It had been so stuffy in the Army and Navy Stores.
0 Translations, 0 Upvotes, Last Activity None

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unit 89

And now it was like riding, to be rushing up Whitehall; and to each movement of the omnibus the beautiful body in the fawn-coloured coat responded freely like a rider, like the figure-head of a ship, for the breeze slightly disarrayed her; the heat gave her cheeks the pallor of white painted wood; and her fine eyes, having no eyes to meet, gazed ahead, blank, bright, with the staring incredible innocence of sculpture.
0 Translations, 0 Upvotes, Last Activity None

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unit 90

It was always talking about her own sufferings that made Miss Kilman so difficult.
0 Translations, 0 Upvotes, Last Activity None

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unit 91

And was she right?
0 Translations, 0 Upvotes, Last Activity None

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unit 92

If it was being on committees and giving up hours and hours every day (she hardly ever saw him in London) that helped the poor, her father did that, goodness knows,--if that was what Miss Kilman meant about being a Christian; but it was so difficult to say.
0 Translations, 0 Upvotes, Last Activity None

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unit 93

Oh, she would like to go a little further.
0 Translations, 0 Upvotes, Last Activity None

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unit 94

Another penny was it to the Strand?
0 Translations, 0 Upvotes, Last Activity None

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unit 95

Here was another penny then.
0 Translations, 0 Upvotes, Last Activity None

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unit 96

She would go up the Strand.
0 Translations, 0 Upvotes, Last Activity None

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unit 97

She liked people who were ill. And every profession is open to the women of your generation, said Miss Kilman.
0 Translations, 0 Upvotes, Last Activity None

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unit 98

So she might be a doctor.
0 Translations, 0 Upvotes, Last Activity None

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unit 99

She might be a farmer.
0 Translations, 0 Upvotes, Last Activity None

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unit 100

Animals are often ill. She might own a thousand acres and have people under her.
0 Translations, 0 Upvotes, Last Activity None

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unit 101

She would go and see them in their cottages.
0 Translations, 0 Upvotes, Last Activity None

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unit 102

This was Somerset House.
0 Translations, 0 Upvotes, Last Activity None

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unit 103

One might be a very good farmer--and that, strangely enough though Miss Kilman had her share in it, was almost entirely due to Somerset House.
0 Translations, 0 Upvotes, Last Activity None

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unit 104

It looked so splendid, so serious, that great grey building.
0 Translations, 0 Upvotes, Last Activity None

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unit 105

And she liked the feeling of people working.
0 Translations, 0 Upvotes, Last Activity None

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unit 106

She liked those churches, like shapes of grey paper, breasting the stream of the Strand.
0 Translations, 0 Upvotes, Last Activity None

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unit 107

It was quite different here from Westminster, she thought, getting off at Chancery Lane.
0 Translations, 0 Upvotes, Last Activity None

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unit 108

It was so serious; it was so busy.
0 Translations, 0 Upvotes, Last Activity None

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unit 109

In short, she would like to have a profession.
0 Translations, 0 Upvotes, Last Activity None

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unit 110

She would become a doctor, a farmer, possibly go into Parliament, if she found it necessary, all because of the Strand.
0 Translations, 0 Upvotes, Last Activity None

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unit 111

The feet of those people busy about their activities, hands putting stone to stone, minds eternally occupied not with trivial chatterings (comparing women to poplars--which was rather exciting, of course, but very silly), but with thoughts of ships, of business, of law, of administration, and with it all so stately (she was in the Temple), gay (there was the river), pious (there was the Church), made her quite determined, whatever her mother might say, to become either a farmer or a doctor.
0 Translations, 0 Upvotes, Last Activity None

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unit 112

But she was, of course, rather lazy.
0 Translations, 0 Upvotes, Last Activity None

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unit 113

And it was much better to say nothing about it.
0 Translations, 0 Upvotes, Last Activity None

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unit 114

It seemed so silly.
0 Translations, 0 Upvotes, Last Activity None

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unit 115

It was the sort of thing that did sometimes happen, when one was alone--buildings without architects' names, crowds of people coming back from the city having more power than single clergymen in Kensington, than any of the books Miss Kilman had lent her, to stimulate what lay slumbrous, clumsy, and shy on the mind's sandy floor to break surface, as a child suddenly stretches its arms; it was just that, perhaps, a sigh, a stretch of the arms, an impulse, a revelation, which has its effects for ever, and then down again it went to the sandy floor.
0 Translations, 0 Upvotes, Last Activity None

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unit 116

She must go home.
0 Translations, 0 Upvotes, Last Activity None

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unit 117

She must dress for dinner.
0 Translations, 0 Upvotes, Last Activity None

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unit 118

But what was the time?--where was a clock?
0 Translations, 0 Upvotes, Last Activity None

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unit 119

She looked up Fleet Street.
0 Translations, 0 Upvotes, Last Activity None

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unit 120

She walked just a little way towards St. Paul's, shyly, like some one penetrating on tiptoe, exploring a strange house by night with a candle, on edge lest the owner should suddenly fling wide his bedroom door and ask her business, nor did she dare wander off into queer alleys, tempting bye-streets, any more than in a strange house open doors which might be bedroom doors, or sitting-room doors, or lead straight to the larder.
0 Translations, 0 Upvotes, Last Activity None

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unit 121

For no Dalloways came down the Strand daily; she was a pioneer, a stray, venturing, trusting.
0 Translations, 0 Upvotes, Last Activity None

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unit 122

In many ways, her mother felt, she was extremely immature, like a child still, attached to dolls, to old slippers; a perfect baby; and that was charming.
0 Translations, 0 Upvotes, Last Activity None

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unit 123

But then, of course, there was in the Dalloway family the tradition of public service.
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unit 124

Abbesses, principals, head mistresses, dignitaries, in the republic of women--without being brilliant, any of them, they were that.
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unit 125

She penetrated a little further in the direction of St. Paul's.
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unit 126

She liked the geniality, sisterhood, motherhood, brotherhood of this uproar.
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unit 127

It seemed to her good.
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unit 128

The noise was tremendous; and suddenly there were trumpets (the unemployed) blaring, rattling about in the uproar; military music; as if people were marching; yet had they been dying--had some woman breathed her last and whoever was watching, opening the window of the room where she had just brought off that act of supreme dignity, looked down on Fleet Street, that uproar, that military music would have come triumphing up to him, consolatory, indifferent.
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unit 129

It was not conscious.
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unit 130

There was no recognition in it of one fortune, or fate, and for that very reason even to those dazed with watching for the last shivers of consciousness on the faces of the dying, consoling.
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unit 131

Forgetfulness in people might wound, their ingratitude corrode, but this voice, pouring endlessly, year in year out, would take whatever it might be; this vow; this van; this life; this procession, would wrap them all about and carry them on, as in the rough stream of a glacier the ice holds a splinter of bone, a blue petal, some oak trees, and rolls them on.
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unit 132

But it was later than she thought.
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unit 133

Her mother would not like her to be wandering off alone like this.
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unit 134

She turned back down the Strand.
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unit 135

A puff of wind (in spite of the heat, there was quite a wind) blew a thin black veil over the sun and over the Strand.
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unit 136

The faces faded; the omnibuses suddenly lost their glow.
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unit 137

For although the clouds were of mountainous white so that one could fancy hacking hard chips off with a hatchet, with broad golden slopes, lawns of celestial pleasure gardens, on their flanks, and had all the appearance of settled habitations assembled for the conference of gods above the world, there was a perpetual movement among them.
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unit 138

Signs were interchanged, when, as if to fulfil some scheme arranged already, now a summit dwindled, now a whole block of pyramidal size which had kept its station inalterably advanced into the midst or gravely led the procession to fresh anchorage.
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unit 139

Fixed though they seemed at their posts, at rest in perfect unanimity, nothing could be fresher, freer, more sensitive superficially than the snow-white or gold-kindled surface; to change, to go, to dismantle the solemn assemblage was immediately possible; and in spite of the grave fixity, the accumulated robustness and solidity, now they struck light to the earth, now darkness.
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unit 140

Calmly and competently, Elizabeth Dalloway mounted the Westminster omnibus.
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unit 141

Going and coming, beckoning, signalling, so the light and shadow which now made the wall grey, now the bananas bright yellow, now made the Strand grey, now made the omnibuses bright yellow, seemed to Septimus Warren Smith lying on the sofa in the sitting-room; watching the watery gold glow and fade with the astonishing sensibility of some live creature on the roses, on the wall-paper.
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unit 142

Outside the trees dragged their leaves like nets through the depths of the air; the sound of water was in the room and through the waves came the voices of birds singing.
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unit 143

Every power poured its treasures on his head, and his hand lay there on the back of the sofa, as he had seen his hand lie when he was bathing, floating, on the top of the waves, while far away on shore he heard dogs barking and barking far away.
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unit 144

Fear no more, says the heart in the body; fear no more.
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unit 145

He was not afraid.
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unit 146

At every moment Nature signified by some laughing hint like that gold spot which went round the wall--there, there, there--her determination to show, by brandishing her plumes, shaking her tresses, flinging her mantle this way and that, beautifully, always beautifully, and standing close up to breathe through her hollowed hands Shakespeare's words, her meaning.
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unit 147

Rezia, sitting at the table twisting a hat in her hands, watched him; saw him smiling.
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unit 148

He was happy then.
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unit 149

But she could not bear to see him smiling.
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unit 150

It was not marriage; it was not being one's husband to look strange like that, always to be starting, laughing, sitting hour after hour silent, or clutching her and telling her to write.
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unit 151

The table drawer was full of those writings; about war; about Shakespeare; about great discoveries; how there is no death.
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unit 152

Lately he had become excited suddenly for no reason (and both Dr. Holmes and Sir William Bradshaw said excitement was the worst thing for him), and waved his hands and cried out that he knew the truth!
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unit 153

He knew everything!
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unit 154

That man, his friend who was killed, Evans, had come, he said.
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unit 155

He was singing behind the screen.
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unit 156

She wrote it down just as he spoke it.
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unit 157

Some things were very beautiful; others sheer nonsense.
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unit 158

And he was always stopping in the middle, changing his mind; wanting to add something; hearing something new; listening with his hand up.
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unit 159

But she heard nothing.
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unit 160

And once they found the girl who did the room reading one of these papers in fits of laughter.
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unit 161

It was a dreadful pity.
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unit 162

For that made Septimus cry out about human cruelty--how they tear each other to pieces.
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unit 163

The fallen, he said, they tear to pieces.
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unit 164

"Holmes is on us," he would say, and he would invent stories about Holmes; Holmes eating porridge; Holmes reading Shakespeare--making himself roar with laughter or rage, for Dr. Holmes seemed to stand for something horrible to him.
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unit 165

"Human nature," he called him.
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unit 166

Then there were the visions.
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unit 167

He was drowned, he used to say, and lying on a cliff with the gulls screaming over him.
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unit 168

He would look over the edge of the sofa down into the sea.
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unit 169

Or he was hearing music.
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unit 170

Really it was only a barrel organ or some man crying in the street.
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unit 171

But "Lovely!"
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unit 172

he used to cry, and the tears would run down his cheeks, which was to her the most dreadful thing of all, to see a man like Septimus, who had fought, who was brave, crying.
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unit 173

And he would lie listening until suddenly he would cry that he was falling down, down into the flames!
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unit 174

Actually she would look for flames, it was so vivid.
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unit 175

But there was nothing.
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unit 176

They were alone in the room.
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unit 177

It was a dream, she would tell him and so quiet him at last, but sometimes she was frightened too.
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unit 178

She sighed as she sat sewing.
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unit 179

Her sigh was tender and enchanting, like the wind outside a wood in the evening.
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unit 180

Now she put down her scissors; now she turned to take something from the table.
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unit 181

A little stir, a little crinkling, a little tapping built up something on the table there, where she sat sewing.
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unit 182

Through his eyelashes he could see her blurred outline; her little black body; her face and hands; her turning movements at the table, as she took up a reel, or looked (she was apt to lose things) for her silk.
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unit 183

She was making a hat for Mrs. Filmer's married daughter, whose name was--he had forgotten her name.
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unit 184

"What is the name of Mrs. Filmer's married daughter?"
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unit 185

he asked.
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unit 186

"Mrs. Peters," said Rezia.
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unit 187

She was afraid it was too small, she said, holding it before her.
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unit 188

Mrs. Peters was a big woman; but she did not like her.
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unit 189

It was only because Mrs. Filmer had been so good to them.
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unit 190

"She gave me grapes this morning," she said--that Rezia wanted to do something to show that they were grateful.
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unit 191

She had come into the room the other evening and found Mrs. Peters, who thought they were out, playing the gramophone.
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unit 192

"Was it true?"
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unit 193

he asked.
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unit 194

She was playing the gramophone?
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unit 195

Yes; she had told him about it at the time; she had found Mrs. Peters playing the gramophone.
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unit 196

He began, very cautiously, to open his eyes, to see whether a gramophone was really there.
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unit 197

But real things--real things were too exciting.
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unit 198

He must be cautious.
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unit 199

He would not go mad.
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unit 200

First he looked at the fashion papers on the lower shelf, then, gradually at the gramophone with the green trumpet.
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unit 201

Nothing could be more exact.
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unit 202

And so, gathering courage, he looked at the sideboard; the plate of bananas; the engraving of Queen Victoria and the Prince Consort; at the mantelpiece, with the jar of roses.
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unit 203

None of these things moved.
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unit 204

All were still; all were real.
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unit 205

"She is a woman with a spiteful tongue," said Rezia.
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unit 206

"What does Mr. Peters do?"
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unit 207

Septimus asked.
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unit 208

"Ah," said Rezia, trying to remember.
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unit 209

She thought Mrs. Filmer had said that he travelled for some company.
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unit 210

"Just now he is in Hull," she said.
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unit 211

"Just now!"
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unit 212

She said that with her Italian accent.
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unit 213

She said that herself.
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unit 214

He shaded his eyes so that he might see only a little of her face at a time, first the chin, then the nose, then the forehead, in case it were deformed, or had some terrible mark on it.
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unit 215

But no, there she was, perfectly natural, sewing, with the pursed lips that women have, the set, the melancholy expression, when sewing.
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unit 216

But there was nothing terrible about it, he assured himself, looking a second time, a third time at her face, her hands, for what was frightening or disgusting in her as she sat there in broad daylight, sewing?
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unit 217

Mrs. Peters had a spiteful tongue.
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unit 218

Mr. Peters was in Hull.
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unit 219

Why then rage and prophesy?
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unit 220

Why fly scourged and outcast?
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unit 221

Why be made to tremble and sob by the clouds?
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unit 222

Why seek truths and deliver messages when Rezia sat sticking pins into the front of her dress, and Mr. Peters was in Hull?
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unit 223

Miracles, revelations, agonies, loneliness, falling through the sea, down, down into the flames, all were burnt out, for he had a sense, as he watched Rezia trimming the straw hat for Mrs. Peters, of a coverlet of flowers.
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unit 224

"It's too small for Mrs. Peters," said Septimus.
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unit 225

For the first time for days he was speaking as he used to do!
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unit 226

Of course it was--absurdly small, she said.
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unit 227

But Mrs. Peters had chosen it.
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unit 228

He took it out of her hands.
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unit 229

He said it was an organ grinder's monkey's hat.
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unit 230

How it rejoiced her that!
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unit 231

Not for weeks had they laughed like this together, poking fun privately like married people.
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unit 232

What she meant was that if Mrs. Filmer had come in, or Mrs. Peters or anybody they would not have understood what she and Septimus were laughing at.
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unit 233

"There," she said, pinning a rose to one side of the hat.
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unit 234

Never had she felt so happy!
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unit 235

Never in her life!
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unit 236

But that was still more ridiculous, Septimus said.
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unit 237

Now the poor woman looked like a pig at a fair.
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unit 238

(Nobody ever made her laugh as Septimus did.)
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unit 239

What had she got in her work-box?
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unit 240

She had ribbons and beads, tassels, artificial flowers.
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unit 241

She tumbled them out on the table.
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unit 242

He began putting odd colours together--for though he had no fingers, could not even do up a parcel, he had a wonderful eye, and often he was right, sometimes absurd, of course, but sometimes wonderfully right.
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unit 243

"She shall have a beautiful hat!"
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unit 244

he murmured, taking up this and that, Rezia kneeling by his side, looking over his shoulder.
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unit 245

Now it was finished--that is to say the design; she must stitch it together.
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unit 246

But she must be very, very careful, he said, to keep it just as he had made it.
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unit 247

So she sewed.
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unit 248

When she sewed, he thought, she made a sound like a kettle on the hob; bubbling, murmuring, always busy, her strong little pointed fingers pinching and poking; her needle flashing straight.
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unit 249

The sun might go in and out, on the tassels, on the wall-paper, but he would wait, he thought, stretching out his feet, looking at his ringed sock at the end of the sofa; he would wait in this warm place, this pocket of still air, which one comes on at the edge of a wood sometimes in the evening, when, because of a fall in the ground, or some arrangement of the trees (one must be scientific above all, scientific), warmth lingers, and the air buffets the cheek like the wing of a bird.
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unit 250

"There it is," said Rezia, twirling Mrs. Peters' hat on the tips of her fingers.
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unit 251

"That'll do for the moment.
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unit 252

Later .
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unit 253

.
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unit 254

."
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unit 255

her sentence bubbled away drip, drip, drip, like a contented tap left running.
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unit 256

It was wonderful.
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unit 257

Never had he done anything which made him feel so proud.
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unit 258

It was so real, it was so substantial, Mrs. Peters' hat.
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unit 259

"Just look at it," he said.
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unit 260

Yes, it would always make her happy to see that hat.
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unit 261

He had become himself then, he had laughed then.
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unit 262

They had been alone together.
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unit 263

Always she would like that hat.
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unit 264

He told her to try it on.
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unit 265

"But I must look so queer!"
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unit 266

she cried, running over to the glass and looking first this side then that.
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unit 267

Then she snatched it off again, for there was a tap at the door.
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unit 268

Could it be Sir William Bradshaw?
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unit 269

Had he sent already?
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unit 270

No!
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unit 271

it was only the small girl with the evening paper.
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unit 272

What always happened, then happened--what happened every night of their lives.
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unit 273

The small girl sucked her thumb at the door; Rezia went down on her knees; Rezia cooed and kissed; Rezia got a bag of sweets out of the table drawer.
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unit 274

For so it always happened.
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unit 275

First one thing, then another.
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unit 276

So she built it up, first one thing and then another.
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unit 277

Dancing, skipping, round and round the room they went.
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unit 278

He took the paper.
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unit 279

Surrey was all out, he read.
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unit 280

There was a heat wave.
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unit 281

Rezia repeated: Surrey was all out.
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unit 282

There was a heat wave, making it part of the game she was playing with Mrs. Filmer's grandchild, both of them laughing, chattering at the same time, at their game.
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unit 283

He was very tired.
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unit 284

He was very happy.
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unit 285

He would sleep.
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unit 286

He shut his eyes.
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unit 287

But directly he saw nothing the sounds of the game became fainter and stranger and sounded like the cries of people seeking and not finding, and passing further and further away.
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unit 288

They had lost him!
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unit 289

He started up in terror.
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unit 290

What did he see?
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unit 291

The plate of bananas on the sideboard.
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unit 292

Nobody was there (Rezia had taken the child to its mother.
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unit 293

It was bedtime).
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unit 294

That was it: to be alone forever.
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unit 295

That was the doom pronounced in Milan when he came into the room and saw them cutting out buckram shapes with their scissors; to be alone forever.
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unit 296

He was alone with the sideboard and the bananas.
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unit 297

He was alone, exposed on this bleak eminence, stretched out--but not on a hill-top; not on a crag; on Mrs. Filmer's sitting-room sofa.
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unit 298

As for the visions, the faces, the voices of the dead, where were they?
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unit 299

There was a screen in front of him, with black bulrushes and blue swallows.
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unit 300

Where he had once seen mountains, where he had seen faces, where he had seen beauty, there was a screen.
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unit 301

"Evans!"
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unit 302

he cried.
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unit 303

There was no answer.
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unit 304

A mouse had squeaked, or a curtain rustled.
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unit 305

Those were the voices of the dead.
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unit 306

The screen, the coalscuttle, the sideboard remained to him.
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unit 307

Let him then face the screen, the coal-scuttle and the sideboard .
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unit 308

.
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unit 309

.
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unit 310

but Rezia burst into the room chattering.
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unit 311

Some letter had come.
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unit 312

Everybody's plans were changed.
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unit 313

Mrs. Filmer would not be able to go to Brighton after all.
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unit 314

There was no time to let Mrs. Williams know, and really Rezia thought it very, very annoying, when she caught sight of the hat and thought .
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unit 315

.
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unit 316

.
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unit 317

perhaps .
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unit 318

.
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unit 319

.
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unit 320

she .
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unit 321

.
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unit 322

.
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unit 323

might just make a little.
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unit 324

.
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unit 325

.
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unit 326

.
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unit 327

Her voice died out in contented melody.
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unit 328

"Ah, damn!"
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unit 329

she cried (it was a joke of theirs, her swearing), the needle had broken.
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unit 330

Hat, child, Brighton, needle.
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unit 331

She built it up; first one thing, then another, she built it up, sewing.
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unit 332

She wanted him to say whether by moving the rose she had improved the hat.
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unit 333

She sat on the end of the sofa.
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unit 334

They were perfectly happy now, she said, suddenly, putting the hat down.
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unit 335

For she could say anything to him now.
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unit 336

She could say whatever came into her head.
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unit 337

That was almost the first thing she had felt about him, that night in the café when he had come in with his English friends.
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unit 338

He had come in, rather shyly, looking round him, and his hat had fallen when he hung it up.
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unit 339

That she could remember.
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unit 340

She knew he was English, though not one of the large Englishmen her sister admired, for he was always thin; but he had a beautiful fresh colour; and with his big nose, his bright eyes, his way of sitting a little hunched made her think, she had often told him, of a young hawk, that first evening she saw him, when they were playing dominoes, and he had come in--of a young hawk; but with her he was always very gentle.
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unit 341

She had never seen him wild or drunk, only suffering sometimes through this terrible war, but even so, when she came in, he would put it all away.
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unit 342

Anything, anything in the whole world, any little bother with her work, anything that struck her to say she would tell him, and he understood at once.
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unit 343

Her own family even were not the same.
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unit 344

Being older than she was and being so clever--how serious he was, wanting her to read Shakespeare before she could even read a child's story in English!--being so much more experienced, he could help her.
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unit 345

And she too could help him.
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unit 346

But this hat now.
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unit 347

And then (it was getting late) Sir William Bradshaw.
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unit 348

She held her hands to her head, waiting for him to say did he like the hat or not, and as she sat there, waiting, looking down, he could feel her mind, like a bird, falling from branch to branch, and always alighting, quite rightly; he could follow her mind, as she sat there in one of those loose lax poses that came to her naturally and, if he should say anything, at once she smiled, like a bird alighting with all its claws firm upon the bough.
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unit 349

But he remembered Bradshaw said, "The people we are most fond of are not good for us when we are ill." Bradshaw said, he must be taught to rest.
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unit 350

Bradshaw said they must be separated.
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unit 351

"Must," "must," why "must"?
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unit 352

What power had Bradshaw over him?
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unit 353

"What right has Bradshaw to say 'must' to me?"
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unit 354

he demanded.
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unit 355

"It is because you talked of killing yourself," said Rezia.
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unit 356

(Mercifully, she could now say anything to Septimus.)
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unit 357

So he was in their power!
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unit 358

Holmes and Bradshaw were on him!
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unit 359

The brute with the red nostrils was snuffing into every secret place!
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unit 360

"Must" it could say!
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unit 361

Where were his papers?
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unit 362

the things he had written?
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unit 363

She brought him his papers, the things he had written, things she had written for him.
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unit 364

She tumbled them out on to the sofa.
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unit 365

They looked at them together.
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unit 366

Diagrams, designs, little men and women brandishing sticks for arms, with wings--were they?--on their backs; circles traced round shillings and sixpences--the suns and stars; zigzagging precipices with mountaineers ascending roped together, exactly like knives and forks; sea pieces with little faces laughing out of what might perhaps be waves: the map of the world.
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unit 367

Burn them!
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unit 368

he cried.
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unit 369

Now for his writings; how the dead sing behind rhododendron bushes; odes to Time; conversations with Shakespeare; Evans, Evans, Evans--his messages from the dead; do not cut down trees; tell the Prime Minister.
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unit 370

Universal love: the meaning of the world.
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unit 371

Burn them!
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unit 372

he cried.
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unit 373

But Rezia laid her hands on them.
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unit 374

Some were very beautiful, she thought.
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unit 375

She would tie them up (for she had no envelope) with a piece of silk.
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unit 376

Even if they took him, she said, she would go with him.
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unit 377

They could not separate them against their wills, she said.
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unit 378

Shuffling the edges straight, she did up the papers, and tied the parcel almost without looking, sitting beside him, he thought, as if all her petals were about her.
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unit 379

She was a flowering tree; and through her branches looked out the face of a lawgiver, who had reached a sanctuary where she feared no one; not Holmes; not Bradshaw; a miracle, a triumph, the last and greatest.
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unit 380

Staggering he saw her mount the appalling staircase, laden with Holmes and Bradshaw, men who never weighed less than eleven stone six, who sent their wives to Court, men who made ten thousand a year and talked of proportion; who different in their verdicts (for Holmes said one thing, Bradshaw another), yet judges they were; who mixed the vision and the sideboard; saw nothing clear, yet ruled, yet inflicted.
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unit 381

"Must" they said.
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unit 382

Over them she triumphed.
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unit 383

"There!"
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unit 384

she said.
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unit 385

The papers were tied up.
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unit 386

No one should get at them.
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unit 387

She would put them away.
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unit 388

And, she said, nothing should separate them.
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unit 389

She sat down beside him and called him by the name of that hawk or crow which being malicious and a great destroyer of crops was precisely like him.
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unit 390

No one could separate them, she said.
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unit 391

Then she got up to go into the bedroom to pack their things, but hearing voices downstairs and thinking that Dr. Holmes had perhaps called, ran down to prevent him coming up.
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unit 392

Septimus could hear her talking to Holmes on the staircase.
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unit 393

"My dear lady, I have come as a friend," Holmes was saying.
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unit 394

"No.
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unit 395

I will not allow you to see my husband," she said.
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unit 396

He could see her, like a little hen, with her wings spread barring his passage.
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unit 397

But Holmes persevered.
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unit 398

"My dear lady, allow me .
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unit 399

.
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unit 400

."
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unit 401

Holmes said, putting her aside (Holmes was a powerfully built man).
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unit 402

Holmes was coming upstairs.
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unit 403

Holmes would burst open the door.
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unit 404

Holmes would say "In a funk, eh?"
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unit 405

Holmes would get him.
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unit 406

But no; not Holmes; not Bradshaw.
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unit 407

Getting up rather unsteadily, hopping indeed from foot to foot, he considered Mrs. Filmer's nice clean bread knife with "Bread" carved on the handle.
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unit 408

Ah, but one mustn't spoil that.
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unit 409

The gas fire?
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unit 410

But it was too late now.
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unit 411

Holmes was coming.
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unit 412

Razors he might have got, but Rezia, who always did that sort of thing, had packed them.
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unit 413

There remained only the window, the large Bloomsbury-lodging house window, the tiresome, the troublesome, and rather melodramatic business of opening the window and throwing himself out.
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unit 414

It was their idea of tragedy, not his or Rezia's (for she was with him).
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unit 415

Holmes and Bradshaw like that sort of thing.
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unit 416

(He sat on the sill.)
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unit 417

But he would wait till the very last moment.
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unit 418

He did not want to die.
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unit 419

Life was good.
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unit 420

The sun hot.
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unit 421

Only human beings--what did they want?
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unit 422

Coming down the staircase opposite an old man stopped and stared at him.
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unit 423

Holmes was at the door.
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unit 424

"I'll give it you!"
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unit 425

he cried, and flung himself vigorously, violently down on to Mrs. Filmer's area railings.
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unit 426

"The coward!"
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unit 427

cried Dr. Holmes, bursting the door open.
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unit 428

Rezia ran to the window, she saw; she understood.
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unit 429

Dr. Holmes and Mrs. Filmer collided with each other.
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unit 430

Mrs. Filmer flapped her apron and made her hide her eyes in the bedroom.
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unit 431

There was a great deal of running up and down stairs.
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unit 432

Dr. Holmes came in--white as a sheet, shaking all over, with a glass in his hand.
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unit 433

She must be brave and drink something, he said (What was it?
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unit 434

Something sweet), for her husband was horribly mangled, would not recover consciousness, she must not see him, must be spared as much as possible, would have the inquest to go through, poor young woman.
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unit 435

Who could have foretold it?
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unit 436

A sudden impulse, no one was in the least to blame (he told Mrs. Filmer).
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unit 437

And why the devil he did it, Dr. Holmes could not conceive.
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unit 438

It seemed to her as she drank the sweet stuff that she was opening long windows, stepping out into some garden.
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unit 439

But where?
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unit 440

The clock was striking--one, two, three: how sensible the sound was; compared with all this thumping and whispering; like Septimus himself.
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unit 441

She was falling asleep.
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unit 442

But the clock went on striking, four, five, six and Mrs. Filmer waving her apron (they wouldn't bring the body in here, would they?)
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unit 443

seemed part of that garden; or a flag.
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unit 444

She had once seen a flag slowly rippling out from a mast when she stayed with her aunt at Venice.
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unit 445

Men killed in battle were thus saluted, and Septimus had been through the War.
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unit 446

Of her memories, most were happy.
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unit 447

She put on her hat, and ran through cornfields--where could it have been?--on to some hill, somewhere near the sea, for there were ships, gulls, butterflies; they sat on a cliff.
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unit 448

In London too, there they sat, and, half dreaming, came to her through the bedroom door, rain falling, whisperings, stirrings among dry corn, the caress of the sea, as it seemed to her, hollowing them in its arched shell and murmuring to her laid on shore, strewn she felt, like flying flowers over some tomb.
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unit 449

"He is dead," she said, smiling at the poor old woman who guarded her with her honest light-blue eyes fixed on the door.
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unit 450

(They wouldn't bring him in here, would they?)
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unit 451

But Mrs. Filmer pooh-poohed.
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unit 452

Oh no, oh no!
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unit 453

They were carrying him away now.
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unit 454

Ought she not to be told?
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unit 455

Married people ought to be together, Mrs. Filmer thought.
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unit 456

But they must do as the doctor said.
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unit 457

"Let her sleep," said Dr. Holmes, feeling her pulse.
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unit 458

She saw the large outline of his body standing dark against the window.
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unit 459

So that was Dr. Holmes.
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unit 460

One of the triumphs of civilisation, Peter Walsh thought.
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unit 461

It is one of the triumphs of civilisation, as the light high bell of the ambulance sounded.
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unit 462

Swiftly, cleanly the ambulance sped to the hospital, having picked up instantly, humanely, some poor devil; some one hit on the head, struck down by disease, knocked over perhaps a minute or so ago at one of these crossings, as might happen to oneself.
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unit 463

That was civilisation.
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unit 464

It struck him coming back from the East--the efficiency, the organisation, the communal spirit of London.
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unit 465

Every cart or carriage of its own accord drew aside to let the ambulance pass.
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unit 466

Perhaps it was morbid; or was it not touching rather, the respect which they showed this ambulance with its victim inside--busy men hurrying home yet instantly bethinking them as it passed of some wife; or presumably how easily it might have been them there, stretched on a shelf with a doctor and a nurse.
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unit 467

.
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unit 468

.
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unit 469

.
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unit 470

Ah, but thinking became morbid, sentimental, directly one began conjuring up doctors, dead bodies; a little glow of pleasure, a sort of lust too over the visual impression warned one not to go on with that sort of thing any more--fatal to art, fatal to friendship.
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unit 471

True.
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unit 472

And yet, thought Peter Walsh, as the ambulance turned the corner though the light high bell could be heard down the next street and still farther as it crossed the Tottenham Court Road, chiming constantly, it is the privilege of loneliness; in privacy one may do as one chooses.
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unit 473

One might weep if no one saw.
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unit 474

It had been his undoing--this susceptibility--in Anglo-Indian society; not weeping at the right time, or laughing either.
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unit 475

I have that in me, he thought standing by the pillar-box, which could now dissolve in tears.
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unit 476

Why, Heaven knows.
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unit 477

Beauty of some sort probably, and the weight of the day, which beginning with that visit to Clarissa had exhausted him with its heat, its intensity, and the drip, drip, of one impression after another down into that cellar where they stood, deep, dark, and no one would ever know.
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unit 478

Partly for that reason, its secrecy, complete and inviolable, he had found life like an unknown garden, full of turns and corners, surprising, yes; really it took one's breath away, these moments; there coming to him by the pillar-box opposite the British Museum one of them, a moment, in which things came together; this ambulance; and life and death.
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unit 479

It was as if he were sucked up to some very high roof by that rush of emotion and the rest of him, like a white shell-sprinkled beach, left bare.
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unit 480

It had been his undoing in Anglo-Indian society--this susceptibility.
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unit 481

Clarissa once, going on top of an omnibus with him somewhere, Clarissa superficially at least, so easily moved, now in despair, now in the best of spirits, all aquiver in those days and such good company, spotting queer little scenes, names, people from the top of a bus, for they used to explore London and bring back bags full of treasures from the Caledonian market--Clarissa had a theory in those days--they had heaps of theories, always theories, as young people have.
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unit 482

It was to explain the feeling they had of dissatisfaction; not knowing people; not being known.
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unit 483

For how could they know each other?
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unit 484

You met every day; then not for six months, or years.
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unit 485

It was unsatisfactory, they agreed, how little one knew people.
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unit 486

But she said, sitting on the bus going up Shaftesbury Avenue, she felt herself everywhere; not "here, here, here"; and she tapped the back of the seat; but everywhere.
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unit 487

She waved her hand, going up Shaftesbury Avenue.
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unit 488

She was all that.
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unit 489

So that to know her, or any one, one must seek out the people who completed them; even the places.
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unit 490

Odd affinities she had with people she had never spoken to, some woman in the street, some man behind a counter--even trees, or barns.
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unit 491

It ended in a transcendental theory which, with her horror of death, allowed her to believe, or say that she believed (for all her scepticism), that since our apparitions, the part of us which appears, are so momentary compared with the other, the unseen part of us, which spreads wide, the unseen might survive, be recovered somehow attached to this person or that, or even haunting certain places after death .
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unit 492

.
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unit 493

.
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unit 494

perhaps--perhaps.
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unit 495

Looking back over that long friendship of almost thirty years her theory worked to this extent.
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unit 496

Brief, broken, often painful as their actual meetings had been what with his absences and interruptions (this morning, for instance, in came Elizabeth, like a long-legged colt, handsome, dumb, just as he was beginning to talk to Clarissa) the effect of them on his life was immeasurable.
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unit 497

There was a mystery about it.
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unit 498

You were given a sharp, acute, uncomfortable grain--the actual meeting; horribly painful as often as not; yet in absence, in the most unlikely places, it would flower out, open, shed its scent, let you touch, taste, look about you, get the whole feel of it and understanding, after years of lying lost.
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unit 499

Thus she had come to him; on board ship; in the Himalayas; suggested by the oddest things (so Sally Seton, generous, enthusiastic goose!
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unit 500

thought of him when she saw blue hydrangeas).
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unit 501

She had influenced him more than any person he had ever known.
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unit 502

And always in this way coming before him without his wishing it, cool, lady-like, critical; or ravishing, romantic, recalling some field or English harvest.
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unit 503

He saw her most often in the country, not in London.
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unit 504

One scene after another at Bourton.
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unit 505

.
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unit 506

.
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unit 507

.
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unit 508

He had reached his hotel.
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unit 509

He crossed the hall, with its mounds of reddish chairs and sofas, its spike-leaved, withered-looking plants.
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unit 510

He got his key off the hook.
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unit 511

The young lady handed him some letters.
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unit 512

He went upstairs--he saw her most often at Bourton, in the late summer, when he stayed there for a week, or fortnight even, as people did in those days.
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unit 513

First on top of some hill there she would stand, hands clapped to her hair, her cloak blowing out, pointing, crying to them--she saw the Severn beneath.
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unit 514

Or in a wood, making the kettle boil--very ineffective with her fingers; the smoke curtseying, blowing in their faces; her little pink face showing through; begging water from an old woman in a cottage, who came to the door to watch them go.
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unit 515

They walked always; the others drove.
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unit 516

She was bored driving, disliked all animals, except that dog.
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unit 517

They tramped miles along roads.
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unit 518

She would break off to get her bearings, pilot him back across country; and all the time they argued, discussed poetry, discussed people, discussed politics (she was a Radical then); never noticing a thing except when she stopped, cried out at a view or a tree, and made him look with her; and so on again, through stubble fields, she walking ahead, with a flower for her aunt, never tired of walking for all her delicacy; to drop down on Bourton in the dusk.
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unit 519

Then, after dinner, old Breitkopf would open the piano and sing without any voice, and they would lie sunk in arm-chairs, trying not to laugh, but always breaking down and laughing, laughing--laughing at nothing.
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unit 520

Breitkopf was supposed not to see.
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unit 521

And then in the morning, flirting up and down like a wagtail in front of the house.
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unit 522

.
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unit 523

.
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unit 524

.
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unit 525

Oh it was a letter from her!
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unit 526

This blue envelope; that was her hand.
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unit 527

And he would have to read it.
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unit 528

Here was another of those meetings, bound to be painful!
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unit 529

To read her letter needed the devil of an effort.
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unit 530

"How heavenly it was to see him.
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unit 531

She must tell him that."
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unit 532

That was all.
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unit 533

But it upset him.
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unit 534

It annoyed him.
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unit 535

He wished she hadn't written it.
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unit 536

Coming on top of his thoughts, it was like a nudge in the ribs.
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unit 537

Why couldn't she let him be?
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unit 538

After all, she had married Dalloway, and lived with him in perfect happiness all these years.
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unit 539

These hotels are not consoling places.
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unit 540

Far from it.
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unit 541

Any number of people had hung up their hats on those pegs.
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unit 542

Even the flies, if you thought of it, had settled on other people's noses.
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unit 543

As for the cleanliness which hit him in the face, it wasn't cleanliness, so much as bareness, frigidity; a thing that had to be.
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unit 544

Some arid matron made her rounds at dawn sniffing, peering, causing blue-nosed maids to scour, for all the world as if the next visitor were a joint of meat to be served on a perfectly clean platter.
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unit 545

For sleep, one bed; for sitting in, one armchair; for cleaning one's teeth and shaving one's chin, one tumbler, one looking-glass.
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unit 546

Books, letters, dressing-gown, slipped about on the impersonality of the horsehair like incongruous impertinences.
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unit 547

And it was Clarissa's letter that made him see all this.
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unit 548

"Heavenly to see you.
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unit 549

She must say so!"
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unit 550

He folded the paper; pushed it away; nothing would induce him to read it again!
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unit 551

To get that letter to him by six o'clock she must have sat down and written it directly he left her; stamped it; sent somebody to the post.
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unit 552

It was, as people say, very like her.
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unit 553

She was upset by his visit.
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unit 554

She had felt a great deal; had for a moment, when she kissed his hand, regretted, envied him even, remembered possibly (for he saw her look it) something he had said--how they would change the world if she married him perhaps; whereas, it was this; it was middle age; it was mediocrity; then forced herself with her indomitable vitality to put all that aside, there being in her a thread of life which for toughness, endurance, power to overcome obstacles, and carry her triumphantly through he had never known the like of.
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unit 555

Yes; but there would come a reaction directly he left the room.
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unit 556

She would be frightfully sorry for him; she would think what in the world she could do to give him pleasure (short always of the one thing) and he could see her with the tears running down her cheeks going to her writing-table and dashing off that one line which he was to find greeting him.
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unit 557

.
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unit 558

.
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unit 559

.
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unit 560

"Heavenly to see you!"
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unit 561

And she meant it.
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unit 562

Peter Walsh had now unlaced his boots.
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unit 563

But it would not have been a success, their marriage.
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unit 564

The other thing, after all, came so much more naturally.
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unit 565

It was odd; it was true; lots of people felt it.
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unit 566

Peter Walsh, who had done just respectably, filled the usual posts adequately, was liked, but thought a little cranky, gave himself airs--it was odd that he should have had, especially now that his hair was grey, a contented look; a look of having reserves.
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unit 567

It was this that made him attractive to women who liked the sense that he was not altogether manly.
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unit 568

There was something unusual about him, or something behind him.
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unit 569

It might be that he was bookish--never came to see you without taking up the book on the table (he was now reading, with his bootlaces trailing on the floor); or that he was a gentleman, which showed itself in the way he knocked the ashes out of his pipe, and in his manners of course to women.
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unit 570

For it was very charming and quite ridiculous how easily some girl without a grain of sense could twist him round her finger.
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unit 571

But at her own risk.
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unit 572

That is to say, though he might be ever so easy, and indeed with his gaiety and good-breeding fascinating to be with, it was only up to a point.
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unit 573

She said something--no, no; he saw through that.
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unit 574

He wouldn't stand that--no, no.
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unit 575

Then he could shout and rock and hold his sides together over some joke with men.
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unit 576

He was the best judge of cooking in India.
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unit 577

He was a man.
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unit 578

But not the sort of man one had to respect--which was a mercy; not like Major Simmons, for instance; not in the least like that, Daisy thought, when, in spite of her two small children, she used to compare them.
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unit 579

He pulled off his boots.
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unit 580

He emptied his pockets.
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unit 581

Out came with his pocket-knife a snapshot of Daisy on the verandah; Daisy all in white, with a fox-terrier on her knee; very charming, very dark; the best he had ever seen of her.
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unit 582

It did come, after all so naturally; so much more naturally than Clarissa.
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unit 583

No fuss.
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unit 584

No bother.
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unit 585

No finicking and fidgeting.
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unit 586

All plain sailing.
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unit 587

And the dark, adorably pretty girl on the verandah exclaimed (he could hear her).
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unit 588

Of course, of course she would give him everything!
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unit 589

she cried (she had no sense of discretion) everything he wanted!
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unit 590

she cried, running to meet him, whoever might be looking.
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unit 591

And she was only twenty-four.
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unit 592

And she had two children.
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unit 593

Well, well!
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unit 594

Well indeed he had got himself into a mess at his age.
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unit 595

And it came over him when he woke in the night pretty forcibly.
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unit 596

Suppose they did marry?
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unit 597

For him it would be all very well, but what about her?
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unit 598

Mrs. Burgess, a good sort and no chatterbox, in whom he had confided, thought this absence of his in England, ostensibly to see lawyers might serve to make Daisy reconsider, think what it meant.
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unit 599

It was a question of her position, Mrs. Burgess said; the social barrier; giving up her children.
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unit 600

She'd be a widow with a past one of these days, draggling about in the suburbs, or more likely, indiscriminate (you know, she said, what such women get like, with too much paint).
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unit 601

But Peter Walsh pooh-poohed all that.
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unit 602

He didn't mean to die yet.
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unit 603

Anyhow she must settle for herself; judge for herself, he thought, padding about the room in his socks, smoothing out his dress-shirt, for he might go to Clarissa's party, or he might go to one of the Halls, or he might settle in and read an absorbing book written by a man he used to know at Oxford.
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unit 604

And if he did retire, that's what he'd do--write books.
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unit 605

He would go to Oxford and poke about in the Bodleian.
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unit 606

Vainly the dark, adorably pretty girl ran to the end of the terrace; vainly waved her hand; vainly cried she didn't care a straw what people said.
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unit 607

There he was, the man she thought the world of, the perfect gentleman, the fascinating, the distinguished (and his age made not the least difference to her), padding about a room in an hotel in Bloomsbury, shaving, washing, continuing, as he took up cans, put down razors, to poke about in the Bodleian, and get at the truth about one or two little matters that interested him.
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unit 608

And he would have a chat with whoever it might be, and so come to disregard more and more precise hours for lunch, and miss engagements, and when Daisy asked him, as she would, for a kiss, a scene, fail to come up to the scratch (though he was genuinely devoted to her)--in short it might be happier, as Mrs. Burgess said, that she should forget him, or merely remember him as he was in August 1922, like a figure standing at the cross roads at dusk, which grows more and more remote as the dog-cart spins away, carrying her securely fastened to the back seat, though her arms are outstretched, and as she sees the figure dwindle and disappear still she cries out how she would do anything in the world, anything, anything, anything.
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unit 609

.
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unit 610

.
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unit 611

.
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unit 612

He never knew what people thought.
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unit 613

It became more and more difficult for him to concentrate.
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unit 614

He became absorbed; he became busied with his own concerns; now surly, now gay; dependent on women, absent-minded, moody, less and less able (so he thought as he shaved) to understand why Clarissa couldn't simply find them a lodging and be nice to Daisy; introduce her.
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unit 615

And then he could just--just do what?
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unit 616

just haunt and hover (he was at the moment actually engaged in sorting out various keys, papers), swoop and taste, be alone, in short, sufficient to himself; and yet nobody of course was more dependent upon others (he buttoned his waistcoat); it had been his undoing.
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unit 617

He could not keep out of smoking-rooms, liked colonels, liked golf, liked bridge, and above all women's society, and the fineness of their companionship, and their faithfulness and audacity and greatness in loving which though it had its drawbacks seemed to him (and the dark, adorably pretty face was on top of the envelopes) so wholly admirable, so splendid a flower to grow on the crest of human life, and yet he could not come up to the scratch, being always apt to see round things (Clarissa had sapped something in him permanently), and to tire very easily of mute devotion and to want variety in love, though it would make him furious if Daisy loved anybody else, furious!
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unit 618

for he was jealous, uncontrollably jealous by temperament.
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unit 619

He suffered tortures!
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unit 620

But where was his knife; his watch; his seals, his note-case, and Clarissa's letter which he would not read again but liked to think of, and Daisy's photograph?
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unit 621

And now for dinner.
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unit 622

They were eating.
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unit 623

Sitting at little tables round vases, dressed or not dressed, with their shawls and bags laid beside them, with their air of false composure, for they were not used to so many courses at dinner, and confidence, for they were able to pay for it, and strain, for they had been running about London all day shopping, sightseeing; and their natural curiosity, for they looked round and up as the nice-looking gentleman in horn-rimmed spectacles came in, and their good nature, for they would have been glad to do any little service, such as lend a time-table or impart useful information, and their desire, pulsing in them, tugging at them subterraneously, somehow to establish connections if it were only a birthplace (Liverpool, for example) in common or friends of the same name; with their furtive glances, odd silences, and sudden withdrawals into family jocularity and isolation; there they sat eating dinner when Mr. Walsh came in and took his seat at a little table by the curtain.
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unit 624

It was not that he said anything, for being solitary he could only address himself to the waiter; it was his way of looking at the menu, of pointing his forefinger to a particular wine, of hitching himself up to the table, of addressing himself seriously, not gluttonously to dinner, that won him their respect; which, having to remain unexpressed for the greater part of the meal, flared up at the table where the Morrises sat when Mr. Walsh was heard to say at the end of the meal, "Bartlett pears."
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unit 625

Why he should have spoken so moderately yet firmly, with the air of a disciplinarian well within his rights which are founded upon justice, neither young Charles Morris, nor old Charles, neither Miss Elaine nor Mrs. Morris knew.
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unit 626

But when he said, "Bartlett pears," sitting alone at his table, they felt that he counted on their support in some lawful demand; was champion of a cause which immediately became their own, so that their eyes met his eyes sympathetically, and when they all reached the smoking-room simultaneously, a little talk between them became inevitable.
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unit 627

It was not very profound--only to the effect that London was crowded; had changed in thirty years; that Mr. Morris preferred Liverpool; that Mrs. Morris had been to the Westminster flower-show, and that they had all seen the Prince of Wales.
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unit 628

Yet, thought Peter Walsh, no family in the world can compare with the Morrises; none whatever; and their relations to each other are perfect, and they don't care a hang for the upper classes, and they like what they like, and Elaine is training for the family business, and the boy has won a scholarship at Leeds, and the old lady (who is about his own age) has three more children at home; and they have two motor cars, but Mr. Morris still mends the boots on Sunday: it is superb, it is absolutely superb, thought Peter Walsh, swaying a little backwards and forwards with his liqueur glass in his hand among the hairy red chairs and ash-trays, feeling very well pleased with himself, for the Morrises liked him.
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unit 629

Yes, they liked a man who said, "Bartlett pears."
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unit 630

They liked him, he felt.
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unit 631

He would go to Clarissa's party.
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unit 632

(The Morrises moved off; but they would meet again.)
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unit 633

He would go to Clarissa's party, because he wanted to ask Richard what they were doing in India--the conservative duffers.
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unit 634

And what's being acted?
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unit 635

And music.
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unit 636

.
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unit 637

.
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unit 638

.
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unit 639

Oh yes, and mere gossip.
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unit 640

For this is the truth about our soul, he thought, our self, who fish-like inhabits deep seas and plies among obscurities threading her way between the boles of giant weeds, over sun-flickered spaces and on and on into gloom, cold, deep, inscrutable; suddenly she shoots to the surface and sports on the wind-wrinkled waves; that is, has a positive need to brush, scrape, kindle herself, gossiping.
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unit 641

What did the Government mean--Richard Dalloway would know--to do about India?
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unit 642

Since it was a very hot night and the paper boys went by with placards proclaiming in huge red letters that there was a heat-wave, wicker chairs were placed on the hotel steps and there, sipping, smoking, detached gentlemen sat.
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unit 643

Peter Walsh sat there.
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unit 644

One might fancy that day, the London day, was just beginning.
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unit 645

Like a woman who had slipped off her print dress and white apron to array herself in blue and pearls, the day changed, put off stuff, took gauze, changed to evening, and with the same sigh of exhilaration that a woman breathes, tumbling petticoats on the floor, it too shed dust, heat, colour; the traffic thinned; motor cars, tinkling, darting, succeeded the lumber of vans; and here and there among the thick foliage of the squares an intense light hung.
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unit 646

I resign, the evening seemed to say, as it paled and faded above the battlements and prominences, moulded, pointed, of hotel, flat, and block of shops, I fade, she was beginning, I disappear, but London would have none of it, and rushed her bayonets into the sky, pinioned her, constrained her to partnership in her revelry.
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unit 647

For the great revolution of Mr. Willett's summer time had taken place since Peter Walsh's last visit to England.
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unit 648

The prolonged evening was new to him.
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unit 649

It was inspiriting, rather.
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unit 650

For as the young people went by with their despatch-boxes, awfully glad to be free, proud too, dumbly, of stepping this famous pavement, joy of a kind, cheap, tinselly, if you like, but all the same rapture, flushed their faces.
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unit 651

They dressed well too; pink stockings; pretty shoes.
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unit 652

They would now have two hours at the pictures.
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unit 653

It sharpened, it refined them, the yellow-blue evening light; and on the leaves in the square shone lurid, livid--they looked as if dipped in sea water--the foliage of a submerged city.
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unit 654

He was astonished by the beauty; it was encouraging too, for where the returned Anglo-Indian sat by rights (he knew crowds of them) in the Oriental Club biliously summing up the ruin of the world, here was he, as young as ever; envying young people their summer time and the rest of it, and more than suspecting from the words of a girl, from a housemaid's laughter--intangible things you couldn't lay your hands on--that shift in the whole pyramidal accumulation which in his youth had seemed immovable.
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unit 655

On top of them it had pressed; weighed them down, the women especially, like those flowers Clarissa's Aunt Helena used to press between sheets of grey blotting-paper with Littré's dictionary on top, sitting under the lamp after dinner.
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unit 656

She was dead now.
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unit 657

He had heard of her, from Clarissa, losing the sight of one eye.
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unit 658

It seemed so fitting--one of nature's masterpieces--that old Miss Parry should turn to glass.
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unit 659

She would die like some bird in a frost gripping her perch.
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unit 660

She belonged to a different age, but being so entire, so complete, would always stand up on the horizon, stone-white, eminent, like a lighthouse marking some past stage on this adventurous, long, long voyage, this interminable (he felt for a copper to buy a paper and read about Surrey and Yorkshire--he had held out that copper millions of times.
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unit 661

Surrey was all out once more)--this interminable life.
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unit 662

But cricket was no mere game.
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unit 663

Cricket was important.
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unit 664

He could never help reading about cricket.
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unit 665

He read the scores in the stop press first, then how it was a hot day; then about a murder case.
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unit 666

Having done things millions of times enriched them, though it might be said to take the surface off.
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unit 667

The past enriched, and experience, and having cared for one or two people, and so having acquired the power which the young lack, of cutting short, doing what one likes, not caring a rap what people say and coming and going without any very great expectations (he left his paper on the table and moved off), which however (and he looked for his hat and coat) was not altogether true of him, not to-night, for here he was starting to go to a party, at his age, with the belief upon him that he was about to have an experience.
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unit 668

But what?
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unit 669

Beauty anyhow.
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unit 670

Not the crude beauty of the eye.
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unit 671

It was not beauty pure and simple--Bedford Place leading into Russell Square.
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unit 672

It was straightness and emptiness of course; the symmetry of a corridor; but it was also windows lit up, a piano, a gramophone sounding; a sense of pleasure-making hidden, but now and again emerging when, through the uncurtained window, the window left open, one saw parties sitting over tables, young people slowly circling, conversations between men and women, maids idly looking out (a strange comment theirs, when work was done), stockings drying on top ledges, a parrot, a few plants.
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unit 673

Absorbing, mysterious, of infinite richness, this life.
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unit 674

And in the large square where the cabs shot and swerved so quick, there were loitering couples, dallying, embracing, shrunk up under the shower of a tree; that was moving; so silent, so absorbed, that one passed, discreetly, timidly, as if in the presence of some sacred ceremony to interrupt which would have been impious.
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unit 675

That was interesting.
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unit 676

And so on into the flare and glare.
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unit 677

His light overcoat blew open, he stepped with indescribable idiosyncrasy, lent a little forward, tripped, with his hands behind his back and his eyes still a little hawklike; he tripped through London, towards Westminster, observing.
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unit 678

Was everybody dining out, then?
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unit 679

Doors were being opened here by a footman to let issue a high-stepping old dame, in buckled shoes, with three purple ostrich feathers in her hair.
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unit 680

Doors were being opened for ladies wrapped like mummies in shawls with bright flowers on them, ladies with bare heads.
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unit 681

And in respectable quarters with stucco pillars through small front gardens lightly swathed with combs in their hair (having run up to see the children), women came; men waited for them, with their coats blowing open, and the motor started.
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unit 682

Everybody was going out.
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unit 683

What with these doors being opened, and the descent and the start, it seemed as if the whole of London were embarking in little boats moored to the bank, tossing on the waters, as if the whole place were floating off in carnival.
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unit 684

And Whitehall was skated over, silver beaten as it was, skated over by spiders, and there was a sense of midges round the arc lamps; it was so hot that people stood about talking.
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unit 685

And here in Westminster was a retired Judge, presumably, sitting four square at his house door dressed all in white.
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unit 686

An Anglo-Indian presumably.
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unit 687

And here a shindy of brawling women, drunken women; here only a policeman and looming houses, high houses, domed houses, churches, parliaments, and the hoot of a steamer on the river, a hollow misty cry.
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unit 688

But it was her street, this, Clarissa's; cabs were rushing round the corner, like water round the piers of a bridge, drawn together, it seemed to him because they bore people going to her party, Clarissa's party.
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unit 689

The cold stream of visual impressions failed him now as if the eye were a cup that overflowed and let the rest run down its china walls unrecorded.
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unit 690

The brain must wake now.
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unit 691

The body must contract now, entering the house, the lighted house, where the door stood open, where the motor cars were standing, and bright women descending: the soul must brave itself to endure.
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unit 692

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