Chapter 2 — Chapter 2

Men must not cut down trees. There is a God.
(He noted such revelations on the backs of envelopes.)
Change the world. No one kills from
hatred. Make it known (he wrote it down). He
waited. He listened. A sparrow perched on the
railing opposite chirped Septimus, Septimus, four
or five times over and went on, drawing its notes
out, to sing freshly and piercingly in Greek words
how there is no crime and, joined by another sparrow,
they sang in voices prolonged and piercing in
Greek words, from trees in the meadow of life
beyond a river where the dead walk, how there is
no death.

There was his hand; there the dead. White
things were assembling behind the railings opposite.
But he dared not look. Evans was behind the
railings!

“What are you saying?” said Rezia suddenly, sitting
down by him.

Interrupted again! She was always interrupting.

Away from people—they must get away from
people, he said (jumping up), right away over there,
where there were chairs beneath a tree and the long
slope of the park dipped like a length of green stuff
with a ceiling cloth of blue and pink smoke high
above, and there was a rampart of far irregular
houses hazed in smoke, the traffic hummed in a
circle, and on the right, dun-coloured animals
stretched long necks over the Zoo palings, barking,
howling. There they sat down under a tree.

“Look,” she implored him, pointing at a little
troop of boys carrying cricket stumps, and one
shuffled, spun round on his heel and shuffled, as
if he were acting a clown at the music hall.

“Look,” she implored him, for Dr. Holmes had
told her to make him notice real things, go to a
music hall, play cricket—that was the very game,
Dr. Holmes said, a nice out-of-door game, the very
game for her husband.

“Look,” she repeated.

Look the unseen bade him, the voice which now
communicated with him who was the greatest of
mankind, Septimus, lately taken from life to death,
the Lord who had come to renew society, who lay
like a coverlet, a snow blanket smitten only by the
sun, for ever unwasted, suffering for ever, the scapegoat,
the eternal sufferer, but he did not want it,
he moaned, putting from him with a wave of his
hand that eternal suffering, that eternal loneliness.

“Look,” she repeated, for he must not talk aloud
to himself out of doors.

“Oh look,” she implored him. But what was
there to look at? A few sheep. That was all.

The way to Regent’s Park Tube station—could
they tell her the way to Regent’s Park Tube station—Maisie
Johnson wanted to know. She was
only up from Edinburgh two days ago.

“Not this way—over there!” Rezia exclaimed,
waving her aside, lest she should see Septimus.

Both seemed queer, Maisie Johnson thought.
Everything seemed very queer. In London for the
first time, come to take up a post at her uncle’s
in Leadenhall Street, and now walking through
Regent’s Park in the morning, this couple on the
chairs gave her quite a turn; the young woman
seeming foreign, the man looking queer; so that
should she be very old she would still remember
and make it jangle again among her memories how
she had walked through Regent’s Park on a fine
summer’s morning fifty years ago. For she was
only nineteen and had got her way at last, to come
to London; and now how queer it was, this couple
she had asked the way of, and the girl started and
jerked her hand, and the man—he seemed awfully
odd; quarrelling, perhaps; parting for ever, perhaps;
something was up, she knew; and now all
these people (for she returned to the Broad Walk),
the stone basins, the prim flowers, the old men and
women, invalids most of them in Bath chairs—all
seemed, after Edinburgh, so queer. And Maisie
Johnson, as she joined that gently trudging, vaguely
gazing, breeze-kissed company—squirrels perching
and preening, sparrow fountains fluttering for
crumbs, dogs busy with the railings, busy with each
other, while the soft warm air washed over them
and lent to the fixed unsurprised gaze with which
they received life something whimsical and mollified—Maisie
Johnson positively felt she must cry
Oh! (for that young man on the seat had given her
quite a turn. Something was up, she knew.)

Horror! horror! she wanted to cry. (She had
left her people; they had warned her what would
happen.)

Why hadn’t she stayed at home? she cried, twisting
the knob of the iron railing.

That girl, thought Mrs. Dempster (who saved
crusts for the squirrels and often ate her lunch in
Regent’s Park), don’t know a thing yet; and really
it seemed to her better to be a little stout, a little
slack, a little moderate in one’s expectations. Percy
drank. Well, better to have a son, thought Mrs.
Dempster. She had had a hard time of it, and
couldn’t help smiling at a girl like that. You’ll get
married, for you’re pretty enough, thought Mrs.
Dempster. Get married, she thought, and then
you’ll know. Oh, the cooks, and so on. Every
man has his ways. But whether I’d have chosen
quite like that if I could have known, thought Mrs.
Dempster, and could not help wishing to whisper a
word to Maisie Johnson; to feel on the creased
pouch of her worn old face the kiss of pity. For
it’s been a hard life, thought Mrs. Dempster. What
hadn’t she given to it? Roses; figure; her feet
too. (She drew the knobbed lumps beneath her
skirt.)

Roses, she thought sardonically. All trash,
m’dear. For really, what with eating, drinking, and
mating, the bad days and good, life had been no
mere matter of roses, and what was more, let me
tell you, Carrie Dempster had no wish to change
her lot with any woman’s in Kentish Town! But,
she implored, pity. Pity, for the loss of roses. Pity
she asked of Maisie Johnson, standing by the hyacinth
beds.

Ah, but that aeroplane! Hadn’t Mrs. Dempster
always longed to see foreign parts? She had a
nephew, a missionary. It soared and shot. She
always went on the sea at Margate, not out o’ sight
of land, but she had no patience with women who
were afraid of water. It swept and fell. Her stomach
was in her mouth. Up again. There’s a fine
young feller aboard of it, Mrs. Dempster wagered,
and away and away it went, fast and fading, away
and away the aeroplane shot; soaring over Greenwich
and all the masts; over the little island of
grey churches, St. Paul’s and the rest till, on either
side of London, fields spread out and dark brown
woods where adventurous thrushes hopping boldly,
glancing quickly, snatched the snail and tapped him
on a stone, once, twice, thrice.

Away and away the aeroplane shot, till it was
nothing but a bright spark; an aspiration; a concentration;
a symbol (so it seemed to Mr. Bentley,
vigorously rolling his strip of turf at Greenwich)
of man’s soul; of his determination, thought Mr.
Bentley, sweeping round the cedar tree, to get outside
his body, beyond his house, by means of
thought, Einstein, speculation, mathematics, the
Mendelian theory—away the aeroplane shot.

Then, while a seedy-looking nondescript man
carrying a leather bag stood on the steps of St.
Paul’s Cathedral, and hesitated, for within was what
balm, how great a welcome, how many tombs with
banners waving over them, tokens of victories not
over armies, but over, he thought, that plaguy spirit
of truth seeking which leaves me at present without
a situation, and more than that, the cathedral
offers company, he thought, invites you to membership
of a society; great men belong to it;
martyrs have died for it; why not enter in, he
thought, put this leather bag stuffed with pamphlets
before an altar, a cross, the symbol of something
which has soared beyond seeking and questing and
knocking of words together and has become all
spirit, disembodied, ghostly—why not enter in? he
thought and while he hesitated out flew the aeroplane
over Ludgate Circus.

It was strange; it was still. Not a sound was to
be heard above the traffic. Unguided it seemed;
sped of its own free will. And now, curving up and
up, straight up, like something mounting in ecstasy,
in pure delight, out from behind poured white smoke
looping, writing a T, an O, an F.

“What are they looking at?” said Clarissa Dalloway
to the maid who opened her door.

The hall of the house was cool as a vault. Mrs.
Dalloway raised her hand to her eyes, and, as the
maid shut the door to, and she heard the swish of
Lucy’s skirts, she felt like a nun who has left the
world and feels fold round her the familiar veils
and the response to old devotions. The cook
whistled in the kitchen. She heard the click of the
typewriter. It was her life, and, bending her head
over the hall table, she bowed beneath the influence,
felt blessed and purified, saying to herself, as she
took the pad with the telephone message on it, how
moments like this are buds on the tree of life,
flowers of darkness they are, she thought (as if
some lovely rose had blossomed for her eyes only);
not for a moment did she believe in God; but all
the more, she thought, taking up the pad, must one
repay in daily life to servants, yes, to dogs and
canaries, above all to Richard her husband, who
was the foundation of it—of the gay sounds, of the
green lights, of the cook even whistling, for Mrs.
Walker was Irish and whistled all day long—one
must pay back from this secret deposit of exquisite
moments, she thought, lifting the pad, while Lucy
stood by her, trying to explain how.

“Mr. Dalloway, ma’am”—

Clarissa read on the telephone pad, “Lady Bruton
wishes to know if Mr. Dalloway will lunch with her
to-day.”

“Mr. Dalloway, ma’am, told me to tell you he
would be lunching out.”

“Dear!” said Clarissa, and Lucy shared as she
meant her to her disappointment (but not the
pang); felt the concord between them; took the
hint; thought how the gentry love; gilded her own
future with calm; and, taking Mrs. Dalloway’s
parasol, handled it like a sacred weapon which a
Goddess, having acquitted herself honourably in the
field of battle, sheds, and placed it in the umbrella
stand.

“Fear no more,” said Clarissa. Fear no more
the heat o’ the sun; for the shock of Lady Bruton
asking Richard to lunch without her made the moment
in which she had stood shiver, as a plant on
the river-bed feels the shock of a passing oar and
shivers: so she rocked: so she shivered.

Millicent Bruton, whose lunch parties were said
to be extraordinarily amusing, had not asked her.
No vulgar jealousy could separate her from Richard.
But she feared time itself, and read on Lady
Bruton’s face, as if it had been a dial cut in impassive
stone, the dwindling of life; how year by
year her share was sliced; how little the margin
that remained was capable any longer of stretching,
of absorbing, as in the youthful years, the colours,
salts, tones of existence, so that she filled the room
she entered, and felt often as she stood hesitating
one moment on the threshold of her drawing-room,
an exquisite suspense, such as might stay a diver
before plunging while the sea darkens and brightens
beneath him, and the waves which threaten to
break, but only gently split their surface, roll and
conceal and encrust as they just turn over the weeds
with pearl.

She put the pad on the hall table. She began to
go slowly upstairs, with her hand on the bannisters,
as if she had left a party, where now this friend now
that had flashed back her face, her voice; had shut
the door and gone out and stood alone, a single figure
against the appalling night, or rather, to be accurate,
against the stare of this matter-of-fact June
morning; soft with the glow of rose petals for some,
she knew, and felt it, as she paused by the open
staircase window which let in blinds flapping, dogs
barking, let in, she thought, feeling herself suddenly
shrivelled, aged, breastless, the grinding, blowing,
flowering of the day, out of doors, out of the
window, out of her body and brain which now failed,
since Lady Bruton, whose lunch parties were said
to be extraordinarily amusing, had not asked her.

Like a nun withdrawing, or a child exploring a
tower, she went upstairs, paused at the window,
came to the bathroom. There was the green linoleum
and a tap dripping. There was an emptiness
about the heart of life; an attic room. Women
must put off their rich apparel. At midday they
must disrobe. She pierced the pincushion and laid
her feathered yellow hat on the bed. The sheets
were clean, tight stretched in a broad white band
from side to side. Narrower and narrower would
her bed be. The candle was half burnt down and
she had read deep in Baron Marbot’s Memoirs. She
had read late at night of the retreat from Moscow.
For the House sat so long that Richard insisted,
after her illness, that she must sleep undisturbed.
And really she preferred to read of the retreat from
Moscow. He knew it. So the room was an attic;
the bed narrow; and lying there reading, for she
slept badly, she could not dispel a virginity preserved
through childbirth which clung to her like
a sheet. Lovely in girlhood, suddenly there came
a moment—for example on the river beneath the
woods at Clieveden—when, through some contraction
of this cold spirit, she had failed him. And
then at Constantinople, and again and again. She
could see what she lacked. It was not beauty; it
was not mind. It was something central which permeated;
something warm which broke up surfaces
and rippled the cold contact of man and woman, or
of women together. For that she could dimly perceive.
She resented it, had a scruple picked up
Heaven knows where, or, as she felt, sent by
Nature (who is invariably wise); yet she could not
resist sometimes yielding to the charm of a woman,
not a girl, of a woman confessing, as to her they
often did, some scrape, some folly. And whether
it was pity, or their beauty, or that she was older,
or some accident—like a faint scent, or a violin
next door (so strange is the power of sounds at certain
moments), she did undoubtedly then feel what
men felt. Only for a moment; but it was enough.
It was a sudden revelation, a tinge like a blush
which one tried to check and then, as it spread, one
yielded to its expansion, and rushed to the farthest
verge and there quivered and felt the world come
closer, swollen with some astonishing significance,
some pressure of rapture, which split its thin skin
and gushed and poured with an extraordinary alleviation
over the cracks and sores! Then, for that
moment, she had seen an illumination; a match
burning in a crocus; an inner meaning almost expressed.
But the close withdrew; the hard softened.
It was over—the moment. Against such
moments (with women too) there contrasted (as
she laid her hat down) the bed and Baron Marbot
and the candle half-burnt. Lying awake, the floor
creaked; the lit house was suddenly darkened, and
if she raised her head she could just hear the click
of the handle released as gently as possible by
Richard, who slipped upstairs in his socks and
then, as often as not, dropped his hot-water bottle
and swore! How she laughed!

Memoirs

that

But this question of love (she thought, putting
her coat away), this falling in love with women.
Take Sally Seton; her relation in the old days with
Sally Seton. Had not that, after all, been love?

She sat on the floor—that was her first impression
of Sally—she sat on the floor with her arms
round her knees, smoking a cigarette. Where could
it have been? The Mannings? The Kinloch-Jones’s?
At some party (where, she could not be
certain), for she had a distinct recollection of saying
to the man she was with, “Who is that?” And
he had told her, and said that Sally’s parents did
not get on (how that shocked her—that one’s
parents should quarrel!). But all that evening she
could not take her eyes off Sally. It was an extraordinary
beauty of the kind she most admired,
dark, large-eyed, with that quality which, since
she hadn’t got it herself, she always envied—a sort
of abandonment, as if she could say anything, do
anything; a quality much commoner in foreigners
than in Englishwomen. Sally always said she had
French blood in her veins, an ancestor had been
with Marie Antoinette, had his head cut off, left a
ruby ring. Perhaps that summer she came to stay
at Bourton, walking in quite unexpectedly without
a penny in her pocket, one night after dinner, and
upsetting poor Aunt Helena to such an extent that
she never forgave her. There had been some quarrel
at home. She literally hadn’t a penny that night
when she came to them—had pawned a brooch to
come down. She had rushed off in a passion. They
sat up till all hours of the night talking. Sally it
was who made her feel, for the first time, how
sheltered the life at Bourton was. She knew nothing
about sex—nothing about social problems. She
had once seen an old man who had dropped dead
in a field—she had seen cows just after their calves
were born. But Aunt Helena never liked discussion
of anything (when Sally gave her William
Morris, it had to be wrapped in brown paper).
There they sat, hour after hour, talking in her bedroom
at the top of the house, talking about life,
how they were to reform the world. They meant
to found a society to abolish private property, and
actually had a letter written, though not sent out.
The ideas were Sally’s, of course—but very soon
she was just as excited—read Plato in bed before
breakfast; read Morris; read Shelley by the hour.

that

Sally’s power was amazing, her gift, her personality.
There was her way with flowers, for instance.
At Bourton they always had stiff little vases
all the way down the table. Sally went out, picked
hollyhocks, dahlias—all sorts of flowers that had
never been seen together—cut their heads off, and
made them swim on the top of water in bowls. The
effect was extraordinary—coming in to dinner in
the sunset. (Of course Aunt Helena thought it
wicked to treat flowers like that.) Then she forgot
her sponge, and ran along the passage naked. That
grim old housemaid, Ellen Atkins, went about
grumbling—“Suppose any of the gentlemen had
seen?” Indeed she did shock people. She was untidy,
Papa said.

The strange thing, on looking back, was the
purity, the integrity, of her feeling for Sally. It
was not like one’s feeling for a man. It was completely
disinterested, and besides, it had a quality
which could only exist between women, between
women just grown up. It was protective, on her
side; sprang from a sense of being in league together,
a presentiment of something that was bound
to part them (they spoke of marriage always as a
catastrophe), which led to this chivalry, this protective
feeling which was much more on her side
than Sally’s. For in those days she was completely
reckless; did the most idiotic things out of
bravado; bicycled round the parapet on the terrace;
smoked cigars. Absurd, she was—very absurd.
But the charm was overpowering, to her at
least, so that she could remember standing in her
bedroom at the top of the house holding the hot-water
can in her hands and saying aloud, “She is
beneath this roof.... She is beneath this roof!”

No, the words meant absolutely nothing to her
now. She could not even get an echo of her old
emotion. But she could remember going cold with
excitement, and doing her hair in a kind of ecstasy
(now the old feeling began to come back to her, as
she took out her hairpins, laid them on the dressing-table,
began to do her hair), with the rooks flaunting
up and down in the pink evening light, and dressing,
and going downstairs, and feeling as she crossed
the hall “if it were now to die ’twere now to be
most happy.” That was her feeling—Othello’s feeling,
and she felt it, she was convinced, as strongly
as Shakespeare meant Othello to feel it, all because
she was coming down to dinner in a white frock to
meet Sally Seton!

She was wearing pink gauze—was that possible?
She seemed, anyhow, all light, glowing, like some
bird or air ball that has flown in, attached itself
for a moment to a bramble. But nothing is so
strange when one is in love (and what was this
except being in love?) as the complete indifference
of other people. Aunt Helena just wandered off
after dinner; Papa read the paper. Peter Walsh
might have been there, and old Miss Cummings;
Joseph Breitkopf certainly was, for he came every
summer, poor old man, for weeks and weeks, and
pretended to read German with her, but really
played the piano and sang Brahms without any
voice.

seemed

All this was only a background for Sally. She
stood by the fireplace talking, in that beautiful voice
which made everything she said sound like a caress,
to Papa, who had begun to be attracted rather
against his will (he never got over lending her one
of his books and finding it soaked on the terrace),
when suddenly she said, “What a shame to sit indoors!”
and they all went out on to the terrace
and walked up and down. Peter Walsh and Joseph
Breitkopf went on about Wagner. She and Sally
fell a little behind. Then came the most exquisite
moment of her whole life passing a stone urn with
flowers in it. Sally stopped; picked a flower; kissed
her on the lips. The whole world might have turned
upside down! The others disappeared; there she
was alone with Sally. And she felt that she had
been given a present, wrapped up, and told just to
keep it, not to look at it—a diamond, something
infinitely precious, wrapped up, which, as they
walked (up and down, up and down), she uncovered,
or the radiance burnt through, the revelation,
the religious feeling!—when old Joseph and Peter
faced them:

“Star-gazing?” said Peter.

It was like running one’s face against a granite
wall in the darkness! It was shocking; it was horrible!

Not for herself. She felt only how Sally was
being mauled already, maltreated; she felt his hostility;
his jealousy; his determination to break into
their companionship. All this she saw as one sees
a landscape in a flash of lightning—and Sally (never
had she admired her so much!) gallantly taking her
way unvanquished. She laughed. She made old
Joseph tell her the names of the stars, which he
liked doing very seriously. She stood there: she
listened. She heard the names of the stars.

“Oh this horror!” she said to herself, as if she
had known all along that something would interrupt,
would embitter her moment of happiness.

Yet, after all, how much she owed to him later.
Always when she thought of him she thought of
their quarrels for some reason—because she wanted
his good opinion so much, perhaps. She owed him
words: “sentimental,” “civilised”; they started up
every day of her life as if he guarded her. A book
was sentimental; an attitude to life sentimental.
“Sentimental,” perhaps she was to be thinking of
the past. What would he think, she wondered,
when he came back?

That she had grown older? Would he say that,
or would she see him thinking when he came back,
that she had grown older? It was true. Since her
illness she had turned almost white.

Laying her brooch on the table, she had a sudden
spasm, as if, while she mused, the icy claws had
had the chance to fix in her. She was not old yet.
She had just broken into her fifty-second year.
Months and months of it were still untouched. June,
July, August! Each still remained almost whole,
and, as if to catch the falling drop, Clarissa (crossing
to the dressing-table) plunged into the very
heart of the moment, transfixed it, there—the moment
of this June morning on which was the
pressure of all the other mornings, seeing the glass,
the dressing-table, and all the bottles afresh, collecting
the whole of her at one point (as she looked
into the glass), seeing the delicate pink face of the
woman who was that very night to give a party; of
Clarissa Dalloway; of herself.

How many million times she had seen her face,
and always with the same imperceptible contraction!
She pursed her lips when she looked in the
glass. It was to give her face point. That was her
self—pointed; dartlike; definite. That was her self
when some effort, some call on her to be her self,
drew the parts together, she alone knew how different,
how incompatible and composed so for the
world only into one centre, one diamond, one
woman who sat in her drawing-room and made a
meeting-point, a radiancy no doubt in some dull
lives, a refuge for the lonely to come to, perhaps;
she had helped young people, who were grateful to
her; had tried to be the same always, never showing
a sign of all the other sides of her—faults, jealousies,
vanities, suspicions, like this of Lady Bruton
not asking her to lunch; which, she thought (combing
her hair finally), is utterly base! Now, where
was her dress?

Her evening dresses hung in the cupboard.
Clarissa, plunging her hand into the softness, gently
detached the green dress and carried it to the window.
She had torn it. Some one had trod on the
skirt. She had felt it give at the Embassy party
at the top among the folds. By artificial light the
green shone, but lost its colour now in the sun. She
would mend it. Her maids had too much to do.
She would wear it to-night. She would take her
silks, her scissors, her—what was it?—her thimble,
of course, down into the drawing-room, for she must
also write, and see that things generally were more
or less in order.

Strange, she thought, pausing on the landing, and
assembling that diamond shape, that single person,
strange how a mistress knows the very moment, the
very temper of her house! Faint sounds rose in
spirals up the well of the stairs; the swish of a
mop; tapping; knocking; a loudness when the front
door opened; a voice repeating a message in the
basement; the chink of silver on a tray; clean silver
for the party. All was for the party.

(And Lucy, coming into the drawing-room with
her tray held out, put the giant candlesticks on the
mantelpiece, the silver casket in the middle, turned
the crystal dolphin towards the clock. They would
come; they would stand; they would talk in the
mincing tones which she could imitate, ladies and
gentlemen. Of all, her mistress was loveliest—mistress
of silver, of linen, of china, for the sun, the
silver, doors off their hinges, Rumpelmayer’s men,
gave her a sense, as she laid the paper-knife on the
inlaid table, of something achieved. Behold! Behold!
she said, speaking to her old friends in the
baker’s shop, where she had first seen service at
Caterham, prying into the glass. She was Lady
Angela, attending Princess Mary, when in came
Mrs. Dalloway.)

“Oh Lucy,” she said, “the silver does look nice!”

“And how,” she said, turning the crystal dolphin
to stand straight, “how did you enjoy the play last
night?” “Oh, they had to go before the end!” she
said. “They had to be back at ten!” she said. “So
they don’t know what happened,” she said. “That
does seem hard luck,” she said (for her servants
stayed later, if they asked her). “That does seem
rather a shame,” she said, taking the old bald-looking
cushion in the middle of the sofa and putting it
in Lucy’s arms, and giving her a little push, and
crying:

“Take it away! Give it to Mrs. Walker with my
compliments! Take it away!” she cried.

And Lucy stopped at the drawing-room door,
holding the cushion, and said, very shyly, turning
a little pink, Couldn’t she help to mend that dress?

But, said Mrs. Dalloway, she had enough on her
hands already, quite enough of her own to do without
that.

“But, thank you, Lucy, oh, thank you,” said Mrs.
Dalloway, and thank you, thank you, she went on
saying (sitting down on the sofa with her dress over
her knees, her scissors, her silks), thank you, thank
you, she went on saying in gratitude to her servants
generally for helping her to be like this, to be what
she wanted, gentle, generous-hearted. Her servants
liked her. And then this dress of hers—where was
the tear? and now her needle to be threaded. This
was a favourite dress, one of Sally Parker’s, the last
almost she ever made, alas, for Sally had now retired,
living at Ealing, and if ever I have a moment,
thought Clarissa (but never would she have a moment
any more), I shall go and see her at Ealing.
For she was a character, thought Clarissa, a real
artist. She thought of little out-of-the-way things;
yet her dresses were never queer. You could wear
them at Hatfield; at Buckingham Palace. She had
worn them at Hatfield; at Buckingham Palace.

Quiet descended on her, calm, content, as her
needle, drawing the silk smoothly to its gentle pause,
collected the green folds together and attached them,
very lightly, to the belt. So on a summer’s day
waves collect, overbalance, and fall; collect and
fall; and the whole world seems to be saying “that
is all” more and more ponderously, until even the
heart in the body which lies in the sun on the beach
says too, That is all. Fear no more, says the heart.
Fear no more, says the heart, committing its burden
to some sea, which sighs collectively for all sorrows,
and renews, begins, collects, lets fall. And the body
alone listens to the passing bee; the wave breaking;
the dog barking, far away barking and barking.

“Heavens, the front-door bell!” exclaimed
Clarissa, staying her needle. Roused, she listened.

“Mrs. Dalloway will see me,” said the elderly
man in the hall. “Oh yes, she will see me,” he
repeated, putting Lucy aside very benevolently, and
running upstairs ever so quickly. “Yes, yes, yes,”
he muttered as he ran upstairs. “She will see me.
After five years in India, Clarissa will see me.”

me

“Who can—what can,” asked Mrs. Dalloway
(thinking it was outrageous to be interrupted at
eleven o’clock on the morning of the day she was
giving a party), hearing a step on the stairs. She
heard a hand upon the door. She made to hide her
dress, like a virgin protecting chastity, respecting
privacy. Now the brass knob slipped. Now the
door opened, and in came—for a single second she
could not remember what he was called! so surprised
she was to see him, so glad, so shy, so utterly
taken aback to have Peter Walsh come to her unexpectedly
in the morning! (She had not read his
letter.)

“And how are you?” said Peter Walsh, positively
trembling; taking both her hands; kissing both her
hands. She’s grown older, he thought, sitting down.
I shan’t tell her anything about it, he thought, for
she’s grown older. She’s looking at me, he thought,
a sudden embarrassment coming over him, though
he had kissed her hands. Putting his hand into his
pocket, he took out a large pocket-knife and half
opened the blade.

Exactly the same, thought Clarissa; the same
queer look; the same check suit; a little out of the
straight his face is, a little thinner, dryer, perhaps,
but he looks awfully well, and just the same.

“How heavenly it is to see you again!” she exclaimed.
He had his knife out. That’s so like him,
she thought.

He had only reached town last night, he said;
would have to go down into the country at once;
and how was everything, how was everybody—Richard?
Elizabeth?

“And what’s all this?” he said, tilting his penknife
towards her green dress.

He’s very well dressed, thought Clarissa; yet he
always criticises me.

me

Here she is mending her dress; mending her dress
as usual, he thought; here she’s been sitting all the
time I’ve been in India; mending her dress; playing
about; going to parties; running to the House and
back and all that, he thought, growing more and
more irritated, more and more agitated, for there’s
nothing in the world so bad for some women as
marriage, he thought; and politics; and having a
Conservative husband, like the admirable Richard.
So it is, so it is, he thought, shutting his knife with
a snap.

“Richard’s very well. Richard’s at a Committee,”
said Clarissa.

And she opened her scissors, and said, did he mind
her just finishing what she was doing to her dress,
for they had a party that night?

“Which I shan’t ask you to,” she said. “My dear
Peter!” she said.

But it was delicious to hear her say that—my
dear Peter! Indeed, it was all so delicious—the
silver, the chairs; all so delicious!

Why wouldn’t she ask him to her party? he
asked.

Now of course, thought Clarissa, he’s enchanting!
perfectly enchanting! Now I remember how impossible
it was ever to make up my mind—and why
did I make up my mind—not to marry him? she
wondered, that awful summer?

“But it’s so extraordinary that you should have
come this morning!” she cried, putting her hands,
one on top of another, down on her dress.

“Do you remember,” she said, “how the blinds
used to flap at Bourton?”

“They did,” he said; and he remembered breakfasting
alone, very awkwardly, with her father; who
had died; and he had not written to Clarissa. But
he had never got on well with old Parry, that querulous,
weak-kneed old man, Clarissa’s father, Justin
Parry.

“I often wish I’d got on better with your father,”
he said.

“But he never liked any one who—our friends,”
said Clarissa; and could have bitten her tongue for
thus reminding Peter that he had wanted to marry
her.

Of course I did, thought Peter; it almost broke
my heart too, he thought; and was overcome with
his own grief, which rose like a moon looked at from
a terrace, ghastly beautiful with light from the
sunken day. I was more unhappy than I’ve ever
been since, he thought. And as if in truth he were
sitting there on the terrace he edged a little towards
Clarissa; put his hand out; raised it; let it fall.
There above them it hung, that moon. She too
seemed to be sitting with him on the terrace, in the
moonlight.

“Herbert has it now,” she said. “I never go there
now,” she said.

Then, just as happens on a terrace in the moonlight,
when one person begins to feel ashamed that
he is already bored, and yet as the other sits silent,
very quiet, sadly looking at the moon, does not like
to speak, moves his foot, clears his throat, notices
some iron scroll on a table leg, stirs a leaf, but says
nothing—so Peter Walsh did now. For why go
back like this to the past? he thought. Why make
him think of it again? Why make him suffer, when
she had tortured him so infernally? Why?

“Do you remember the lake?” she said, in an
abrupt voice, under the pressure of an emotion
which caught her heart, made the muscles of her
throat stiff, and contracted her lips in a spasm as
she said “lake.” For she was a child, throwing
bread to the ducks, between her parents, and at the
same time a grown woman coming to her parents
who stood by the lake, holding her life in her arms
which, as she neared them, grew larger and larger
in her arms, until it became a whole life, a complete
life, which she put down by them and said, “This
is what I have made of it! This!” And what had
she made of it? What, indeed? sitting there sewing
this morning with Peter.

She looked at Peter Walsh; her look, passing
through all that time and that emotion, reached
him doubtfully; settled on him tearfully; and rose
and fluttered away, as a bird touches a branch and
rises and flutters away. Quite simply she wiped
her eyes.

“Yes,” said Peter. “Yes, yes, yes,” he said, as
if she drew up to the surface something which positively
hurt him as it rose. Stop! Stop! he wanted
to cry. For he was not old; his life was not over;
not by any means. He was only just past fifty.
Shall I tell her, he thought, or not? He would like
to make a clean breast of it all. But she is too cold,
he thought; sewing, with her scissors; Daisy would
look ordinary beside Clarissa. And she would think
me a failure, which I am in their sense, he thought;
in the Dalloways’ sense. Oh yes, he had no doubt
about that; he was a failure, compared with all
this—the inlaid table, the mounted paper-knife, the
dolphin and the candlesticks, the chair-covers and
the old valuable English tinted prints—he was a
failure! I detest the smugness of the whole affair
he thought; Richard’s doing, not Clarissa’s; save
that she married him. (Here Lucy came into the
room, carrying silver, more silver, but charming,
slender, graceful she looked, he thought, as she
stooped to put it down.) And this has been going
on all the time! he thought; week after week;
Clarissa’s life; while I—he thought; and at once
everything seemed to radiate from him; journeys;
rides; quarrels; adventures; bridge parties; love affairs;
work; work, work! and he took out his knife
quite openly—his old horn-handled knife which
Clarissa could swear he had had these thirty years—and
clenched his fist upon it.

What an extraordinary habit that was, Clarissa
thought; always playing with a knife. Always making
one feel, too, frivolous; empty-minded; a mere
silly chatterbox, as he used. But I too, she thought,
and, taking up her needle, summoned, like a Queen
whose guards have fallen asleep and left her unprotected
(she had been quite taken aback by this visit—it
had upset her) so that any one can stroll in
and have a look at her where she lies with the
brambles curving over her, summoned to her help
the things she did; the things she liked; her husband;
Elizabeth; her self, in short, which Peter
hardly knew now, all to come about her and beat
off the enemy.

“Well, and what’s happened to you?” she said.
So before a battle begins, the horses paw the ground;
toss their heads; the light shines on their flanks;
their necks curve. So Peter Walsh and Clarissa,
sitting side by side on the blue sofa, challenged each
other. His powers chafed and tossed in him. He
assembled from different quarters all sorts of things;
praise; his career at Oxford; his marriage, which
she knew nothing whatever about; how he had
loved; and altogether done his job.

“Millions of things!” he exclaimed, and, urged
by the assembly of powers which were now charging
this way and that and giving him the feeling at once
frightening and extremely exhilarating of being
rushed through the air on the shoulders of people
he could no longer see, he raised his hands to his
forehead.