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

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•Part VIII.	•Partie VIII
•Lucy came running full tilt downstairs, having just nipped in to the drawing-room to smooth a cover, to straighten a chair, to pause a moment and feel whoever came in must think how clean, how bright, how beautifully cared for, when they saw the beautiful silver, the brass fire-irons, the new chair-covers, and the curtains of yellow chintz: she appraised each; heard a roar of voices; people already coming up from dinner; she must fly!	•Lucy surgit en dévalant les escaliers, se précipita au salon pour lisser une nappe, ranger une chaise, s'arrêter un instant et songer que quiconque entrerait dans la pièce penserait que tout était impeccable, brillant et bien entretenu en voyant l'argenterie rutilante, les chenets en laiton, les sièges fraîchement retapissés et les rideaux de chintz jaune ; elle évalua chaque objet puis entendit la rumeur des voix : les convives sortaient de table et elle devait filer !
•The Prime Minister was coming, Agnes said: so she had heard them say in the dining-room, she said, coming in with a tray of glasses. •Did it matter, did it matter in the least, one Prime Minister more or less? •It made no difference at this hour of the night to Mrs. Walker among the plates, saucepans, cullenders, frying-pans, chicken in aspic, ice-cream freezers, pared crusts of bread, lemons, soup tureens, and pudding basins which, however hard they washed up in the scullery seemed to be all on top of her, on the kitchen table, on chairs, while the fire blared and roared, the electric lights glared, and still supper had to be laid. •All she felt was, one Prime Minister more or less made not a scrap of difference to Mrs. Walker.	•Le Premier ministre allait venir, c'est ce qu'elle les avait entendus annoncer dans la salle à manger, dit Agnès en entrant avec un plateau de verres. •Est-ce que cela avait vraiment de l'importance, est-ce que cela faisait une différence, un Premier ministre de plus ou de moins ? •À cette heure tardive, cela importait peu à Mrs Walker, qui s'affairait parmi les assiettes, les casseroles, les passoires, les poêles à frire, le poulet en gelée, les sorbetières, les croûtons, les citrons, les soupières et les moules à pudding, toutes choses qui, bien qu'on frottât dur dans l'arrière-cuisine, semblaient s'amasser sur ses épaules, sur la table de la cuisine, sur les chaises... tandis que le feu rugissait et grondait, que les lumières électriques brillaient et que le souper devait encore être servi. •Tout ce qu'elle ressentait, c'était qu'un Premier ministre de plus ou de moins ne changerait absolument rien pour Mrs Walker.
•The ladies were going upstairs already, said Lucy; the ladies were going up, one by one, Mrs. Dalloway walking last and almost always sending back some message to the kitchen, "My love to Mrs. Walker," that was it one night. •Next morning they would go over the dishes--the soup, the salmon; the salmon, Mrs. Walker knew, as usual underdone, for she always got nervous about the pudding and left it to Jenny; so it happened, the salmon was always underdone. •But some lady with fair hair and silver ornaments had said, Lucy said, about the entrée, was it really made at home? •But it was the salmon that bothered Mrs. Walker, as she spun the plates round and round, and pulled in dampers and pulled out dampers; and there came a burst of laughter from the dining-room; a voice speaking; then another burst of laughter--the gentlemen enjoying themselves when the ladies had gone. •The tokay, said Lucy running in. •Mr. Dalloway had sent for the tokay, from the Emperor's cellars, the Imperial Tokay.	•Les dames montaient déjà à l'étage, dit Lucy. En effet, les dames montèrent, une par une, Mrs Dalloway la dernière, envoyant comme presque toujours ce message à la cuisine : « Mes félicitations à Mrs Walker », c'était tout ce soir-là. •Le lendemain matin, on passerait en revue les plats : la soupe, le saumon — le saumon ! Mrs Walker le savait bien, n'était jamais assez cuit. Elle était toujours soucieuse à propos du pudding et laissait Jenny s'occuper du poisson, ce qui entraînait inévitablement une cuisson qui laissait à désirer. •Mais, selon Lucy, une dame aux cheveux blonds et aux bijoux en argent avait demandé si l'entrée était vraiment faite maison. •Mais c'était le saumon qui contrariait Mrs Walker alors qu'elle manipulait les assiettes, ouvrant et fermant les clapets de sa cuisinière ; des éclats de rire résonnaient depuis la salle à manger, une voix se fit entendre, suivie d'un nouvel éclat de rire — les messieurs semblaient visiblement s'amuser après le départ des dames. •Le tokay, dit Lucy en accourant. •Mr Dalloway avait fait venir le tokay des caves de l'empereur, le tokay impérial.
•It was borne through the kitchen. •Over her shoulder Lucy reported how Miss Elizabeth looked quite lovely; she couldn't take her eyes off her; in her pink dress, wearing the necklace Mr. Dalloway had given her. •Jenny must remember the dog, Miss Elizabeth's fox-terrier, which, since it bit, had to be shut up and might, Elizabeth thought, want something. •Jenny must remember the dog. •But Jenny was not going upstairs with all those people about. •There was a motor at the door already! •There was a ring at the bell--and the gentlemen still in the dining-room, drinking tokay!	•On le fit passer par la cuisine. •Lucy rapporta, par-dessus son épaule, que Miss Elizabeth était ravissante et qu'elle ne pouvait détacher ses yeux d'elle, dans sa robe rose, portant le collier que Mr Dalloway lui avait offert. •Jenny doit se souvenir du chien, le fox-terrier de Miss Élisabeth qui, puisqu'il mord, est enfermé et veut peut-être quelque chose, d'après Élisabeth. •Jenny ne doit pas oublier le chien. •Mais Jenny n'allait pas monter à l'étage avec tous ces invités. •Il y avait déjà une automobile à la porte ! •La cloche retentit... et les messieurs étaient encore dans la salle à manger à boire du tokay !
•There, they were going upstairs; that was the first to come, and now they would come faster and faster, so that Mrs. Parkinson (hired for parties) would leave the hall door ajar, and the hall would be full of gentlemen waiting (they stood waiting, sleeking down their hair) while the ladies took their cloaks off in the room along the passage; where Mrs. Barnet helped them, old Ellen Barnet, who had been with the family for forty years, and came every summer to help the ladies, and remembered mothers when they were girls, and though very unassuming did shake hands; said "milady" very respectfully, yet had a humorous way with her, looking at the young ladies, and ever so tactfully helping Lady Lovejoy, who had some trouble with her underbodice. •And they could not help feeling, Lady Lovejoy and Miss Alice, that some little privilege in the matter of brush and comb, was awarded them having known Mrs. Barnet--"thirty years, milady," Mrs. Barnet supplied her. •Young ladies did not use to rouge, said Lady Lovejoy, when they stayed at Bourton in the old days. •And Miss Alice didn't need rouge, said Mrs. Barnet, looking at her fondly. •There Mrs. Barnet would sit, in the cloakroom, patting down the furs, smoothing out the Spanish shawls, tidying the dressing-table, and knowing perfectly well, in spite of the furs and the embroideries, which were nice ladies, which were not. •The dear old body, said Lady Lovejoy, mounting the stairs, Clarissa's old nurse.	•Voilà, ils montaient l'escalier ; c'étaient les premiers qui arrivaient et maintenant ils se suivraient les uns derrière les autres, c'est pourquoi Mrs Parkinson (embauchée pour les réceptions) laissa la porte entrebâillée et le vestibule fut rapidement envahi de gentlemans qui attendaient, lissant leurs cheveux, pendant que les dames ôtaient leur manteau pour le laisser dans la pièce qui longeait le couloir et servait de vestiaire ; tandis que Mrs Barnet les aidait, la vieille Ellen Barnet qui avait été au service de la famille pendant quarante ans et venait chaque été pour prêter main forte à ces dames, se souvenait des mères quand elles étaient jeunes filles et, bien que tout à fait discrète, serrait des mains en prononçant « milady » très respectueusement mais avec humour en regardant ces jeunes dames, et aida même, avec beaucoup de tact, Lady Lovejoy qui avait un petit problème avec son corset. •Et Lady Lovejoy, comme Miss Alice, ressentirent comme un petit privilège qui leur était octroyé lorsque Mrs Barnet leur donna une brosse et un peigne parce qu'elles la connaissaient de longue date... « trente ans milady, » murmura Mrs Barnett. •— Les jeunes dames ne mettaient pas de rouge aux lèvres autrefois lorsqu'elles séjournaient à Bourton, dit Lady Lovejoy. •— Et Miss Alice n'avait pas besoin de rouge, répondit Mrs Barnet en la regardant affectueusement. •Installée dans le vestiaire, Mrs Barnet lissait soigneusement les fourrures, défroissait les châles espagnols, arrangeait la coiffeuse, tout en sachant très bien, malgré les étoffes et les broderies, quelles dames étaient aimables et lesquelles ne l'étaient pas. •« Cette bonne chère âme », dit Lady Lovejoy en montant les escaliers, en parlant de l'ancienne nourrice de Clarissa.
•And then Lady Lovejoy stiffened. •"Lady and Miss Lovejoy," she said to Mr. Wilkins (hired for parties). •He had an admirable manner, as he bent and straightened himself, bent and straightened himself and announced with perfect impartiality "Lady and Miss Lovejoy . •. •. •Sir John and Lady Needham . •. •. •Miss Weld . •. •. •Mr. •Walsh." •His manner was admirable; his family life must be irreproachable, except that it seemed impossible that a being with greenish lips and shaven cheeks could ever have blundered into the nuisance of children.	•Puis Lady Lovejoy se raidit. •— Lady Lovejoy et sa fille, annonça-t-elle à Mr Wilkins (engagé pour les réceptions). •Il avait des manières admirables, s'inclinant et se redressant, s'inclinant encore et se redressant, tout en annonçant avec une cérémonie parfaite : — Lady Lovejoy et Miss... •... •... •Sir John et Lady Needham... •... •... •Miss Weld... •... •... •Mr •Walsh. •Ses manières étaient admirables ; sa vie familiale devait être irréprochable, sauf qu'il semblait impossible qu'un être aux lèvres verdâtres et aux joues rasées ait pu se fourvoyer dans le pandémonium que représentent les enfants.
•"How delightful to see you!" •said Clarissa. •She said it to every one. •How delightful to see you! •She was at her worst--effusive, insincere. •It was a great mistake to have come. •He should have stayed at home and read his book, thought Peter Walsh; should have gone to a music hall; he should have stayed at home, for he knew no one.	•— Quel plaisir de vous voir ! •susurra Clarissa. •Elle disait cela à tout le monde. •Quel plaisir de vous voir ! •Sa fébrilité atteignait son paroxysme : hyperémotive et hypocrite. •C'était une grave erreur d'être venu. •Peter Walsh pensait qu'il aurait dû rester chez lui et lire son livre ; il aurait dû aller au music-hall ; ou il aurait dû rester chez lui, car il ne connaissait personne ici.
•Oh dear, it was going to be a failure; a complete failure, Clarissa felt it in her bones as dear old Lord Lexham stood there apologising for his wife who had caught cold at the Buckingham Palace garden party. •She could see Peter out of the tail of her eye, criticising her, there, in that corner. •Why, after all, did she do these things? •Why seek pinnacles and stand drenched in fire? •Might it consume her anyhow! •Burn her to cinders! •Better anything, better brandish one's torch and hurl it to earth than taper and dwindle away like some Ellie Henderson! •It was extraordinary how Peter put her into these states just by coming and standing in a corner. •He made her see herself; exaggerate. •It was idiotic. •But why did he come, then, merely to criticise? •Why always take, never give? •Why not risk one's one little point of view? •There he was wandering off, and she must speak to him. •But she would not get the chance. •Life was that--humiliation, renunciation. •What Lord Lexham was saying was that his wife would not wear her furs at the garden party because "my dear, you ladies are all alike"--Lady Lexham being seventy-five at least! •It was delicious, how they petted each other, that old couple. •She did like old Lord Lexham. •She did think it mattered, her party, and it made her feel quite sick to know that it was all going wrong, all falling flat. •Anything, any explosion, any horror was better than people wandering aimlessly, standing in a bunch at a corner like Ellie Henderson, not even caring to hold themselves upright.	•Mon Dieu, cela allait forcément être un désastre, un désastre total. Clarissa le sentait au plus profond d'elle-même tandis que le pauvre vieux Lord Lexham se tenait devant elle, présentant ses excuses pour son épouse qui avait attrapé un rhume lors de la garden-party au palais de Buckingham. •Du coin de l'œil, elle voyait Peter qui la jugeait, là, dans un recoin. •Pourquoi, après tout, faisait-elle ces choses ? •Pourquoi rechercher les sommets et vouloir plonger dans les flammes ? •Que les flammes la consument alors ! •Puisse-t-elle se réduire en cendres ! •Better anything, better brandish one's torch and hurl it to earth than taper and dwindle away like some Ellie Henderson! •It was extraordinary how Peter put her into these states just by coming and standing in a corner. •He made her see herself; exaggerate. •It was idiotic. •But why did he come, then, merely to criticise? •Why always take, never give? •Why not risk one's one little point of view? •There he was wandering off, and she must speak to him. •But she would not get the chance. •Life was that--humiliation, renunciation. •What Lord Lexham was saying was that his wife would not wear her furs at the garden party because "my dear, you ladies are all alike"--Lady Lexham being seventy-five at least! •It was delicious, how they petted each other, that old couple. •She did like old Lord Lexham. •She did think it mattered, her party, and it made her feel quite sick to know that it was all going wrong, all falling flat. •Anything, any explosion, any horror was better than people wandering aimlessly, standing in a bunch at a corner like Ellie Henderson, not even caring to hold themselves upright.
•Gently the yellow curtain with all the birds of Paradise blew out and it seemed as if there were a flight of wings into the room, right out, then sucked back. •(For the windows were open.) •Was it draughty, Ellie Henderson wondered? •She was subject to chills. •But it did not matter that she should come down sneezing to-morrow; it was the girls with their naked shoulders she thought of, being trained to think of others by an old father, an invalid, late vicar of Bourton, but he was dead now; and her chills never went to her chest, never. •It was the girls she thought of, the young girls with their bare shoulders, she herself having always been a wisp of a creature, with her thin hair and meagre profile; though now, past fifty, there was beginning to shine through some mild beam, something purified into distinction by years of self-abnegation but obscured again, perpetually, by her distressing gentility, her panic fear, which arose from three hundred pounds' income, and her weaponless state (she could not earn a penny) and it made her timid, and more and more disqualified year by year to meet well-dressed people who did this sort of thing every night of the season, merely telling their maids "I'll wear so and so," whereas Ellie Henderson ran out nervously and bought cheap pink flowers, half a dozen, and then threw a shawl over her old black dress. •For her invitation to Clarissa's party had come at the last moment. •She was not quite happy about it. •She had a sort of feeling that Clarissa had not meant to ask her this year.	•Gently the yellow curtain with all the birds of Paradise blew out and it seemed as if there were a flight of wings into the room, right out, then sucked back. •(For the windows were open.) •Was it draughty, Ellie Henderson wondered? •She was subject to chills. •But it did not matter that she should come down sneezing to-morrow; it was the girls with their naked shoulders she thought of, being trained to think of others by an old father, an invalid, late vicar of Bourton, but he was dead now; and her chills never went to her chest, never. •It was the girls she thought of, the young girls with their bare shoulders, she herself having always been a wisp of a creature, with her thin hair and meagre profile; though now, past fifty, there was beginning to shine through some mild beam, something purified into distinction by years of self-abnegation but obscured again, perpetually, by her distressing gentility, her panic fear, which arose from three hundred pounds' income, and her weaponless state (she could not earn a penny) and it made her timid, and more and more disqualified year by year to meet well-dressed people who did this sort of thing every night of the season, merely telling their maids "I'll wear so and so," whereas Ellie Henderson ran out nervously and bought cheap pink flowers, half a dozen, and then threw a shawl over her old black dress. •For her invitation to Clarissa's party had come at the last moment. •She was not quite happy about it. •She had a sort of feeling that Clarissa had not meant to ask her this year.
•Why should she? •There was no reason really, except that they had always known each other. •Indeed, they were cousins. •But naturally they had rather drifted apart, Clarissa being so sought after. •It was an event to her, going to a party. •It was quite a treat just to see the lovely clothes. •Wasn't that Elizabeth, grown up, with her hair done in the fashionable way, in the pink dress? •Yet she could not be more than seventeen. •She was very, very handsome. •But girls when they first came out didn't seem to wear white as they used. •(She must remember everything to tell Edith.) •Girls wore straight frocks, perfectly tight, with skirts well above the ankles. •It was not becoming, she thought.	•Why should she? •There was no reason really, except that they had always known each other. •Indeed, they were cousins. •But naturally they had rather drifted apart, Clarissa being so sought after. •It was an event to her, going to a party. •It was quite a treat just to see the lovely clothes. •Wasn't that Elizabeth, grown up, with her hair done in the fashionable way, in the pink dress? •Yet she could not be more than seventeen. •She was very, very handsome. •But girls when they first came out didn't seem to wear white as they used. •(She must remember everything to tell Edith.) •Girls wore straight frocks, perfectly tight, with skirts well above the ankles. •It was not becoming, she thought.
•So, with her weak eyesight, Ellie Henderson craned rather forward, and it wasn't so much she who minded not having any one to talk to (she hardly knew anybody there), for she felt that they were all such interesting people to watch; politicians presumably; Richard Dalloway's friends; but it was Richard himself who felt that he could not let the poor creature go on standing there all the evening by herself.	•So, with her weak eyesight, Ellie Henderson craned rather forward, and it wasn't so much she who minded not having any one to talk to (she hardly knew anybody there), for she felt that they were all such interesting people to watch; politicians presumably; Richard Dalloway's friends; but it was Richard himself who felt that he could not let the poor creature go on standing there all the evening by herself.
•"Well, Ellie, and how's the world treating you?" •he said in his genial way, and Ellie Henderson, getting nervous and flushing and feeling that it was extraordinarily nice of him to come and talk to her, said that many people really felt the heat more than the cold.	•"Well, Ellie, and how's the world treating you?" •he said in his genial way, and Ellie Henderson, getting nervous and flushing and feeling that it was extraordinarily nice of him to come and talk to her, said that many people really felt the heat more than the cold.
•"Yes, they do," said Richard Dalloway. •"Yes."	•"Yes, they do," said Richard Dalloway. •"Yes."
•But what more did one say?	•But what more did one say?
•"Hullo, Richard," said somebody, taking him by the elbow, and, good Lord, there was old Peter, old Peter Walsh. •He was delighted to see him--ever so pleased to see him! •He hadn't changed a bit. •And off they went together walking right across the room, giving each other little pats, as if they hadn't met for a long time, Ellie Henderson thought, watching them go, certain she knew that man's face. •A tall man, middle aged, rather fine eyes, dark, wearing spectacles, with a look of John Burrows. •Edith would be sure to know.	•"Hullo, Richard," said somebody, taking him by the elbow, and, good Lord, there was old Peter, old Peter Walsh. •He was delighted to see him--ever so pleased to see him! •He hadn't changed a bit. •And off they went together walking right across the room, giving each other little pats, as if they hadn't met for a long time, Ellie Henderson thought, watching them go, certain she knew that man's face. •A tall man, middle aged, rather fine eyes, dark, wearing spectacles, with a look of John Burrows. •Edith would be sure to know.
•The curtain with its flight of birds of Paradise blew out again. •And Clarissa saw--she saw Ralph Lyon beat it back, and go on talking. •So it wasn't a failure after all! •it was going to be all right now--her party. •It had begun. •It had started. •But it was still touch and go. •She must stand there for the present. •People seemed to come in a rush.	•The curtain with its flight of birds of Paradise blew out again. •And Clarissa saw--she saw Ralph Lyon beat it back, and go on talking. •So it wasn't a failure after all! •it was going to be all right now--her party. •It had begun. •It had started. •But it was still touch and go. •She must stand there for the present. •People seemed to come in a rush.
•Colonel and Mrs. Garrod . •. •. •Mr. Hugh Whitbread . •. •. •Mr. Bowley . •. •. •Mrs. Hilbery . •. •. •Lady Mary Maddox . •. •. •Mr. Quin . •. •. •intoned Wilkin. •She had six or seven words with each, and they went on, they went into the rooms; into something now, not nothing, since Ralph Lyon had beat back the curtain.	•Colonel and Mrs. Garrod . •. •. •Mr. Hugh Whitbread . •. •. •Mr. Bowley . •. •. •Mrs. Hilbery . •. •. •Lady Mary Maddox . •. •. •Mr. Quin . •. •. •intoned Wilkin. •She had six or seven words with each, and they went on, they went into the rooms; into something now, not nothing, since Ralph Lyon had beat back the curtain.
•And yet for her own part, it was too much of an effort. •She was not enjoying it. •It was too much like being--just anybody, standing there; anybody could do it; yet this anybody she did a little admire, couldn't help feeling that she had, anyhow, made this happen, that it marked a stage, this post that she felt herself to have become, for oddly enough she had quite forgotten what she looked like, but felt herself a stake driven in at the top of her stairs. •Every time she gave a party she had this feeling of being something not herself, and that every one was unreal in one way; much more real in another. •It was, she thought, partly their clothes, partly being taken out of their ordinary ways, partly the background, it was possible to say things you couldn't say anyhow else, things that needed an effort; possible to go much deeper. •But not for her; not yet anyhow.	•And yet for her own part, it was too much of an effort. •She was not enjoying it. •It was too much like being--just anybody, standing there; anybody could do it; yet this anybody she did a little admire, couldn't help feeling that she had, anyhow, made this happen, that it marked a stage, this post that she felt herself to have become, for oddly enough she had quite forgotten what she looked like, but felt herself a stake driven in at the top of her stairs. •Every time she gave a party she had this feeling of being something not herself, and that every one was unreal in one way; much more real in another. •It was, she thought, partly their clothes, partly being taken out of their ordinary ways, partly the background, it was possible to say things you couldn't say anyhow else, things that needed an effort; possible to go much deeper. •But not for her; not yet anyhow.
•"How delightful to see you!" •she said. •Dear old Sir Harry! •He would know every one.	•"How delightful to see you!" •she said. •Dear old Sir Harry! •He would know every one.
•And what was so odd about it was the sense one had as they came up the stairs one after another, Mrs. Mount and Celia, Herbert Ainsty, Mrs. Dakers--oh and Lady Bruton!	•And what was so odd about it was the sense one had as they came up the stairs one after another, Mrs. Mount and Celia, Herbert Ainsty, Mrs. Dakers--oh and Lady Bruton!
•"How awfully good of you to come!" •she said, and she meant it--it was odd how standing there one felt them going on, going on, some quite old, some . •. •.	•"How awfully good of you to come!" •she said, and she meant it--it was odd how standing there one felt them going on, going on, some quite old, some . •. •.
•What name? •Lady Rosseter? •But who on earth was Lady Rosseter?	•What name? •Lady Rosseter? •But who on earth was Lady Rosseter?
•"Clarissa!" •That voice! •It was Sally Seton! •Sally Seton! •after all these years! •She loomed through a mist. •For she hadn't looked like that, Sally Seton, when Clarissa grasped the hot water can, to think of her under this roof, under this roof! •Not like that!	•"Clarissa!" •That voice! •It was Sally Seton! •Sally Seton! •after all these years! •She loomed through a mist. •For she hadn't looked like that, Sally Seton, when Clarissa grasped the hot water can, to think of her under this roof, under this roof! •Not like that!
•All on top of each other, embarrassed, laughing, words tumbled out--passing through London; heard from Clara Haydon; what a chance of seeing you! •So I thrust myself in--without an invitation. •. •. •.	•All on top of each other, embarrassed, laughing, words tumbled out--passing through London; heard from Clara Haydon; what a chance of seeing you! •So I thrust myself in--without an invitation. •. •. •.
•One might put down the hot water can quite composedly. •The lustre had gone out of her. •Yet it was extraordinary to see her again, older, happier, less lovely. •They kissed each other, first this cheek then that, by the drawing-room door, and Clarissa turned, with Sally's hand in hers, and saw her rooms full, heard the roar of voices, saw the candlesticks, the blowing curtains, and the roses which Richard had given her.	•One might put down the hot water can quite composedly. •The lustre had gone out of her. •Yet it was extraordinary to see her again, older, happier, less lovely. •They kissed each other, first this cheek then that, by the drawing-room door, and Clarissa turned, with Sally's hand in hers, and saw her rooms full, heard the roar of voices, saw the candlesticks, the blowing curtains, and the roses which Richard had given her.
•"I have five enormous boys," said Sally.	•"I have five enormous boys," said Sally.
•She had the simplest egotism, the most open desire to be thought first always, and Clarissa loved her for being still like that. •"I can't believe it!" •she cried, kindling all over with pleasure at the thought of the past.	•She had the simplest egotism, the most open desire to be thought first always, and Clarissa loved her for being still like that. •"I can't believe it!" •she cried, kindling all over with pleasure at the thought of the past.
•But alas, Wilkins; Wilkins wanted her; Wilkins was emitting in a voice of commanding authority as if the whole company must be admonished and the hostess reclaimed from frivolity, one name: "The Prime Minister," said Peter Walsh.	•But alas, Wilkins; Wilkins wanted her; Wilkins was emitting in a voice of commanding authority as if the whole company must be admonished and the hostess reclaimed from frivolity, one name: "The Prime Minister," said Peter Walsh.
•The Prime Minister? •Was it really? •Ellie Henderson marvelled. •What a thing to tell Edith!	•The Prime Minister? •Was it really? •Ellie Henderson marvelled. •What a thing to tell Edith!
•One couldn't laugh at him. •He looked so ordinary. •You might have stood him behind a counter and bought biscuits--poor chap, all rigged up in gold lace. •And to be fair, as he went his rounds, first with Clarissa then with Richard escorting him, he did it very well. •He tried to look somebody. •It was amusing to watch. •Nobody looked at him. •They just went on talking, yet it was perfectly plain that they all knew, felt to the marrow of their bones, this majesty passing; this symbol of what they all stood for, English society. •Old Lady Bruton, and she looked very fine too, very stalwart in her lace, swam up, and they withdrew into a little room which at once became spied upon, guarded, and a sort of stir and rustle rippled through every one, openly: the Prime Minister!	•One couldn't laugh at him. •He looked so ordinary. •You might have stood him behind a counter and bought biscuits--poor chap, all rigged up in gold lace. •And to be fair, as he went his rounds, first with Clarissa then with Richard escorting him, he did it very well. •He tried to look somebody. •It was amusing to watch. •Nobody looked at him. •They just went on talking, yet it was perfectly plain that they all knew, felt to the marrow of their bones, this majesty passing; this symbol of what they all stood for, English society. •Old Lady Bruton, and she looked very fine too, very stalwart in her lace, swam up, and they withdrew into a little room which at once became spied upon, guarded, and a sort of stir and rustle rippled through every one, openly: the Prime Minister!
•Lord, lord, the snobbery of the English! •thought Peter Walsh, standing in the corner. •How they loved dressing up in gold lace and doing homage! •There! •That must be, by Jove it was, Hugh Whitbread, snuffing round the precincts of the great, grown rather fatter, rather whiter, the admirable Hugh!	•Lord, lord, the snobbery of the English! •thought Peter Walsh, standing in the corner. •How they loved dressing up in gold lace and doing homage! •There! •That must be, by Jove it was, Hugh Whitbread, snuffing round the precincts of the great, grown rather fatter, rather whiter, the admirable Hugh!
•He looked always as if he were on duty, thought Peter, a privileged, but secretive being, hoarding secrets which he would die to defend, though it was only some little piece of tittle-tattle dropped by a court footman, which would be in all the papers tomorrow. •Such were his rattles, his baubles, in playing with which he had grown white, come to the verge of old age, enjoying the respect and affection of all who had the privilege of knowing this type of the English public school man. •Inevitably one made up things like that about Hugh; that was his style; the style of those admirable letters which Peter had read thousands of miles across the sea in the Times, and had thanked God he was out of that pernicious hubble-bubble if it were only to hear baboons chatter and coolies beat their wives. •An olive-skinned youth from one of the Universities stood obsequiously by. •Him he would patronise, initiate, teach how to get on. •For he liked nothing better than doing kindnesses, making the hearts of old ladies palpitate with the joy of being thought of in their age, their affliction, thinking themselves quite forgotten, yet here was dear Hugh driving up and spending an hour talking of the past, remembering trifles, praising the home-made cake, though Hugh might eat cake with a Duchess any day of his life, and, to look at him, probably did spend a good deal of time in that agreeable occupation. •The All-judging, the All-merciful, might excuse. •Peter Walsh had no mercy. •Villains there must be, and God knows the rascals who get hanged for battering the brains of a girl out in a train do less harm on the whole than Hugh Whitbread and his kindness. •Look at him now, on tiptoe, dancing forward, bowing and scraping, as the Prime Minister and Lady Bruton emerged, intimating for all the world to see that he was privileged to say something, something private, to Lady Bruton as she passed. •She stopped. •She wagged her fine old head. •She was thanking him presumably for some piece of servility. •She had her toadies, minor officials in Government offices who ran about putting through little jobs on her behalf, in return for which she gave them luncheon. •But she derived from the eighteenth century. •She was all right.	•He looked always as if he were on duty, thought Peter, a privileged, but secretive being, hoarding secrets which he would die to defend, though it was only some little piece of tittle-tattle dropped by a court footman, which would be in all the papers tomorrow. •Such were his rattles, his baubles, in playing with which he had grown white, come to the verge of old age, enjoying the respect and affection of all who had the privilege of knowing this type of the English public school man. •Inevitably one made up things like that about Hugh; that was his style; the style of those admirable letters which Peter had read thousands of miles across the sea in the Times, and had thanked God he was out of that pernicious hubble-bubble if it were only to hear baboons chatter and coolies beat their wives. •An olive-skinned youth from one of the Universities stood obsequiously by. •Him he would patronise, initiate, teach how to get on. •For he liked nothing better than doing kindnesses, making the hearts of old ladies palpitate with the joy of being thought of in their age, their affliction, thinking themselves quite forgotten, yet here was dear Hugh driving up and spending an hour talking of the past, remembering trifles, praising the home-made cake, though Hugh might eat cake with a Duchess any day of his life, and, to look at him, probably did spend a good deal of time in that agreeable occupation. •The All-judging, the All-merciful, might excuse. •Peter Walsh had no mercy. •Villains there must be, and God knows the rascals who get hanged for battering the brains of a girl out in a train do less harm on the whole than Hugh Whitbread and his kindness. •Look at him now, on tiptoe, dancing forward, bowing and scraping, as the Prime Minister and Lady Bruton emerged, intimating for all the world to see that he was privileged to say something, something private, to Lady Bruton as she passed. •She stopped. •She wagged her fine old head. •She was thanking him presumably for some piece of servility. •She had her toadies, minor officials in Government offices who ran about putting through little jobs on her behalf, in return for which she gave them luncheon. •But she derived from the eighteenth century. •She was all right.
•And now Clarissa escorted her Prime Minister down the room, prancing, sparkling, with the stateliness of her grey hair. •She wore ear-rings, and a silver-green mermaid's dress. •Lolloping on the waves and braiding her tresses she seemed, having that gift still; to be; to exist; to sum it all up in the moment as she passed; turned, caught her scarf in some other woman's dress, unhitched it, laughed, all with the most perfect ease and air of a creature floating in its element. •But age had brushed her; even as a mermaid might behold in her glass the setting sun on some very clear evening over the waves. •There was a breath of tenderness; her severity, her prudery, her woodenness were all warmed through now, and she had about her as she said good-bye to the thick gold-laced man who was doing his best, and good luck to him, to look important, an inexpressible dignity; an exquisite cordiality; as if she wished the whole world well, and must now, being on the very verge and rim of things, take her leave. •So she made him think. •(But he was not in love.)	•And now Clarissa escorted her Prime Minister down the room, prancing, sparkling, with the stateliness of her grey hair. •She wore ear-rings, and a silver-green mermaid's dress. •Lolloping on the waves and braiding her tresses she seemed, having that gift still; to be; to exist; to sum it all up in the moment as she passed; turned, caught her scarf in some other woman's dress, unhitched it, laughed, all with the most perfect ease and air of a creature floating in its element. •But age had brushed her; even as a mermaid might behold in her glass the setting sun on some very clear evening over the waves. •There was a breath of tenderness; her severity, her prudery, her woodenness were all warmed through now, and she had about her as she said good-bye to the thick gold-laced man who was doing his best, and good luck to him, to look important, an inexpressible dignity; an exquisite cordiality; as if she wished the whole world well, and must now, being on the very verge and rim of things, take her leave. •So she made him think. •(But he was not in love.)
•Indeed, Clarissa felt, the Prime Minister had been good to come. •And, walking down the room with him, with Sally there and Peter there and Richard very pleased, with all those people rather inclined, perhaps, to envy, she had felt that intoxication of the moment, that dilatation of the nerves of the heart itself till it seemed to quiver, steeped, upright;--yes, but after all it was what other people felt, that; for, though she loved it and felt it tingle and sting, still these semblances, these triumphs (dear old Peter, for example, thinking her so brilliant), had a hollowness; at arm's length they were, not in the heart; and it might be that she was growing old but they satisfied her no longer as they used; and suddenly, as she saw the Prime Minister go down the stairs, the gilt rim of the Sir Joshua picture of the little girl with a muff brought back Kilman with a rush; Kilman her enemy. •That was satisfying; that was real. •Ah, how she hated her--hot, hypocritical, corrupt; with all that power; Elizabeth's seducer; the woman who had crept in to steal and defile (Richard would say, What nonsense!). •She hated her: she loved her. •It was enemies one wanted, not friends--not Mrs. Durrant and Clara, Sir William and Lady Bradshaw, Miss Truelock and Eleanor Gibson (whom she saw coming upstairs). •They must find her if they wanted her. •She was for the party!	•Indeed, Clarissa felt, the Prime Minister had been good to come. •And, walking down the room with him, with Sally there and Peter there and Richard very pleased, with all those people rather inclined, perhaps, to envy, she had felt that intoxication of the moment, that dilatation of the nerves of the heart itself till it seemed to quiver, steeped, upright;--yes, but after all it was what other people felt, that; for, though she loved it and felt it tingle and sting, still these semblances, these triumphs (dear old Peter, for example, thinking her so brilliant), had a hollowness; at arm's length they were, not in the heart; and it might be that she was growing old but they satisfied her no longer as they used; and suddenly, as she saw the Prime Minister go down the stairs, the gilt rim of the Sir Joshua picture of the little girl with a muff brought back Kilman with a rush; Kilman her enemy. •That was satisfying; that was real. •Ah, how she hated her--hot, hypocritical, corrupt; with all that power; Elizabeth's seducer; the woman who had crept in to steal and defile (Richard would say, What nonsense!). •She hated her: she loved her. •It was enemies one wanted, not friends--not Mrs. Durrant and Clara, Sir William and Lady Bradshaw, Miss Truelock and Eleanor Gibson (whom she saw coming upstairs). •They must find her if they wanted her. •She was for the party!
•There was her old friend Sir Harry.	•There was her old friend Sir Harry.
•"Dear Sir Harry!" •she said, going up to the fine old fellow who had produced more bad pictures than any other two Academicians in the whole of St. John's Wood (they were always of cattle, standing in sunset pools absorbing moisture, or signifying, for he had a certain range of gesture, by the raising of one foreleg and the toss of the antlers, "the Approach of the Stranger"--all his activities, dining out, racing, were founded on cattle standing absorbing moisture in sunset pools).	•"Dear Sir Harry!" •she said, going up to the fine old fellow who had produced more bad pictures than any other two Academicians in the whole of St. John's Wood (they were always of cattle, standing in sunset pools absorbing moisture, or signifying, for he had a certain range of gesture, by the raising of one foreleg and the toss of the antlers, "the Approach of the Stranger"--all his activities, dining out, racing, were founded on cattle standing absorbing moisture in sunset pools).
•"What are you laughing at?" •she asked him. •For Willie Titcomb and Sir Harry and Herbert Ainsty were all laughing. •But no. •Sir Harry could not tell Clarissa Dalloway (much though he liked her; of her type he thought her perfect, and threatened to paint her) his stories of the music hall stage. •He chaffed her about her party. •He missed his brandy. •These circles, he said, were above him. •But he liked her; respected her, in spite of her damnable, difficult upper-class refinement, which made it impossible to ask Clarissa Dalloway to sit on his knee. •And up came that wandering will-o'-the-wisp, that vagulous phosphorescence, old Mrs. Hilbery, stretching her hands to the blaze of his laughter (about the Duke and the Lady), which, as she heard it across the room, seemed to reassure her on a point which sometimes bothered her if she woke early in the morning and did not like to call her maid for a cup of tea; how it is certain we must die.	•"What are you laughing at?" •she asked him. •For Willie Titcomb and Sir Harry and Herbert Ainsty were all laughing. •But no. •Sir Harry could not tell Clarissa Dalloway (much though he liked her; of her type he thought her perfect, and threatened to paint her) his stories of the music hall stage. •He chaffed her about her party. •He missed his brandy. •These circles, he said, were above him. •But he liked her; respected her, in spite of her damnable, difficult upper-class refinement, which made it impossible to ask Clarissa Dalloway to sit on his knee. •And up came that wandering will-o'-the-wisp, that vagulous phosphorescence, old Mrs. Hilbery, stretching her hands to the blaze of his laughter (about the Duke and the Lady), which, as she heard it across the room, seemed to reassure her on a point which sometimes bothered her if she woke early in the morning and did not like to call her maid for a cup of tea; how it is certain we must die.
•"They won't tell us their stories," said Clarissa.	•"They won't tell us their stories," said Clarissa.
•"Dear Clarissa!" •exclaimed Mrs. Hilbery. •She looked to-night, she said, so like her mother as she first saw her walking in a garden in a grey hat.	•"Dear Clarissa!" •exclaimed Mrs. Hilbery. •She looked to-night, she said, so like her mother as she first saw her walking in a garden in a grey hat.
•And really Clarissa's eyes filled with tears. •Her mother, walking in a garden! •But alas, she must go.	•And really Clarissa's eyes filled with tears. •Her mother, walking in a garden! •But alas, she must go.
•For there was Professor Brierly, who lectured on Milton, talking to little Jim Hutton (who was unable even for a party like this to compass both tie and waistcoat or make his hair lie flat), and even at this distance they were quarrelling, she could see. •For Professor Brierly was a very queer fish. •With all those degrees, honours, lectureships between him and the scribblers he suspected instantly an atmosphere not favourable to his queer compound; his prodigious learning and timidity; his wintry charm without cordiality; his innocence blent with snobbery; he quivered if made conscious by a lady's unkempt hair, a youth's boots, of an underworld, very creditable doubtless, of rebels, of ardent young people; of would-be geniuses, and intimated with a little toss of the head, with a sniff--Humph!--the value of moderation; of some slight training in the classics in order to appreciate Milton. •Professor Brierly (Clarissa could see) wasn't hitting it off with little Jim Hutton (who wore red socks, his black being at the laundry) about Milton. •She interrupted.	•For there was Professor Brierly, who lectured on Milton, talking to little Jim Hutton (who was unable even for a party like this to compass both tie and waistcoat or make his hair lie flat), and even at this distance they were quarrelling, she could see. •For Professor Brierly was a very queer fish. •With all those degrees, honours, lectureships between him and the scribblers he suspected instantly an atmosphere not favourable to his queer compound; his prodigious learning and timidity; his wintry charm without cordiality; his innocence blent with snobbery; he quivered if made conscious by a lady's unkempt hair, a youth's boots, of an underworld, very creditable doubtless, of rebels, of ardent young people; of would-be geniuses, and intimated with a little toss of the head, with a sniff--Humph!--the value of moderation; of some slight training in the classics in order to appreciate Milton. •Professor Brierly (Clarissa could see) wasn't hitting it off with little Jim Hutton (who wore red socks, his black being at the laundry) about Milton. •She interrupted.
•She said she loved Bach. •So did Hutton. •That was the bond between them, and Hutton (a very bad poet) always felt that Mrs. Dalloway was far the best of the great ladies who took an interest in art. •It was odd how strict she was. •About music she was purely impersonal. •She was rather a prig. •But how charming to look at! •She made her house so nice if it weren't for her Professors. •Clarissa had half a mind to snatch him off and set him down at the piano in the back room. •For he played divinely.	•She said she loved Bach. •So did Hutton. •That was the bond between them, and Hutton (a very bad poet) always felt that Mrs. Dalloway was far the best of the great ladies who took an interest in art. •It was odd how strict she was. •About music she was purely impersonal. •She was rather a prig. •But how charming to look at! •She made her house so nice if it weren't for her Professors. •Clarissa had half a mind to snatch him off and set him down at the piano in the back room. •For he played divinely.
•"But the noise!" •she said. •"The noise!"	•"But the noise!" •she said. •"The noise!"
•"The sign of a successful party." •Nodding urbanely, the Professor stepped delicately off.	•"The sign of a successful party." •Nodding urbanely, the Professor stepped delicately off.
•"He knows everything in the whole world about Milton," said Clarissa.	•"He knows everything in the whole world about Milton," said Clarissa.
•"Does he indeed?" •said Hutton, who would imitate the Professor throughout Hampstead; the Professor on Milton; the Professor on moderation; the Professor stepping delicately off.	•"Does he indeed?" •said Hutton, who would imitate the Professor throughout Hampstead; the Professor on Milton; the Professor on moderation; the Professor stepping delicately off.
•But she must speak to that couple, said Clarissa, Lord Gayton and Nancy Blow.	•But she must speak to that couple, said Clarissa, Lord Gayton and Nancy Blow.
•Not that they added perceptibly to the noise of the party. •They were not talking (perceptibly) as they stood side by side by the yellow curtains. •They would soon be off elsewhere, together; and never had very much to say in any circumstances. •They looked; that was all. •That was enough. •They looked so clean, so sound, she with an apricot bloom of powder and paint, but he scrubbed, rinsed, with the eyes of a bird, so that no ball could pass him or stroke surprise him. •He struck, he leapt, accurately, on the spot. •Ponies' mouths quivered at the end of his reins. •He had his honours, ancestral monuments, banners hanging in the church at home. •He had his duties; his tenants; a mother and sisters; had been all day at Lords, and that was what they were talking about--cricket, cousins, the movies--when Mrs. Dalloway came up. •Lord Gayton liked her most awfully. •So did Miss Blow. •She had such charming manners.	•Not that they added perceptibly to the noise of the party. •They were not talking (perceptibly) as they stood side by side by the yellow curtains. •They would soon be off elsewhere, together; and never had very much to say in any circumstances. •They looked; that was all. •That was enough. •They looked so clean, so sound, she with an apricot bloom of powder and paint, but he scrubbed, rinsed, with the eyes of a bird, so that no ball could pass him or stroke surprise him. •He struck, he leapt, accurately, on the spot. •Ponies' mouths quivered at the end of his reins. •He had his honours, ancestral monuments, banners hanging in the church at home. •He had his duties; his tenants; a mother and sisters; had been all day at Lords, and that was what they were talking about--cricket, cousins, the movies--when Mrs. Dalloway came up. •Lord Gayton liked her most awfully. •So did Miss Blow. •She had such charming manners.
•"It is angelic--it is delicious of you to have come!" •she said. •She loved Lords; she loved youth, and Nancy, dressed at enormous expense by the greatest artists in Paris, stood there looking as if her body had merely put forth, of its own accord, a green frill.	•"It is angelic--it is delicious of you to have come!" •she said. •She loved Lords; she loved youth, and Nancy, dressed at enormous expense by the greatest artists in Paris, stood there looking as if her body had merely put forth, of its own accord, a green frill.
•"I had meant to have dancing," said Clarissa.	•"I had meant to have dancing," said Clarissa.
•For the young people could not talk. •And why should they? •Shout, embrace, swing, be up at dawn; carry sugar to ponies; kiss and caress the snouts of adorable chows; and then all tingling and streaming, plunge and swim. •But the enormous resources of the English language, the power it bestows, after all, of communicating feelings (at their age, she and Peter would have been arguing all the evening), was not for them. •They would solidify young. •They would be good beyond measure to the people on the estate, but alone, perhaps, rather dull.	•For the young people could not talk. •And why should they? •Shout, embrace, swing, be up at dawn; carry sugar to ponies; kiss and caress the snouts of adorable chows; and then all tingling and streaming, plunge and swim. •But the enormous resources of the English language, the power it bestows, after all, of communicating feelings (at their age, she and Peter would have been arguing all the evening), was not for them. •They would solidify young. •They would be good beyond measure to the people on the estate, but alone, perhaps, rather dull.
•"What a pity!" •she said. •"I had hoped to have dancing."	•"What a pity!" •she said. •"I had hoped to have dancing."
•It was so extraordinarily nice of them to have come! •But talk of dancing! •The rooms were packed.	•It was so extraordinarily nice of them to have come! •But talk of dancing! •The rooms were packed.
•There was old Aunt Helena in her shawl. •Alas, she must leave them--Lord Gayton and Nancy Blow. •There was old Miss Parry, her aunt.	•There was old Aunt Helena in her shawl. •Alas, she must leave them--Lord Gayton and Nancy Blow. •There was old Miss Parry, her aunt.
•For Miss Helena Parry was not dead: Miss Parry was alive. •She was past eighty. •She ascended staircases slowly with a stick. •She was placed in a chair (Richard had seen to it). •People who had known Burma in the 'seventies were always led up to her. •Where had Peter got to? •They used to be such friends. •For at the mention of India, or even Ceylon, her eyes (only one was glass) slowly deepened, became blue, beheld, not human beings--she had no tender memories, no proud illusions about Viceroys, Generals, Mutinies--it was orchids she saw, and mountain passes and herself carried on the backs of coolies in the 'sixties over solitary peaks; or descending to uproot orchids (startling blossoms, never beheld before) which she painted in water-colour; an indomitable Englishwoman, fretful if disturbed by the War, say, which dropped a bomb at her very door, from her deep meditation over orchids and her own figure journeying in the 'sixties in India--but here was Peter.	•For Miss Helena Parry was not dead: Miss Parry was alive. •She was past eighty. •She ascended staircases slowly with a stick. •She was placed in a chair (Richard had seen to it). •People who had known Burma in the 'seventies were always led up to her. •Where had Peter got to? •They used to be such friends. •For at the mention of India, or even Ceylon, her eyes (only one was glass) slowly deepened, became blue, beheld, not human beings--she had no tender memories, no proud illusions about Viceroys, Generals, Mutinies--it was orchids she saw, and mountain passes and herself carried on the backs of coolies in the 'sixties over solitary peaks; or descending to uproot orchids (startling blossoms, never beheld before) which she painted in water-colour; an indomitable Englishwoman, fretful if disturbed by the War, say, which dropped a bomb at her very door, from her deep meditation over orchids and her own figure journeying in the 'sixties in India--but here was Peter.
•"Come and talk to Aunt Helena about Burma," said Clarissa.	•"Come and talk to Aunt Helena about Burma," said Clarissa.
•And yet he had not had a word with her all the evening!	•And yet he had not had a word with her all the evening!
•"We will talk later," said Clarissa, leading him up to Aunt Helena, in her white shawl, with her stick.	•"We will talk later," said Clarissa, leading him up to Aunt Helena, in her white shawl, with her stick.
•"Peter Walsh," said Clarissa.	•"Peter Walsh," said Clarissa.
•That meant nothing.	•That meant nothing.
•Clarissa had asked her. •It was tiring; it was noisy; but Clarissa had asked her. •So she had come. •It was a pity that they lived in London--Richard and Clarissa. •If only for Clarissa's health it would have been better to live in the country. •But Clarissa had always been fond of society.	•Clarissa had asked her. •It was tiring; it was noisy; but Clarissa had asked her. •So she had come. •It was a pity that they lived in London--Richard and Clarissa. •If only for Clarissa's health it would have been better to live in the country. •But Clarissa had always been fond of society.
•"He has been in Burma," said Clarissa.	•"He has been in Burma," said Clarissa.
•Ah. •She could not resist recalling what Charles Darwin had said about her little book on the orchids of Burma.	•Ah. •She could not resist recalling what Charles Darwin had said about her little book on the orchids of Burma.
•(Clarissa must speak to Lady Bruton.)	•(Clarissa must speak to Lady Bruton.)
•No doubt it was forgotten now, her book on the orchids of Burma, but it went into three editions before 1870, she told Peter. •She remembered him now. •He had been at Bourton (and he had left her, Peter Walsh remembered, without a word in the drawing-room that night when Clarissa had asked him to come boating).	•No doubt it was forgotten now, her book on the orchids of Burma, but it went into three editions before 1870, she told Peter. •She remembered him now. •He had been at Bourton (and he had left her, Peter Walsh remembered, without a word in the drawing-room that night when Clarissa had asked him to come boating).
•"Richard so much enjoyed his lunch party," said Clarissa to Lady Bruton.	•"Richard so much enjoyed his lunch party," said Clarissa to Lady Bruton.
•"Richard was the greatest possible help," Lady Bruton replied. •"He helped me to write a letter. •And how are you?"	•"Richard was the greatest possible help," Lady Bruton replied. •"He helped me to write a letter. •And how are you?"
•"Oh, perfectly well!" •said Clarissa. •(Lady Bruton detested illness in the wives of politicians.)	•"Oh, perfectly well!" •said Clarissa. •(Lady Bruton detested illness in the wives of politicians.)
•"And there's Peter Walsh!" •said Lady Bruton (for she could never think of anything to say to Clarissa; though she liked her. •She had lots of fine qualities; but they had nothing in common--she and Clarissa. •It might have been better if Richard had married a woman with less charm, who would have helped him more in his work. •He had lost his chance of the Cabinet). •"There's Peter Walsh!" •she said, shaking hands with that agreeable sinner, that very able fellow who should have made a name for himself but hadn't (always in difficulties with women), and, of course, old Miss Parry. •Wonderful old lady!	•"And there's Peter Walsh!" •said Lady Bruton (for she could never think of anything to say to Clarissa; though she liked her. •She had lots of fine qualities; but they had nothing in common--she and Clarissa. •It might have been better if Richard had married a woman with less charm, who would have helped him more in his work. •He had lost his chance of the Cabinet). •"There's Peter Walsh!" •she said, shaking hands with that agreeable sinner, that very able fellow who should have made a name for himself but hadn't (always in difficulties with women), and, of course, old Miss Parry. •Wonderful old lady!
•Lady Bruton stood by Miss Parry's chair, a spectral grenadier, draped in black, inviting Peter Walsh to lunch; cordial; but without small talk, remembering nothing whatever about the flora or fauna of India. •She had been there, of course; had stayed with three Viceroys; thought some of the Indian civilians uncommonly fine fellows; but what a tragedy it was--the state of India! •The Prime Minister had just been telling her (old Miss Parry huddled up in her shawl, did not care what the Prime Minister had just been telling her), and Lady Bruton would like to have Peter Walsh's opinion, he being fresh from the centre, and she would get Sir Sampson to meet him, for really it prevented her from sleeping at night, the folly of it, the wickedness she might say, being a soldier's daughter. •She was an old woman now, not good for much. •But her house, her servants, her good friend Milly Brush--did he remember her?--were all there only asking to be used if--if they could be of help, in short. •For she never spoke of England, but this isle of men, this dear, dear land, was in her blood (without reading Shakespeare), and if ever a woman could have worn the helmet and shot the arrow, could have led troops to attack, ruled with indomitable justice barbarian hordes and lain under a shield noseless in a church, or made a green grass mound on some primeval hillside, that woman was Millicent Bruton. •Debarred by her sex and some truancy, too, of the logical faculty (she found it impossible to write a letter to the Times), she had the thought of Empire always at hand, and had acquired from her association with that armoured goddess her ramrod bearing, her robustness of demeanour, so that one could not figure her even in death parted from the earth or roaming territories over which, in some spiritual shape, the Union Jack had ceased to fly. •To be not English even among the dead--no, no! •Impossible!	•Lady Bruton stood by Miss Parry's chair, a spectral grenadier, draped in black, inviting Peter Walsh to lunch; cordial; but without small talk, remembering nothing whatever about the flora or fauna of India. •She had been there, of course; had stayed with three Viceroys; thought some of the Indian civilians uncommonly fine fellows; but what a tragedy it was--the state of India! •The Prime Minister had just been telling her (old Miss Parry huddled up in her shawl, did not care what the Prime Minister had just been telling her), and Lady Bruton would like to have Peter Walsh's opinion, he being fresh from the centre, and she would get Sir Sampson to meet him, for really it prevented her from sleeping at night, the folly of it, the wickedness she might say, being a soldier's daughter. •She was an old woman now, not good for much. •But her house, her servants, her good friend Milly Brush--did he remember her?--were all there only asking to be used if--if they could be of help, in short. •For she never spoke of England, but this isle of men, this dear, dear land, was in her blood (without reading Shakespeare), and if ever a woman could have worn the helmet and shot the arrow, could have led troops to attack, ruled with indomitable justice barbarian hordes and lain under a shield noseless in a church, or made a green grass mound on some primeval hillside, that woman was Millicent Bruton. •Debarred by her sex and some truancy, too, of the logical faculty (she found it impossible to write a letter to the Times), she had the thought of Empire always at hand, and had acquired from her association with that armoured goddess her ramrod bearing, her robustness of demeanour, so that one could not figure her even in death parted from the earth or roaming territories over which, in some spiritual shape, the Union Jack had ceased to fly. •To be not English even among the dead--no, no! •Impossible!
•But was it Lady Bruton (whom she used to know)? •Was it Peter Walsh grown grey? •Lady Rosseter asked herself (who had been Sally Seton). •It was old Miss Parry certainly--the old aunt who used to be so cross when she stayed at Bourton. •Never should she forget running along the passage naked, and being sent for by Miss Parry! •And Clarissa! •oh Clarissa! •Sally caught her by the arm.	•But was it Lady Bruton (whom she used to know)? •Was it Peter Walsh grown grey? •Lady Rosseter asked herself (who had been Sally Seton). •It was old Miss Parry certainly--the old aunt who used to be so cross when she stayed at Bourton. •Never should she forget running along the passage naked, and being sent for by Miss Parry! •And Clarissa! •oh Clarissa! •Sally caught her by the arm.
•Clarissa stopped beside them.	•Clarissa stopped beside them.
•"But I can't stay," she said. •"I shall come later. •Wait," she said, looking at Peter and Sally. •They must wait, she meant, until all these people had gone.	•"But I can't stay," she said. •"I shall come later. •Wait," she said, looking at Peter and Sally. •They must wait, she meant, until all these people had gone.
•"I shall come back," she said, looking at her old friends, Sally and Peter, who were shaking hands, and Sally, remembering the past no doubt, was laughing.	•"I shall come back," she said, looking at her old friends, Sally and Peter, who were shaking hands, and Sally, remembering the past no doubt, was laughing.
•But her voice was wrung of its old ravishing richness; her eyes not aglow as they used to be, when she smoked cigars, when she ran down the passage to fetch her sponge bag, without a stitch of clothing on her, and Ellen Atkins asked, What if the gentlemen had met her? •But everybody forgave her. •She stole a chicken from the larder because she was hungry in the night; she smoked cigars in her bedroom; she left a priceless book in the punt. •But everybody adored her (except perhaps Papa). •It was her warmth; her vitality--she would paint, she would write. •Old women in the village never to this day forgot to ask after "your friend in the red cloak who seemed so bright." •She accused Hugh Whitbread, of all people (and there he was, her old friend Hugh, talking to the Portuguese Ambassador), of kissing her in the smoking-room to punish her for saying that women should have votes. •Vulgar men did, she said. •And Clarissa remembered having to persuade her not to denounce him at family prayers--which she was capable of doing with her daring, her recklessness, her melodramatic love of being the centre of everything and creating scenes, and it was bound, Clarissa used to think, to end in some awful tragedy; her death; her martyrdom; instead of which she had married, quite unexpectedly, a bald man with a large buttonhole who owned, it was said, cotton mills at Manchester. •And she had five boys!	•But her voice was wrung of its old ravishing richness; her eyes not aglow as they used to be, when she smoked cigars, when she ran down the passage to fetch her sponge bag, without a stitch of clothing on her, and Ellen Atkins asked, What if the gentlemen had met her? •But everybody forgave her. •She stole a chicken from the larder because she was hungry in the night; she smoked cigars in her bedroom; she left a priceless book in the punt. •But everybody adored her (except perhaps Papa). •It was her warmth; her vitality--she would paint, she would write. •Old women in the village never to this day forgot to ask after "your friend in the red cloak who seemed so bright." •She accused Hugh Whitbread, of all people (and there he was, her old friend Hugh, talking to the Portuguese Ambassador), of kissing her in the smoking-room to punish her for saying that women should have votes. •Vulgar men did, she said. •And Clarissa remembered having to persuade her not to denounce him at family prayers--which she was capable of doing with her daring, her recklessness, her melodramatic love of being the centre of everything and creating scenes, and it was bound, Clarissa used to think, to end in some awful tragedy; her death; her martyrdom; instead of which she had married, quite unexpectedly, a bald man with a large buttonhole who owned, it was said, cotton mills at Manchester. •And she had five boys!
•She and Peter had settled down together. •They were talking: it seemed so familiar--that they should be talking. •They would discuss the past. •With the two of them (more even than with Richard) she shared her past; the garden; the trees; old Joseph Breitkopf singing Brahms without any voice; the drawing-room wallpaper; the smell of the mats. •A part of this Sally must always be; Peter must always be. •But she must leave them. •There were the Bradshaws, whom she disliked. •She must go up to Lady Bradshaw (in grey and silver, balancing like a sea-lion at the edge of its tank, barking for invitations, Duchesses, the typical successful man's wife), she must go up to Lady Bradshaw and say . •. •.	•She and Peter had settled down together. •They were talking: it seemed so familiar--that they should be talking. •They would discuss the past. •With the two of them (more even than with Richard) she shared her past; the garden; the trees; old Joseph Breitkopf singing Brahms without any voice; the drawing-room wallpaper; the smell of the mats. •A part of this Sally must always be; Peter must always be. •But she must leave them. •There were the Bradshaws, whom she disliked. •She must go up to Lady Bradshaw (in grey and silver, balancing like a sea-lion at the edge of its tank, barking for invitations, Duchesses, the typical successful man's wife), she must go up to Lady Bradshaw and say . •. •.
•But Lady Bradshaw anticipated her.	•But Lady Bradshaw anticipated her.
•"We are shockingly late, dear Mrs. Dalloway, we hardly dared to come in," she said.	•"We are shockingly late, dear Mrs. Dalloway, we hardly dared to come in," she said.
•And Sir William, who looked very distinguished, with his grey hair and blue eyes, said yes; they had not been able to resist the temptation. •He was talking to Richard about that Bill probably, which they wanted to get through the Commons. •Why did the sight of him, talking to Richard, curl her up? •He looked what he was, a great doctor. •A man absolutely at the head of his profession, very powerful, rather worn. •For think what cases came before him--people in the uttermost depths of misery; people on the verge of insanity; husbands and wives. •He had to decide questions of appalling difficulty. •Yet--what she felt was, one wouldn't like Sir William to see one unhappy. •No; not that man.	•And Sir William, who looked very distinguished, with his grey hair and blue eyes, said yes; they had not been able to resist the temptation. •He was talking to Richard about that Bill probably, which they wanted to get through the Commons. •Why did the sight of him, talking to Richard, curl her up? •He looked what he was, a great doctor. •A man absolutely at the head of his profession, very powerful, rather worn. •For think what cases came before him--people in the uttermost depths of misery; people on the verge of insanity; husbands and wives. •He had to decide questions of appalling difficulty. •Yet--what she felt was, one wouldn't like Sir William to see one unhappy. •No; not that man.
•"How is your son at Eton?" •she asked Lady Bradshaw.	•"How is your son at Eton?" •she asked Lady Bradshaw.
•He had just missed his eleven, said Lady Bradshaw, because of the mumps. •His father minded even more than he did, she thought "being," she said, "nothing but a great boy himself."	•He had just missed his eleven, said Lady Bradshaw, because of the mumps. •His father minded even more than he did, she thought "being," she said, "nothing but a great boy himself."
•Clarissa looked at Sir William, talking to Richard. •He did not look like a boy--not in the least like a boy. •She had once gone with some one to ask his advice. •He had been perfectly right; extremely sensible. •But Heavens--what a relief to get out to the street again! •There was some poor wretch sobbing, she remembered, in the waiting-room. •But she did not know what it was--about Sir William; what exactly she disliked. •Only Richard agreed with her, "didn't like his taste, didn't like his smell." •But he was extraordinarily able. •They were talking about this Bill. •Some case, Sir William was mentioning, lowering his voice. •It had its bearing upon what he was saying about the deferred effects of shell shock. •There must be some provision in the Bill.	•Clarissa looked at Sir William, talking to Richard. •He did not look like a boy--not in the least like a boy. •She had once gone with some one to ask his advice. •He had been perfectly right; extremely sensible. •But Heavens--what a relief to get out to the street again! •There was some poor wretch sobbing, she remembered, in the waiting-room. •But she did not know what it was--about Sir William; what exactly she disliked. •Only Richard agreed with her, "didn't like his taste, didn't like his smell." •But he was extraordinarily able. •They were talking about this Bill. •Some case, Sir William was mentioning, lowering his voice. •It had its bearing upon what he was saying about the deferred effects of shell shock. •There must be some provision in the Bill.
•Sinking her voice, drawing Mrs. Dalloway into the shelter of a common femininity, a common pride in the illustrious qualities of husbands and their sad tendency to overwork, Lady Bradshaw (poor goose--one didn't dislike her) murmured how, "just as we were starting, my husband was called up on the telephone, a very sad case. •A young man (that is what Sir William is telling Mr. Dalloway) had killed himself. •He had been in the army." •Oh! •thought Clarissa, in the middle of my party, here's death, she thought.	•Sinking her voice, drawing Mrs. Dalloway into the shelter of a common femininity, a common pride in the illustrious qualities of husbands and their sad tendency to overwork, Lady Bradshaw (poor goose--one didn't dislike her) murmured how, "just as we were starting, my husband was called up on the telephone, a very sad case. •A young man (that is what Sir William is telling Mr. Dalloway) had killed himself. •He had been in the army." •Oh! •thought Clarissa, in the middle of my party, here's death, she thought.
•She went on, into the little room where the Prime Minister had gone with Lady Bruton. •Perhaps there was somebody there. •But there was nobody. •The chairs still kept the impress of the Prime Minister and Lady Bruton, she turned deferentially, he sitting four-square, authoritatively. •They had been talking about India. •There was nobody. •The party's splendour fell to the floor, so strange it was to come in alone in her finery.	•She went on, into the little room where the Prime Minister had gone with Lady Bruton. •Perhaps there was somebody there. •But there was nobody. •The chairs still kept the impress of the Prime Minister and Lady Bruton, she turned deferentially, he sitting four-square, authoritatively. •They had been talking about India. •There was nobody. •The party's splendour fell to the floor, so strange it was to come in alone in her finery.
•What business had the Bradshaws to talk of death at her party? •A young man had killed himself. •And they talked of it at her party--the Bradshaws, talked of death. •He had killed himself--but how? •Always her body went through it first, when she was told, suddenly, of an accident; her dress flamed, her body burnt. •He had thrown himself from a window. •Up had flashed the ground; through him, blundering, bruising, went the rusty spikes. •There he lay with a thud, thud, thud in his brain, and then a suffocation of blackness. •So she saw it. •But why had he done it? •And the Bradshaws talked of it at her party!	•What business had the Bradshaws to talk of death at her party? •A young man had killed himself. •And they talked of it at her party--the Bradshaws, talked of death. •He had killed himself--but how? •Always her body went through it first, when she was told, suddenly, of an accident; her dress flamed, her body burnt. •He had thrown himself from a window. •Up had flashed the ground; through him, blundering, bruising, went the rusty spikes. •There he lay with a thud, thud, thud in his brain, and then a suffocation of blackness. •So she saw it. •But why had he done it? •And the Bradshaws talked of it at her party!
•She had once thrown a shilling into the Serpentine, never anything more. •But he had flung it away. •They went on living (she would have to go back; the rooms were still crowded; people kept on coming). •They (all day she had been thinking of Bourton, of Peter, of Sally), they would grow old. •A thing there was that mattered; a thing, wreathed about with chatter, defaced, obscured in her own life, let drop every day in corruption, lies, chatter. •This he had preserved. •Death was defiance. •Death was an attempt to communicate; people feeling the impossibility of reaching the centre which, mystically, evaded them; closeness drew apart; rapture faded, one was alone. •There was an embrace in death.	•She had once thrown a shilling into the Serpentine, never anything more. •But he had flung it away. •They went on living (she would have to go back; the rooms were still crowded; people kept on coming). •They (all day she had been thinking of Bourton, of Peter, of Sally), they would grow old. •A thing there was that mattered; a thing, wreathed about with chatter, defaced, obscured in her own life, let drop every day in corruption, lies, chatter. •This he had preserved. •Death was defiance. •Death was an attempt to communicate; people feeling the impossibility of reaching the centre which, mystically, evaded them; closeness drew apart; rapture faded, one was alone. •There was an embrace in death.
•But this young man who had killed himself--had he plunged holding his treasure? •"If it were now to die, 'twere now to be most happy," she had said to herself once, coming down in white.	•But this young man who had killed himself--had he plunged holding his treasure? •"If it were now to die, 'twere now to be most happy," she had said to herself once, coming down in white.
•Or there were the poets and thinkers. •Suppose he had had that passion, and had gone to Sir William Bradshaw, a great doctor yet to her obscurely evil, without sex or lust, extremely polite to women, but capable of some indescribable outrage--forcing your soul, that was it--if this young man had gone to him, and Sir William had impressed him, like that, with his power, might he not then have said (indeed she felt it now), Life is made intolerable; they make life intolerable, men like that?	•Or there were the poets and thinkers. •Suppose he had had that passion, and had gone to Sir William Bradshaw, a great doctor yet to her obscurely evil, without sex or lust, extremely polite to women, but capable of some indescribable outrage--forcing your soul, that was it--if this young man had gone to him, and Sir William had impressed him, like that, with his power, might he not then have said (indeed she felt it now), Life is made intolerable; they make life intolerable, men like that?
•Then (she had felt it only this morning) there was the terror; the overwhelming incapacity, one's parents giving it into one's hands, this life, to be lived to the end, to be walked with serenely; there was in the depths of her heart an awful fear. •Even now, quite often if Richard had not been there reading the Times, so that she could crouch like a bird and gradually revive, send roaring up that immeasurable delight, rubbing stick to stick, one thing with another, she must have perished. •But that young man had killed himself.	•Then (she had felt it only this morning) there was the terror; the overwhelming incapacity, one's parents giving it into one's hands, this life, to be lived to the end, to be walked with serenely; there was in the depths of her heart an awful fear. •Even now, quite often if Richard had not been there reading the Times, so that she could crouch like a bird and gradually revive, send roaring up that immeasurable delight, rubbing stick to stick, one thing with another, she must have perished. •But that young man had killed himself.
•Somehow it was her disaster--her disgrace. •It was her punishment to see sink and disappear here a man, there a woman, in this profound darkness, and she forced to stand here in her evening dress. •She had schemed; she had pilfered. •She was never wholly admirable. •She had wanted success. •Lady Bexborough and the rest of it. •And once she had walked on the terrace at Bourton.	•Somehow it was her disaster--her disgrace. •It was her punishment to see sink and disappear here a man, there a woman, in this profound darkness, and she forced to stand here in her evening dress. •She had schemed; she had pilfered. •She was never wholly admirable. •She had wanted success. •Lady Bexborough and the rest of it. •And once she had walked on the terrace at Bourton.
•It was due to Richard; she had never been so happy. •Nothing could be slow enough; nothing last too long. •No pleasure could equal, she thought, straightening the chairs, pushing in one book on the shelf, this having done with the triumphs of youth, lost herself in the process of living, to find it, with a shock of delight, as the sun rose, as the day sank. •Many a time had she gone, at Bourton when they were all talking, to look at the sky; or seen it between people's shoulders at dinner; seen it in London when she could not sleep. •She walked to the window.	•It was due to Richard; she had never been so happy. •Nothing could be slow enough; nothing last too long. •No pleasure could equal, she thought, straightening the chairs, pushing in one book on the shelf, this having done with the triumphs of youth, lost herself in the process of living, to find it, with a shock of delight, as the sun rose, as the day sank. •Many a time had she gone, at Bourton when they were all talking, to look at the sky; or seen it between people's shoulders at dinner; seen it in London when she could not sleep. •She walked to the window.
•It held, foolish as the idea was, something of her own in it, this country sky, this sky above Westminster. •She parted the curtains; she looked. •Oh, but how surprising!--in the room opposite the old lady stared straight at her! •She was going to bed. •And the sky. •It will be a solemn sky, she had thought, it will be a dusky sky, turning away its cheek in beauty. •But there it was--ashen pale, raced over quickly by tapering vast clouds. •It was new to her. •The wind must have risen. •She was going to bed, in the room opposite. •It was fascinating to watch her, moving about, that old lady, crossing the room, coming to the window. •Could she see her? •It was fascinating, with people still laughing and shouting in the drawing-room, to watch that old woman, quite quietly, going to bed. •She pulled the blind now. •The clock began striking. •The young man had killed himself; but she did not pity him; with the clock striking the hour, one, two, three, she did not pity him, with all this going on. •There! •the old lady had put out her light! •the whole house was dark now with this going on, she repeated, and the words came to her, Fear no more the heat of the sun. •She must go back to them. •But what an extraordinary night! •She felt somehow very like him--the young man who had killed himself. •She felt glad that he had done it; thrown it away. •The clock was striking. •The leaden circles dissolved in the air. •He made her feel the beauty; made her feel the fun. •But she must go back. •She must assemble. •She must find Sally and Peter. •And she came in from the little room.	•It held, foolish as the idea was, something of her own in it, this country sky, this sky above Westminster. •She parted the curtains; she looked. •Oh, but how surprising!--in the room opposite the old lady stared straight at her! •She was going to bed. •And the sky. •It will be a solemn sky, she had thought, it will be a dusky sky, turning away its cheek in beauty. •But there it was--ashen pale, raced over quickly by tapering vast clouds. •It was new to her. •The wind must have risen. •She was going to bed, in the room opposite. •It was fascinating to watch her, moving about, that old lady, crossing the room, coming to the window. •Could she see her? •It was fascinating, with people still laughing and shouting in the drawing-room, to watch that old woman, quite quietly, going to bed. •She pulled the blind now. •The clock began striking. •The young man had killed himself; but she did not pity him; with the clock striking the hour, one, two, three, she did not pity him, with all this going on. •There! •the old lady had put out her light! •the whole house was dark now with this going on, she repeated, and the words came to her, Fear no more the heat of the sun. •She must go back to them. •But what an extraordinary night! •She felt somehow very like him--the young man who had killed himself. •She felt glad that he had done it; thrown it away. •The clock was striking. •The leaden circles dissolved in the air. •He made her feel the beauty; made her feel the fun. •But she must go back. •She must assemble. •She must find Sally and Peter. •And she came in from the little room.
•"But where is Clarissa?" •said Peter. •He was sitting on the sofa with Sally. •(After all these years he really could not call her "Lady Rosseter.") •"Where's the woman gone to?" •he asked. •"Where's Clarissa?"	•"But where is Clarissa?" •said Peter. •He was sitting on the sofa with Sally. •(After all these years he really could not call her "Lady Rosseter.") •"Where's the woman gone to?" •he asked. •"Where's Clarissa?"
•Sally supposed, and so did Peter for the matter of that, that there were people of importance, politicians, whom neither of them knew unless by sight in the picture papers, whom Clarissa had to be nice to, had to talk to. •She was with them. •Yet there was Richard Dalloway not in the Cabinet. •He hadn't been a success, Sally supposed? •For herself, she scarcely ever read the papers. •She sometimes saw his name mentioned. •But then--well, she lived a very solitary life, in the wilds, Clarissa would say, among great merchants, great manufacturers, men, after all, who did things. •She had done things too!	•Sally supposed, and so did Peter for the matter of that, that there were people of importance, politicians, whom neither of them knew unless by sight in the picture papers, whom Clarissa had to be nice to, had to talk to. •She was with them. •Yet there was Richard Dalloway not in the Cabinet. •He hadn't been a success, Sally supposed? •For herself, she scarcely ever read the papers. •She sometimes saw his name mentioned. •But then--well, she lived a very solitary life, in the wilds, Clarissa would say, among great merchants, great manufacturers, men, after all, who did things. •She had done things too!
•"I have five sons!" •she told him.	•"I have five sons!" •she told him.
•Lord, Lord, what a change had come over her! •the softness of motherhood; its egotism too. •Last time they met, Peter remembered, had been among the cauliflowers in the moonlight, the leaves "like rough bronze" she had said, with her literary turn; and she had picked a rose. •She had marched him up and down that awful night, after the scene by the fountain; he was to catch the midnight train. •Heavens, he had wept!	•Lord, Lord, what a change had come over her! •the softness of motherhood; its egotism too. •Last time they met, Peter remembered, had been among the cauliflowers in the moonlight, the leaves "like rough bronze" she had said, with her literary turn; and she had picked a rose. •She had marched him up and down that awful night, after the scene by the fountain; he was to catch the midnight train. •Heavens, he had wept!
•That was his old trick, opening a pocket-knife, thought Sally, always opening and shutting a knife when he got excited. •They had been very, very intimate, she and Peter Walsh, when he was in love with Clarissa, and there was that dreadful, ridiculous scene over Richard Dalloway at lunch. •She had called Richard "Wickham." •Why not call Richard "Wickham"? •Clarissa had flared up! •and indeed they had never seen each other since, she and Clarissa, not more than half a dozen times perhaps in the last ten years. •And Peter Walsh had gone off to India, and she had heard vaguely that he had made an unhappy marriage, and she didn't know whether he had any children, and she couldn't ask him, for he had changed. •He was rather shrivelled-looking, but kinder, she felt, and she had a real affection for him, for he was connected with her youth, and she still had a little Emily Brontë he had given her, and he was to write, surely? •In those days he was to write.	•That was his old trick, opening a pocket-knife, thought Sally, always opening and shutting a knife when he got excited. •They had been very, very intimate, she and Peter Walsh, when he was in love with Clarissa, and there was that dreadful, ridiculous scene over Richard Dalloway at lunch. •She had called Richard "Wickham." •Why not call Richard "Wickham"? •Clarissa had flared up! •and indeed they had never seen each other since, she and Clarissa, not more than half a dozen times perhaps in the last ten years. •And Peter Walsh had gone off to India, and she had heard vaguely that he had made an unhappy marriage, and she didn't know whether he had any children, and she couldn't ask him, for he had changed. •He was rather shrivelled-looking, but kinder, she felt, and she had a real affection for him, for he was connected with her youth, and she still had a little Emily Brontë he had given her, and he was to write, surely? •In those days he was to write.
•"Have you written?" •she asked him, spreading her hand, her firm and shapely hand, on her knee in a way he recalled.	•"Have you written?" •she asked him, spreading her hand, her firm and shapely hand, on her knee in a way he recalled.
•"Not a word!" •said Peter Walsh, and she laughed.	•"Not a word!" •said Peter Walsh, and she laughed.
•She was still attractive, still a personage, Sally Seton. •But who was this Rosseter? •He wore two camellias on his wedding day--that was all Peter knew of him. •"They have myriads of servants, miles of conservatories," Clarissa wrote; something like that. •Sally owned it with a shout of laughter.	•She was still attractive, still a personage, Sally Seton. •But who was this Rosseter? •He wore two camellias on his wedding day--that was all Peter knew of him. •"They have myriads of servants, miles of conservatories," Clarissa wrote; something like that. •Sally owned it with a shout of laughter.
•"Yes, I have ten thousand a year"--whether before the tax was paid or after, she couldn't remember, for her husband, "whom you must meet," she said, "whom you would like," she said, did all that for her.	•"Yes, I have ten thousand a year"--whether before the tax was paid or after, she couldn't remember, for her husband, "whom you must meet," she said, "whom you would like," she said, did all that for her.
•And Sally used to be in rags and tatters. •She had pawned her grandmother's ring which Marie Antoinette had given her great-grandfather to come to Bourton.	•And Sally used to be in rags and tatters. •She had pawned her grandmother's ring which Marie Antoinette had given her great-grandfather to come to Bourton.
•Oh yes, Sally remembered; she had it still, a ruby ring which Marie Antoinette had given her great-grandfather. •She never had a penny to her name in those days, and going to Bourton always meant some frightful pinch. •But going to Bourton had meant so much to her--had kept her sane, she believed, so unhappy had she been at home. •But that was all a thing of the past--all over now, she said. •And Mr. Parry was dead; and Miss Parry was still alive. •Never had he had such a shock in his life! •said Peter. •He had been quite certain she was dead. •And the marriage had been, Sally supposed, a success? •And that very handsome, very self-possessed young woman was Elizabeth, over there, by the curtains, in red.	•Oh yes, Sally remembered; she had it still, a ruby ring which Marie Antoinette had given her great-grandfather. •She never had a penny to her name in those days, and going to Bourton always meant some frightful pinch. •But going to Bourton had meant so much to her--had kept her sane, she believed, so unhappy had she been at home. •But that was all a thing of the past--all over now, she said. •And Mr. Parry was dead; and Miss Parry was still alive. •Never had he had such a shock in his life! •said Peter. •He had been quite certain she was dead. •And the marriage had been, Sally supposed, a success? •And that very handsome, very self-possessed young woman was Elizabeth, over there, by the curtains, in red.
•(She was like a poplar, she was like a river, she was like a hyacinth, Willie Titcomb was thinking. •Oh how much nicer to be in the country and do what she liked! •She could hear her poor dog howling, Elizabeth was certain.) •She was not a bit like Clarissa, Peter Walsh said.	•(She was like a poplar, she was like a river, she was like a hyacinth, Willie Titcomb was thinking. •Oh how much nicer to be in the country and do what she liked! •She could hear her poor dog howling, Elizabeth was certain.) •She was not a bit like Clarissa, Peter Walsh said.
•"Oh, Clarissa!" •said Sally.	•"Oh, Clarissa!" •said Sally.
•What Sally felt was simply this. •She had owed Clarissa an enormous amount. •They had been friends, not acquaintances, friends, and she still saw Clarissa all in white going about the house with her hands full of flowers--to this day tobacco plants made her think of Bourton. •But--did Peter understand?--she lacked something. •Lacked what was it? •She had charm; she had extraordinary charm. •But to be frank (and she felt that Peter was an old friend, a real friend--did absence matter? •did distance matter? •She had often wanted to write to him, but torn it up, yet felt he understood, for people understand without things being said, as one realises growing old, and old she was, had been that afternoon to see her sons at Eton, where they had the mumps), to be quite frank then, how could Clarissa have done it?--married Richard Dalloway? •a sportsman, a man who cared only for dogs. •Literally, when he came into the room he smelt of the stables. •And then all this? •She waved her hand.	•What Sally felt was simply this. •She had owed Clarissa an enormous amount. •They had been friends, not acquaintances, friends, and she still saw Clarissa all in white going about the house with her hands full of flowers--to this day tobacco plants made her think of Bourton. •But--did Peter understand?--she lacked something. •Lacked what was it? •She had charm; she had extraordinary charm. •But to be frank (and she felt that Peter was an old friend, a real friend--did absence matter? •did distance matter? •She had often wanted to write to him, but torn it up, yet felt he understood, for people understand without things being said, as one realises growing old, and old she was, had been that afternoon to see her sons at Eton, where they had the mumps), to be quite frank then, how could Clarissa have done it?--married Richard Dalloway? •a sportsman, a man who cared only for dogs. •Literally, when he came into the room he smelt of the stables. •And then all this? •She waved her hand.
•Hugh Whitbread it was, strolling past in his white waistcoat, dim, fat, blind, past everything he looked, except self-esteem and comfort.	•Hugh Whitbread it was, strolling past in his white waistcoat, dim, fat, blind, past everything he looked, except self-esteem and comfort.
•"He's not going to recognise us," said Sally, and really she hadn't the courage--so that was Hugh! •the admirable Hugh!	•"He's not going to recognise us," said Sally, and really she hadn't the courage--so that was Hugh! •the admirable Hugh!
•"And what does he do?" •she asked Peter.	•"And what does he do?" •she asked Peter.
•He blacked the King's boots or counted bottles at Windsor, Peter told her. •Peter kept his sharp tongue still! •But Sally must be frank, Peter said. •That kiss now, Hugh's.	•He blacked the King's boots or counted bottles at Windsor, Peter told her. •Peter kept his sharp tongue still! •But Sally must be frank, Peter said. •That kiss now, Hugh's.
•On the lips, she assured him, in the smoking-room one evening. •She went straight to Clarissa in a rage. •Hugh didn't do such things! •Clarissa said, the admirable Hugh! •Hugh's socks were without exception the most beautiful she had ever seen--and now his evening dress. •Perfect! •And had he children?	•On the lips, she assured him, in the smoking-room one evening. •She went straight to Clarissa in a rage. •Hugh didn't do such things! •Clarissa said, the admirable Hugh! •Hugh's socks were without exception the most beautiful she had ever seen--and now his evening dress. •Perfect! •And had he children?
•"Everybody in the room has six sons at Eton," Peter told her, except himself. •He, thank God, had none. •No sons, no daughters, no wife. •Well, he didn't seem to mind, said Sally. •He looked younger, she thought, than any of them.	•"Everybody in the room has six sons at Eton," Peter told her, except himself. •He, thank God, had none. •No sons, no daughters, no wife. •Well, he didn't seem to mind, said Sally. •He looked younger, she thought, than any of them.
•But it had been a silly thing to do, in many ways, Peter said, to marry like that; "a perfect goose she was," he said, but, he said, "we had a splendid time of it," but how could that be? •Sally wondered; what did he mean? •and how odd it was to know him and yet not know a single thing that had happened to him. •And did he say it out of pride? •Very likely, for after all it must be galling for him (though he was an oddity, a sort of sprite, not at all an ordinary man), it must be lonely at his age to have no home, nowhere to go to. •But he must stay with them for weeks and weeks. •Of course he would; he would love to stay with them, and that was how it came out. •All these years the Dalloways had never been once. •Time after time they had asked them. •Clarissa (for it was Clarissa of course) would not come. •For, said Sally, Clarissa was at heart a snob--one had to admit it, a snob. •And it was that that was between them, she was convinced. •Clarissa thought she had married beneath her, her husband being--she was proud of it--a miner's son. •Every penny they had he had earned. •As a little boy (her voice trembled) he had carried great sacks.	•But it had been a silly thing to do, in many ways, Peter said, to marry like that; "a perfect goose she was," he said, but, he said, "we had a splendid time of it," but how could that be? •Sally wondered; what did he mean? •and how odd it was to know him and yet not know a single thing that had happened to him. •And did he say it out of pride? •Very likely, for after all it must be galling for him (though he was an oddity, a sort of sprite, not at all an ordinary man), it must be lonely at his age to have no home, nowhere to go to. •But he must stay with them for weeks and weeks. •Of course he would; he would love to stay with them, and that was how it came out. •All these years the Dalloways had never been once. •Time after time they had asked them. •Clarissa (for it was Clarissa of course) would not come. •For, said Sally, Clarissa was at heart a snob--one had to admit it, a snob. •And it was that that was between them, she was convinced. •Clarissa thought she had married beneath her, her husband being--she was proud of it--a miner's son. •Every penny they had he had earned. •As a little boy (her voice trembled) he had carried great sacks.
•(And so she would go on, Peter felt, hour after hour; the miner's son; people thought she had married beneath her; her five sons; and what was the other thing--plants, hydrangeas, syringas, very, very rare hibiscus lilies that never grow north of the Suez Canal, but she, with one gardener in a suburb near Manchester, had beds of them, positively beds! •Now all that Clarissa had escaped, unmaternal as she was.)	•(And so she would go on, Peter felt, hour after hour; the miner's son; people thought she had married beneath her; her five sons; and what was the other thing--plants, hydrangeas, syringas, very, very rare hibiscus lilies that never grow north of the Suez Canal, but she, with one gardener in a suburb near Manchester, had beds of them, positively beds! •Now all that Clarissa had escaped, unmaternal as she was.)
•A snob was she? •Yes, in many ways. •Where was she, all this time? •It was getting late.	•A snob was she? •Yes, in many ways. •Where was she, all this time? •It was getting late.
•"Yet," said Sally, "when I heard Clarissa was giving a party, I felt I couldn't not come--must see her again (and I'm staying in Victoria Street, practically next door). •So I just came without an invitation. •But," she whispered, "tell me, do. •Who is this?"	•"Yet," said Sally, "when I heard Clarissa was giving a party, I felt I couldn't not come--must see her again (and I'm staying in Victoria Street, practically next door). •So I just came without an invitation. •But," she whispered, "tell me, do. •Who is this?"
•It was Mrs. Hilbery, looking for the door. •For how late it was getting! •And, she murmured, as the night grew later, as people went, one found old friends; quiet nooks and corners; and the loveliest views. •Did they know, she asked, that they were surrounded by an enchanted garden? •Lights and trees and wonderful gleaming lakes and the sky. •Just a few fairy lamps, Clarissa Dalloway had said, in the back garden! •But she was a magician! •It was a park. •. •. •. •And she didn't know their names, but friends she knew they were, friends without names, songs without words, always the best. •But there were so many doors, such unexpected places, she could not find her way.	•It was Mrs. Hilbery, looking for the door. •For how late it was getting! •And, she murmured, as the night grew later, as people went, one found old friends; quiet nooks and corners; and the loveliest views. •Did they know, she asked, that they were surrounded by an enchanted garden? •Lights and trees and wonderful gleaming lakes and the sky. •Just a few fairy lamps, Clarissa Dalloway had said, in the back garden! •But she was a magician! •It was a park. •. •. •. •And she didn't know their names, but friends she knew they were, friends without names, songs without words, always the best. •But there were so many doors, such unexpected places, she could not find her way.
•"Old Mrs. Hilbery," said Peter; but who was that? •that lady standing by the curtain all the evening, without speaking? •He knew her face; connected her with Bourton. •Surely she used to cut up underclothes at the large table in the window? •Davidson, was that her name?	•"Old Mrs. Hilbery," said Peter; but who was that? •that lady standing by the curtain all the evening, without speaking? •He knew her face; connected her with Bourton. •Surely she used to cut up underclothes at the large table in the window? •Davidson, was that her name?
•"Oh, that is Ellie Henderson," said Sally. •Clarissa was really very hard on her. •She was a cousin, very poor. •Clarissa was hard on people.	•"Oh, that is Ellie Henderson," said Sally. •Clarissa was really very hard on her. •She was a cousin, very poor. •Clarissa was hard on people.
•She was rather, said Peter. •Yet, said Sally, in her emotional way, with a rush of that enthusiasm which Peter used to love her for, yet dreaded a little now, so effusive she might become--how generous to her friends Clarissa was! •and what a rare quality one found it, and how sometimes at night or on Christmas Day, when she counted up her blessings, she put that friendship first. •They were young; that was it. •Clarissa was pure-hearted; that was it. •Peter would think her sentimental. •So she was. •For she had come to feel that it was the only thing worth saying--what one felt. •Cleverness was silly. •One must say simply what one felt.	•She was rather, said Peter. •Yet, said Sally, in her emotional way, with a rush of that enthusiasm which Peter used to love her for, yet dreaded a little now, so effusive she might become--how generous to her friends Clarissa was! •and what a rare quality one found it, and how sometimes at night or on Christmas Day, when she counted up her blessings, she put that friendship first. •They were young; that was it. •Clarissa was pure-hearted; that was it. •Peter would think her sentimental. •So she was. •For she had come to feel that it was the only thing worth saying--what one felt. •Cleverness was silly. •One must say simply what one felt.
•"But I do not know," said Peter Walsh, "what I feel."	•"But I do not know," said Peter Walsh, "what I feel."
•Poor Peter, thought Sally. •Why did not Clarissa come and talk to them? •That was what he was longing for. •She knew it. •All the time he was thinking only of Clarissa, and was fidgeting with his knife.	•Poor Peter, thought Sally. •Why did not Clarissa come and talk to them? •That was what he was longing for. •She knew it. •All the time he was thinking only of Clarissa, and was fidgeting with his knife.
•He had not found life simple, Peter said. •His relations with Clarissa had not been simple. •It had spoilt his life, he said. •(They had been so intimate--he and Sally Seton, it was absurd not to say it.) •One could not be in love twice, he said. •And what could she say? •Still, it is better to have loved (but he would think her sentimental--he used to be so sharp). •He must come and stay with them in Manchester. •That is all very true, he said. •All very true. •He would love to come and stay with them, directly he had done what he had to do in London.	•He had not found life simple, Peter said. •His relations with Clarissa had not been simple. •It had spoilt his life, he said. •(They had been so intimate--he and Sally Seton, it was absurd not to say it.) •One could not be in love twice, he said. •And what could she say? •Still, it is better to have loved (but he would think her sentimental--he used to be so sharp). •He must come and stay with them in Manchester. •That is all very true, he said. •All very true. •He would love to come and stay with them, directly he had done what he had to do in London.
•And Clarissa had cared for him more than she had ever cared for Richard. •Sally was positive of that.	•And Clarissa had cared for him more than she had ever cared for Richard. •Sally was positive of that.
•"No, no, no!" •said Peter (Sally should not have said that--she went too far). •That good fellow--there he was at the end of the room, holding forth, the same as ever, dear old Richard. •Who was he talking to? •Sally asked, that very distinguished-looking man? •Living in the wilds as she did, she had an insatiable curiosity to know who people were. •But Peter did not know. •He did not like his looks, he said, probably a Cabinet Minister. •Of them all, Richard seemed to him the best, he said--the most disinterested.	•"No, no, no!" •said Peter (Sally should not have said that--she went too far). •That good fellow--there he was at the end of the room, holding forth, the same as ever, dear old Richard. •Who was he talking to? •Sally asked, that very distinguished-looking man? •Living in the wilds as she did, she had an insatiable curiosity to know who people were. •But Peter did not know. •He did not like his looks, he said, probably a Cabinet Minister. •Of them all, Richard seemed to him the best, he said--the most disinterested.
•"But what has he done?" •Sally asked. •Public work, she supposed. •And were they happy together? •Sally asked (she herself was extremely happy); for, she admitted, she knew nothing about them, only jumped to conclusions, as one does, for what can one know even of the people one lives with every day? •she asked. •Are we not all prisoners? •She had read a wonderful play about a man who scratched on the wall of his cell, and she had felt that was true of life--one scratched on the wall. •Despairing of human relationships (people were so difficult), she often went into her garden and got from her flowers a peace which men and women never gave her. •But no; he did not like cabbages; he preferred human beings, Peter said. •Indeed, the young are beautiful, Sally said, watching Elizabeth cross the room. •How unlike Clarissa at her age! •Could he make anything of her? •She would not open her lips. •Not much, not yet, Peter admitted. •She was like a lily, Sally said, a lily by the side of a pool. •But Peter did not agree that we know nothing. •We know everything, he said; at least he did.	•"But what has he done?" •Sally asked. •Public work, she supposed. •And were they happy together? •Sally asked (she herself was extremely happy); for, she admitted, she knew nothing about them, only jumped to conclusions, as one does, for what can one know even of the people one lives with every day? •she asked. •Are we not all prisoners? •She had read a wonderful play about a man who scratched on the wall of his cell, and she had felt that was true of life--one scratched on the wall. •Despairing of human relationships (people were so difficult), she often went into her garden and got from her flowers a peace which men and women never gave her. •But no; he did not like cabbages; he preferred human beings, Peter said. •Indeed, the young are beautiful, Sally said, watching Elizabeth cross the room. •How unlike Clarissa at her age! •Could he make anything of her? •She would not open her lips. •Not much, not yet, Peter admitted. •She was like a lily, Sally said, a lily by the side of a pool. •But Peter did not agree that we know nothing. •We know everything, he said; at least he did.
•But these two, Sally whispered, these two coming now (and really she must go, if Clarissa did not come soon), this distinguished-looking man and his rather common-looking wife who had been talking to Richard--what could one know about people like that?	•But these two, Sally whispered, these two coming now (and really she must go, if Clarissa did not come soon), this distinguished-looking man and his rather common-looking wife who had been talking to Richard--what could one know about people like that?
•"That they're damnable humbugs," said Peter, looking at them casually. •He made Sally laugh.	•"That they're damnable humbugs," said Peter, looking at them casually. •He made Sally laugh.
•But Sir William Bradshaw stopped at the door to look at a picture. •He looked in the corner for the engraver's name. •His wife looked too. •Sir William Bradshaw was so interested in art.	•But Sir William Bradshaw stopped at the door to look at a picture. •He looked in the corner for the engraver's name. •His wife looked too. •Sir William Bradshaw was so interested in art.
•When one was young, said Peter, one was too much excited to know people. •Now that one was old, fifty-two to be precise (Sally was fifty-five, in body, she said, but her heart was like a girl's of twenty); now that one was mature then, said Peter, one could watch, one could understand, and one did not lose the power of feeling, he said. •No, that is true, said Sally. •She felt more deeply, more passionately, every year. •It increased, he said, alas, perhaps, but one should be glad of it--it went on increasing in his experience. •There was some one in India. •He would like to tell Sally about her. •He would like Sally to know her. •She was married, he said. •She had two small children. •They must all come to Manchester, said Sally--he must promise before they left.	•When one was young, said Peter, one was too much excited to know people. •Now that one was old, fifty-two to be precise (Sally was fifty-five, in body, she said, but her heart was like a girl's of twenty); now that one was mature then, said Peter, one could watch, one could understand, and one did not lose the power of feeling, he said. •No, that is true, said Sally. •She felt more deeply, more passionately, every year. •It increased, he said, alas, perhaps, but one should be glad of it--it went on increasing in his experience. •There was some one in India. •He would like to tell Sally about her. •He would like Sally to know her. •She was married, he said. •She had two small children. •They must all come to Manchester, said Sally--he must promise before they left.
•There's Elizabeth, he said, she feels not half what we feel, not yet. •But, said Sally, watching Elizabeth go to her father, one can see they are devoted to each other. •She could feel it by the way Elizabeth went to her father.	•There's Elizabeth, he said, she feels not half what we feel, not yet. •But, said Sally, watching Elizabeth go to her father, one can see they are devoted to each other. •She could feel it by the way Elizabeth went to her father.
•For her father had been looking at her, as he stood talking to the Bradshaws, and he had thought to himself, Who is that lovely girl? •And suddenly he realised that it was his Elizabeth, and he had not recognised her, she looked so lovely in her pink frock! •Elizabeth had felt him looking at her as she talked to Willie Titcomb. •So she went to him and they stood together, now that the party was almost over, looking at the people going, and the rooms getting emptier and emptier, with things scattered on the floor. •Even Ellie Henderson was going, nearly last of all, though no one had spoken to her, but she had wanted to see everything, to tell Edith. •And Richard and Elizabeth were rather glad it was over, but Richard was proud of his daughter. •And he had not meant to tell her, but he could not help telling her. •He had looked at her, he said, and he had wondered, Who is that lovely girl? •and it was his daughter! •That did make her happy. •But her poor dog was howling.	•For her father had been looking at her, as he stood talking to the Bradshaws, and he had thought to himself, Who is that lovely girl? •And suddenly he realised that it was his Elizabeth, and he had not recognised her, she looked so lovely in her pink frock! •Elizabeth had felt him looking at her as she talked to Willie Titcomb. •So she went to him and they stood together, now that the party was almost over, looking at the people going, and the rooms getting emptier and emptier, with things scattered on the floor. •Even Ellie Henderson was going, nearly last of all, though no one had spoken to her, but she had wanted to see everything, to tell Edith. •And Richard and Elizabeth were rather glad it was over, but Richard was proud of his daughter. •And he had not meant to tell her, but he could not help telling her. •He had looked at her, he said, and he had wondered, Who is that lovely girl? •and it was his daughter! •That did make her happy. •But her poor dog was howling.
•"Richard has improved. •You are right," said Sally. •"I shall go and talk to him. •I shall say goodnight. •What does the brain matter," said Lady Rosseter, getting up, "compared with the heart?"	•"Richard has improved. •You are right," said Sally. •"I shall go and talk to him. •I shall say goodnight. •What does the brain matter," said Lady Rosseter, getting up, "compared with the heart?"
•"I will come," said Peter, but he sat on for a moment. •What is this terror? •what is this ecstasy? •he thought to himself. •What is it that fills me with extraordinary excitement?	•"I will come," said Peter, but he sat on for a moment. •What is this terror? •what is this ecstasy? •he thought to himself. •What is it that fills me with extraordinary excitement?
•It is Clarissa, he said.	•It is Clarissa, he said.
•For there she was.	•For there she was.
•THE END	•THE END

unit 1

Part VIII.
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unit 2

Lucy came running full tilt downstairs, having just nipped in to the drawing-room to smooth a cover, to straighten a chair, to pause a moment and feel whoever came in must think how clean, how bright, how beautifully cared for, when they saw the beautiful silver, the brass fire-irons, the new chair-covers, and the curtains of yellow chintz: she appraised each; heard a roar of voices; people already coming up from dinner; she must fly!
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unit 3

The Prime Minister was coming, Agnes said: so she had heard them say in the dining-room, she said, coming in with a tray of glasses.
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unit 4

Did it matter, did it matter in the least, one Prime Minister more or less?
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unit 5

It made no difference at this hour of the night to Mrs. Walker among the plates, saucepans, cullenders, frying-pans, chicken in aspic, ice-cream freezers, pared crusts of bread, lemons, soup tureens, and pudding basins which, however hard they washed up in the scullery seemed to be all on top of her, on the kitchen table, on chairs, while the fire blared and roared, the electric lights glared, and still supper had to be laid.
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unit 6

All she felt was, one Prime Minister more or less made not a scrap of difference to Mrs. Walker.
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unit 7

The ladies were going upstairs already, said Lucy; the ladies were going up, one by one, Mrs. Dalloway walking last and almost always sending back some message to the kitchen, "My love to Mrs. Walker," that was it one night.
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unit 8

Next morning they would go over the dishes--the soup, the salmon; the salmon, Mrs. Walker knew, as usual underdone, for she always got nervous about the pudding and left it to Jenny; so it happened, the salmon was always underdone.
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unit 9

But some lady with fair hair and silver ornaments had said, Lucy said, about the entrée, was it really made at home?
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unit 10

But it was the salmon that bothered Mrs. Walker, as she spun the plates round and round, and pulled in dampers and pulled out dampers; and there came a burst of laughter from the dining-room; a voice speaking; then another burst of laughter--the gentlemen enjoying themselves when the ladies had gone.
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unit 11

The tokay, said Lucy running in.
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unit 12

Mr. Dalloway had sent for the tokay, from the Emperor's cellars, the Imperial Tokay.
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unit 13

It was borne through the kitchen.
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unit 14

Over her shoulder Lucy reported how Miss Elizabeth looked quite lovely; she couldn't take her eyes off her; in her pink dress, wearing the necklace Mr. Dalloway had given her.
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unit 15

Jenny must remember the dog, Miss Elizabeth's fox-terrier, which, since it bit, had to be shut up and might, Elizabeth thought, want something.
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unit 16

Jenny must remember the dog.
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unit 17

But Jenny was not going upstairs with all those people about.
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unit 18

There was a motor at the door already!
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unit 19

There was a ring at the bell--and the gentlemen still in the dining-room, drinking tokay!
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unit 20

There, they were going upstairs; that was the first to come, and now they would come faster and faster, so that Mrs. Parkinson (hired for parties) would leave the hall door ajar, and the hall would be full of gentlemen waiting (they stood waiting, sleeking down their hair) while the ladies took their cloaks off in the room along the passage; where Mrs. Barnet helped them, old Ellen Barnet, who had been with the family for forty years, and came every summer to help the ladies, and remembered mothers when they were girls, and though very unassuming did shake hands; said "milady" very respectfully, yet had a humorous way with her, looking at the young ladies, and ever so tactfully helping Lady Lovejoy, who had some trouble with her underbodice.
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unit 21

And they could not help feeling, Lady Lovejoy and Miss Alice, that some little privilege in the matter of brush and comb, was awarded them having known Mrs. Barnet--"thirty years, milady," Mrs. Barnet supplied her.
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unit 22

Young ladies did not use to rouge, said Lady Lovejoy, when they stayed at Bourton in the old days.
1 Translations, 1 Upvotes, Last Activity 21 hours ago

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unit 23

And Miss Alice didn't need rouge, said Mrs. Barnet, looking at her fondly.
1 Translations, 1 Upvotes, Last Activity 21 hours ago

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unit 24

There Mrs. Barnet would sit, in the cloakroom, patting down the furs, smoothing out the Spanish shawls, tidying the dressing-table, and knowing perfectly well, in spite of the furs and the embroideries, which were nice ladies, which were not.
1 Translations, 0 Upvotes, Last Activity 7 hours ago

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unit 25

The dear old body, said Lady Lovejoy, mounting the stairs, Clarissa's old nurse.
1 Translations, 0 Upvotes, Last Activity 7 hours ago

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unit 26

And then Lady Lovejoy stiffened.
1 Translations, 0 Upvotes, Last Activity 6 hours ago

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unit 27

"Lady and Miss Lovejoy," she said to Mr. Wilkins (hired for parties).
1 Translations, 0 Upvotes, Last Activity 6 hours ago

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unit 28

He had an admirable manner, as he bent and straightened himself, bent and straightened himself and announced with perfect impartiality "Lady and Miss Lovejoy .
1 Translations, 0 Upvotes, Last Activity 6 hours ago

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unit 29

.
1 Translations, 0 Upvotes, Last Activity 6 hours ago

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unit 30

.
1 Translations, 0 Upvotes, Last Activity 6 hours ago

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unit 31

Sir John and Lady Needham .
1 Translations, 0 Upvotes, Last Activity 6 hours ago

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unit 32

.
1 Translations, 0 Upvotes, Last Activity 6 hours ago

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unit 33

.
1 Translations, 0 Upvotes, Last Activity 6 hours ago

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unit 34

Miss Weld .
1 Translations, 0 Upvotes, Last Activity 6 hours ago

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unit 35

.
1 Translations, 0 Upvotes, Last Activity 6 hours ago

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unit 36

.
1 Translations, 0 Upvotes, Last Activity 6 hours ago

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unit 37

Mr.
1 Translations, 0 Upvotes, Last Activity 6 hours ago

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unit 38

Walsh."
1 Translations, 0 Upvotes, Last Activity 6 hours ago

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unit 39

His manner was admirable; his family life must be irreproachable, except that it seemed impossible that a being with greenish lips and shaven cheeks could ever have blundered into the nuisance of children.
1 Translations, 0 Upvotes, Last Activity 6 hours ago

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unit 40

"How delightful to see you!"
1 Translations, 0 Upvotes, Last Activity 6 hours ago

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unit 41

said Clarissa.
1 Translations, 0 Upvotes, Last Activity 6 hours ago

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unit 42

She said it to every one.
1 Translations, 0 Upvotes, Last Activity 6 hours ago

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unit 43

How delightful to see you!
1 Translations, 0 Upvotes, Last Activity 6 hours ago

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unit 44

She was at her worst--effusive, insincere.
1 Translations, 0 Upvotes, Last Activity 6 hours ago

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unit 45

It was a great mistake to have come.
1 Translations, 0 Upvotes, Last Activity 6 hours ago

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unit 46

He should have stayed at home and read his book, thought Peter Walsh; should have gone to a music hall; he should have stayed at home, for he knew no one.
1 Translations, 0 Upvotes, Last Activity 6 hours ago

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unit 47

Oh dear, it was going to be a failure; a complete failure, Clarissa felt it in her bones as dear old Lord Lexham stood there apologising for his wife who had caught cold at the Buckingham Palace garden party.
1 Translations, 0 Upvotes, Last Activity 5 hours ago

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unit 48

She could see Peter out of the tail of her eye, criticising her, there, in that corner.
1 Translations, 0 Upvotes, Last Activity 5 hours ago

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unit 49

Why, after all, did she do these things?
1 Translations, 0 Upvotes, Last Activity an hour ago

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unit 50

Why seek pinnacles and stand drenched in fire?
1 Translations, 0 Upvotes, Last Activity an hour ago

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unit 51

Might it consume her anyhow!
1 Translations, 0 Upvotes, Last Activity an hour ago

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unit 52

Burn her to cinders!
1 Translations, 0 Upvotes, Last Activity an hour ago

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unit 53

Better anything, better brandish one's torch and hurl it to earth than taper and dwindle away like some Ellie Henderson!
0 Translations, 0 Upvotes, Last Activity None

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unit 54

It was extraordinary how Peter put her into these states just by coming and standing in a corner.
0 Translations, 0 Upvotes, Last Activity None

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unit 55

He made her see herself; exaggerate.
0 Translations, 0 Upvotes, Last Activity None

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unit 56

It was idiotic.
0 Translations, 0 Upvotes, Last Activity None

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unit 57

But why did he come, then, merely to criticise?
0 Translations, 0 Upvotes, Last Activity None

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unit 58

Why always take, never give?
0 Translations, 0 Upvotes, Last Activity None

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unit 59

Why not risk one's one little point of view?
0 Translations, 0 Upvotes, Last Activity None

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unit 60

There he was wandering off, and she must speak to him.
0 Translations, 0 Upvotes, Last Activity None

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unit 61

But she would not get the chance.
0 Translations, 0 Upvotes, Last Activity None

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unit 62

Life was that--humiliation, renunciation.
0 Translations, 0 Upvotes, Last Activity None

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unit 63

What Lord Lexham was saying was that his wife would not wear her furs at the garden party because "my dear, you ladies are all alike"--Lady Lexham being seventy-five at least!
0 Translations, 0 Upvotes, Last Activity None

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unit 64

It was delicious, how they petted each other, that old couple.
0 Translations, 0 Upvotes, Last Activity None

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unit 65

She did like old Lord Lexham.
0 Translations, 0 Upvotes, Last Activity None

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unit 66

She did think it mattered, her party, and it made her feel quite sick to know that it was all going wrong, all falling flat.
0 Translations, 0 Upvotes, Last Activity None

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unit 67

Anything, any explosion, any horror was better than people wandering aimlessly, standing in a bunch at a corner like Ellie Henderson, not even caring to hold themselves upright.
0 Translations, 0 Upvotes, Last Activity None

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unit 68

Gently the yellow curtain with all the birds of Paradise blew out and it seemed as if there were a flight of wings into the room, right out, then sucked back.
0 Translations, 0 Upvotes, Last Activity None

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unit 69

(For the windows were open.)
0 Translations, 0 Upvotes, Last Activity None

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unit 70

Was it draughty, Ellie Henderson wondered?
0 Translations, 0 Upvotes, Last Activity None

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unit 71

She was subject to chills.
0 Translations, 0 Upvotes, Last Activity None

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unit 72

But it did not matter that she should come down sneezing to-morrow; it was the girls with their naked shoulders she thought of, being trained to think of others by an old father, an invalid, late vicar of Bourton, but he was dead now; and her chills never went to her chest, never.
0 Translations, 0 Upvotes, Last Activity None

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unit 73

It was the girls she thought of, the young girls with their bare shoulders, she herself having always been a wisp of a creature, with her thin hair and meagre profile; though now, past fifty, there was beginning to shine through some mild beam, something purified into distinction by years of self-abnegation but obscured again, perpetually, by her distressing gentility, her panic fear, which arose from three hundred pounds' income, and her weaponless state (she could not earn a penny) and it made her timid, and more and more disqualified year by year to meet well-dressed people who did this sort of thing every night of the season, merely telling their maids "I'll wear so and so," whereas Ellie Henderson ran out nervously and bought cheap pink flowers, half a dozen, and then threw a shawl over her old black dress.
0 Translations, 0 Upvotes, Last Activity None

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unit 74

For her invitation to Clarissa's party had come at the last moment.
0 Translations, 0 Upvotes, Last Activity None

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unit 75

She was not quite happy about it.
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unit 76

She had a sort of feeling that Clarissa had not meant to ask her this year.
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unit 77

Why should she?
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unit 78

There was no reason really, except that they had always known each other.
0 Translations, 0 Upvotes, Last Activity None

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unit 79

Indeed, they were cousins.
0 Translations, 0 Upvotes, Last Activity None

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unit 80

But naturally they had rather drifted apart, Clarissa being so sought after.
0 Translations, 0 Upvotes, Last Activity None

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unit 81

It was an event to her, going to a party.
0 Translations, 0 Upvotes, Last Activity None

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unit 82

It was quite a treat just to see the lovely clothes.
0 Translations, 0 Upvotes, Last Activity None

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unit 83

Wasn't that Elizabeth, grown up, with her hair done in the fashionable way, in the pink dress?
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unit 84

Yet she could not be more than seventeen.
0 Translations, 0 Upvotes, Last Activity None

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unit 85

She was very, very handsome.
0 Translations, 0 Upvotes, Last Activity None

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unit 86

But girls when they first came out didn't seem to wear white as they used.
0 Translations, 0 Upvotes, Last Activity None

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unit 87

(She must remember everything to tell Edith.)
0 Translations, 0 Upvotes, Last Activity None

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unit 88

Girls wore straight frocks, perfectly tight, with skirts well above the ankles.
0 Translations, 0 Upvotes, Last Activity None

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unit 89

It was not becoming, she thought.
0 Translations, 0 Upvotes, Last Activity None

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unit 90

So, with her weak eyesight, Ellie Henderson craned rather forward, and it wasn't so much she who minded not having any one to talk to (she hardly knew anybody there), for she felt that they were all such interesting people to watch; politicians presumably; Richard Dalloway's friends; but it was Richard himself who felt that he could not let the poor creature go on standing there all the evening by herself.
0 Translations, 0 Upvotes, Last Activity None

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unit 91

"Well, Ellie, and how's the world treating you?"
0 Translations, 0 Upvotes, Last Activity None

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unit 92

he said in his genial way, and Ellie Henderson, getting nervous and flushing and feeling that it was extraordinarily nice of him to come and talk to her, said that many people really felt the heat more than the cold.
0 Translations, 0 Upvotes, Last Activity None

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unit 93

"Yes, they do," said Richard Dalloway.
0 Translations, 0 Upvotes, Last Activity None

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unit 94

"Yes."
0 Translations, 0 Upvotes, Last Activity None

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unit 95

But what more did one say?
0 Translations, 0 Upvotes, Last Activity None

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unit 96

"Hullo, Richard," said somebody, taking him by the elbow, and, good Lord, there was old Peter, old Peter Walsh.
0 Translations, 0 Upvotes, Last Activity None

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unit 97

He was delighted to see him--ever so pleased to see him!
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unit 98

He hadn't changed a bit.
0 Translations, 0 Upvotes, Last Activity None

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unit 99

And off they went together walking right across the room, giving each other little pats, as if they hadn't met for a long time, Ellie Henderson thought, watching them go, certain she knew that man's face.
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unit 100

A tall man, middle aged, rather fine eyes, dark, wearing spectacles, with a look of John Burrows.
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unit 101

Edith would be sure to know.
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unit 102

The curtain with its flight of birds of Paradise blew out again.
0 Translations, 0 Upvotes, Last Activity None

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unit 103

And Clarissa saw--she saw Ralph Lyon beat it back, and go on talking.
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unit 104

So it wasn't a failure after all!
0 Translations, 0 Upvotes, Last Activity None

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unit 105

it was going to be all right now--her party.
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unit 106

It had begun.
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unit 107

It had started.
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unit 108

But it was still touch and go.
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unit 109

She must stand there for the present.
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unit 110

People seemed to come in a rush.
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unit 111

Colonel and Mrs. Garrod .
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unit 112

.
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unit 113

.
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unit 114

Mr. Hugh Whitbread .
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unit 115

.
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unit 116

.
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unit 117

Mr. Bowley .
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unit 118

.
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unit 119

.
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unit 120

Mrs. Hilbery .
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unit 121

.
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unit 122

.
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unit 123

Lady Mary Maddox .
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unit 124

.
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unit 125

.
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unit 126

Mr. Quin .
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unit 127

.
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unit 128

.
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unit 129

intoned Wilkin.
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unit 130

She had six or seven words with each, and they went on, they went into the rooms; into something now, not nothing, since Ralph Lyon had beat back the curtain.
0 Translations, 0 Upvotes, Last Activity None

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unit 131

And yet for her own part, it was too much of an effort.
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unit 132

She was not enjoying it.
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unit 133

It was too much like being--just anybody, standing there; anybody could do it; yet this anybody she did a little admire, couldn't help feeling that she had, anyhow, made this happen, that it marked a stage, this post that she felt herself to have become, for oddly enough she had quite forgotten what she looked like, but felt herself a stake driven in at the top of her stairs.
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unit 134

Every time she gave a party she had this feeling of being something not herself, and that every one was unreal in one way; much more real in another.
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unit 135

It was, she thought, partly their clothes, partly being taken out of their ordinary ways, partly the background, it was possible to say things you couldn't say anyhow else, things that needed an effort; possible to go much deeper.
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unit 136

But not for her; not yet anyhow.
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unit 137

"How delightful to see you!"
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unit 138

she said.
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unit 139

Dear old Sir Harry!
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unit 140

He would know every one.
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unit 141

And what was so odd about it was the sense one had as they came up the stairs one after another, Mrs. Mount and Celia, Herbert Ainsty, Mrs. Dakers--oh and Lady Bruton!
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unit 142

"How awfully good of you to come!"
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unit 143

she said, and she meant it--it was odd how standing there one felt them going on, going on, some quite old, some .
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unit 144

.
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unit 145

.
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unit 146

What name?
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unit 147

Lady Rosseter?
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unit 148

But who on earth was Lady Rosseter?
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unit 149

"Clarissa!"
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unit 150

That voice!
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unit 151

It was Sally Seton!
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unit 152

Sally Seton!
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unit 153

after all these years!
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unit 154

She loomed through a mist.
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unit 155

For she hadn't looked like that, Sally Seton, when Clarissa grasped the hot water can, to think of her under this roof, under this roof!
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unit 156

Not like that!
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unit 157

All on top of each other, embarrassed, laughing, words tumbled out--passing through London; heard from Clara Haydon; what a chance of seeing you!
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unit 158

So I thrust myself in--without an invitation.
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unit 159

.
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unit 160

.
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unit 161

.
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unit 162

One might put down the hot water can quite composedly.
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unit 163

The lustre had gone out of her.
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unit 164

Yet it was extraordinary to see her again, older, happier, less lovely.
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unit 165

They kissed each other, first this cheek then that, by the drawing-room door, and Clarissa turned, with Sally's hand in hers, and saw her rooms full, heard the roar of voices, saw the candlesticks, the blowing curtains, and the roses which Richard had given her.
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unit 166

"I have five enormous boys," said Sally.
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unit 167

She had the simplest egotism, the most open desire to be thought first always, and Clarissa loved her for being still like that.
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unit 168

"I can't believe it!"
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unit 169

she cried, kindling all over with pleasure at the thought of the past.
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unit 170

But alas, Wilkins; Wilkins wanted her; Wilkins was emitting in a voice of commanding authority as if the whole company must be admonished and the hostess reclaimed from frivolity, one name: "The Prime Minister," said Peter Walsh.
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unit 171

The Prime Minister?
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unit 172

Was it really?
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unit 173

Ellie Henderson marvelled.
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unit 174

What a thing to tell Edith!
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unit 175

One couldn't laugh at him.
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unit 176

He looked so ordinary.
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unit 177

You might have stood him behind a counter and bought biscuits--poor chap, all rigged up in gold lace.
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unit 178

And to be fair, as he went his rounds, first with Clarissa then with Richard escorting him, he did it very well.
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unit 179

He tried to look somebody.
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unit 180

It was amusing to watch.
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unit 181

Nobody looked at him.
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unit 182

They just went on talking, yet it was perfectly plain that they all knew, felt to the marrow of their bones, this majesty passing; this symbol of what they all stood for, English society.
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unit 183

Old Lady Bruton, and she looked very fine too, very stalwart in her lace, swam up, and they withdrew into a little room which at once became spied upon, guarded, and a sort of stir and rustle rippled through every one, openly: the Prime Minister!
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unit 184

Lord, lord, the snobbery of the English!
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unit 185

thought Peter Walsh, standing in the corner.
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unit 186

How they loved dressing up in gold lace and doing homage!
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unit 187

There!
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unit 188

That must be, by Jove it was, Hugh Whitbread, snuffing round the precincts of the great, grown rather fatter, rather whiter, the admirable Hugh!
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unit 189

He looked always as if he were on duty, thought Peter, a privileged, but secretive being, hoarding secrets which he would die to defend, though it was only some little piece of tittle-tattle dropped by a court footman, which would be in all the papers tomorrow.
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unit 190

Such were his rattles, his baubles, in playing with which he had grown white, come to the verge of old age, enjoying the respect and affection of all who had the privilege of knowing this type of the English public school man.
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unit 191

Inevitably one made up things like that about Hugh; that was his style; the style of those admirable letters which Peter had read thousands of miles across the sea in the Times, and had thanked God he was out of that pernicious hubble-bubble if it were only to hear baboons chatter and coolies beat their wives.
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unit 192

An olive-skinned youth from one of the Universities stood obsequiously by.
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unit 193

Him he would patronise, initiate, teach how to get on.
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unit 194

For he liked nothing better than doing kindnesses, making the hearts of old ladies palpitate with the joy of being thought of in their age, their affliction, thinking themselves quite forgotten, yet here was dear Hugh driving up and spending an hour talking of the past, remembering trifles, praising the home-made cake, though Hugh might eat cake with a Duchess any day of his life, and, to look at him, probably did spend a good deal of time in that agreeable occupation.
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unit 195

The All-judging, the All-merciful, might excuse.
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unit 196

Peter Walsh had no mercy.
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unit 197

Villains there must be, and God knows the rascals who get hanged for battering the brains of a girl out in a train do less harm on the whole than Hugh Whitbread and his kindness.
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unit 198

Look at him now, on tiptoe, dancing forward, bowing and scraping, as the Prime Minister and Lady Bruton emerged, intimating for all the world to see that he was privileged to say something, something private, to Lady Bruton as she passed.
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unit 199

She stopped.
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unit 200

She wagged her fine old head.
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unit 201

She was thanking him presumably for some piece of servility.
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unit 202

She had her toadies, minor officials in Government offices who ran about putting through little jobs on her behalf, in return for which she gave them luncheon.
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unit 203

But she derived from the eighteenth century.
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unit 204

She was all right.
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unit 205

And now Clarissa escorted her Prime Minister down the room, prancing, sparkling, with the stateliness of her grey hair.
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unit 206

She wore ear-rings, and a silver-green mermaid's dress.
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unit 207

Lolloping on the waves and braiding her tresses she seemed, having that gift still; to be; to exist; to sum it all up in the moment as she passed; turned, caught her scarf in some other woman's dress, unhitched it, laughed, all with the most perfect ease and air of a creature floating in its element.
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unit 208

But age had brushed her; even as a mermaid might behold in her glass the setting sun on some very clear evening over the waves.
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unit 209

There was a breath of tenderness; her severity, her prudery, her woodenness were all warmed through now, and she had about her as she said good-bye to the thick gold-laced man who was doing his best, and good luck to him, to look important, an inexpressible dignity; an exquisite cordiality; as if she wished the whole world well, and must now, being on the very verge and rim of things, take her leave.
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unit 210

So she made him think.
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unit 211

(But he was not in love.)
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unit 212

Indeed, Clarissa felt, the Prime Minister had been good to come.
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unit 213

And, walking down the room with him, with Sally there and Peter there and Richard very pleased, with all those people rather inclined, perhaps, to envy, she had felt that intoxication of the moment, that dilatation of the nerves of the heart itself till it seemed to quiver, steeped, upright;--yes, but after all it was what other people felt, that; for, though she loved it and felt it tingle and sting, still these semblances, these triumphs (dear old Peter, for example, thinking her so brilliant), had a hollowness; at arm's length they were, not in the heart; and it might be that she was growing old but they satisfied her no longer as they used; and suddenly, as she saw the Prime Minister go down the stairs, the gilt rim of the Sir Joshua picture of the little girl with a muff brought back Kilman with a rush; Kilman her enemy.
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unit 214

That was satisfying; that was real.
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unit 215

Ah, how she hated her--hot, hypocritical, corrupt; with all that power; Elizabeth's seducer; the woman who had crept in to steal and defile (Richard would say, What nonsense!).
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unit 216

She hated her: she loved her.
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unit 217

It was enemies one wanted, not friends--not Mrs. Durrant and Clara, Sir William and Lady Bradshaw, Miss Truelock and Eleanor Gibson (whom she saw coming upstairs).
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unit 218

They must find her if they wanted her.
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unit 219

She was for the party!
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unit 220

There was her old friend Sir Harry.
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unit 221

"Dear Sir Harry!"
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unit 222

she said, going up to the fine old fellow who had produced more bad pictures than any other two Academicians in the whole of St. John's Wood (they were always of cattle, standing in sunset pools absorbing moisture, or signifying, for he had a certain range of gesture, by the raising of one foreleg and the toss of the antlers, "the Approach of the Stranger"--all his activities, dining out, racing, were founded on cattle standing absorbing moisture in sunset pools).
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unit 223

"What are you laughing at?"
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unit 224

she asked him.
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unit 225

For Willie Titcomb and Sir Harry and Herbert Ainsty were all laughing.
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unit 226

But no.
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unit 227

Sir Harry could not tell Clarissa Dalloway (much though he liked her; of her type he thought her perfect, and threatened to paint her) his stories of the music hall stage.
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unit 228

He chaffed her about her party.
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unit 229

He missed his brandy.
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unit 230

These circles, he said, were above him.
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unit 231

But he liked her; respected her, in spite of her damnable, difficult upper-class refinement, which made it impossible to ask Clarissa Dalloway to sit on his knee.
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unit 232

And up came that wandering will-o'-the-wisp, that vagulous phosphorescence, old Mrs. Hilbery, stretching her hands to the blaze of his laughter (about the Duke and the Lady), which, as she heard it across the room, seemed to reassure her on a point which sometimes bothered her if she woke early in the morning and did not like to call her maid for a cup of tea; how it is certain we must die.
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unit 233

"They won't tell us their stories," said Clarissa.
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unit 234

"Dear Clarissa!"
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unit 235

exclaimed Mrs. Hilbery.
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unit 236

She looked to-night, she said, so like her mother as she first saw her walking in a garden in a grey hat.
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unit 237

And really Clarissa's eyes filled with tears.
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unit 238

Her mother, walking in a garden!
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unit 239

But alas, she must go.
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unit 240

For there was Professor Brierly, who lectured on Milton, talking to little Jim Hutton (who was unable even for a party like this to compass both tie and waistcoat or make his hair lie flat), and even at this distance they were quarrelling, she could see.
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unit 241

For Professor Brierly was a very queer fish.
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unit 242

With all those degrees, honours, lectureships between him and the scribblers he suspected instantly an atmosphere not favourable to his queer compound; his prodigious learning and timidity; his wintry charm without cordiality; his innocence blent with snobbery; he quivered if made conscious by a lady's unkempt hair, a youth's boots, of an underworld, very creditable doubtless, of rebels, of ardent young people; of would-be geniuses, and intimated with a little toss of the head, with a sniff--Humph!--the value of moderation; of some slight training in the classics in order to appreciate Milton.
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unit 243

Professor Brierly (Clarissa could see) wasn't hitting it off with little Jim Hutton (who wore red socks, his black being at the laundry) about Milton.
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unit 244

She interrupted.
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unit 245

She said she loved Bach.
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unit 246

So did Hutton.
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unit 247

That was the bond between them, and Hutton (a very bad poet) always felt that Mrs. Dalloway was far the best of the great ladies who took an interest in art.
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unit 248

It was odd how strict she was.
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unit 249

About music she was purely impersonal.
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unit 250

She was rather a prig.
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unit 251

But how charming to look at!
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unit 252

She made her house so nice if it weren't for her Professors.
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unit 253

Clarissa had half a mind to snatch him off and set him down at the piano in the back room.
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unit 254

For he played divinely.
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unit 255

"But the noise!"
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unit 256

she said.
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unit 257

"The noise!"
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unit 258

"The sign of a successful party."
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unit 259

Nodding urbanely, the Professor stepped delicately off.
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unit 260

"He knows everything in the whole world about Milton," said Clarissa.
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unit 261

"Does he indeed?"
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unit 262

said Hutton, who would imitate the Professor throughout Hampstead; the Professor on Milton; the Professor on moderation; the Professor stepping delicately off.
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unit 263

But she must speak to that couple, said Clarissa, Lord Gayton and Nancy Blow.
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unit 264

Not that they added perceptibly to the noise of the party.
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unit 265

They were not talking (perceptibly) as they stood side by side by the yellow curtains.
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unit 266

They would soon be off elsewhere, together; and never had very much to say in any circumstances.
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unit 267

They looked; that was all.
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unit 268

That was enough.
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unit 269

They looked so clean, so sound, she with an apricot bloom of powder and paint, but he scrubbed, rinsed, with the eyes of a bird, so that no ball could pass him or stroke surprise him.
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unit 270

He struck, he leapt, accurately, on the spot.
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unit 271

Ponies' mouths quivered at the end of his reins.
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unit 272

He had his honours, ancestral monuments, banners hanging in the church at home.
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unit 273

He had his duties; his tenants; a mother and sisters; had been all day at Lords, and that was what they were talking about--cricket, cousins, the movies--when Mrs. Dalloway came up.
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unit 274

Lord Gayton liked her most awfully.
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unit 275

So did Miss Blow.
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unit 276

She had such charming manners.
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unit 277

"It is angelic--it is delicious of you to have come!"
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unit 278

she said.
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unit 279

She loved Lords; she loved youth, and Nancy, dressed at enormous expense by the greatest artists in Paris, stood there looking as if her body had merely put forth, of its own accord, a green frill.
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unit 280

"I had meant to have dancing," said Clarissa.
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unit 281

For the young people could not talk.
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unit 282

And why should they?
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unit 283

Shout, embrace, swing, be up at dawn; carry sugar to ponies; kiss and caress the snouts of adorable chows; and then all tingling and streaming, plunge and swim.
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unit 284

But the enormous resources of the English language, the power it bestows, after all, of communicating feelings (at their age, she and Peter would have been arguing all the evening), was not for them.
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unit 285

They would solidify young.
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unit 286

They would be good beyond measure to the people on the estate, but alone, perhaps, rather dull.
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unit 287

"What a pity!"
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unit 288

she said.
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unit 289

"I had hoped to have dancing."
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unit 290

It was so extraordinarily nice of them to have come!
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unit 291

But talk of dancing!
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unit 292

The rooms were packed.
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unit 293

There was old Aunt Helena in her shawl.
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unit 294

Alas, she must leave them--Lord Gayton and Nancy Blow.
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unit 295

There was old Miss Parry, her aunt.
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unit 296

For Miss Helena Parry was not dead: Miss Parry was alive.
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unit 297

She was past eighty.
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unit 298

She ascended staircases slowly with a stick.
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unit 299

She was placed in a chair (Richard had seen to it).
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unit 300

People who had known Burma in the 'seventies were always led up to her.
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unit 301

Where had Peter got to?
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unit 302

They used to be such friends.
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unit 303

For at the mention of India, or even Ceylon, her eyes (only one was glass) slowly deepened, became blue, beheld, not human beings--she had no tender memories, no proud illusions about Viceroys, Generals, Mutinies--it was orchids she saw, and mountain passes and herself carried on the backs of coolies in the 'sixties over solitary peaks; or descending to uproot orchids (startling blossoms, never beheld before) which she painted in water-colour; an indomitable Englishwoman, fretful if disturbed by the War, say, which dropped a bomb at her very door, from her deep meditation over orchids and her own figure journeying in the 'sixties in India--but here was Peter.
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unit 304

"Come and talk to Aunt Helena about Burma," said Clarissa.
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unit 305

And yet he had not had a word with her all the evening!
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unit 306

"We will talk later," said Clarissa, leading him up to Aunt Helena, in her white shawl, with her stick.
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unit 307

"Peter Walsh," said Clarissa.
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unit 308

That meant nothing.
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unit 309

Clarissa had asked her.
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unit 310

It was tiring; it was noisy; but Clarissa had asked her.
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unit 311

So she had come.
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unit 312

It was a pity that they lived in London--Richard and Clarissa.
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unit 313

If only for Clarissa's health it would have been better to live in the country.
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unit 314

But Clarissa had always been fond of society.
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unit 315

"He has been in Burma," said Clarissa.
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unit 316

Ah.
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unit 317

She could not resist recalling what Charles Darwin had said about her little book on the orchids of Burma.
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unit 318

(Clarissa must speak to Lady Bruton.)
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unit 319

No doubt it was forgotten now, her book on the orchids of Burma, but it went into three editions before 1870, she told Peter.
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unit 320

She remembered him now.
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unit 321

He had been at Bourton (and he had left her, Peter Walsh remembered, without a word in the drawing-room that night when Clarissa had asked him to come boating).
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unit 322

"Richard so much enjoyed his lunch party," said Clarissa to Lady Bruton.
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unit 323

"Richard was the greatest possible help," Lady Bruton replied.
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unit 324

"He helped me to write a letter.
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unit 325

And how are you?"
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unit 326

"Oh, perfectly well!"
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unit 327

said Clarissa.
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unit 328

(Lady Bruton detested illness in the wives of politicians.)
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unit 329

"And there's Peter Walsh!"
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unit 330

said Lady Bruton (for she could never think of anything to say to Clarissa; though she liked her.
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unit 331

She had lots of fine qualities; but they had nothing in common--she and Clarissa.
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unit 332

It might have been better if Richard had married a woman with less charm, who would have helped him more in his work.
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unit 333

He had lost his chance of the Cabinet).
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unit 334

"There's Peter Walsh!"
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unit 335

she said, shaking hands with that agreeable sinner, that very able fellow who should have made a name for himself but hadn't (always in difficulties with women), and, of course, old Miss Parry.
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unit 336

Wonderful old lady!
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unit 337

Lady Bruton stood by Miss Parry's chair, a spectral grenadier, draped in black, inviting Peter Walsh to lunch; cordial; but without small talk, remembering nothing whatever about the flora or fauna of India.
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unit 338

She had been there, of course; had stayed with three Viceroys; thought some of the Indian civilians uncommonly fine fellows; but what a tragedy it was--the state of India!
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unit 339

The Prime Minister had just been telling her (old Miss Parry huddled up in her shawl, did not care what the Prime Minister had just been telling her), and Lady Bruton would like to have Peter Walsh's opinion, he being fresh from the centre, and she would get Sir Sampson to meet him, for really it prevented her from sleeping at night, the folly of it, the wickedness she might say, being a soldier's daughter.
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unit 340

She was an old woman now, not good for much.
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unit 341

But her house, her servants, her good friend Milly Brush--did he remember her?--were all there only asking to be used if--if they could be of help, in short.
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unit 342

For she never spoke of England, but this isle of men, this dear, dear land, was in her blood (without reading Shakespeare), and if ever a woman could have worn the helmet and shot the arrow, could have led troops to attack, ruled with indomitable justice barbarian hordes and lain under a shield noseless in a church, or made a green grass mound on some primeval hillside, that woman was Millicent Bruton.
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unit 343

Debarred by her sex and some truancy, too, of the logical faculty (she found it impossible to write a letter to the Times), she had the thought of Empire always at hand, and had acquired from her association with that armoured goddess her ramrod bearing, her robustness of demeanour, so that one could not figure her even in death parted from the earth or roaming territories over which, in some spiritual shape, the Union Jack had ceased to fly.
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unit 344

To be not English even among the dead--no, no!
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unit 345

Impossible!
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unit 346

But was it Lady Bruton (whom she used to know)?
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unit 347

Was it Peter Walsh grown grey?
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unit 348

Lady Rosseter asked herself (who had been Sally Seton).
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unit 349

It was old Miss Parry certainly--the old aunt who used to be so cross when she stayed at Bourton.
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unit 350

Never should she forget running along the passage naked, and being sent for by Miss Parry!
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unit 351

And Clarissa!
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unit 352

oh Clarissa!
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unit 353

Sally caught her by the arm.
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unit 354

Clarissa stopped beside them.
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unit 355

"But I can't stay," she said.
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unit 356

"I shall come later.
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unit 357

Wait," she said, looking at Peter and Sally.
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unit 358

They must wait, she meant, until all these people had gone.
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unit 359

"I shall come back," she said, looking at her old friends, Sally and Peter, who were shaking hands, and Sally, remembering the past no doubt, was laughing.
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unit 360

But her voice was wrung of its old ravishing richness; her eyes not aglow as they used to be, when she smoked cigars, when she ran down the passage to fetch her sponge bag, without a stitch of clothing on her, and Ellen Atkins asked, What if the gentlemen had met her?
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unit 361

But everybody forgave her.
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unit 362

She stole a chicken from the larder because she was hungry in the night; she smoked cigars in her bedroom; she left a priceless book in the punt.
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unit 363

But everybody adored her (except perhaps Papa).
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unit 364

It was her warmth; her vitality--she would paint, she would write.
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unit 365

Old women in the village never to this day forgot to ask after "your friend in the red cloak who seemed so bright."
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unit 366

She accused Hugh Whitbread, of all people (and there he was, her old friend Hugh, talking to the Portuguese Ambassador), of kissing her in the smoking-room to punish her for saying that women should have votes.
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unit 367

Vulgar men did, she said.
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unit 368

And Clarissa remembered having to persuade her not to denounce him at family prayers--which she was capable of doing with her daring, her recklessness, her melodramatic love of being the centre of everything and creating scenes, and it was bound, Clarissa used to think, to end in some awful tragedy; her death; her martyrdom; instead of which she had married, quite unexpectedly, a bald man with a large buttonhole who owned, it was said, cotton mills at Manchester.
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unit 369

And she had five boys!
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unit 370

She and Peter had settled down together.
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unit 371

They were talking: it seemed so familiar--that they should be talking.
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unit 372

They would discuss the past.
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unit 373

With the two of them (more even than with Richard) she shared her past; the garden; the trees; old Joseph Breitkopf singing Brahms without any voice; the drawing-room wallpaper; the smell of the mats.
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unit 374

A part of this Sally must always be; Peter must always be.
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unit 375

But she must leave them.
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unit 376

There were the Bradshaws, whom she disliked.
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unit 377

She must go up to Lady Bradshaw (in grey and silver, balancing like a sea-lion at the edge of its tank, barking for invitations, Duchesses, the typical successful man's wife), she must go up to Lady Bradshaw and say .
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unit 378

.
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unit 379

.
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unit 380

But Lady Bradshaw anticipated her.
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unit 381

"We are shockingly late, dear Mrs. Dalloway, we hardly dared to come in," she said.
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unit 382

And Sir William, who looked very distinguished, with his grey hair and blue eyes, said yes; they had not been able to resist the temptation.
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unit 383

He was talking to Richard about that Bill probably, which they wanted to get through the Commons.
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unit 384

Why did the sight of him, talking to Richard, curl her up?
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unit 385

He looked what he was, a great doctor.
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unit 386

A man absolutely at the head of his profession, very powerful, rather worn.
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unit 387

For think what cases came before him--people in the uttermost depths of misery; people on the verge of insanity; husbands and wives.
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unit 388

He had to decide questions of appalling difficulty.
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unit 389

Yet--what she felt was, one wouldn't like Sir William to see one unhappy.
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unit 390

No; not that man.
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unit 391

"How is your son at Eton?"
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unit 392

she asked Lady Bradshaw.
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unit 393

He had just missed his eleven, said Lady Bradshaw, because of the mumps.
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unit 394

His father minded even more than he did, she thought "being," she said, "nothing but a great boy himself."
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unit 395

Clarissa looked at Sir William, talking to Richard.
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unit 396

He did not look like a boy--not in the least like a boy.
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unit 397

She had once gone with some one to ask his advice.
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unit 398

He had been perfectly right; extremely sensible.
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unit 399

But Heavens--what a relief to get out to the street again!
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unit 400

There was some poor wretch sobbing, she remembered, in the waiting-room.
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unit 401

But she did not know what it was--about Sir William; what exactly she disliked.
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unit 402

Only Richard agreed with her, "didn't like his taste, didn't like his smell."
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unit 403

But he was extraordinarily able.
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unit 404

They were talking about this Bill.
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unit 405

Some case, Sir William was mentioning, lowering his voice.
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unit 406

It had its bearing upon what he was saying about the deferred effects of shell shock.
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unit 407

There must be some provision in the Bill.
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unit 408

Sinking her voice, drawing Mrs. Dalloway into the shelter of a common femininity, a common pride in the illustrious qualities of husbands and their sad tendency to overwork, Lady Bradshaw (poor goose--one didn't dislike her) murmured how, "just as we were starting, my husband was called up on the telephone, a very sad case.
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unit 409

A young man (that is what Sir William is telling Mr. Dalloway) had killed himself.
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unit 410

He had been in the army."
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unit 411

Oh!
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unit 412

thought Clarissa, in the middle of my party, here's death, she thought.
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unit 413

She went on, into the little room where the Prime Minister had gone with Lady Bruton.
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unit 414

Perhaps there was somebody there.
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unit 415

But there was nobody.
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unit 416

The chairs still kept the impress of the Prime Minister and Lady Bruton, she turned deferentially, he sitting four-square, authoritatively.
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unit 417

They had been talking about India.
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unit 418

There was nobody.
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unit 419

The party's splendour fell to the floor, so strange it was to come in alone in her finery.
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unit 420

What business had the Bradshaws to talk of death at her party?
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unit 421

A young man had killed himself.
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unit 422

And they talked of it at her party--the Bradshaws, talked of death.
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unit 423

He had killed himself--but how?
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unit 424

Always her body went through it first, when she was told, suddenly, of an accident; her dress flamed, her body burnt.
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unit 425

He had thrown himself from a window.
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unit 426

Up had flashed the ground; through him, blundering, bruising, went the rusty spikes.
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unit 427

There he lay with a thud, thud, thud in his brain, and then a suffocation of blackness.
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unit 428

So she saw it.
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unit 429

But why had he done it?
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unit 430

And the Bradshaws talked of it at her party!
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unit 431

She had once thrown a shilling into the Serpentine, never anything more.
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unit 432

But he had flung it away.
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unit 433

They went on living (she would have to go back; the rooms were still crowded; people kept on coming).
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unit 434

They (all day she had been thinking of Bourton, of Peter, of Sally), they would grow old.
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unit 435

A thing there was that mattered; a thing, wreathed about with chatter, defaced, obscured in her own life, let drop every day in corruption, lies, chatter.
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unit 436

This he had preserved.
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unit 437

Death was defiance.
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unit 438

Death was an attempt to communicate; people feeling the impossibility of reaching the centre which, mystically, evaded them; closeness drew apart; rapture faded, one was alone.
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unit 439

There was an embrace in death.
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unit 440

But this young man who had killed himself--had he plunged holding his treasure?
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unit 441

"If it were now to die, 'twere now to be most happy," she had said to herself once, coming down in white.
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unit 442

Or there were the poets and thinkers.
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unit 443

Suppose he had had that passion, and had gone to Sir William Bradshaw, a great doctor yet to her obscurely evil, without sex or lust, extremely polite to women, but capable of some indescribable outrage--forcing your soul, that was it--if this young man had gone to him, and Sir William had impressed him, like that, with his power, might he not then have said (indeed she felt it now), Life is made intolerable; they make life intolerable, men like that?
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unit 444

Then (she had felt it only this morning) there was the terror; the overwhelming incapacity, one's parents giving it into one's hands, this life, to be lived to the end, to be walked with serenely; there was in the depths of her heart an awful fear.
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unit 445

Even now, quite often if Richard had not been there reading the Times, so that she could crouch like a bird and gradually revive, send roaring up that immeasurable delight, rubbing stick to stick, one thing with another, she must have perished.
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unit 446

But that young man had killed himself.
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unit 447

Somehow it was her disaster--her disgrace.
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unit 448

It was her punishment to see sink and disappear here a man, there a woman, in this profound darkness, and she forced to stand here in her evening dress.
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unit 449

She had schemed; she had pilfered.
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unit 450

She was never wholly admirable.
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unit 451

She had wanted success.
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unit 452

Lady Bexborough and the rest of it.
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unit 453

And once she had walked on the terrace at Bourton.
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unit 454

It was due to Richard; she had never been so happy.
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unit 455

Nothing could be slow enough; nothing last too long.
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unit 456

No pleasure could equal, she thought, straightening the chairs, pushing in one book on the shelf, this having done with the triumphs of youth, lost herself in the process of living, to find it, with a shock of delight, as the sun rose, as the day sank.
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unit 457

Many a time had she gone, at Bourton when they were all talking, to look at the sky; or seen it between people's shoulders at dinner; seen it in London when she could not sleep.
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unit 458

She walked to the window.
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unit 459

It held, foolish as the idea was, something of her own in it, this country sky, this sky above Westminster.
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unit 460

She parted the curtains; she looked.
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unit 461

Oh, but how surprising!--in the room opposite the old lady stared straight at her!
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unit 462

She was going to bed.
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unit 463

And the sky.
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unit 464

It will be a solemn sky, she had thought, it will be a dusky sky, turning away its cheek in beauty.
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unit 465

But there it was--ashen pale, raced over quickly by tapering vast clouds.
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unit 466

It was new to her.
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unit 467

The wind must have risen.
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unit 468

She was going to bed, in the room opposite.
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unit 469

It was fascinating to watch her, moving about, that old lady, crossing the room, coming to the window.
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unit 470

Could she see her?
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unit 471

It was fascinating, with people still laughing and shouting in the drawing-room, to watch that old woman, quite quietly, going to bed.
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unit 472

She pulled the blind now.
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unit 473

The clock began striking.
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unit 474

The young man had killed himself; but she did not pity him; with the clock striking the hour, one, two, three, she did not pity him, with all this going on.
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unit 475

There!
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unit 476

the old lady had put out her light!
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unit 477

the whole house was dark now with this going on, she repeated, and the words came to her, Fear no more the heat of the sun.
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unit 478

She must go back to them.
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unit 479

But what an extraordinary night!
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unit 480

She felt somehow very like him--the young man who had killed himself.
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unit 481

She felt glad that he had done it; thrown it away.
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unit 482

The clock was striking.
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unit 483

The leaden circles dissolved in the air.
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unit 484

He made her feel the beauty; made her feel the fun.
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unit 485

But she must go back.
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unit 486

She must assemble.
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unit 487

She must find Sally and Peter.
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unit 488

And she came in from the little room.
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unit 489

"But where is Clarissa?"
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unit 490

said Peter.
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unit 491

He was sitting on the sofa with Sally.
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unit 492

(After all these years he really could not call her "Lady Rosseter.")
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unit 493

"Where's the woman gone to?"
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unit 494

he asked.
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unit 495

"Where's Clarissa?"
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unit 496

Sally supposed, and so did Peter for the matter of that, that there were people of importance, politicians, whom neither of them knew unless by sight in the picture papers, whom Clarissa had to be nice to, had to talk to.
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unit 497

She was with them.
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unit 498

Yet there was Richard Dalloway not in the Cabinet.
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unit 499

He hadn't been a success, Sally supposed?
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unit 500

For herself, she scarcely ever read the papers.
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unit 501

She sometimes saw his name mentioned.
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unit 502

But then--well, she lived a very solitary life, in the wilds, Clarissa would say, among great merchants, great manufacturers, men, after all, who did things.
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unit 503

She had done things too!
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unit 504

"I have five sons!"
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unit 505

she told him.
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unit 506

Lord, Lord, what a change had come over her!
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unit 507

the softness of motherhood; its egotism too.
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unit 508

Last time they met, Peter remembered, had been among the cauliflowers in the moonlight, the leaves "like rough bronze" she had said, with her literary turn; and she had picked a rose.
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unit 509

She had marched him up and down that awful night, after the scene by the fountain; he was to catch the midnight train.
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unit 510

Heavens, he had wept!
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unit 511

That was his old trick, opening a pocket-knife, thought Sally, always opening and shutting a knife when he got excited.
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unit 512

They had been very, very intimate, she and Peter Walsh, when he was in love with Clarissa, and there was that dreadful, ridiculous scene over Richard Dalloway at lunch.
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unit 513

She had called Richard "Wickham."
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unit 514

Why not call Richard "Wickham"?
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unit 515

Clarissa had flared up!
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unit 516

and indeed they had never seen each other since, she and Clarissa, not more than half a dozen times perhaps in the last ten years.
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unit 517

And Peter Walsh had gone off to India, and she had heard vaguely that he had made an unhappy marriage, and she didn't know whether he had any children, and she couldn't ask him, for he had changed.
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unit 518

He was rather shrivelled-looking, but kinder, she felt, and she had a real affection for him, for he was connected with her youth, and she still had a little Emily Brontë he had given her, and he was to write, surely?
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unit 519

In those days he was to write.
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unit 520

"Have you written?"
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unit 521

she asked him, spreading her hand, her firm and shapely hand, on her knee in a way he recalled.
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unit 522

"Not a word!"
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unit 523

said Peter Walsh, and she laughed.
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unit 524

She was still attractive, still a personage, Sally Seton.
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unit 525

But who was this Rosseter?
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unit 526

He wore two camellias on his wedding day--that was all Peter knew of him.
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unit 527

"They have myriads of servants, miles of conservatories," Clarissa wrote; something like that.
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unit 528

Sally owned it with a shout of laughter.
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unit 529

"Yes, I have ten thousand a year"--whether before the tax was paid or after, she couldn't remember, for her husband, "whom you must meet," she said, "whom you would like," she said, did all that for her.
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unit 530

And Sally used to be in rags and tatters.
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unit 531

She had pawned her grandmother's ring which Marie Antoinette had given her great-grandfather to come to Bourton.
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unit 532

Oh yes, Sally remembered; she had it still, a ruby ring which Marie Antoinette had given her great-grandfather.
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unit 533

She never had a penny to her name in those days, and going to Bourton always meant some frightful pinch.
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unit 534

But going to Bourton had meant so much to her--had kept her sane, she believed, so unhappy had she been at home.
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unit 535

But that was all a thing of the past--all over now, she said.
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unit 536

And Mr. Parry was dead; and Miss Parry was still alive.
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unit 537

Never had he had such a shock in his life!
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unit 538

said Peter.
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unit 539

He had been quite certain she was dead.
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unit 540

And the marriage had been, Sally supposed, a success?
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unit 541

And that very handsome, very self-possessed young woman was Elizabeth, over there, by the curtains, in red.
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unit 542

(She was like a poplar, she was like a river, she was like a hyacinth, Willie Titcomb was thinking.
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unit 543

Oh how much nicer to be in the country and do what she liked!
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unit 544

She could hear her poor dog howling, Elizabeth was certain.)
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unit 545

She was not a bit like Clarissa, Peter Walsh said.
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unit 546

"Oh, Clarissa!"
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unit 547

said Sally.
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unit 548

What Sally felt was simply this.
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unit 549

She had owed Clarissa an enormous amount.
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unit 550

They had been friends, not acquaintances, friends, and she still saw Clarissa all in white going about the house with her hands full of flowers--to this day tobacco plants made her think of Bourton.
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unit 551

But--did Peter understand?--she lacked something.
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unit 552

Lacked what was it?
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unit 553

She had charm; she had extraordinary charm.
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unit 554

But to be frank (and she felt that Peter was an old friend, a real friend--did absence matter?
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unit 555

did distance matter?
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unit 556

She had often wanted to write to him, but torn it up, yet felt he understood, for people understand without things being said, as one realises growing old, and old she was, had been that afternoon to see her sons at Eton, where they had the mumps), to be quite frank then, how could Clarissa have done it?--married Richard Dalloway?
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unit 557

a sportsman, a man who cared only for dogs.
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unit 558

Literally, when he came into the room he smelt of the stables.
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unit 559

And then all this?
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unit 560

She waved her hand.
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unit 561

Hugh Whitbread it was, strolling past in his white waistcoat, dim, fat, blind, past everything he looked, except self-esteem and comfort.
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unit 562

"He's not going to recognise us," said Sally, and really she hadn't the courage--so that was Hugh!
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unit 563

the admirable Hugh!
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unit 564

"And what does he do?"
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unit 565

she asked Peter.
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unit 566

He blacked the King's boots or counted bottles at Windsor, Peter told her.
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unit 567

Peter kept his sharp tongue still!
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unit 568

But Sally must be frank, Peter said.
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unit 569

That kiss now, Hugh's.
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unit 570

On the lips, she assured him, in the smoking-room one evening.
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unit 571

She went straight to Clarissa in a rage.
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unit 572

Hugh didn't do such things!
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unit 573

Clarissa said, the admirable Hugh!
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unit 574

Hugh's socks were without exception the most beautiful she had ever seen--and now his evening dress.
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unit 575

Perfect!
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unit 576

And had he children?
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unit 577

"Everybody in the room has six sons at Eton," Peter told her, except himself.
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unit 578

He, thank God, had none.
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unit 579

No sons, no daughters, no wife.
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unit 580

Well, he didn't seem to mind, said Sally.
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unit 581

He looked younger, she thought, than any of them.
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unit 582

But it had been a silly thing to do, in many ways, Peter said, to marry like that; "a perfect goose she was," he said, but, he said, "we had a splendid time of it," but how could that be?
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unit 583

Sally wondered; what did he mean?
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unit 584

and how odd it was to know him and yet not know a single thing that had happened to him.
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unit 585

And did he say it out of pride?
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unit 586

Very likely, for after all it must be galling for him (though he was an oddity, a sort of sprite, not at all an ordinary man), it must be lonely at his age to have no home, nowhere to go to.
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unit 587

But he must stay with them for weeks and weeks.
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unit 588

Of course he would; he would love to stay with them, and that was how it came out.
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unit 589

All these years the Dalloways had never been once.
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unit 590

Time after time they had asked them.
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unit 591

Clarissa (for it was Clarissa of course) would not come.
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unit 592

For, said Sally, Clarissa was at heart a snob--one had to admit it, a snob.
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unit 593

And it was that that was between them, she was convinced.
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unit 594

Clarissa thought she had married beneath her, her husband being--she was proud of it--a miner's son.
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unit 595

Every penny they had he had earned.
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unit 596

As a little boy (her voice trembled) he had carried great sacks.
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unit 597

(And so she would go on, Peter felt, hour after hour; the miner's son; people thought she had married beneath her; her five sons; and what was the other thing--plants, hydrangeas, syringas, very, very rare hibiscus lilies that never grow north of the Suez Canal, but she, with one gardener in a suburb near Manchester, had beds of them, positively beds!
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unit 598

Now all that Clarissa had escaped, unmaternal as she was.)
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unit 599

A snob was she?
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unit 600

Yes, in many ways.
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unit 601

Where was she, all this time?
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unit 602

It was getting late.
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unit 603

"Yet," said Sally, "when I heard Clarissa was giving a party, I felt I couldn't not come--must see her again (and I'm staying in Victoria Street, practically next door).
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unit 604

So I just came without an invitation.
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unit 605

But," she whispered, "tell me, do.
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unit 606

Who is this?"
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unit 607

It was Mrs. Hilbery, looking for the door.
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unit 608

For how late it was getting!
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unit 609

And, she murmured, as the night grew later, as people went, one found old friends; quiet nooks and corners; and the loveliest views.
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unit 610

Did they know, she asked, that they were surrounded by an enchanted garden?
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unit 611

Lights and trees and wonderful gleaming lakes and the sky.
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unit 612

Just a few fairy lamps, Clarissa Dalloway had said, in the back garden!
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unit 613

But she was a magician!
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unit 614

It was a park.
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unit 615

.
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unit 616

.
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unit 617

.
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unit 618

And she didn't know their names, but friends she knew they were, friends without names, songs without words, always the best.
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unit 619

But there were so many doors, such unexpected places, she could not find her way.
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unit 620

"Old Mrs. Hilbery," said Peter; but who was that?
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unit 621

that lady standing by the curtain all the evening, without speaking?
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unit 622

He knew her face; connected her with Bourton.
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unit 623

Surely she used to cut up underclothes at the large table in the window?
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unit 624

Davidson, was that her name?
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unit 625

"Oh, that is Ellie Henderson," said Sally.
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unit 626

Clarissa was really very hard on her.
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unit 627

She was a cousin, very poor.
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unit 628

Clarissa was hard on people.
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unit 629

She was rather, said Peter.
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unit 630

Yet, said Sally, in her emotional way, with a rush of that enthusiasm which Peter used to love her for, yet dreaded a little now, so effusive she might become--how generous to her friends Clarissa was!
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unit 631

and what a rare quality one found it, and how sometimes at night or on Christmas Day, when she counted up her blessings, she put that friendship first.
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unit 632

They were young; that was it.
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unit 633

Clarissa was pure-hearted; that was it.
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unit 634

Peter would think her sentimental.
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unit 635

So she was.
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unit 636

For she had come to feel that it was the only thing worth saying--what one felt.
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unit 637

Cleverness was silly.
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unit 638

One must say simply what one felt.
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unit 639

"But I do not know," said Peter Walsh, "what I feel."
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unit 640

Poor Peter, thought Sally.
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unit 641

Why did not Clarissa come and talk to them?
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unit 642

That was what he was longing for.
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unit 643

She knew it.
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unit 644

All the time he was thinking only of Clarissa, and was fidgeting with his knife.
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unit 645

He had not found life simple, Peter said.
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unit 646

His relations with Clarissa had not been simple.
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unit 647

It had spoilt his life, he said.
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unit 648

(They had been so intimate--he and Sally Seton, it was absurd not to say it.)
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unit 649

One could not be in love twice, he said.
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unit 650

And what could she say?
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unit 651

Still, it is better to have loved (but he would think her sentimental--he used to be so sharp).
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unit 652

He must come and stay with them in Manchester.
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unit 653

That is all very true, he said.
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unit 654

All very true.
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unit 655

He would love to come and stay with them, directly he had done what he had to do in London.
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unit 656

And Clarissa had cared for him more than she had ever cared for Richard.
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unit 657

Sally was positive of that.
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unit 658

"No, no, no!"
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unit 659

said Peter (Sally should not have said that--she went too far).
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unit 660

That good fellow--there he was at the end of the room, holding forth, the same as ever, dear old Richard.
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unit 661

Who was he talking to?
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unit 662

Sally asked, that very distinguished-looking man?
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unit 663

Living in the wilds as she did, she had an insatiable curiosity to know who people were.
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unit 664

But Peter did not know.
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unit 665

He did not like his looks, he said, probably a Cabinet Minister.
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unit 666

Of them all, Richard seemed to him the best, he said--the most disinterested.
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unit 667

"But what has he done?"
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unit 668

Sally asked.
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unit 669

Public work, she supposed.
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unit 670

And were they happy together?
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unit 671

Sally asked (she herself was extremely happy); for, she admitted, she knew nothing about them, only jumped to conclusions, as one does, for what can one know even of the people one lives with every day?
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unit 672

she asked.
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unit 673

Are we not all prisoners?
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unit 674

She had read a wonderful play about a man who scratched on the wall of his cell, and she had felt that was true of life--one scratched on the wall.
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unit 675

Despairing of human relationships (people were so difficult), she often went into her garden and got from her flowers a peace which men and women never gave her.
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unit 676

But no; he did not like cabbages; he preferred human beings, Peter said.
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unit 677

Indeed, the young are beautiful, Sally said, watching Elizabeth cross the room.
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unit 678

How unlike Clarissa at her age!
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unit 679

Could he make anything of her?
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unit 680

She would not open her lips.
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unit 681

Not much, not yet, Peter admitted.
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unit 682

She was like a lily, Sally said, a lily by the side of a pool.
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unit 683

But Peter did not agree that we know nothing.
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unit 684

We know everything, he said; at least he did.
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unit 685

But these two, Sally whispered, these two coming now (and really she must go, if Clarissa did not come soon), this distinguished-looking man and his rather common-looking wife who had been talking to Richard--what could one know about people like that?
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unit 686

"That they're damnable humbugs," said Peter, looking at them casually.
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unit 687

He made Sally laugh.
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unit 688

But Sir William Bradshaw stopped at the door to look at a picture.
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unit 689

He looked in the corner for the engraver's name.
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unit 690

His wife looked too.
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unit 691

Sir William Bradshaw was so interested in art.
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unit 692

When one was young, said Peter, one was too much excited to know people.
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unit 693

Now that one was old, fifty-two to be precise (Sally was fifty-five, in body, she said, but her heart was like a girl's of twenty); now that one was mature then, said Peter, one could watch, one could understand, and one did not lose the power of feeling, he said.
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unit 694

No, that is true, said Sally.
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unit 695

She felt more deeply, more passionately, every year.
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unit 696

It increased, he said, alas, perhaps, but one should be glad of it--it went on increasing in his experience.
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unit 697

There was some one in India.
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unit 698

He would like to tell Sally about her.
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unit 699

He would like Sally to know her.
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unit 700

She was married, he said.
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unit 701

She had two small children.
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unit 702

They must all come to Manchester, said Sally--he must promise before they left.
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unit 703

There's Elizabeth, he said, she feels not half what we feel, not yet.
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unit 704

But, said Sally, watching Elizabeth go to her father, one can see they are devoted to each other.
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unit 705

She could feel it by the way Elizabeth went to her father.
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unit 706

For her father had been looking at her, as he stood talking to the Bradshaws, and he had thought to himself, Who is that lovely girl?
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unit 707

And suddenly he realised that it was his Elizabeth, and he had not recognised her, she looked so lovely in her pink frock!
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unit 708

Elizabeth had felt him looking at her as she talked to Willie Titcomb.
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unit 709

So she went to him and they stood together, now that the party was almost over, looking at the people going, and the rooms getting emptier and emptier, with things scattered on the floor.
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unit 710

Even Ellie Henderson was going, nearly last of all, though no one had spoken to her, but she had wanted to see everything, to tell Edith.
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unit 711

And Richard and Elizabeth were rather glad it was over, but Richard was proud of his daughter.
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unit 712

And he had not meant to tell her, but he could not help telling her.
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unit 713

He had looked at her, he said, and he had wondered, Who is that lovely girl?
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unit 714

and it was his daughter!
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unit 715

That did make her happy.
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unit 716

But her poor dog was howling.
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unit 717

"Richard has improved.
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unit 718

You are right," said Sally.
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unit 719

"I shall go and talk to him.
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unit 720

I shall say goodnight.
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unit 721

What does the brain matter," said Lady Rosseter, getting up, "compared with the heart?"
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unit 722

"I will come," said Peter, but he sat on for a moment.
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unit 723

What is this terror?
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unit 724

what is this ecstasy?
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unit 725

he thought to himself.
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unit 726

What is it that fills me with extraordinary excitement?
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unit 727

It is Clarissa, he said.
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unit 728

For there she was.
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unit 729

THE END
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Part VIII.
Lucy came running full tilt downstairs, having just nipped in to the drawing-room to smooth a cover, to straighten a chair, to pause a moment and feel whoever came in must think how clean, how bright, how beautifully cared for, when they saw the beautiful silver, the brass fire-irons, the new chair-covers, and the curtains of yellow chintz: she appraised each; heard a roar of voices; people already coming up from dinner; she must fly!
The Prime Minister was coming, Agnes said: so she had heard them say in the dining-room, she said, coming in with a tray of glasses. Did it matter, did it matter in the least, one Prime Minister more or less? It made no difference at this hour of the night to Mrs. Walker among the plates, saucepans, cullenders, frying-pans, chicken in aspic, ice-cream freezers, pared crusts of bread, lemons, soup tureens, and pudding basins which, however hard they washed up in the scullery seemed to be all on top of her, on the kitchen table, on chairs, while the fire blared and roared, the electric lights glared, and still supper had to be laid. All she felt was, one Prime Minister more or less made not a scrap of difference to Mrs. Walker.
The ladies were going upstairs already, said Lucy; the ladies were going up, one by one, Mrs. Dalloway walking last and almost always sending back some message to the kitchen, "My love to Mrs. Walker," that was it one night. Next morning they would go over the dishes--the soup, the salmon; the salmon, Mrs. Walker knew, as usual underdone, for she always got nervous about the pudding and left it to Jenny; so it happened, the salmon was always underdone. But some lady with fair hair and silver ornaments had said, Lucy said, about the entrée, was it really made at home? But it was the salmon that bothered Mrs. Walker, as she spun the plates round and round, and pulled in dampers and pulled out dampers; and there came a burst of laughter from the dining-room; a voice speaking; then another burst of laughter--the gentlemen enjoying themselves when the ladies had gone. The tokay, said Lucy running in. Mr. Dalloway had sent for the tokay, from the Emperor's cellars, the Imperial Tokay.
It was borne through the kitchen. Over her shoulder Lucy reported how Miss Elizabeth looked quite lovely; she couldn't take her eyes off her; in her pink dress, wearing the necklace Mr. Dalloway had given her. Jenny must remember the dog, Miss Elizabeth's fox-terrier, which, since it bit, had to be shut up and might, Elizabeth thought, want something. Jenny must remember the dog. But Jenny was not going upstairs with all those people about. There was a motor at the door already! There was a ring at the bell--and the gentlemen still in the dining-room, drinking tokay!
There, they were going upstairs; that was the first to come, and now they would come faster and faster, so that Mrs. Parkinson (hired for parties) would leave the hall door ajar, and the hall would be full of gentlemen waiting (they stood waiting, sleeking down their hair) while the ladies took their cloaks off in the room along the passage; where Mrs. Barnet helped them, old Ellen Barnet, who had been with the family for forty years, and came every summer to help the ladies, and remembered mothers when they were girls, and though very unassuming did shake hands; said "milady" very respectfully, yet had a humorous way with her, looking at the young ladies, and ever so tactfully helping Lady Lovejoy, who had some trouble with her underbodice. And they could not help feeling, Lady Lovejoy and Miss Alice, that some little privilege in the matter of brush and comb, was awarded them having known Mrs. Barnet--"thirty years, milady," Mrs. Barnet supplied her. Young ladies did not use to rouge, said Lady Lovejoy, when they stayed at Bourton in the old days. And Miss Alice didn't need rouge, said Mrs. Barnet, looking at her fondly. There Mrs. Barnet would sit, in the cloakroom, patting down the furs, smoothing out the Spanish shawls, tidying the dressing-table, and knowing perfectly well, in spite of the furs and the embroideries, which were nice ladies, which were not. The dear old body, said Lady Lovejoy, mounting the stairs, Clarissa's old nurse.
And then Lady Lovejoy stiffened. "Lady and Miss Lovejoy," she said to Mr. Wilkins (hired for parties). He had an admirable manner, as he bent and straightened himself, bent and straightened himself and announced with perfect impartiality "Lady and Miss Lovejoy . . . Sir John and Lady Needham . . . Miss Weld . . . Mr. Walsh." His manner was admirable; his family life must be irreproachable, except that it seemed impossible that a being with greenish lips and shaven cheeks could ever have blundered into the nuisance of children.
"How delightful to see you!" said Clarissa. She said it to every one. How delightful to see you! She was at her worst--effusive, insincere. It was a great mistake to have come. He should have stayed at home and read his book, thought Peter Walsh; should have gone to a music hall; he should have stayed at home, for he knew no one.
Oh dear, it was going to be a failure; a complete failure, Clarissa felt it in her bones as dear old Lord Lexham stood there apologising for his wife who had caught cold at the Buckingham Palace garden party. She could see Peter out of the tail of her eye, criticising her, there, in that corner. Why, after all, did she do these things? Why seek pinnacles and stand drenched in fire? Might it consume her anyhow! Burn her to cinders! Better anything, better brandish one's torch and hurl it to earth than taper and dwindle away like some Ellie Henderson! It was extraordinary how Peter put her into these states just by coming and standing in a corner. He made her see herself; exaggerate. It was idiotic. But why did he come, then, merely to criticise? Why always take, never give? Why not risk one's one little point of view? There he was wandering off, and she must speak to him. But she would not get the chance. Life was that--humiliation, renunciation. What Lord Lexham was saying was that his wife would not wear her furs at the garden party because "my dear, you ladies are all alike"--Lady Lexham being seventy-five at least! It was delicious, how they petted each other, that old couple. She did like old Lord Lexham. She did think it mattered, her party, and it made her feel quite sick to know that it was all going wrong, all falling flat. Anything, any explosion, any horror was better than people wandering aimlessly, standing in a bunch at a corner like Ellie Henderson, not even caring to hold themselves upright.
Gently the yellow curtain with all the birds of Paradise blew out and it seemed as if there were a flight of wings into the room, right out, then sucked back. (For the windows were open.) Was it draughty, Ellie Henderson wondered? She was subject to chills. But it did not matter that she should come down sneezing to-morrow; it was the girls with their naked shoulders she thought of, being trained to think of others by an old father, an invalid, late vicar of Bourton, but he was dead now; and her chills never went to her chest, never. It was the girls she thought of, the young girls with their bare shoulders, she herself having always been a wisp of a creature, with her thin hair and meagre profile; though now, past fifty, there was beginning to shine through some mild beam, something purified into distinction by years of self-abnegation but obscured again, perpetually, by her distressing gentility, her panic fear, which arose from three hundred pounds' income, and her weaponless state (she could not earn a penny) and it made her timid, and more and more disqualified year by year to meet well-dressed people who did this sort of thing every night of the season, merely telling their maids "I'll wear so and so," whereas Ellie Henderson ran out nervously and bought cheap pink flowers, half a dozen, and then threw a shawl over her old black dress. For her invitation to Clarissa's party had come at the last moment. She was not quite happy about it. She had a sort of feeling that Clarissa had not meant to ask her this year.
Why should she? There was no reason really, except that they had always known each other. Indeed, they were cousins. But naturally they had rather drifted apart, Clarissa being so sought after. It was an event to her, going to a party. It was quite a treat just to see the lovely clothes. Wasn't that Elizabeth, grown up, with her hair done in the fashionable way, in the pink dress? Yet she could not be more than seventeen. She was very, very handsome. But girls when they first came out didn't seem to wear white as they used. (She must remember everything to tell Edith.) Girls wore straight frocks, perfectly tight, with skirts well above the ankles. It was not becoming, she thought.
So, with her weak eyesight, Ellie Henderson craned rather forward, and it wasn't so much she who minded not having any one to talk to (she hardly knew anybody there), for she felt that they were all such interesting people to watch; politicians presumably; Richard Dalloway's friends; but it was Richard himself who felt that he could not let the poor creature go on standing there all the evening by herself.
"Well, Ellie, and how's the world treating you?" he said in his genial way, and Ellie Henderson, getting nervous and flushing and feeling that it was extraordinarily nice of him to come and talk to her, said that many people really felt the heat more than the cold.
"Yes, they do," said Richard Dalloway. "Yes."
But what more did one say?
"Hullo, Richard," said somebody, taking him by the elbow, and, good Lord, there was old Peter, old Peter Walsh. He was delighted to see him--ever so pleased to see him! He hadn't changed a bit. And off they went together walking right across the room, giving each other little pats, as if they hadn't met for a long time, Ellie Henderson thought, watching them go, certain she knew that man's face. A tall man, middle aged, rather fine eyes, dark, wearing spectacles, with a look of John Burrows. Edith would be sure to know.
The curtain with its flight of birds of Paradise blew out again. And Clarissa saw--she saw Ralph Lyon beat it back, and go on talking. So it wasn't a failure after all! it was going to be all right now--her party. It had begun. It had started. But it was still touch and go. She must stand there for the present. People seemed to come in a rush.
Colonel and Mrs. Garrod . . . Mr. Hugh Whitbread . . . Mr. Bowley . . . Mrs. Hilbery . . . Lady Mary Maddox . . . Mr. Quin . . . intoned Wilkin. She had six or seven words with each, and they went on, they went into the rooms; into something now, not nothing, since Ralph Lyon had beat back the curtain.
And yet for her own part, it was too much of an effort. She was not enjoying it. It was too much like being--just anybody, standing there; anybody could do it; yet this anybody she did a little admire, couldn't help feeling that she had, anyhow, made this happen, that it marked a stage, this post that she felt herself to have become, for oddly enough she had quite forgotten what she looked like, but felt herself a stake driven in at the top of her stairs. Every time she gave a party she had this feeling of being something not herself, and that every one was unreal in one way; much more real in another. It was, she thought, partly their clothes, partly being taken out of their ordinary ways, partly the background, it was possible to say things you couldn't say anyhow else, things that needed an effort; possible to go much deeper. But not for her; not yet anyhow.
"How delightful to see you!" she said. Dear old Sir Harry! He would know every one.
And what was so odd about it was the sense one had as they came up the stairs one after another, Mrs. Mount and Celia, Herbert Ainsty, Mrs. Dakers--oh and Lady Bruton!
"How awfully good of you to come!" she said, and she meant it--it was odd how standing there one felt them going on, going on, some quite old, some . . .
What name? Lady Rosseter? But who on earth was Lady Rosseter?
"Clarissa!" That voice! It was Sally Seton! Sally Seton! after all these years! She loomed through a mist. For she hadn't looked like that, Sally Seton, when Clarissa grasped the hot water can, to think of her under this roof, under this roof! Not like that!
All on top of each other, embarrassed, laughing, words tumbled out--passing through London; heard from Clara Haydon; what a chance of seeing you! So I thrust myself in--without an invitation. . . .
One might put down the hot water can quite composedly. The lustre had gone out of her. Yet it was extraordinary to see her again, older, happier, less lovely. They kissed each other, first this cheek then that, by the drawing-room door, and Clarissa turned, with Sally's hand in hers, and saw her rooms full, heard the roar of voices, saw the candlesticks, the blowing curtains, and the roses which Richard had given her.
"I have five enormous boys," said Sally.
She had the simplest egotism, the most open desire to be thought first always, and Clarissa loved her for being still like that. "I can't believe it!" she cried, kindling all over with pleasure at the thought of the past.
But alas, Wilkins; Wilkins wanted her; Wilkins was emitting in a voice of commanding authority as if the whole company must be admonished and the hostess reclaimed from frivolity, one name:
"The Prime Minister," said Peter Walsh.
The Prime Minister? Was it really? Ellie Henderson marvelled. What a thing to tell Edith!
One couldn't laugh at him. He looked so ordinary. You might have stood him behind a counter and bought biscuits--poor chap, all rigged up in gold lace. And to be fair, as he went his rounds, first with Clarissa then with Richard escorting him, he did it very well. He tried to look somebody. It was amusing to watch. Nobody looked at him. They just went on talking, yet it was perfectly plain that they all knew, felt to the marrow of their bones, this majesty passing; this symbol of what they all stood for, English society. Old Lady Bruton, and she looked very fine too, very stalwart in her lace, swam up, and they withdrew into a little room which at once became spied upon, guarded, and a sort of stir and rustle rippled through every one, openly: the Prime Minister!
Lord, lord, the snobbery of the English! thought Peter Walsh, standing in the corner. How they loved dressing up in gold lace and doing homage! There! That must be, by Jove it was, Hugh Whitbread, snuffing round the precincts of the great, grown rather fatter, rather whiter, the admirable Hugh!
He looked always as if he were on duty, thought Peter, a privileged, but secretive being, hoarding secrets which he would die to defend, though it was only some little piece of tittle-tattle dropped by a court footman, which would be in all the papers tomorrow. Such were his rattles, his baubles, in playing with which he had grown white, come to the verge of old age, enjoying the respect and affection of all who had the privilege of knowing this type of the English public school man. Inevitably one made up things like that about Hugh; that was his style; the style of those admirable letters which Peter had read thousands of miles across the sea in the Times, and had thanked God he was out of that pernicious hubble-bubble if it were only to hear baboons chatter and coolies beat their wives. An olive-skinned youth from one of the Universities stood obsequiously by. Him he would patronise, initiate, teach how to get on. For he liked nothing better than doing kindnesses, making the hearts of old ladies palpitate with the joy of being thought of in their age, their affliction, thinking themselves quite forgotten, yet here was dear Hugh driving up and spending an hour talking of the past, remembering trifles, praising the home-made cake, though Hugh might eat cake with a Duchess any day of his life, and, to look at him, probably did spend a good deal of time in that agreeable occupation. The All-judging, the All-merciful, might excuse. Peter Walsh had no mercy. Villains there must be, and God knows the rascals who get hanged for battering the brains of a girl out in a train do less harm on the whole than Hugh Whitbread and his kindness. Look at him now, on tiptoe, dancing forward, bowing and scraping, as the Prime Minister and Lady Bruton emerged, intimating for all the world to see that he was privileged to say something, something private, to Lady Bruton as she passed. She stopped. She wagged her fine old head. She was thanking him presumably for some piece of servility. She had her toadies, minor officials in Government offices who ran about putting through little jobs on her behalf, in return for which she gave them luncheon. But she derived from the eighteenth century. She was all right.
And now Clarissa escorted her Prime Minister down the room, prancing, sparkling, with the stateliness of her grey hair. She wore ear-rings, and a silver-green mermaid's dress. Lolloping on the waves and braiding her tresses she seemed, having that gift still; to be; to exist; to sum it all up in the moment as she passed; turned, caught her scarf in some other woman's dress, unhitched it, laughed, all with the most perfect ease and air of a creature floating in its element. But age had brushed her; even as a mermaid might behold in her glass the setting sun on some very clear evening over the waves. There was a breath of tenderness; her severity, her prudery, her woodenness were all warmed through now, and she had about her as she said good-bye to the thick gold-laced man who was doing his best, and good luck to him, to look important, an inexpressible dignity; an exquisite cordiality; as if she wished the whole world well, and must now, being on the very verge and rim of things, take her leave. So she made him think. (But he was not in love.)
Indeed, Clarissa felt, the Prime Minister had been good to come. And, walking down the room with him, with Sally there and Peter there and Richard very pleased, with all those people rather inclined, perhaps, to envy, she had felt that intoxication of the moment, that dilatation of the nerves of the heart itself till it seemed to quiver, steeped, upright;--yes, but after all it was what other people felt, that; for, though she loved it and felt it tingle and sting, still these semblances, these triumphs (dear old Peter, for example, thinking her so brilliant), had a hollowness; at arm's length they were, not in the heart; and it might be that she was growing old but they satisfied her no longer as they used; and suddenly, as she saw the Prime Minister go down the stairs, the gilt rim of the Sir Joshua picture of the little girl with a muff brought back Kilman with a rush; Kilman her enemy. That was satisfying; that was real. Ah, how she hated her--hot, hypocritical, corrupt; with all that power; Elizabeth's seducer; the woman who had crept in to steal and defile (Richard would say, What nonsense!). She hated her: she loved her. It was enemies one wanted, not friends--not Mrs. Durrant and Clara, Sir William and Lady Bradshaw, Miss Truelock and Eleanor Gibson (whom she saw coming upstairs). They must find her if they wanted her. She was for the party!
There was her old friend Sir Harry.
"Dear Sir Harry!" she said, going up to the fine old fellow who had produced more bad pictures than any other two Academicians in the whole of St. John's Wood (they were always of cattle, standing in sunset pools absorbing moisture, or signifying, for he had a certain range of gesture, by the raising of one foreleg and the toss of the antlers, "the Approach of the Stranger"--all his activities, dining out, racing, were founded on cattle standing absorbing moisture in sunset pools).
"What are you laughing at?" she asked him. For Willie Titcomb and Sir Harry and Herbert Ainsty were all laughing. But no. Sir Harry could not tell Clarissa Dalloway (much though he liked her; of her type he thought her perfect, and threatened to paint her) his stories of the music hall stage. He chaffed her about her party. He missed his brandy. These circles, he said, were above him. But he liked her; respected her, in spite of her damnable, difficult upper-class refinement, which made it impossible to ask Clarissa Dalloway to sit on his knee. And up came that wandering will-o'-the-wisp, that vagulous phosphorescence, old Mrs. Hilbery, stretching her hands to the blaze of his laughter (about the Duke and the Lady), which, as she heard it across the room, seemed to reassure her on a point which sometimes bothered her if she woke early in the morning and did not like to call her maid for a cup of tea; how it is certain we must die.
"They won't tell us their stories," said Clarissa.
"Dear Clarissa!" exclaimed Mrs. Hilbery. She looked to-night, she said, so like her mother as she first saw her walking in a garden in a grey hat.
And really Clarissa's eyes filled with tears. Her mother, walking in a garden! But alas, she must go.
For there was Professor Brierly, who lectured on Milton, talking to little Jim Hutton (who was unable even for a party like this to compass both tie and waistcoat or make his hair lie flat), and even at this distance they were quarrelling, she could see. For Professor Brierly was a very queer fish. With all those degrees, honours, lectureships between him and the scribblers he suspected instantly an atmosphere not favourable to his queer compound; his prodigious learning and timidity; his wintry charm without cordiality; his innocence blent with snobbery; he quivered if made conscious by a lady's unkempt hair, a youth's boots, of an underworld, very creditable doubtless, of rebels, of ardent young people; of would-be geniuses, and intimated with a little toss of the head, with a sniff--Humph!--the value of moderation; of some slight training in the classics in order to appreciate Milton. Professor Brierly (Clarissa could see) wasn't hitting it off with little Jim Hutton (who wore red socks, his black being at the laundry) about Milton. She interrupted.
She said she loved Bach. So did Hutton. That was the bond between them, and Hutton (a very bad poet) always felt that Mrs. Dalloway was far the best of the great ladies who took an interest in art. It was odd how strict she was. About music she was purely impersonal. She was rather a prig. But how charming to look at! She made her house so nice if it weren't for her Professors. Clarissa had half a mind to snatch him off and set him down at the piano in the back room. For he played divinely.
"But the noise!" she said. "The noise!"
"The sign of a successful party." Nodding urbanely, the Professor stepped delicately off.
"He knows everything in the whole world about Milton," said Clarissa.
"Does he indeed?" said Hutton, who would imitate the Professor throughout Hampstead; the Professor on Milton; the Professor on moderation; the Professor stepping delicately off.
But she must speak to that couple, said Clarissa, Lord Gayton and Nancy Blow.
Not that they added perceptibly to the noise of the party. They were not talking (perceptibly) as they stood side by side by the yellow curtains. They would soon be off elsewhere, together; and never had very much to say in any circumstances. They looked; that was all. That was enough. They looked so clean, so sound, she with an apricot bloom of powder and paint, but he scrubbed, rinsed, with the eyes of a bird, so that no ball could pass him or stroke surprise him. He struck, he leapt, accurately, on the spot. Ponies' mouths quivered at the end of his reins. He had his honours, ancestral monuments, banners hanging in the church at home. He had his duties; his tenants; a mother and sisters; had been all day at Lords, and that was what they were talking about--cricket, cousins, the movies--when Mrs. Dalloway came up. Lord Gayton liked her most awfully. So did Miss Blow. She had such charming manners.
"It is angelic--it is delicious of you to have come!" she said. She loved Lords; she loved youth, and Nancy, dressed at enormous expense by the greatest artists in Paris, stood there looking as if her body had merely put forth, of its own accord, a green frill.
"I had meant to have dancing," said Clarissa.
For the young people could not talk. And why should they? Shout, embrace, swing, be up at dawn; carry sugar to ponies; kiss and caress the snouts of adorable chows; and then all tingling and streaming, plunge and swim. But the enormous resources of the English language, the power it bestows, after all, of communicating feelings (at their age, she and Peter would have been arguing all the evening), was not for them. They would solidify young. They would be good beyond measure to the people on the estate, but alone, perhaps, rather dull.
"What a pity!" she said. "I had hoped to have dancing."
It was so extraordinarily nice of them to have come! But talk of dancing! The rooms were packed.
There was old Aunt Helena in her shawl. Alas, she must leave them--Lord Gayton and Nancy Blow. There was old Miss Parry, her aunt.
For Miss Helena Parry was not dead: Miss Parry was alive. She was past eighty. She ascended staircases slowly with a stick. She was placed in a chair (Richard had seen to it). People who had known Burma in the 'seventies were always led up to her. Where had Peter got to? They used to be such friends. For at the mention of India, or even Ceylon, her eyes (only one was glass) slowly deepened, became blue, beheld, not human beings--she had no tender memories, no proud illusions about Viceroys, Generals, Mutinies--it was orchids she saw, and mountain passes and herself carried on the backs of coolies in the 'sixties over solitary peaks; or descending to uproot orchids (startling blossoms, never beheld before) which she painted in water-colour; an indomitable Englishwoman, fretful if disturbed by the War, say, which dropped a bomb at her very door, from her deep meditation over orchids and her own figure journeying in the 'sixties in India--but here was Peter.
"Come and talk to Aunt Helena about Burma," said Clarissa.
And yet he had not had a word with her all the evening!
"We will talk later," said Clarissa, leading him up to Aunt Helena, in her white shawl, with her stick.
"Peter Walsh," said Clarissa.
That meant nothing.
Clarissa had asked her. It was tiring; it was noisy; but Clarissa had asked her. So she had come. It was a pity that they lived in London--Richard and Clarissa. If only for Clarissa's health it would have been better to live in the country. But Clarissa had always been fond of society.
"He has been in Burma," said Clarissa.
Ah. She could not resist recalling what Charles Darwin had said about her little book on the orchids of Burma.
(Clarissa must speak to Lady Bruton.)
No doubt it was forgotten now, her book on the orchids of Burma, but it went into three editions before 1870, she told Peter. She remembered him now. He had been at Bourton (and he had left her, Peter Walsh remembered, without a word in the drawing-room that night when Clarissa had asked him to come boating).
"Richard so much enjoyed his lunch party," said Clarissa to Lady Bruton.
"Richard was the greatest possible help," Lady Bruton replied. "He helped me to write a letter. And how are you?"
"Oh, perfectly well!" said Clarissa. (Lady Bruton detested illness in the wives of politicians.)
"And there's Peter Walsh!" said Lady Bruton (for she could never think of anything to say to Clarissa; though she liked her. She had lots of fine qualities; but they had nothing in common--she and Clarissa. It might have been better if Richard had married a woman with less charm, who would have helped him more in his work. He had lost his chance of the Cabinet). "There's Peter Walsh!" she said, shaking hands with that agreeable sinner, that very able fellow who should have made a name for himself but hadn't (always in difficulties with women), and, of course, old Miss Parry. Wonderful old lady!
Lady Bruton stood by Miss Parry's chair, a spectral grenadier, draped in black, inviting Peter Walsh to lunch; cordial; but without small talk, remembering nothing whatever about the flora or fauna of India. She had been there, of course; had stayed with three Viceroys; thought some of the Indian civilians uncommonly fine fellows; but what a tragedy it was--the state of India! The Prime Minister had just been telling her (old Miss Parry huddled up in her shawl, did not care what the Prime Minister had just been telling her), and Lady Bruton would like to have Peter Walsh's opinion, he being fresh from the centre, and she would get Sir Sampson to meet him, for really it prevented her from sleeping at night, the folly of it, the wickedness she might say, being a soldier's daughter. She was an old woman now, not good for much. But her house, her servants, her good friend Milly Brush--did he remember her?--were all there only asking to be used if--if they could be of help, in short. For she never spoke of England, but this isle of men, this dear, dear land, was in her blood (without reading Shakespeare), and if ever a woman could have worn the helmet and shot the arrow, could have led troops to attack, ruled with indomitable justice barbarian hordes and lain under a shield noseless in a church, or made a green grass mound on some primeval hillside, that woman was Millicent Bruton. Debarred by her sex and some truancy, too, of the logical faculty (she found it impossible to write a letter to the Times), she had the thought of Empire always at hand, and had acquired from her association with that armoured goddess her ramrod bearing, her robustness of demeanour, so that one could not figure her even in death parted from the earth or roaming territories over which, in some spiritual shape, the Union Jack had ceased to fly. To be not English even among the dead--no, no! Impossible!
But was it Lady Bruton (whom she used to know)? Was it Peter Walsh grown grey? Lady Rosseter asked herself (who had been Sally Seton). It was old Miss Parry certainly--the old aunt who used to be so cross when she stayed at Bourton. Never should she forget running along the passage naked, and being sent for by Miss Parry! And Clarissa! oh Clarissa! Sally caught her by the arm.
Clarissa stopped beside them.
"But I can't stay," she said. "I shall come later. Wait," she said, looking at Peter and Sally. They must wait, she meant, until all these people had gone.
"I shall come back," she said, looking at her old friends, Sally and Peter, who were shaking hands, and Sally, remembering the past no doubt, was laughing.
But her voice was wrung of its old ravishing richness; her eyes not aglow as they used to be, when she smoked cigars, when she ran down the passage to fetch her sponge bag, without a stitch of clothing on her, and Ellen Atkins asked, What if the gentlemen had met her? But everybody forgave her. She stole a chicken from the larder because she was hungry in the night; she smoked cigars in her bedroom; she left a priceless book in the punt. But everybody adored her (except perhaps Papa). It was her warmth; her vitality--she would paint, she would write. Old women in the village never to this day forgot to ask after "your friend in the red cloak who seemed so bright." She accused Hugh Whitbread, of all people (and there he was, her old friend Hugh, talking to the Portuguese Ambassador), of kissing her in the smoking-room to punish her for saying that women should have votes. Vulgar men did, she said. And Clarissa remembered having to persuade her not to denounce him at family prayers--which she was capable of doing with her daring, her recklessness, her melodramatic love of being the centre of everything and creating scenes, and it was bound, Clarissa used to think, to end in some awful tragedy; her death; her martyrdom; instead of which she had married, quite unexpectedly, a bald man with a large buttonhole who owned, it was said, cotton mills at Manchester. And she had five boys!
She and Peter had settled down together. They were talking: it seemed so familiar--that they should be talking. They would discuss the past. With the two of them (more even than with Richard) she shared her past; the garden; the trees; old Joseph Breitkopf singing Brahms without any voice; the drawing-room wallpaper; the smell of the mats. A part of this Sally must always be; Peter must always be. But she must leave them. There were the Bradshaws, whom she disliked. She must go up to Lady Bradshaw (in grey and silver, balancing like a sea-lion at the edge of its tank, barking for invitations, Duchesses, the typical successful man's wife), she must go up to Lady Bradshaw and say . . .
But Lady Bradshaw anticipated her.
"We are shockingly late, dear Mrs. Dalloway, we hardly dared to come in," she said.
And Sir William, who looked very distinguished, with his grey hair and blue eyes, said yes; they had not been able to resist the temptation. He was talking to Richard about that Bill probably, which they wanted to get through the Commons. Why did the sight of him, talking to Richard, curl her up? He looked what he was, a great doctor. A man absolutely at the head of his profession, very powerful, rather worn. For think what cases came before him--people in the uttermost depths of misery; people on the verge of insanity; husbands and wives. He had to decide questions of appalling difficulty. Yet--what she felt was, one wouldn't like Sir William to see one unhappy. No; not that man.
"How is your son at Eton?" she asked Lady Bradshaw.
He had just missed his eleven, said Lady Bradshaw, because of the mumps. His father minded even more than he did, she thought "being," she said, "nothing but a great boy himself."
Clarissa looked at Sir William, talking to Richard. He did not look like a boy--not in the least like a boy. She had once gone with some one to ask his advice. He had been perfectly right; extremely sensible. But Heavens--what a relief to get out to the street again! There was some poor wretch sobbing, she remembered, in the waiting-room. But she did not know what it was--about Sir William; what exactly she disliked. Only Richard agreed with her, "didn't like his taste, didn't like his smell." But he was extraordinarily able. They were talking about this Bill. Some case, Sir William was mentioning, lowering his voice. It had its bearing upon what he was saying about the deferred effects of shell shock. There must be some provision in the Bill.
Sinking her voice, drawing Mrs. Dalloway into the shelter of a common femininity, a common pride in the illustrious qualities of husbands and their sad tendency to overwork, Lady Bradshaw (poor goose--one didn't dislike her) murmured how, "just as we were starting, my husband was called up on the telephone, a very sad case. A young man (that is what Sir William is telling Mr. Dalloway) had killed himself. He had been in the army." Oh! thought Clarissa, in the middle of my party, here's death, she thought.
She went on, into the little room where the Prime Minister had gone with Lady Bruton. Perhaps there was somebody there. But there was nobody. The chairs still kept the impress of the Prime Minister and Lady Bruton, she turned deferentially, he sitting four-square, authoritatively. They had been talking about India. There was nobody. The party's splendour fell to the floor, so strange it was to come in alone in her finery.
What business had the Bradshaws to talk of death at her party? A young man had killed himself. And they talked of it at her party--the Bradshaws, talked of death. He had killed himself--but how? Always her body went through it first, when she was told, suddenly, of an accident; her dress flamed, her body burnt. He had thrown himself from a window. Up had flashed the ground; through him, blundering, bruising, went the rusty spikes. There he lay with a thud, thud, thud in his brain, and then a suffocation of blackness. So she saw it. But why had he done it? And the Bradshaws talked of it at her party!
She had once thrown a shilling into the Serpentine, never anything more. But he had flung it away. They went on living (she would have to go back; the rooms were still crowded; people kept on coming). They (all day she had been thinking of Bourton, of Peter, of Sally), they would grow old. A thing there was that mattered; a thing, wreathed about with chatter, defaced, obscured in her own life, let drop every day in corruption, lies, chatter. This he had preserved. Death was defiance. Death was an attempt to communicate; people feeling the impossibility of reaching the centre which, mystically, evaded them; closeness drew apart; rapture faded, one was alone. There was an embrace in death.
But this young man who had killed himself--had he plunged holding his treasure? "If it were now to die, 'twere now to be most happy," she had said to herself once, coming down in white.
Or there were the poets and thinkers. Suppose he had had that passion, and had gone to Sir William Bradshaw, a great doctor yet to her obscurely evil, without sex or lust, extremely polite to women, but capable of some indescribable outrage--forcing your soul, that was it--if this young man had gone to him, and Sir William had impressed him, like that, with his power, might he not then have said (indeed she felt it now), Life is made intolerable; they make life intolerable, men like that?
Then (she had felt it only this morning) there was the terror; the overwhelming incapacity, one's parents giving it into one's hands, this life, to be lived to the end, to be walked with serenely; there was in the depths of her heart an awful fear. Even now, quite often if Richard had not been there reading the Times, so that she could crouch like a bird and gradually revive, send roaring up that immeasurable delight, rubbing stick to stick, one thing with another, she must have perished. But that young man had killed himself.
Somehow it was her disaster--her disgrace. It was her punishment to see sink and disappear here a man, there a woman, in this profound darkness, and she forced to stand here in her evening dress. She had schemed; she had pilfered. She was never wholly admirable. She had wanted success. Lady Bexborough and the rest of it. And once she had walked on the terrace at Bourton.
It was due to Richard; she had never been so happy. Nothing could be slow enough; nothing last too long. No pleasure could equal, she thought, straightening the chairs, pushing in one book on the shelf, this having done with the triumphs of youth, lost herself in the process of living, to find it, with a shock of delight, as the sun rose, as the day sank. Many a time had she gone, at Bourton when they were all talking, to look at the sky; or seen it between people's shoulders at dinner; seen it in London when she could not sleep. She walked to the window.
It held, foolish as the idea was, something of her own in it, this country sky, this sky above Westminster. She parted the curtains; she looked. Oh, but how surprising!--in the room opposite the old lady stared straight at her! She was going to bed. And the sky. It will be a solemn sky, she had thought, it will be a dusky sky, turning away its cheek in beauty. But there it was--ashen pale, raced over quickly by tapering vast clouds. It was new to her. The wind must have risen. She was going to bed, in the room opposite. It was fascinating to watch her, moving about, that old lady, crossing the room, coming to the window. Could she see her? It was fascinating, with people still laughing and shouting in the drawing-room, to watch that old woman, quite quietly, going to bed. She pulled the blind now. The clock began striking. The young man had killed himself; but she did not pity him; with the clock striking the hour, one, two, three, she did not pity him, with all this going on. There! the old lady had put out her light! the whole house was dark now with this going on, she repeated, and the words came to her, Fear no more the heat of the sun. She must go back to them. But what an extraordinary night! She felt somehow very like him--the young man who had killed himself. She felt glad that he had done it; thrown it away. The clock was striking. The leaden circles dissolved in the air. He made her feel the beauty; made her feel the fun. But she must go back. She must assemble. She must find Sally and Peter. And she came in from the little room.
"But where is Clarissa?" said Peter. He was sitting on the sofa with Sally. (After all these years he really could not call her "Lady Rosseter.") "Where's the woman gone to?" he asked. "Where's Clarissa?"
Sally supposed, and so did Peter for the matter of that, that there were people of importance, politicians, whom neither of them knew unless by sight in the picture papers, whom Clarissa had to be nice to, had to talk to. She was with them. Yet there was Richard Dalloway not in the Cabinet. He hadn't been a success, Sally supposed? For herself, she scarcely ever read the papers. She sometimes saw his name mentioned. But then--well, she lived a very solitary life, in the wilds, Clarissa would say, among great merchants, great manufacturers, men, after all, who did things. She had done things too!
"I have five sons!" she told him.
Lord, Lord, what a change had come over her! the softness of motherhood; its egotism too. Last time they met, Peter remembered, had been among the cauliflowers in the moonlight, the leaves "like rough bronze" she had said, with her literary turn; and she had picked a rose. She had marched him up and down that awful night, after the scene by the fountain; he was to catch the midnight train. Heavens, he had wept!
That was his old trick, opening a pocket-knife, thought Sally, always opening and shutting a knife when he got excited. They had been very, very intimate, she and Peter Walsh, when he was in love with Clarissa, and there was that dreadful, ridiculous scene over Richard Dalloway at lunch. She had called Richard "Wickham." Why not call Richard "Wickham"? Clarissa had flared up! and indeed they had never seen each other since, she and Clarissa, not more than half a dozen times perhaps in the last ten years. And Peter Walsh had gone off to India, and she had heard vaguely that he had made an unhappy marriage, and she didn't know whether he had any children, and she couldn't ask him, for he had changed. He was rather shrivelled-looking, but kinder, she felt, and she had a real affection for him, for he was connected with her youth, and she still had a little Emily Brontë he had given her, and he was to write, surely? In those days he was to write.
"Have you written?" she asked him, spreading her hand, her firm and shapely hand, on her knee in a way he recalled.
"Not a word!" said Peter Walsh, and she laughed.
She was still attractive, still a personage, Sally Seton. But who was this Rosseter? He wore two camellias on his wedding day--that was all Peter knew of him. "They have myriads of servants, miles of conservatories," Clarissa wrote; something like that. Sally owned it with a shout of laughter.
"Yes, I have ten thousand a year"--whether before the tax was paid or after, she couldn't remember, for her husband, "whom you must meet," she said, "whom you would like," she said, did all that for her.
And Sally used to be in rags and tatters. She had pawned her grandmother's ring which Marie Antoinette had given her great-grandfather to come to Bourton.
Oh yes, Sally remembered; she had it still, a ruby ring which Marie Antoinette had given her great-grandfather. She never had a penny to her name in those days, and going to Bourton always meant some frightful pinch. But going to Bourton had meant so much to her--had kept her sane, she believed, so unhappy had she been at home. But that was all a thing of the past--all over now, she said. And Mr. Parry was dead; and Miss Parry was still alive. Never had he had such a shock in his life! said Peter. He had been quite certain she was dead. And the marriage had been, Sally supposed, a success? And that very handsome, very self-possessed young woman was Elizabeth, over there, by the curtains, in red.
(She was like a poplar, she was like a river, she was like a hyacinth, Willie Titcomb was thinking. Oh how much nicer to be in the country and do what she liked! She could hear her poor dog howling, Elizabeth was certain.) She was not a bit like Clarissa, Peter Walsh said.
"Oh, Clarissa!" said Sally.
What Sally felt was simply this. She had owed Clarissa an enormous amount. They had been friends, not acquaintances, friends, and she still saw Clarissa all in white going about the house with her hands full of flowers--to this day tobacco plants made her think of Bourton. But--did Peter understand?--she lacked something. Lacked what was it? She had charm; she had extraordinary charm. But to be frank (and she felt that Peter was an old friend, a real friend--did absence matter? did distance matter? She had often wanted to write to him, but torn it up, yet felt he understood, for people understand without things being said, as one realises growing old, and old she was, had been that afternoon to see her sons at Eton, where they had the mumps), to be quite frank then, how could Clarissa have done it?--married Richard Dalloway? a sportsman, a man who cared only for dogs. Literally, when he came into the room he smelt of the stables. And then all this? She waved her hand.
Hugh Whitbread it was, strolling past in his white waistcoat, dim, fat, blind, past everything he looked, except self-esteem and comfort.
"He's not going to recognise us," said Sally, and really she hadn't the courage--so that was Hugh! the admirable Hugh!
"And what does he do?" she asked Peter.
He blacked the King's boots or counted bottles at Windsor, Peter told her. Peter kept his sharp tongue still! But Sally must be frank, Peter said. That kiss now, Hugh's.
On the lips, she assured him, in the smoking-room one evening. She went straight to Clarissa in a rage. Hugh didn't do such things! Clarissa said, the admirable Hugh! Hugh's socks were without exception the most beautiful she had ever seen--and now his evening dress. Perfect! And had he children?
"Everybody in the room has six sons at Eton," Peter told her, except himself. He, thank God, had none. No sons, no daughters, no wife. Well, he didn't seem to mind, said Sally. He looked younger, she thought, than any of them.
But it had been a silly thing to do, in many ways, Peter said, to marry like that; "a perfect goose she was," he said, but, he said, "we had a splendid time of it," but how could that be? Sally wondered; what did he mean? and how odd it was to know him and yet not know a single thing that had happened to him. And did he say it out of pride? Very likely, for after all it must be galling for him (though he was an oddity, a sort of sprite, not at all an ordinary man), it must be lonely at his age to have no home, nowhere to go to. But he must stay with them for weeks and weeks. Of course he would; he would love to stay with them, and that was how it came out. All these years the Dalloways had never been once. Time after time they had asked them. Clarissa (for it was Clarissa of course) would not come. For, said Sally, Clarissa was at heart a snob--one had to admit it, a snob. And it was that that was between them, she was convinced. Clarissa thought she had married beneath her, her husband being--she was proud of it--a miner's son. Every penny they had he had earned. As a little boy (her voice trembled) he had carried great sacks.
(And so she would go on, Peter felt, hour after hour; the miner's son; people thought she had married beneath her; her five sons; and what was the other thing--plants, hydrangeas, syringas, very, very rare hibiscus lilies that never grow north of the Suez Canal, but she, with one gardener in a suburb near Manchester, had beds of them, positively beds! Now all that Clarissa had escaped, unmaternal as she was.)
A snob was she? Yes, in many ways. Where was she, all this time? It was getting late.
"Yet," said Sally, "when I heard Clarissa was giving a party, I felt I couldn't not come--must see her again (and I'm staying in Victoria Street, practically next door). So I just came without an invitation. But," she whispered, "tell me, do. Who is this?"
It was Mrs. Hilbery, looking for the door. For how late it was getting! And, she murmured, as the night grew later, as people went, one found old friends; quiet nooks and corners; and the loveliest views. Did they know, she asked, that they were surrounded by an enchanted garden? Lights and trees and wonderful gleaming lakes and the sky. Just a few fairy lamps, Clarissa Dalloway had said, in the back garden! But she was a magician! It was a park. . . . And she didn't know their names, but friends she knew they were, friends without names, songs without words, always the best. But there were so many doors, such unexpected places, she could not find her way.
"Old Mrs. Hilbery," said Peter; but who was that? that lady standing by the curtain all the evening, without speaking? He knew her face; connected her with Bourton. Surely she used to cut up underclothes at the large table in the window? Davidson, was that her name?
"Oh, that is Ellie Henderson," said Sally. Clarissa was really very hard on her. She was a cousin, very poor. Clarissa was hard on people.
She was rather, said Peter. Yet, said Sally, in her emotional way, with a rush of that enthusiasm which Peter used to love her for, yet dreaded a little now, so effusive she might become--how generous to her friends Clarissa was! and what a rare quality one found it, and how sometimes at night or on Christmas Day, when she counted up her blessings, she put that friendship first. They were young; that was it. Clarissa was pure-hearted; that was it. Peter would think her sentimental. So she was. For she had come to feel that it was the only thing worth saying--what one felt. Cleverness was silly. One must say simply what one felt.
"But I do not know," said Peter Walsh, "what I feel."
Poor Peter, thought Sally. Why did not Clarissa come and talk to them? That was what he was longing for. She knew it. All the time he was thinking only of Clarissa, and was fidgeting with his knife.
He had not found life simple, Peter said. His relations with Clarissa had not been simple. It had spoilt his life, he said. (They had been so intimate--he and Sally Seton, it was absurd not to say it.) One could not be in love twice, he said. And what could she say? Still, it is better to have loved (but he would think her sentimental--he used to be so sharp). He must come and stay with them in Manchester. That is all very true, he said. All very true. He would love to come and stay with them, directly he had done what he had to do in London.
And Clarissa had cared for him more than she had ever cared for Richard. Sally was positive of that.
"No, no, no!" said Peter (Sally should not have said that--she went too far). That good fellow--there he was at the end of the room, holding forth, the same as ever, dear old Richard. Who was he talking to? Sally asked, that very distinguished-looking man? Living in the wilds as she did, she had an insatiable curiosity to know who people were. But Peter did not know. He did not like his looks, he said, probably a Cabinet Minister. Of them all, Richard seemed to him the best, he said--the most disinterested.
"But what has he done?" Sally asked. Public work, she supposed. And were they happy together? Sally asked (she herself was extremely happy); for, she admitted, she knew nothing about them, only jumped to conclusions, as one does, for what can one know even of the people one lives with every day? she asked. Are we not all prisoners? She had read a wonderful play about a man who scratched on the wall of his cell, and she had felt that was true of life--one scratched on the wall. Despairing of human relationships (people were so difficult), she often went into her garden and got from her flowers a peace which men and women never gave her. But no; he did not like cabbages; he preferred human beings, Peter said. Indeed, the young are beautiful, Sally said, watching Elizabeth cross the room. How unlike Clarissa at her age! Could he make anything of her? She would not open her lips. Not much, not yet, Peter admitted. She was like a lily, Sally said, a lily by the side of a pool. But Peter did not agree that we know nothing. We know everything, he said; at least he did.
But these two, Sally whispered, these two coming now (and really she must go, if Clarissa did not come soon), this distinguished-looking man and his rather common-looking wife who had been talking to Richard--what could one know about people like that?
"That they're damnable humbugs," said Peter, looking at them casually. He made Sally laugh.
But Sir William Bradshaw stopped at the door to look at a picture. He looked in the corner for the engraver's name. His wife looked too. Sir William Bradshaw was so interested in art.
When one was young, said Peter, one was too much excited to know people. Now that one was old, fifty-two to be precise (Sally was fifty-five, in body, she said, but her heart was like a girl's of twenty); now that one was mature then, said Peter, one could watch, one could understand, and one did not lose the power of feeling, he said. No, that is true, said Sally. She felt more deeply, more passionately, every year. It increased, he said, alas, perhaps, but one should be glad of it--it went on increasing in his experience. There was some one in India. He would like to tell Sally about her. He would like Sally to know her. She was married, he said. She had two small children. They must all come to Manchester, said Sally--he must promise before they left.
There's Elizabeth, he said, she feels not half what we feel, not yet. But, said Sally, watching Elizabeth go to her father, one can see they are devoted to each other. She could feel it by the way Elizabeth went to her father.
For her father had been looking at her, as he stood talking to the Bradshaws, and he had thought to himself, Who is that lovely girl? And suddenly he realised that it was his Elizabeth, and he had not recognised her, she looked so lovely in her pink frock! Elizabeth had felt him looking at her as she talked to Willie Titcomb. So she went to him and they stood together, now that the party was almost over, looking at the people going, and the rooms getting emptier and emptier, with things scattered on the floor. Even Ellie Henderson was going, nearly last of all, though no one had spoken to her, but she had wanted to see everything, to tell Edith. And Richard and Elizabeth were rather glad it was over, but Richard was proud of his daughter. And he had not meant to tell her, but he could not help telling her. He had looked at her, he said, and he had wondered, Who is that lovely girl? and it was his daughter! That did make her happy. But her poor dog was howling.
"Richard has improved. You are right," said Sally. "I shall go and talk to him. I shall say goodnight. What does the brain matter," said Lady Rosseter, getting up, "compared with the heart?"
"I will come," said Peter, but he sat on for a moment. What is this terror? what is this ecstasy? he thought to himself. What is it that fills me with extraordinary excitement?
It is Clarissa, he said.
For there she was.
THE END