Classic Works from Women Writers

by Editors of Canterbury Classics

  “I long to ask questions,” she continued. “You interest me so much. If I’m impertinent, you must just box my ears.”

  “And I—I want to ask questions,” said Rachel with such earnestness that Mrs. Dalloway had to check her smile.

  “D’you mind if we walk?” she said. “The air’s so delicious.”

  She snuffed it like a racehorse as they shut the door and stood on deck.

  “Isn’t it good to be alive?” she exclaimed, and drew Rachel’s arm within hers.

  “Look, look! How exquisite!”

  The shores of Portugal were beginning to lose their substance; but the land was still the land, though at a great distance. They could distinguish the little towns that were sprinkled in the folds of the hills, and the smoke rising faintly. The towns appeared to be very small in comparison with the great purple mountains behind them.

  “Honestly, though,” said Clarissa, having looked, “I don’t like views. They’re too inhuman.” They walked on.

  “How odd it is!” she continued impulsively. “This time yesterday we’d never met. I was packing in a stuffy little room in the hotel. We know absolutely nothing about each other—and yet—I feel as if I did know you!”

  “You have children—your husband was in Parliament?”

  “You’ve never been to school, and you live—?”

  “With my aunts at Richmond.”

  “Richmond?”

  “You see, my aunts like the Park. They like the quiet.”

  “And you don’t! I understand!” Clarissa laughed.

  “I like walking in the Park alone; but not—with the dogs,” she finished.

  “No; and some people are dogs; aren’t they?” said Clarissa, as if she had guessed a secret. “But not every one—oh no, not every one.”

  “Not every one,” said Rachel, and stopped.

  “I can quite imagine you walking alone,” said Clarissa: “and thinking—in a little world of your own. But how you will enjoy it—some day!”

  “I shall enjoy walking with a man—is that what you mean?” said Rachel, regarding Mrs. Dalloway with her large enquiring eyes.

  “I wasn’t thinking of a man particularly,” said Clarissa. “But you will.”

  “No. I shall never marry,” Rachel determined.

  “I shouldn’t be so sure of that,” said Clarissa. Her sidelong glance told Rachel that she found her attractive although she was inexplicably amused.

  “Why do people marry?” Rachel asked.

  “That’s what you’re going to find out,” Clarissa laughed.

  Rachel followed her eyes and found that they rested for a second, on the robust figure of Richard Dalloway, who was engaged in striking a match on the sole of his boot; while Willoughby expounded something, which seemed to be of great interest to them both.

  “There’s nothing like it,” she concluded. “Do tell me about the Ambroses. Or am I asking too many questions?”

  “I find you easy to talk to,” said Rachel.

  The short sketch of the Ambroses was, however, somewhat perfunctory, and contained little but the fact that Mr. Ambrose was her uncle.

  “Your mother’s brother?”

  When a name has dropped out of use, the lightest touch upon it tells. Mrs. Dalloway went on:

  “Are you like your mother?”

  “No; she was different,” said Rachel.

  She was overcome by an intense desire to tell Mrs. Dalloway things she had never told anyone—things she had not realised herself until this moment.

  “I am lonely,” she began. “I want—” She did not know what she wanted, so that she could not finish the sentence; but her lip quivered.

  But it seemed that Mrs. Dalloway was able to understand without words.

  “I know,” she said, actually putting one arm round Rachel’s shoulder. “When I was your age I wanted too. No one understood until I met Richard. He gave me all I wanted. He’s man and woman as well.” Her eyes rested upon Mr. Dalloway, leaning upon the rail, still talking. “Don’t think I say that because I’m his wife—I see his faults more clearly than I see anyone else’s. What one wants in the person one lives with is that they should keep one at one’s best. I often wonder what I’ve done to be so happy!” she exclaimed, and a tear slid down her cheek. She wiped it away, squeezed Rachel’s hand, and exclaimed:

  “How good life is!” At that moment, standing out in the fresh breeze, with the sun upon the waves, and Mrs. Dalloway’s hand upon her arm, it seemed indeed as if life which had been unnamed before was infinitely wonderful, and too good to be true.

  Here Helen passed them, and seeing Rachel arm-in-arm with a comparative stranger, looking excited, was amused, but at the same time slightly irritated. But they were immediately joined by Richard, who had enjoyed a very interesting talk with Willoughby and was in a sociable mood.

  “Observe my Panama,” he said, touching the brim of his hat. “Are you aware, Miss Vinrace, how much can be done to induce fine weather by appropriate headdress? I have determined that it is a hot summer day; I warn you that nothing you can say will shake me. Therefore I am going to sit down. I advise you to follow my example.” Three chairs in a row invited them to be seated.

  Leaning back, Richard surveyed the waves.

  “That’s a very pretty blue,” he said. “But there’s a little too much of it. Variety is essential to a view. Thus, if you have hills you ought to have a river; if a river, hills. The best view in the world in my opinion is that from Boars Hill on a fine day—it must be a fine day, mark you—A rug?—Oh, thank you, my dear … in that case you have also the advantage of associations—the Past.”

  “D’you want to talk, Dick, or shall I read aloud?”

  Clarissa had fetched a book with the rugs.

  “Persuasion,” announced Richard, examining the volume.

  “That’s for Miss Vinrace,” said Clarissa. “She can’t bear our beloved Jane.”

  “That—if I may say so—is because you have not read her,” said Richard. “She is incomparably the greatest female writer we possess.”

  “She is the greatest,” he continued, “and for this reason: she does not attempt to write like a man. Every other woman does; on that account, I don’t read ’em.”

  “Produce your instances, Miss Vinrace,” he went on, joining his finger-tips. “I’m ready to be converted.”

  He waited, while Rachel vainly tried to vindicate her sex from the slight he put upon it.

  “I’m afraid he’s right,” said Clarissa. “He generally is—the wretch!”

  “I brought Persuasion,” she went on, “because I thought it was a little less threadbare than the others—though, Dick, it’s no good your pretending to know Jane by heart, considering that she always sends you to sleep!”

  “After the labours of legislation, I deserve sleep,” said Richard.

  “You’re not to think about those guns,” said Clarissa, seeing that his eye, passing over the waves, still sought the land meditatively, “or about navies, or empires, or anything.” So saying she opened the book and began to read:

  “ ‘Sir Walter Elliott, of Kellynch Hall, in Somersetshire, was a man who, for his own amusement, never took up any book but the Baronetage’—don’t you know Sir Walter?—‘There he found occupation for an idle hour, and consolation in a distressed one.’ She does write well, doesn’t she? ‘There—’ ” She read on in a light humorous voice. She was determined that Sir Walter should take her husband’s mind off the guns of Britain, and divert him in an exquisite, quaint, sprightly, and slightly ridiculous world. After a time it appeared that the sun was sinking in that world, and the points becoming softer. Rachel looked up to see what caused the change. Richard’s eyelids were closing and opening; opening and closing. A loud nasal breath announced that he no longer considered appearances, that he was sound asleep.

  “Triumph!” Clarissa whispered at the end of a sentence. Suddenly she raised her hand in protest. A sailor hesitated; she gave th
e book to Rachel, and stepped lightly to take the message—“Mr. Grice wished to know if it was convenient,” etc. She followed him. Ridley, who had prowled unheeded, started forward, stopped, and, with a gesture of disgust, strode off to his study. The sleeping politician was left in Rachel’s charge. She read a sentence, and took a look at him. In sleep he looked like a coat hanging at the end of a bed; there were all the wrinkles, and the sleeves and trousers kept their shape though no longer filled out by legs and arms. You can then best judge the age and state of the coat. She looked him all over until it seemed to her that he must protest.

  He was a man of forty perhaps; and here there were lines round his eyes, and there curious clefts in his cheeks. Slightly battered he appeared, but dogged and in the prime of life.

  “Sisters and a dormouse and some canaries,” Rachel murmured, never taking her eyes off him. “I wonder, I wonder” she ceased, her chin upon her hand, still looking at him. A bell chimed behind them, and Richard raised his head. Then he opened his eyes which wore for a second the queer look of a shortsighted person’s whose spectacles are lost. It took him a moment to recover from the impropriety of having snored, and possibly grunted, before a young lady. To wake and find oneself left alone with one was also slightly disconcerting.

  “I suppose I’ve been dozing,” he said. “What’s happened to everyone? Clarissa?”

  “Mrs. Dalloway has gone to look at Mr. Grice’s fish,” Rachel replied.

  “I might have guessed,” said Richard. “It’s a common occurrence. And how have you improved the shining hour? Have you become a convert?”

  “I don’t think I’ve read a line,” said Rachel.

  “That’s what I always find. There are too many things to look at. I find nature very stimulating myself. My best ideas have come to me out of doors.”

  “When you were walking?”

  “Walking—riding—yachting—I suppose the most momentous conversations of my life took place while perambulating the great court at Trinity. I was at both universities. It was a fad of my father’s. He thought it broadening to the mind. I think I agree with him. I can remember—what an age ago it seems!—settling the basis of a future state with the present Secretary for India. We thought ourselves very wise. I’m not sure we weren’t. We were happy, Miss Vinrace, and we were young—gifts which make for wisdom.”

  “Have you done what you said you’d do?” she asked.

  “A searching question! I answer—Yes and No. If on the one hand I have not accomplished what I set out to accomplish—which of us does!—on the other I can fairly say this: I have not lowered my ideal.”

  He looked resolutely at a sea-gull, as though his ideal flew on the wings of the bird.

  “But,” said Rachel, “what is your ideal?”

  “There you ask too much, Miss Vinrace,” said Richard playfully.

  She could only say that she wanted to know, and Richard was sufficiently amused to answer.

  “Well, how shall I reply? In one word—Unity. Unity of aim, of dominion, of progress. The dispersion of the best ideas over the greatest area.”

  “The English?”

  “I grant that the English seem, on the whole, whiter than most men, their records cleaner. But, good Lord, don’t run away with the idea that I don’t see the drawbacks—horrors—unmentionable things done in our very midst! I’m under no illusions. Few people, I suppose, have fewer illusions than I have. Have you ever been in a factory, Miss Vinrace!—No, I suppose not—I may say I hope not.”

  As for Rachel, she had scarcely walked through a poor street, and always under the escort of father, maid, or aunts.

  “I was going to say that if you’d ever seen the kind of thing that’s going on round you, you’d understand what it is that makes me and men like me politicians. You asked me a moment ago whether I’d done what I set out to do. Well, when I consider my life, there is one fact I admit that I’m proud of; owing to me some thousands of girls in Lancashire—and many thousands to come after them—can spend an hour every day in the open air which their mothers had to spend over their looms. I’m prouder of that, I own, than I should be of writing Keats and Shelley into the bargain!”

  It became painful to Rachel to be one of those who write Keats and Shelley. She liked Richard Dalloway, and warmed as he warmed. He seemed to mean what he said.

  “I know nothing!” she exclaimed.

  “It’s far better that you should know nothing,” he said paternally, “and you wrong yourself, I’m sure. You play very nicely, I’m told, and I’ve no doubt you’ve read heaps of learned books.”

  Elderly banter would no longer check her.

  “You talk of unity,” she said. “You ought to make me understand.”

  “I never allow my wife to talk politics,” he said seriously. “For this reason. It is impossible for human beings, constituted as they are, both to fight and to have ideals. If I have preserved mine, as I am thankful to say that in great measure I have, it is due to the fact that I have been able to come home to my wife in the evening and to find that she has spent her day in calling, music, play with the children, domestic duties—what you will; her illusions have not been destroyed. She gives me courage to go on. The strain of public life is very great,” he added.

  This made him appear a battered martyr, parting every day with some of the finest gold, in the service of mankind.

  “I can’t think,” Rachel exclaimed, “how anyone does it!”

  “Explain, Miss Vinrace,” said Richard. “This is a matter I want to clear up.”

  His kindness was genuine, and she determined to take the chance he gave her, although to talk to a man of such worth and authority made her heart beat.

  “It seems to me like this,” she began, doing her best first to recollect and then to expose her shivering private visions.

  “There’s an old widow in her room, somewhere, let us suppose in the suburbs of Leeds.”

  Richard bent his head to show that he accepted the widow.

  “In London you’re spending your life, talking, writing things, getting bills through, missing what seems natural. The result of it all is that she goes to her cupboard and finds a little more tea, a few lumps of sugar, or a little less tea and a newspaper. Widows all over the country I admit do this. Still, there’s the mind of the widow—the affections; those you leave untouched. But you waste you own.”

  “If the widow goes to her cupboard and finds it bare,” Richard answered, “her spiritual outlook we may admit will be affected. If I may pick holes in your philosophy, Miss Vinrace, which has its merits, I would point out that a human being is not a set of compartments, but an organism. Imagination, Miss Vinrace; use your imagination; that’s where you young Liberals fail. Conceive the world as a whole. Now for your second point; when you assert that in trying to set the house in order for the benefit of the young generation I am wasting my higher capabilities, I totally disagree with you. I can conceive no more exalted aim—to be the citizen of the Empire. Look at it in this way, Miss Vinrace; conceive the state as a complicated machine; we citizens are parts of that machine; some fulfil more important duties; others (perhaps I am one of them) serve only to connect some obscure parts of the mechanism, concealed from the public eye. Yet if the meanest screw fails in its task, the proper working of the whole is imperilled.”

  It was impossible to combine the image of a lean black widow, gazing out of her window, and longing for someone to talk to, with the image of a vast machine, such as one sees at South Kensington, thumping, thumping, thumping. The attempt at communication had been a failure.

  “We don’t seem to understand each other,” she said.

  “Shall I say something that will make you very angry?” he replied.

  “It won’t,” said Rachel.

  “Well, then; no woman has what I may call the political instinct. You have very great virtues; I am the first, I hope, to admit that; but I have never met a woman who even saw what is meant by statesmanship. I am go
ing to make you still more angry. I hope that I never shall meet such a woman. Now, Miss Vinrace, are we enemies for life?”

  Vanity, irritation, and a thrusting desire to be understood, urged her to make another attempt.

  “Under the streets, in the sewers, in the wires, in the telephones, there is something alive; is that what you mean? In things like dust-carts, and men mending roads? You feel that all the time when you walk about London, and when you turn on a tap and the water comes?”

  “Certainly,” said Richard. “I understand you to mean that the whole of modern society is based upon cooperative effort. If only more people would realise that, Miss Vinrace, there would be fewer of your old widows in solitary lodgings!”

  Rachel considered.

  “Are you a Liberal or are you a Conservative?” she asked.

  “I call myself a Conservative for convenience sake,” said Richard, smiling. “But there is more in common between the two parties than people generally allow.”

  There was a pause, which did not come on Rachel’s side from any lack of things to say; as usual she could not say them, and was further confused by the fact that the time for talking probably ran short. She was haunted by absurd jumbled ideas—how, if one went back far enough, everything perhaps was intelligible; everything was in common; for the mammoths who pastured in the fields of Richmond High Street had turned into paving stones and boxes full of ribbon, and her aunts.

  “Did you say you lived in the country when you were a child?” she asked.

  Crude as her manners seemed to him, Richard was flattered. There could be no doubt that her interest was genuine.

  “I did,” he smiled.

  “And what happened?” she asked. “Or do I ask too many questions?”

  “I’m flattered, I assure you. But—let me see—what happened? Well, riding, lessons, sisters. There was an enchanted rubbish heap, I remember, where all kinds of queer things happened. Odd, what things impress children! I can remember the look of the place to this day. It’s a fallacy to think that children are happy. They’re not; they’re unhappy. I’ve never suffered so much as I did when I was a child.”