“Is there a dance?” she asked.
“Yes. Down the street,” said Sara.
Maggie looked out. At this distance the music sounded romantic, mysterious, and the colours flowed over each other, neither pink nor white nor blue.
Maggie stretched herself and unpinned the flower that she was wearing. It was drooping; the white petals were stained with black marks. She looked out of the window again. The mixture of lights was very odd; one leaf was a lurid green; another was a bright white. The branches crossed each other at different levels. Then Sally laughed.
“Did anybody give you a piece of glass,” she said, “saying to you, Miss Pargiter . . . my broken heart?”
“No,” said Maggie, “why should they?” The flower fell off her lap onto the floor.
“I was thinking,” said Sara. “The people in the garden . . .”
She waved her hand at the window. They were silent for a moment, listening to the dance music.
“And who did you sit next?” Sara asked after a time.
“A man in gold lace,” said Maggie.
“In gold lace?” Sara repeated.
Maggie was silent. She was getting used to the room; the discrepancy between this litter and the shiny ballroom was leaving her. She envied her sister lying in bed with the window open and the breeze blowing in.
“Because he was going to a party,” she said. She paused. Something had caught her eye. A branch swayed up and down in the little breeze. Maggie held the blind so that the window was uncurtained. Now she could see the whole sky, and the houses and the branches in the garden.
“It’s the moon,” she said. It was the moon that was making the leaves white. They both looked at the moon, which shone like a silver coin, perfectly polished, very sharp and hard.
“But if they don’t say O my broken heart,” said Sara, “what do they say, at parties?”
Maggie flicked off a white fleck that had stuck to her arm from her gloves.
“Some people say one thing,” she said, getting up, “and some people say another.”
She picked up the little brown book which lay on the counterpane and smoothed out the bedclothes. Sara took the book out of her hand.
“This man,” she said, tapping the ugly little brown volume, “says the world’s nothing but thought, Maggie.”
“Does he?” said Maggie, putting the book on the wash-stand. It was a device, she knew, to keep her standing there, talking.
“D’you think it’s true?” Sara asked.
“Possibly,” said Maggie, without thinking what she was saying. She put out her hand to draw the curtain.
“The world’s nothing but thought, does he say?” she repeated, holding the curtain apart.
She had been thinking something of the kind when the cab crossed the Serpentine; when her mother interrupted her. She had been thinking, Am I that, or am I this? Are we one, or are we separate — something of the kind.
“Then what about trees and colours?” she said, turning round.
“Trees and colours?” Sara repeated.
“Would there be trees if we didn’t see them?” said Maggie.
“What’s ‘I’? . . . ‘I’ . . .” She stopped. She did not know what she meant. She was talking nonsense.
“Yes,” said Sara. “What’s ‘I’?” She held her sister tight by the skirt, whether she wanted to prevent her from going, or whether she wanted to argue the question.
“What’s ‘I’?” she repeated.
But there was a rustling outside the door and her mother came in.
“Oh my dear children!” she exclaimed, “still out of bed? Still talking?”
She came across the room, beaming, glowing, as if she were still under the influence of the party. Jewels flashed on her neck and her arms. She was extraordinarily handsome. She glanced round her.
“And the flower’s on the floor, and everything’s so untidy,” she said. She picked up the flower that Maggie had dropped and put it to her lips.
“Because I was reading, Mama, because I was waiting,” said Sara. She took her mother’s hand and stroked the bare arm. She imitated her mother’s manner so exactly that Maggie smiled. They were the very opposite of each other — Lady Pargiter so sumptuous; Sally so angular. But it’s worked, she thought to herself, as Lady Pargiter allowed herself to be pulled down onto the bed. The imitation had been perfect.
“But you must go to sleep, Sal,” she protested. “What did the doctor say? Lie straight, lie still, he said.” She pushed her back onto the pillows.
“I am lying straight and still,” said Sara. “Now” — she looked up at her— “tell me about the party.”
Maggie stood upright in the window. She watched the couples coming down the iron staircase. Soon the garden was full of pale whites and pinks, moving in and out. She half heard them behind her talking about the party.
“It was a very nice party,” her mother was saying.
Maggie looked out of the window. The square of the garden was filled with differently tinted colours. They seemed to ripple one over the other until they entered the angle where the light from the house fell, when they suddenly turned to ladies and gentlemen in full evening dress.
“No fish-knives?” she heard Sara saying.
She turned.
“Who was the man I sat next?” she asked.
“Sir Matthew Mayhew,” said Lady Pargiter.
“Who is Sir Matthew Mayhew?” said Maggie.
“A most distinguished man, Maggie!” said her mother, flinging her hand out.
“A most distinguished man,” Sara echoed her.
“But he is,” Lady Pargiter repeated, smiling at her daughter whom she loved, perhaps because of her shoulder.
“It was a great honour to sit next him, Maggie,” she continued. “A great honour,” she said reprovingly. She paused, as if she saw a little scene. She looked up.
“And then,” she resumed, “when Mary Palmer says to me, Which is your daughter? I see Maggie, miles away, at the other end of the room, talking to Martin, whom she might have met every day of her life in an omnibus!”
Her words were stressed so that they seemed to rise and fall. She emphasised the rhythm still further by tapping with her fingers on Sally’s bare arm.
“But I don’t see Martin every day,” Maggie protested.
“I haven’t seen him since he came back from Africa.” Her mother interrupted her.
“But you don’t go to parties, my dear Maggie, to talk to your own cousins. You go to parties to—”
Here the dance music crashed out. The first chords seemed possessed of frantic energy, as if they were summoning the dancers imperiously to return. Lady Pargiter stopped in the middle of her sentence. She sighed; her body seemed to become indolent and suave. The heavy lids lowered themselves slightly over her large dark eyes. She swayed her head slowly in time to the music.
“What’s that they’re playing?” she murmured. She hummed the tune, beating time with her hand. “Something I used to dance to.”
“Dance it now, Mama,” said Sara.
“Yes, Mama. Show us how you used to dance,” Maggie urged her.
“But without a partner — ?” Lady Pargiter protested.
Maggie pushed a chair away.
“Imagine a partner,” Sara urged her.
“Well,” said Lady Pargiter. She rose. “It was something like this,” she said. She paused; she held her skirt out with one hand; she slightly crooked the other in which she held the flower; she twirled round and round in the space which Maggie had cleared. She moved with extraordinary stateliness. All her limbs seemed to bend and flow in the lilt and the curve of the music; which became louder and clearer as she danced to it. She circled in and out among the chairs and tables and then, as the music stopped, “There!” she exclaimed. Her body seemed to fold and close itself together as she sighed “There!” and sank all in one movement on the edge of the bed.
“Wonderful!” Maggie exclaimed. Her eyes rest
ed on her mother with admiration.
“Nonsense,” Lady Pargiter laughed, panting slightly. “I’m much too old to dance now; but when I was young; when I was your age—” She sat there panting.
“You danced out of the house onto the terrace and found a little note folded in your bouquet—” said Sara, stroking her mother’s arm. “Tell us that story, Mama.”
“Not tonight,” said Lady Pargiter. “Listen — there’s the clock striking!”
Since the Abbey was so near, the sound of the hour filled the room; softly, tumultuously, as if it were a flurry of soft sighs hurrying one on top of another, yet concealing something hard. Lady Pargiter counted. It was very late.
“I’ll tell you the true story one of these days,” she said as she bent to kiss her daughter goodnight.
“Now! Now!” cried Sara, holding her fast.
“No, not now — not now!” Lady Pargiter laughed, snatching away her hand. “There’s Papa calling me!”
They heard footsteps in the passage outside, and then Sir Digby’s voice at the door.
“Eugénie! It’s very late, Eugénie!” they heard him say.
“Coming!” she cried. “Coming!”
Sara caught her by the train of her dress. “You haven’t told us the story of the bouquet, Mamma!” she cried.
“Eugénie!” Sir Digby repeated. His voice sounded peremptory. “Have you locked—”
“Yes, yes, yes,” said Eugénie. “I will tell you the true story another time,” she said, freeing herself from her daughter’s grasp. She kissed them both quickly and went out of the room.
“She won’t tell us,” said Maggie, picking up her gloves. She spoke with some bitterness.
They listened to the voices talking in the passage. They could hear their father’s voice. He was expostulating. His voice sounded querulous and cross.
“Pirouetting up and down with his sword between his legs; with his opera hat under his arm and his sword between his legs,” said Sara, pummelling her pillows viciously.
The voices went further away, downstairs.
“Who was the note from, d’you think?” said Maggie. She paused, looking at her sister burrowing into her pillows.
“The note? What note?” said Sara. “Oh, the note in the bouquet. I don’t remember,” she said. She yawned.
Maggie shut the window and pulled the curtain but she left a chink of light.
“Pull it tight, Maggie,” said Sara irritably. “Shut out that din.”
She curled herself up with her back to the window. She had raised a hump of pillow against her head as if to shut out the dance music that was still going on. She pressed her face into a cleft of the pillows. She looked like a chrysalis wrapped round in the sharp white folds of the sheet. Only the tip of her nose was visible. Her hip and her feet jutted out at the end of the bed covered by a single sheet. She gave a profound sigh that was half a snore; she was asleep already.
Maggie went along the passage. Then she saw that there were lights in the hall beneath. She stopped and looked down over the banister. The hall was lit up. She could see the great Italian chair with the gilt claws that stood in the hall. Her mother had thrown her evening cloak over it, so that it fell in soft golden folds over the crimson cover. She could see a tray with whisky and a soda-water syphon on the hall table. Then she heard the voices of her father and mother as they came up the kitchen stairs. They had been down in the basement; there had been a burglary up the street; her mother had promised to have a new lock put on the kitchen door but had forgotten. She could hear her father say:
“. . . they’d melt it down; we should never get it back again.”
Maggie went on a few steps upstairs.
“I’m so sorry, Digby,” Eugénie said as they came into the hall. “I will tie a knot in my handkerchief; I will go directly after breakfast tomorrow morning. . . . Yes,” she said, gathering her cloak in her arms, “I will go myself, and I will say ‘I’ve had enough of your excuses, Mr Toye. No, Mr Toye, you have deceived me once too often. And after all these years!’”
Then there was a pause. Maggie could hear soda-water squirted into a tumbler; the chink of a glass; and then the lights went out.
1908
It was March and the wind was blowing. But it was not “blowing.” It was scraping, scourging. It was so cruel. So unbecoming. Not merely did it bleach faces and raise red spots on noses; it tweaked up skirts; showed stout legs; made trousers reveal skeleton shins. There was no roundness, no fruit in it. Rather it was like the curve of a scythe which cuts, not corn, usefully; but destroys, revelling in sheer sterility. With one blast it blew out colour — even a Rembrandt in the National Gallery, even a solid ruby in a Bond Street window: one blast and they were gone. Had it any breeding place it was in the Isle of Dogs among tin cans lying beside a workhouse drab on the banks of a polluted city. It tossed up rotten leaves, gave them another span of degraded existence; scorned, derided them, yet had nothing to put in the place of the scorned, the derided. Down they fell. Uncreative, unproductive, yelling its joy in destruction, its power to peel off the bark, the bloom, and show the bare bone, it paled every window; drove old gentlemen further and further into the leather smelling recesses of clubs; and old ladies to sit eyeless, leather cheeked, joyless among the tassels and antimacassars of their bedrooms and kitchens. Triumphing in its wantonness it emptied the streets; swept flesh before it; and coming smack against a dust cart standing outside the Army and Navy Stores, scattered along the pavement a litter of old envelopes; twists of hair; papers already blood smeared, yellow smeared, smudged with print and sent them scudding to plaster legs, lamp posts, pillar boxes, and fold themselves frantically against area railings.
Matty Stiles, the caretaker, huddled in the basement of the house in Browne Street, looked up. There was a rattle of dust along the pavement. It worked its way under the doors, through the window frames; on to chests and dressers. But she didn’t care. She was one of the unlucky ones. She had been thinking it was a safe job, sure to last the summer out anyhow. The lady was dead; the gentleman too. She had got the job through her son the policeman. The house with its basement would never let this side of Christmas — so they told her. She had only to show parties round who came with orders to view from the agent. And she always mentioned the basement — how damp it was. “Look at that stain on the ceiling.” There it was, sure enough. All the same, the party from China took a fancy to it. It suited him, he said. He had business in the city. She was one of the unlucky ones — after three months to turn out and lodge with her son in Pimlico.
A bell rang. Let him ring, ring, ring, she growled. She wasn’t going to open the door any more. There he was standing on the door-step. She could see a pair of legs against the railing. Let him ring as much as he liked. The house was sold. Couldn’t he see the notice on the board? Couldn’t he read it? Hadn’t he eyes? She huddled closer to the fire, which was covered with pale ash. She could see his legs there, standing on the door-step, between the canaries’ cage and the dirty linen which she had been going to wash, but this wind made her shoulder ache cruel. Let him ring the house down, for all she cared.
Martin was standing there.
“Sold” was written on a strip of bright red paper pasted across the house-agent’s board.
“Already!” said Martin. He had made a little circle to look at the house in Browne Street. And it was already sold. The red strip gave him a shock. It was sold already, and Digby had only been dead three months — Eugénie not much more than a year. He stood for a moment gazing at the black windows now grimed with dust. It was a house of character; built some time in the eighteenth century. Eugénie had been proud of it. And I used to like going there, he thought. But now an old newspaper was on the door-step; wisps of straw had caught in the railings; and he could see, for there were no blinds, into an empty room. A woman was peering up at him from behind the bars of a cage in the basement. It was no use ringing. He turned away. A feeling of something extinguishe
d came over him as he went down the street.
It’s a grimy, it’s a sordid end, he thought; I used to enjoy going there. But he disliked brooding over unpleasant thoughts. What’s the good of it? he asked himself.
“The King of Spain’s daughter,” he hummed as he turned the corner, “came to visit me . . .”
“And how much longer,” he asked himself, pressing the bell, as he stood on the door-step of the house in Abercorn Terrace, “is old Crosby going to keep me waiting?” The wind was very cold.
He stood there, looking at the buff-coloured front of the large, architecturally insignificant, but no doubt convenient family mansion in which his father and sister still lived. “She takes her time nowadays,” he thought, shivering in the wind. But here the door opened, and Crosby appeared.
“Hullo, Crosby!” he said.
She beamed on him so that her gold tooth showed. He was always her favourite, they said, and the thought pleased him today.
“How’s the world treating you?” he asked, as he gave her his hat.
She was just the same — more shrivelled, more gnat-like, and her blue eyes were more prominent than ever.
“Feeling the rheumatics?” he asked, as she helped him off with his coat. She grinned, silently. He felt friendly; he was glad to find her much as usual. “And Miss Eleanor?” he asked, as he opened the drawing-room door. The room was empty. She was not there. But she had been there, for there was a book on the table. Nothing had been changed he was glad to see. He stood in front of the fire and looked at his mother’s picture. In the course of the past few years it had ceased to be his mother; it had become a work of art. But it was dirty.
There used to be a flower in the grass, he thought, peering into a dark corner: but now there was nothing but dirty brown paint. And what’s she been reading? he wondered. He took the book that was propped up against the teapot and looked at it. “Renan,” he read. “Why Renan?” he asked himself, beginning to read as he waited.
Complete Works of Virginia Woolf Page 216