Chapter 3 — Chapter 3

Clarissa sat very upright; drew in her breath.

“I am in love,” he said, not to her however, but
to some one raised up in the dark so that you could
not touch her but must lay your garland down on
the grass in the dark.

“In love,” he repeated, now speaking rather dryly
to Clarissa Dalloway; “in love with a girl in India.”
He had deposited his garland. Clarissa could make
what she would of it.

“In love!” she said. That he at his age should
be sucked under in his little bow-tie by that monster!
And there’s no flesh on his neck; his hands
are red; and he’s six months older than I am! her
eye flashed back to her; but in her heart she felt,
all the same, he is in love. He has that, she felt;
he is in love.

But the indomitable egotism which for ever rides
down the hosts opposed to it, the river which says
on, on, on; even though, it admits, there may be
no goal for us whatever, still on, on; this indomitable
egotism charged her cheeks with colour; made her
look very young; very pink; very bright-eyed as
she sat with her dress upon her knee, and her needle
held to the end of green silk, trembling a little. He
was in love! Not with her. With some younger
woman, of course.

“And who is she?” she asked.

Now this statue must be brought from its height
and set down between them.

“A married woman, unfortunately,” he said; “the
wife of a Major in the Indian Army.”

And with a curious ironical sweetness he smiled
as he placed her in this ridiculous way before
Clarissa.

(All the same, he is in love, thought Clarissa.)

“She has,” he continued, very reasonably, “two
small children; a boy and a girl; and I have come
over to see my lawyers about the divorce.”

There they are! he thought. Do what you like
with them, Clarissa! There they are! And second
by second it seemed to him that the wife of the
Major in the Indian Army (his Daisy) and her two
small children became more and more lovely as
Clarissa looked at them; as if he had set light to a
grey pellet on a plate and there had risen up a
lovely tree in the brisk sea-salted air of their intimacy
(for in some ways no one understood him, felt
with him, as Clarissa did)—their exquisite intimacy.

She flattered him; she fooled him, thought
Clarissa; shaping the woman, the wife of the Major
in the Indian Army, with three strokes of a knife.
What a waste! What a folly! All his life long
Peter had been fooled like that; first getting sent
down from Oxford; next marrying the girl on the
boat going out to India; now the wife of a Major in
the Indian Army—thank Heaven she had refused to
marry him! Still, he was in love; her old friend,
her dear Peter, he was in love.

“But what are you going to do?” she asked him.
Oh the lawyers and solicitors, Messrs. Hooper and
Grateley of Lincoln’s Inn, they were going to do
it, he said. And he actually pared his nails with his
pocket-knife.

For Heaven’s sake, leave your knife alone! she
cried to herself in irrepressible irritation; it was his
silly unconventionality, his weakness; his lack of the
ghost of a notion what any one else was feeling that
annoyed her, had always annoyed her; and now at
his age, how silly!

I know all that, Peter thought; I know what I’m
up against, he thought, running his finger along the
blade of his knife, Clarissa and Dalloway and all
the rest of them; but I’ll show Clarissa—and then
to his utter surprise, suddenly thrown by those uncontrollable
forces thrown through the air, he burst
into tears; wept; wept without the least shame,
sitting on the sofa, the tears running down his
cheeks.

And Clarissa had leant forward, taken his hand,
drawn him to her, kissed him,—actually had felt his
face on hers before she could down the brandishing
of silver flashing—plumes like pampas grass in a
tropic gale in her breast, which, subsiding, left her
holding his hand, patting his knee and, feeling as
she sat back extraordinarily at her ease with him
and light-hearted, all in a clap it came over her, If
I had married him, this gaiety would have been
mine all day!

It was all over for her. The sheet was stretched
and the bed narrow. She had gone up into the
tower alone and left them blackberrying in the sun.
The door had shut, and there among the dust of
fallen plaster and the litter of birds’ nests how distant
the view had looked, and the sounds came thin
and chill (once on Leith Hill, she remembered), and
Richard, Richard! she cried, as a sleeper in the
night starts and stretches a hand in the dark for
help. Lunching with Lady Bruton, it came back
to her. He has left me; I am alone for ever, she
thought, folding her hands upon her knee.

Peter Walsh had got up and crossed to the window
and stood with his back to her, flicking a bandanna
handkerchief from side to side. Masterly and dry
and desolate he looked, his thin shoulder-blades lifting
his coat slightly; blowing his nose violently.
Take me with you, Clarissa thought impulsively, as
if he were starting directly upon some great voyage;
and then, next moment, it was as if the five acts
of a play that had been very exciting and moving
were now over and she had lived a lifetime in them
and had run away, had lived with Peter, and it was
now over.

Now it was time to move, and, as a woman gathers
her things together, her cloak, her gloves, her opera-glasses,
and gets up to go out of the theatre into the
street, she rose from the sofa and went to Peter.

And it was awfully strange, he thought, how she
still had the power, as she came tinkling, rustling,
still had the power as she came across the room,
to make the moon, which he detested, rise at Bourton
on the terrace in the summer sky.

“Tell me,” he said, seizing her by the shoulders.
“Are you happy, Clarissa? Does Richard—”

The door opened.

“Here is my Elizabeth,” said Clarissa, emotionally,
histrionically, perhaps.

“How d’y do?” said Elizabeth coming forward.

The sound of Big Ben striking the half-hour
struck out between them with extraordinary vigour,
as if a young man, strong, indifferent, inconsiderate,
were swinging dumb-bells this way and that.

“Hullo, Elizabeth!” cried Peter, stuffing his handkerchief
into his pocket, going quickly to her, saying
“Good-bye, Clarissa” without looking at her, leaving
the room quickly, and running downstairs and opening
the hall door.

“Peter! Peter!” cried Clarissa, following him out
on to the landing. “My party to-night! Remember
my party to-night!” she cried, having to raise her
voice against the roar of the open air, and, overwhelmed
by the traffic and the sound of all the
clocks striking, her voice crying “Remember my
party to-night!” sounded frail and thin and very
far away as Peter Walsh shut the door.

Remember my party, remember my party, said
Peter Walsh as he stepped down the street, speaking
to himself rhythmically, in time with the flow of the
sound, the direct downright sound of Big Ben striking
the half-hour. (The leaden circles dissolved in
the air.) Oh these parties, he thought; Clarissa’s
parties. Why does she give these parties, he
thought. Not that he blamed her or this effigy of
a man in a tail-coat with a carnation in his buttonhole
coming towards him. Only one person in the
world could be as he was, in love. And there he
was, this fortunate man, himself, reflected in the
plate-glass window of a motor-car manufacturer in
Victoria Street. All India lay behind him; plains,
mountains; epidemics of cholera; a district twice
as big as Ireland; decisions he had come to alone—he,
Peter Walsh; who was now really for the first
time in his life, in love. Clarissa had grown hard,
he thought; and a trifle sentimental into the bargain,
he suspected, looking at the great motor-cars capable
of doing—how many miles on how many gallons?
For he had a turn for mechanics; had invented a
plough in his district, had ordered wheel-barrows
from England, but the coolies wouldn’t use them,
all of which Clarissa knew nothing whatever about.

The way she said “Here is my Elizabeth!”—that
annoyed him. Why not “Here’s Elizabeth” simply?
It was insincere. And Elizabeth didn’t like it either.
(Still the last tremors of the great booming voice
shook the air round him; the half-hour; still early;
only half-past eleven still.) For he understood
young people; he liked them. There was always
something cold in Clarissa, he thought. She had
always, even as a girl, a sort of timidity, which in
middle age becomes conventionality, and then it’s
all up, it’s all up, he thought, looking rather drearily
into the glassy depths, and wondering whether by
calling at that hour he had annoyed her; overcome
with shame suddenly at having been a fool; wept;
been emotional; told her everything, as usual, as
usual.

As a cloud crosses the sun, silence falls on London;
and falls on the mind. Effort ceases. Time
flaps on the mast. There we stop; there we stand.
Rigid, the skeleton of habit alone upholds the human
frame. Where there is nothing, Peter Walsh said
to himself; feeling hollowed out, utterly empty
within. Clarissa refused me, he thought. He stood
there thinking, Clarissa refused me.

Ah, said St. Margaret’s, like a hostess who comes
into her drawing-room on the very stroke of the
hour and finds her guests there already. I am not
late. No, it is precisely half-past eleven, she says.
Yet, though she is perfectly right, her voice, being
the voice of the hostess, is reluctant to inflict its
individuality. Some grief for the past holds it back;
some concern for the present. It is half-past eleven,
she says, and the sound of St. Margaret’s glides into
the recesses of the heart and buries itself in ring
after ring of sound, like something alive which wants
to confide itself, to disperse itself, to be, with a
tremor of delight, at rest—like Clarissa herself,
thought Peter Walsh, coming down the stairs on the
stroke of the hour in white. It is Clarissa herself,
he thought, with a deep emotion, and an extraordinarily
clear, yet puzzling, recollection of her, as if
this bell had come into the room years ago, where
they sat at some moment of great intimacy, and had
gone from one to the other and had left, like a bee
with honey, laden with the moment. But what
room? What moment? And why had he been so
profoundly happy when the clock was striking?
Then, as the sound of St. Margaret’s languished,
he thought, She has been ill, and the sound expressed
languor and suffering. It was her heart,
he remembered; and the sudden loudness of the final
stroke tolled for death that surprised in the midst
of life, Clarissa falling where she stood, in her drawing-room.
No! No! he cried. She is not dead! I
am not old, he cried, and marched up Whitehall,
as if there rolled down to him, vigorous, unending,
his future.

He was not old, or set, or dried in the least. As
for caring what they said of him—the Dalloways,
the Whitbreads, and their set, he cared not a straw—not
a straw (though it was true he would have,
some time or other, to see whether Richard couldn’t
help him to some job). Striding, staring, he glared
at the statue of the Duke of Cambridge. He had
been sent down from Oxford—true. He had been
a Socialist, in some sense a failure—true. Still the
future of civilisation lies, he thought, in the hands
of young men like that; of young men such as he
was, thirty years ago; with their love of abstract
principles; getting books sent out to them all the
way from London to a peak in the Himalayas; reading
science; reading philosophy. The future lies in
the hands of young men like that, he thought.

A patter like the patter of leaves in a wood came
from behind, and with it a rustling, regular thudding
sound, which as it overtook him drummed his
thoughts, strict in step, up Whitehall, without his
doing. Boys in uniform, carrying guns, marched
with their eyes ahead of them, marched, their arms
stiff, and on their faces an expression like the letters
of a legend written round the base of a statue praising
duty, gratitude, fidelity, love of England.

It is, thought Peter Walsh, beginning to keep step
with them, a very fine training. But they did not
look robust. They were weedy for the most part,
boys of sixteen, who might, to-morrow, stand behind
bowls of rice, cakes of soap on counters. Now they
wore on them unmixed with sensual pleasure or daily
preoccupations the solemnity of the wreath which
they had fetched from Finsbury Pavement to the
empty tomb. They had taken their vow. The
traffic respected it; vans were stopped.

I can’t keep up with them, Peter Walsh thought,
as they marched up Whitehall, and sure enough, on
they marched, past him, past every one, in their
steady way, as if one will worked legs and arms uniformly,
and life, with its varieties, its irreticences,
had been laid under a pavement of monuments and
wreaths and drugged into a stiff yet staring corpse
by discipline. One had to respect it; one might
laugh; but one had to respect it, he thought. There
they go, thought Peter Walsh, pausing at the edge
of the pavement; and all the exalted statues, Nelson,
Gordon, Havelock, the black, the spectacular images
of great soldiers stood looking ahead of them, as if
they too had made the same renunciation (Peter
Walsh felt he too had made it, the great renunciation),
trampled under the same temptations, and
achieved at length a marble stare. But the stare
Peter Walsh did not want for himself in the least;
though he could respect it in others. He could respect
it in boys. They don’t know the troubles of
the flesh yet, he thought, as the marching boys disappeared
in the direction of the Strand—all that
I’ve been through, he thought, crossing the road,
and standing under Gordon’s statue, Gordon whom
as a boy he had worshipped; Gordon standing lonely
with one leg raised and his arms crossed,—poor
Gordon, he thought.

And just because nobody yet knew he was in
London, except Clarissa, and the earth, after the
voyage, still seemed an island to him, the strangeness
of standing alone, alive, unknown, at half-past
eleven in Trafalgar Square overcame him. What
is it? Where am I? And why, after all, does one
do it? he thought, the divorce seeming all moonshine.
And down his mind went flat as a marsh,
and three great emotions bowled over him; understanding;
a vast philanthropy; and finally, as if
the result of the others, an irrepressible, exquisite
delight; as if inside his brain by another hand
strings were pulled, shutters moved, and he, having
nothing to do with it, yet stood at the opening of
endless avenues, down which if he chose he might
wander. He had not felt so young for years.

He had escaped! was utterly free—as happens in
the downfall of habit when the mind, like an unguarded
flame, bows and bends and seems about
to blow from its holding. I haven’t felt so young
for years! thought Peter, escaping (only of course
for an hour or so) from being precisely what he was,
and feeling like a child who runs out of doors, and
sees, as he runs, his old nurse waving at the wrong
window. But she’s extraordinarily attractive, he
thought, as, walking across Trafalgar Square in the
direction of the Haymarket, came a young woman
who, as she passed Gordon’s statue, seemed, Peter
Walsh thought (susceptible as he was), to shed veil
after veil, until she became the very woman he had
always had in mind; young, but stately; merry, but
discreet; black, but enchanting.

Straightening himself and stealthily fingering his
pocket-knife he started after her to follow this
woman, this excitement, which seemed even with its
back turned to shed on him a light which connected
them, which singled him out, as if the random uproar
of the traffic had whispered through hollowed
hands his name, not Peter, but his private name
which he called himself in his own thoughts. “You,”
she said, only “you,” saying it with her white gloves
and her shoulders. Then the thin long cloak which
the wind stirred as she walked past Dent’s shop in
Cockspur Street blew out with an enveloping kindness,
a mournful tenderness, as of arms that would
open and take the tired—

But she’s not married; she’s young; quite young,
thought Peter, the red carnation he had seen her
wear as she came across Trafalgar Square burning
again in his eyes and making her lips red. But she
waited at the kerbstone. There was a dignity about
her. She was not worldly, like Clarissa; not rich,
like Clarissa. Was she, he wondered as she
moved, respectable? Witty, with a lizard’s flickering
tongue, he thought (for one must invent, must
allow oneself a little diversion), a cool waiting wit,
a darting wit; not noisy.

She moved; she crossed; he followed her. To
embarrass her was the last thing he wished. Still
if she stopped he would say “Come and have an
ice,” he would say, and she would answer, perfectly
simply, “Oh yes.”

But other people got between them in the street,
obstructing him, blotting her out. He pursued; she
changed. There was colour in her cheeks; mockery
in her eyes; he was an adventurer, reckless, he
thought, swift, daring, indeed (landed as he was last
night from India) a romantic buccaneer, careless of
all these damned proprieties, yellow dressing-gowns,
pipes, fishing-rods, in the shop windows; and respectability
and evening parties and spruce old men
wearing white slips beneath their waistcoats. He
was a buccaneer. On and on she went, across Piccadilly,
and up Regent Street, ahead of him, her cloak,
her gloves, her shoulders combining with the fringes
and the laces and the feather boas in the windows
to make the spirit of finery and whimsy which
dwindled out of the shops on to the pavement, as
the light of a lamp goes wavering at night over
hedges in the darkness.

Laughing and delightful, she had crossed Oxford
Street and Great Portland Street and turned down
one of the little streets, and now, and now, the great
moment was approaching, for now she slackened,
opened her bag, and with one look in his direction,
but not at him, one look that bade farewell,
summed up the whole situation and dismissed it
triumphantly, for ever, had fitted her key, opened
the door, and gone! Clarissa’s voice saying, Remember
my party, Remember my party, sang in
his ears. The house was one of those flat red houses
with hanging flower-baskets of vague impropriety.
It was over.

Well, I’ve had my fun; I’ve had it, he thought,
looking up at the swinging baskets of pale geraniums.
And it was smashed to atoms—his fun, for
it was half made up, as he knew very well; invented,
this escapade with the girl; made up, as one
makes up the better part of life, he thought—making
oneself up; making her up; creating an exquisite
amusement, and something more. But odd it was,
and quite true; all this one could never share—it
smashed to atoms.

He turned; went up the street, thinking to find
somewhere to sit, till it was time for Lincoln’s Inn—for
Messrs. Hooper and Grateley. Where should he
go? No matter. Up the street, then, towards
Regent’s Park. His boots on the pavement struck
out “no matter”; for it was early, still very
early.

It was a splendid morning too. Like the pulse
of a perfect heart, life struck straight through the
streets. There was no fumbling—no hesitation.
Sweeping and swerving, accurately, punctually,
noiselessly, there, precisely at the right instant, the
motor-car stopped at the door. The girl, silk-stockinged,
feathered, evanescent, but not to him
particularly attractive (for he had had his fling),
alighted. Admirable butlers, tawny chow dogs, halls
laid in black and white lozenges with white blinds
blowing, Peter saw through the opened door and
approved of. A splendid achievement in its own
way, after all, London; the season; civilisation.
Coming as he did from a respectable Anglo-Indian
family which for at least three generations had administered
the affairs of a continent (it’s strange,
he thought, what a sentiment I have about that, disliking
India, and empire, and army as he did), there
were moments when civilisation, even of this sort,
seemed dear to him as a personal possession; moments
of pride in England; in butlers; chow dogs;
girls in their security. Ridiculous enough, still there
it is, he thought. And the doctors and men of business
and capable women all going about their business,
punctual, alert, robust, seemed to him wholly
admirable, good fellows, to whom one would entrust
one’s life, companions in the art of living, who would
see one through. What with one thing and another,
the show was really very tolerable; and he would
sit down in the shade and smoke.

There was Regent’s Park. Yes. As a child he
had walked in Regent’s Park—odd, he thought, how
the thought of childhood keeps coming back to me—the
result of seeing Clarissa, perhaps; for women
live much more in the past than we do, he thought.
They attach themselves to places; and their fathers—a
woman’s always proud of her father. Bourton
was a nice place, a very nice place, but I could
never get on with the old man, he thought. There
was quite a scene one night—an argument about
something or other, what, he could not remember.
Politics presumably.

Yes, he remembered Regent’s Park; the long
straight walk; the little house where one bought
air-balls to the left; an absurd statue with an inscription
somewhere or other. He looked for an
empty seat. He did not want to be bothered (feeling
a little drowsy as he did) by people asking him
the time. An elderly grey nurse, with a baby asleep
in its perambulator—that was the best he could do
for himself; sit down at the far end of the seat by
that nurse.

She’s a queer-looking girl, he thought, suddenly
remembering Elizabeth as she came into the room
and stood by her mother. Grown big; quite
grown-up, not exactly pretty; handsome rather; and
she can’t be more than eighteen. Probably she
doesn’t get on with Clarissa. “There’s my Elizabeth”—that
sort of thing—why not “Here’s Elizabeth”
simply?—trying to make out, like most
mothers, that things are what they’re not. She
trusts to her charm too much, he thought. She overdoes
it.

The rich benignant cigar smoke eddied coolly
down his throat; he puffed it out again in rings
which breasted the air bravely for a moment; blue,
circular—I shall try and get a word alone with
Elizabeth to-night, he thought—then began to
wobble into hour-glass shapes and taper away; odd
shapes they take, he thought. Suddenly he closed
his eyes, raised his hand with an effort, and threw
away the heavy end of his cigar. A great brush
swept smooth across his mind, sweeping across it
moving branches, children’s voices, the shuffle of
feet, and people passing, and humming traffic, rising
and falling traffic. Down, down he sank into the
plumes and feathers of sleep, sank, and was muffled
over.

The grey nurse resumed her knitting as Peter
Walsh, on the hot seat beside her, began snoring.
In her grey dress, moving her hands indefatigably
yet quietly, she seemed like the champion of the
rights of sleepers, like one of those spectral presences
which rise in twilight in woods made of sky
and branches. The solitary traveller, haunter of
lanes, disturber of ferns, and devastator of great
hemlock plants, looking up, suddenly sees the giant
figure at the end of the ride.

By conviction an atheist perhaps, he is taken by
surprise with moments of extraordinary exaltation.
Nothing exists outside us except a state of mind,
he thinks; a desire for solace, for relief, for something
outside these miserable pigmies, these feeble,
these ugly, these craven men and women. But if
he can conceive of her, then in some sort she exists,
he thinks, and advancing down the path with his
eyes upon sky and branches he rapidly endows them
with womanhood; sees with amazement how grave
they become; how majestically, as the breeze stirs
them, they dispense with a dark flutter of the leaves
charity, comprehension, absolution, and then, flinging
themselves suddenly aloft, confound the piety
of their aspect with a wild carouse.

Such are the visions which proffer great cornucopias
full of fruit to the solitary traveller, or murmur
in his ear like sirens lolloping away on the
green sea waves, or are dashed in his face like
bunches of roses, or rise to the surface like pale
faces which fishermen flounder through floods to
embrace.

Such are the visions which ceaselessly float up,
pace beside, put their faces in front of, the actual
thing; often overpowering the solitary traveller and
taking away from him the sense of the earth, the
wish to return, and giving him for substitute a general
peace, as if (so he thinks as he advances down
the forest ride) all this fever of living were simplicity
itself; and myriads of things merged in one
thing; and this figure, made of sky and branches
as it is, had risen from the troubled sea (he is
elderly, past fifty now) as a shape might be sucked
up out of the waves to shower down from her magnificent
hands compassion, comprehension, absolution.
So, he thinks, may I never go back to the
lamplight; to the sitting-room; never finish my
book; never knock out my pipe; never ring for Mrs.
Turner to clear away; rather let me walk straight
on to this great figure, who will, with a toss of her
head, mount me on her streamers and let me blow
to nothingness with the rest.

Such are the visions. The solitary traveller is
soon beyond the wood; and there, coming to the
door with shaded eyes, possibly to look for his return,
with hands raised, with white apron blowing,
is an elderly woman who seems (so powerful is this
infirmity) to seek, over a desert, a lost son; to
search for a rider destroyed; to be the figure of the
mother whose sons have been killed in the battles
of the world. So, as the solitary traveller advances
down the village street where the women stand knitting
and the men dig in the garden, the evening
seems ominous; the figures still; as if some august
fate, known to them, awaited without fear, were
about to sweep them into complete annihilation.

Indoors among ordinary things, the cupboard, the
table, the window-sill with its geraniums, suddenly
the outline of the landlady, bending to remove the
cloth, becomes soft with light, an adorable emblem
which only the recollection of cold human contacts
forbids us to embrace. She takes the marmalade;
she shuts it in the cupboard.

“There is nothing more to-night, sir?”

But to whom does the solitary traveller make
reply?

So the elderly nurse knitted over the sleeping
baby in Regent’s Park. So Peter Walsh snored.

He woke with extreme suddenness, saying to himself,
“The death of the soul.”

“Lord, Lord!” he said to himself out loud, stretching
and opening his eyes. “The death of the soul.”
The words attached themselves to some scene, to
some room, to some past he had been dreaming of.
It became clearer; the scene, the room, the past he
had been dreaming of.

It was at Bourton that summer, early in the ’nineties,
when he was so passionately in love with
Clarissa. There were a great many people there,
laughing and talking, sitting round a table after tea
and the room was bathed in yellow light and full
of cigarette smoke. They were talking about a man
who had married his housemaid, one of the neighbouring
squires, he had forgotten his name. He had
married his housemaid, and she had been brought
to Bourton to call—an awful visit it had been. She
was absurdly over-dressed, “like a cockatoo,”
Clarissa had said, imitating her, and she never
stopped talking. On and on she went, on and on.
Clarissa imitated her. Then somebody said—Sally
Seton it was—did it make any real difference to
one’s feelings to know that before they’d married
she had had a baby? (In those days, in mixed company,
it was a bold thing to say.) He could see
Clarissa now, turning bright pink; somehow contracting;
and saying, “Oh, I shall never be able
to speak to her again!” Whereupon the whole
party sitting round the tea-table seemed to wobble.
It was very uncomfortable.

He hadn’t blamed her for minding the fact, since
in those days a girl brought up as she was, knew
nothing, but it was her manner that annoyed him;
timid; hard; something arrogant; unimaginative;
prudish. “The death of the soul.” He had said
that instinctively, ticketing the moment as he used
to do—the death of her soul.

Every one wobbled; every one seemed to bow, as
she spoke, and then to stand up different. He could
see Sally Seton, like a child who has been in mischief,
leaning forward, rather flushed, wanting to
talk, but afraid, and Clarissa did frighten people.
(She was Clarissa’s greatest friend, always about
the place, totally unlike her, an attractive creature,
handsome, dark, with the reputation in those days
of great daring and he used to give her cigars, which
she smoked in her bedroom. She had either been
engaged to somebody or quarrelled with her family
and old Parry disliked them both equally, which was
a great bond.) Then Clarissa, still with an air of
being offended with them all, got up, made some
excuse, and went off, alone. As she opened the door,
in came that great shaggy dog which ran after sheep.
She flung herself upon him, went into raptures. It
was as if she said to Peter—it was all aimed at him,
he knew—“I know you thought me absurd about
that woman just now; but see how extraordinarily
sympathetic I am; see how I love my Rob!”

They had always this queer power of communicating
without words. She knew directly he criticised
her. Then she would do something quite obvious
to defend herself, like this fuss with the dog—but
it never took him in, he always saw through
Clarissa. Not that he said anything, of course; just
sat looking glum. It was the way their quarrels
often began.

She shut the door. At once he became extremely
depressed. It all seemed useless—going on being in
love; going on quarrelling; going on making it up,
and he wandered off alone, among outhouses, stables,
looking at the horses. (The place was quite a
humble one; the Parrys were never very well off;
but there were always grooms and stable-boys about—Clarissa
loved riding—and an old coachman—what
was his name?—an old nurse, old Moody, old
Goody, some such name they called her, whom one
was taken to visit in a little room with lots of
photographs, lots of bird-cages.)

It was an awful evening! He grew more and
more gloomy, not about that only; about everything.
And he couldn’t see her; couldn’t explain to her;
couldn’t have it out. There were always people
about—she’d go on as if nothing had happened.
That was the devilish part of her—this coldness,
this woodenness, something very profound in her,
which he had felt again this morning talking to her;
an impenetrability. Yet Heaven knows he loved her.
She had some queer power of fiddling on one’s
nerves, turning one’s nerves to fiddle-strings, yes.

He had gone in to dinner rather late, from some
idiotic idea of making himself felt, and had sat down
by old Miss Parry—Aunt Helena—Mr. Parry’s sister,
who was supposed to preside. There she sat in
her white Cashmere shawl, with her head against the
window—a formidable old lady, but kind to him,
for he had found her some rare flower, and she was
a great botanist, marching off in thick boots with
a black collecting-box slung between her shoulders.
He sat down beside her, and couldn’t speak. Everything
seemed to race past him; he just sat there, eating.
And then half-way through dinner he made
himself look across at Clarissa for the first time.
She was talking to a young man on her right. He
had a sudden revelation. “She will marry that
man,” he said to himself. He didn’t even know his
name.

For of course it was that afternoon, that very
afternoon, that Dalloway had come over; and
Clarissa called him “Wickham”; that was the beginning
of it all. Somebody had brought him over;
and Clarissa got his name wrong. She introduced
him to everybody as Wickham. At last he said
“My name is Dalloway!”—that was his first view
of Richard—a fair young man, rather awkward,
sitting on a deck-chair, and blurting out “My name
is Dalloway!” Sally got hold of it; always after
that she called him “My name is Dalloway!”

He was a prey to revelations at that time. This
one—that she would marry Dalloway—was blinding—overwhelming
at the moment. There was a
sort of—how could he put it?—a sort of ease in her
manner to him; something maternal; something
gentle. They were talking about politics. All
through dinner he tried to hear what they were
saying.

Afterwards he could remember standing by old
Miss Parry’s chair in the drawing-room. Clarissa
came up, with her perfect manners, like a real
hostess, and wanted to introduce him to some one—spoke
as if they had never met before, which enraged
him. Yet even then he admired her for it.
He admired her courage; her social instinct; he
admired her power of carrying things through.
“The perfect hostess,” he said to her, whereupon
she winced all over. But he meant her to feel it.
He would have done anything to hurt her after seeing
her with Dalloway. So she left him. And he
had a feeling that they were all gathered together
in a conspiracy against him—laughing and talking—behind
his back. There he stood by Miss Parry’s
chair as though he had been cut out of wood, he
talking about wild flowers. Never, never had he
suffered so infernally! He must have forgotten even
to pretend to listen; at last he woke up; he saw
Miss Parry looking rather disturbed, rather indignant,
with her prominent eyes fixed. He almost
cried out that he couldn’t attend because he was in
Hell! People began going out of the room. He
heard them talking about fetching cloaks; about its
being cold on the water, and so on. They were
going boating on the lake by moonlight—one of
Sally’s mad ideas. He could hear her describing
the moon. And they all went out. He was left
quite alone.

“Don’t you want to go with them?” said Aunt
Helena—old Miss Parry!—she had guessed. And
he turned round and there was Clarissa again. She
had come back to fetch him. He was overcome by
her generosity—her goodness.

“Come along,” she said. “They’re waiting.”

He had never felt so happy in the whole of his
life! Without a word they made it up. They
walked down to the lake. He had twenty minutes
of perfect happiness. Her voice, her laugh, her
dress (something floating, white, crimson), her
spirit, her adventurousness; she made them all disembark
and explore the island; she startled a hen;
she laughed; she sang. And all the time, he knew
perfectly well, Dalloway was falling in love with
her; she was falling in love with Dalloway; but it
didn’t seem to matter. Nothing mattered. They
sat on the ground and talked—he and Clarissa.
They went in and out of each other’s minds without
any effort. And then in a second it was over.
He said to himself as they were getting into the
boat, “She will marry that man,” dully, without any
resentment; but it was an obvious thing. Dalloway
would marry Clarissa.

Dalloway rowed them in. He said nothing. But
somehow as they watched him start, jumping on to
his bicycle to ride twenty miles through the woods,
wobbling off down the drive, waving his hand and
disappearing, he obviously did feel, instinctively,
tremendously, strongly, all that; the night; the
romance; Clarissa. He deserved to have her.

For himself, he was absurd. His demands upon
Clarissa (he could see it now) were absurd. He
asked impossible things. He made terrible scenes.
She would have accepted him still, perhaps, if he
had been less absurd. Sally thought so. She wrote
him all that summer long letters; how they had
talked of him; how she had praised him, how
Clarissa burst into tears! It was an extraordinary
summer—all letters, scenes, telegrams—arriving at
Bourton early in the morning, hanging about till the
servants were up; appalling tête-à-têtes with old
Mr. Parry at breakfast; Aunt Helena formidable
but kind; Sally sweeping him off for talks in the
vegetable garden; Clarissa in bed with headaches.

tête-à-têtes

The final scene, the terrible scene which he believed
had mattered more than anything in the whole
of his life (it might be an exaggeration—but still
so it did seem now) happened at three o’clock in
the afternoon of a very hot day. It was a trifle that
led up to it—Sally at lunch saying something about
Dalloway, and calling him “My name is Dalloway”;
whereupon Clarissa suddenly stiffened, coloured, in
a way she had, and rapped out sharply, “We’ve had
enough of that feeble joke.” That was all; but for
him it was precisely as if she had said, “I’m only
amusing myself with you; I’ve an understanding
with Richard Dalloway.” So he took it. He had
not slept for nights. “It’s got to be finished one
way or the other,” he said to himself. He sent a
note to her by Sally asking her to meet him by the
fountain at three. “Something very important has
happened,” he scribbled at the end of it.

The fountain was in the middle of a little shrubbery,
far from the house, with shrubs and trees all
round it. There she came, even before the time,
and they stood with the fountain between them, the
spout (it was broken) dribbling water incessantly.
How sights fix themselves upon the mind! For
example, the vivid green moss.

She did not move. “Tell me the truth, tell me
the truth,” he kept on saying. He felt as if his
forehead would burst. She seemed contracted,
petrified. She did not move. “Tell me the truth,”
he repeated, when suddenly that old man Breitkopf
popped his head in carrying the Times; stared at
them; gaped; and went away. They neither of
them moved. “Tell me the truth,” he repeated. He
felt that he was grinding against something physically
hard; she was unyielding. She was like iron,
like flint, rigid up the backbone. And when she
said, “It’s no use. It’s no use. This is the end”—after
he had spoken for hours, it seemed, with the
tears running down his cheeks—it was as if she had
hit him in the face. She turned, she left him, went
away.

Times

“Clarissa!” he cried. “Clarissa!” But she never
came back. It was over. He went away that night.
He never saw her again.

It was awful, he cried, awful, awful!

Still, the sun was hot. Still, one got over things.
Still, life had a way of adding day to day. Still,
he thought, yawning and beginning to take notice—Regent’s
Park had changed very little since he
was a boy, except for the squirrels—still, presumably
there were compensations—when little Elise
Mitchell, who had been picking up pebbles to add
to the pebble collection which she and her brother
were making on the nursery mantelpiece, plumped
her handful down on the nurse’s knee and scudded
off again full tilt into a lady’s legs. Peter Walsh
laughed out.

But Lucrezia Warren Smith was saying to herself,
It’s wicked; why should I suffer? she was asking,
as she walked down the broad path. No; I
can’t stand it any longer, she was saying, having
left Septimus, who wasn’t Septimus any longer, to
say hard, cruel, wicked things, to talk to himself,
to talk to a dead man, on the seat over there; when
the child ran full tilt into her, fell flat, and burst out
crying.

That was comforting rather. She stood her upright,
dusted her frock, kissed her.

But for herself she had done nothing wrong; she
had loved Septimus; she had been happy; she had
had a beautiful home, and there her sisters lived
still, making hats. Why should she suffer?

she

The child ran straight back to its nurse, and
Rezia saw her scolded, comforted, taken up by the
nurse who put down her knitting, and the kind-looking
man gave her his watch to blow open to
comfort her—but why should she be exposed? Why
not left in Milan? Why tortured? Why?

she

Slightly waved by tears the broad path, the nurse,
the man in grey, the perambulator, rose and fell before
her eyes. To be rocked by this malignant torturer
was her lot. But why? She was like a bird
sheltering under the thin hollow of a leaf, who blinks
at the sun when the leaf moves; starts at the crack
of a dry twig. She was exposed; she was surrounded
by the enormous trees, vast clouds of an
indifferent world, exposed; tortured; and why should
she suffer? Why?

She frowned; she stamped her foot. She must
go back again to Septimus since it was almost time
for them to be going to Sir William Bradshaw. She
must go back and tell him, go back to him sitting
there on the green chair under the tree, talking to
himself, or to that dead man Evans, whom she had
only seen once for a moment in the shop. He had
seemed a nice quiet man; a great friend of Septimus’s,
and he had been killed in the War. But
such things happen to every one. Every one has
friends who were killed in the War. Every one gives
up something when they marry. She had given up
her home. She had come to live here, in this awful
city. But Septimus let himself think about horrible
things, as she could too, if she tried. He had grown
stranger and stranger. He said people were talking
behind the bedroom walls. Mrs. Filmer thought it
odd. He saw things too—he had seen an old
woman’s head in the middle of a fern. Yet he
could be happy when he chose. They went to
Hampton Court on top of a bus, and they were perfectly
happy. All the little red and yellow flowers
were out on the grass, like floating lamps he said,
and talked and chattered and laughed, making up
stories. Suddenly he said, “Now we will kill ourselves,”
when they were standing by the river, and
he looked at it with a look which she had seen in
his eyes when a train went by, or an omnibus—a
look as if something fascinated him; and she felt he
was going from her and she caught him by the arm.
But going home he was perfectly quiet—perfectly
reasonable. He would argue with her about killing
themselves; and explain how wicked people were;
how he could see them making up lies as they passed
in the street. He knew all their thoughts, he said;
he knew everything. He knew the meaning of the
world, he said.

Then when they got back he could hardly walk.
He lay on the sofa and made her hold his hand to
prevent him from falling down, down, he cried,
into the flames! and saw faces laughing at him, calling
him horrible disgusting names, from the walls,
and hands pointing round the screen. Yet they
were quite alone. But he began to talk aloud, answering
people, arguing, laughing, crying, getting
very excited and making her write things down.
Perfect nonsense it was; about death; about Miss
Isabel Pole. She could stand it no longer. She
would go back.