Complete Works of Virginia Woolf

by Virginia Woolf

  She curled herself up again, holding her cup in her hand.

  It was still early, it was true. But why, he thought as he opened the book again and turned over the pages, won’t she come? Is she afraid? he wondered. He looked at her crumpled in her chair. Her dress was shabby. He looked at the book again, but he could hardly see to read. She had not lit the lamp.

  “I can’t see to read without a light,” he said. It grew dark soon in this street; the houses were so close. Now a car passed and a light slid across the ceiling.

  “Shall I turn on the light?” she asked.

  “No,” he said. “I’ll try to remember something.” He began to say aloud the only poem he knew by heart. As he spoke the words out into the semi-darkness they sounded extremely beautiful, he thought, because they could not see each other, perhaps.

  He paused at the end of the verse.

  “Go on,” she said.

  He began again. The words going out into the room seemed like actual presences, hard and independent; yet as she was listening they were changed by their contact with her. But as he reached the end of the second verse —

  Society is all but rude —

  To this delicious solitude . . .

  he heard a sound. Was it in the poem or outside of it, he wondered? Inside, he thought, and was about to go on, when she raised her hand. He stopped. He heard heavy footsteps outside the door. Was someone coming in? Her eyes were on the door.

  “The Jew,” she murmured.

  “The Jew?” he said. They listened. He could hear quite distinctly now. Somebody was turning on taps; somebody was having a bath in the room opposite.

  “The Jew having a bath,” she said.

  “The Jew having a bath?” he repeated.

  “And tomorrow there’ll be a line of grease round the bath,” she said.

  “Damn the Jew!” he exclaimed. The thought of a line of grease from a strange man’s body on the bath next door disgusted him.

  “Go on—” said Sara: “Society is all but rude,” she repeated the last lines, “to this delicious solitude.”

  “No,” he said.

  They listened to the water running. The man was coughing and clearing his throat as he sponged.

  “Who is this Jew?” he asked.

  “Abrahamson, in the tallow trade,” she said.

  They listened.

  “Engaged to a pretty girl in a tailor’s shop,” she added.

  They could hear the sounds through the thin walls very distinctly.

  He was snorting as he sponged himself.

  “But he leaves hairs in the bath,” she concluded.

  North felt a shiver run through him. Hairs in food, hairs on basins, other people’s hairs made him feel physically sick.

  “D’you share a bath with him?” he asked.

  She nodded.

  He made a noise like “Pah!”

  “‘Pah.’ That’s what I said,” she laughed. “‘Pah!’ — when I went into the bathroom on a cold winter’s morning— ‘Pah!’ — she threw her hand out—”’Pah!’” She paused.

  “And then — ?” he asked.

  “And then,” she said, sipping her coffee, “I came back into the sitting-room. And breakfast was waiting. Fried eggs and a bit of toast. Lydia with her blouse torn and her hair down. The unemployed singing hymns under the window. And I said to myself—” she flung her hand out, “‘Polluted city, unbelieving city, city of dead fish and worn-out frying-pans’ — thinking of a river’s bank, when the tide’s out,” she explained.

  “Go on,” he nodded.

  “So I put on my hat and coat and rushed out in a rage,” she continued, “and stood on the bridge, and said, ‘Am I a weed, carried this way, that way, on a tide that comes twice a day without a meaning?’”

  “Yes?” he prompted her.

  “And there were people passing; the strutting; the tiptoeing; the pasty; the ferret-eyed; the bowler-hatted, servile innumerable army of workers. And I said, ‘Must I join your conspiracy? Stain the hand, the unstained hand,’” — he could see her hand gleam as she waved it in the half-light of the sitting-room, “‘ — and sign on, and serve a master; all because of a Jew in my bath, all because of a Jew?’”

  She sat up and laughed, excited by the sound of her own voice which had run in to a jog-trot rhythm.

  “Go on, go on,” he said.

  “But I had a talisman, a glowing gem, a lucent emerald” — she picked up an envelope that lay on the floor— “a letter of introduction. And I said to the flunkey in peach-blossom trousers, ‘Admit me, sirrah,’ and he led me along corridors piled with purple till I came to a door, a mahogany door, and knocked; and a voice said, ‘Enter.’ And what did I find?” She paused. “A stout man with red cheeks. On his table three orchids in a vase. Pressed into your hand, I thought, as the car crunches the gravel by your wife at parting. And over the fireplace the usual picture—”

  “Stop!” North interrupted her. “You have come to an office,” he tapped the table. “You are presenting a letter of introduction — but to whom?”

  “Oh, to whom?” she laughed. “To a man in sponge-bag trousers. ‘I knew your father at Oxford,’ he said, toying with the blotting-paper, ornamented in one corner with a cartwheel. But what do you find insoluble, I asked him, looking at the mahogany man, the clean-shaven, rosy-gilled, mutton-fed man—”

  “The man in a newspaper office,” North checked her, “who knew your father. And then?”

  “There was a humming and a grinding. The great machines went round; and little boys popped in with elongated sheets; black sheets; smudged; damp with printer’s ink. ‘Pardon me a moment,’ he said, and made a note in the margin. But the Jew’s in my bath, I said — the Jew . . . the Jew—” She stopped suddenly and emptied her glass.

  Yes, he thought, there’s the voice; there’s the attitude; and the reflection in other people’s faces; but then there’s something true — in the silence perhaps. But it was not silent. They could hear the Jew thudding in the bathroom; he seemed to stagger from foot to foot as he dried himself. Now he unlocked the door, and they heard him go upstairs. The pipes began to give forth hollow gurgling sounds.

  “How much of that was true?” he asked her. But she had lapsed into silence. The actual words he supposed — the actual words floated together and formed a sentence in his mind — meant that she was poor; that she must earn her living, but the excitement with which she had spoken, due to wine perhaps, had created yet another person; another semblance, which one must solidify into one whole.

  The house was quiet now, save for the sound of the bath water running away. A watery pattern fluctuated on the ceiling. The street lamps jiggering up and down outside made the houses opposite a curious pale red. The uproar of the day had died away; no carts were rattling down the street. The vegetable-sellers, the organ-grinders, the woman practising her scales, the man playing the trombone, had all trundled away their barrows, pulled down their shutters, and closed the lids of their pianos. It was so still that for a moment North thought he was in Africa, sitting on the verandah in the moonlight; but he roused himself. “What about this party?” he said. He got up and threw away his cigarette. He stretched himself and looked at his watch. “It’s time to go,” he said. “Go and get ready,” he urged her. For if one went to a party, he thought, it was absurd to go just as people were leaving. And the party must have begun.

  “What were you saying — what were you saying, Nell?” said Peggy, in order to distract Eleanor from paying her share of the cab, as they stood on the doorstep. “Ordinary people — ordinary people ought to do what?” she asked.

  Eleanor was still fumbling with her purse and did not answer.

  “No, I can’t allow that,” she said. “Here, take this—”

  But Peggy brushed aside the hand, and the coins rolled on the doorstep. They both stooped simultaneously and their heads collided.

  “Don’t bother,” said Eleanor as a coin rolled away. “It was all my
fault.” The maid was holding the door open.

  “And where do we take our cloaks off?” she said. “In here?”

  They went into a room on the ground floor which, though an office, had been arranged so that it could be used as a cloak-room. There was a looking-glass on the table: and in front of it trays of pins and combs and brushes. She went up to the glass and gave herself one brief glance.

  “What a gipsy I look!” she said, and ran a comb through her hair. “Burnt as brown as a nigger!” Then she gave way to Peggy and waited.

  “I wonder if this was the room . . .” she said.

  “What room?” said Peggy abstractedly: she was attending to her face.

  “. . . where we used to meet,” said Eleanor. She looked about her. It was still used as an office apparently; but now there were house-agents’ placards on the wall.

  “I wonder if Kitty’ll come tonight,” she mused.

  Peggy was gazing into the glass and did not answer.

  “She doesn’t often come to town now. Only for weddings and christenings and so on,” Eleanor continued.

  Peggy was drawing a line with a tube of some sort round her lips.

  “Suddenly you meet a young man six-foot-two and you realise this is the baby,” Eleanor went on.

  Peggy was still absorbed in her face.

  “D’you have to do that fresh every time?” said Eleanor.

  “I should look a fright if I didn’t,” said Peggy. The tightness round her lips and eyes seemed to her visible. She had never felt less in the mood for a party.

  “Oh, how kind of you . . .” Eleanor broke off. The maid had brought in a sixpence.

  “Now, Peggy,” said she, proffering the coin, “let me pay my share.”

  “Don’t be an ass,” said Peggy, brushing away her hand.

  “But it was my cab,” Eleanor insisted. Peggy walked on. “Because I hate going to parties,” Eleanor continued, following her, still holding out the coin, “on the cheap. You don’t remember your grandfather? He always said, ‘Don’t spoil a good ship for a ha’porth of tar.’ If you went shopping with him,” she went on as they began mounting the stairs, “‘Show me the very best thing you’ve got,’ he’d say.”

  “I remember him,” said Peggy.

  “Do you?” said Eleanor. She was pleased that anyone should remember her father. “They’ve lent these rooms, I suppose,” she added as they walked upstairs. Doors were open. “That’s a solicitor’s,” she said, looking at some deed-boxes with white names painted on them.

  “Yes, I see what you mean about painting — making-up,” she continued, glancing at her niece. “You do look nice. You look lit-up. I like it on young people. Not for myself. I should feel bedizened — bedizzened? — how d’you pronounce it? And what am I to do with these coppers if you won’t take them? I ought to have left them in my bag downstairs.” They mounted higher and higher. “I suppose they’ve opened all these rooms,” she continued — they had now reached a strip of red carpet— “so that if Delia’s little room gets too full — but of course the party’s hardly begun yet. We’re early. Everybody’s upstairs. I hear them talking. Come along. Shall I go first?”

  A babble of voices sounded behind a door. A maid intercepted them.

  “Miss Pargiter,” said Eleanor.

  “Miss Pargiter!” the maid called out, opening the door.

  “Go and get ready,” said North. He crossed the room and fumbled with the switch.

  He touched the switch, and the electric light in the middle of the room came on. The shade had been taken off, and a cone of greenish paper had been twisted round it.

  “Go and get ready,” he repeated. Sara did not answer. She had pulled a book towards her and pretended to read it.

  “He’s killed the king,” she said. “So what’ll he do next?” She held her finger between the pages of the book and looked up at him; a device, he knew, to put off the moment of action. He did not want to go either. Still, if Eleanor wanted them to go — he hesitated, looking at his watch.

  “What’ll he do next?” she repeated.

  “Comedy,” he said briefly, “Contrast,” he said, remembering something he had read. “The only form of continuity,” he added at a venture.

  “Well, go on reading,” she said, handing him the book.

  He opened it at random.

  “The scene is a rocky island in the middle of the sea,” he said. He paused.

  Always before reading he had to arrange the scene; to let this sink; that come forward. A rocky island in the middle of the sea, he said to himself — there were green pools, tufts of silver grass, sand, and far away the soft sigh of waves breaking. He opened his mouth to read. Then there was a sound behind him; a presence — in the play or in the room? He looked up.

  “Maggie!” Sara exclaimed. There she was standing at the open door in evening dress.

  “Were you asleep?” she said, coming into the room. “We’ve been ringing and ringing.”

  She stood smiling at them, amused, as if she had wakened sleepers.

  “Why d’you trouble to have a bell when it’s always broken?” said a man who stood behind her.

  North rose. At first he scarcely remembered them. The surface sight was strange on top of his memory of them, as he had seen them years ago.

  “The bells don’t ring, and the taps don’t run,” he said, awkwardly. “Or they don’t stop running,” he added, for the bath water was still gurgling in the pipes.

  “Luckily the door was open,” said Maggie. She stood at the table looking at the broken apple peel and the dish of fly-blown fruit. Some beauty, North thought, withers; some, he looked at her, grows more beautiful with age. Her hair was grey; her children must be grown up now, he supposed. But why do women purse their lips up when they look in the glass? he wondered. She was looking in the glass. She was pursing her lips. Then she crossed the room, and sat down in the chair by the fireplace.

  “And why has Renny been crying?” said Sara. North looked at him. There were wet marks on either side of his large nose.

  “Because we’ve been to a very bad play,” he said, “and should like something to drink,” he added.

  Sara went to the cupboard and began clinking glasses. “Were you reading?” said Renny, looking at the book which had fallen on the floor.

  “We were on a rocky island in the middle of the sea,” said Sara, putting the glasses on the table. Renny began to pour out whisky.

  Now I remember him, North thought. Last time they had met was before he went to the war. It was in a little house in Westminster. They had sat in front of the fire. And a child had played with a spotted horse. And he had envied them their happiness. And they had talked about science. And Renny had said, “I help them to make shells,” and a mask had come down over his face. A man who made shells; a man who loved peace; a man of science; a man who cried. . . .

  “Stop!” cried Renny. “Stop!” Sara had spurted the soda water over the table.

  “When did you get back?” Renny asked him, taking his glass and looking at him with eyes still wet with tears.

  “About a week ago,” he said.

  “You’ve sold your farm?” said Renny. He sat down with his glass in his hand.

  “Yes, sold it,” said North. “Whether I shall stay, or go back,” he said, taking his glass and raising it to his lips, “I don’t know.”

  “Where was your farm?” said Renny, bending towards him. And they talked about Africa.

  Maggie looked at them drinking and talking. The twisted cone of paper over the electric light was oddly stained. The mottled light made their faces look greenish. The two grooves on each side of Renny’s nose were still wet. His face was all peaks and hollows; North’s face was round and snub-nosed and rather blueish about the lips. She gave her chair a little push so that she got the two heads in relation side by side. They were very different. And as they talked about Africa their faces changed, as if some twitch had been given to the fine network under the skin
and the weights fell into different sockets. A thrill ran through her as if the weights in her own body had changed too. But there was something about the light that puzzled her. She looked round. A lamp must be flaring in the street outside. Its light, flickering up and down, mixed with the electric light under the greenish cone of mottled paper. It was that which. . . . She started; a voice had reached her.

  “To Africa?” she said, looking at North.

  “To Delia’s party,” he said. “I asked if you were coming. . . .” She had not been listening.

  “One moment . . .” Renny interrupted. He held up his hand like a policeman stopping traffic. And again they went on, talking about Africa.

  Maggie lay back in her chair. Behind their heads rose the curve of the mahogany chair back. And behind the curve of the chair back was a crinkled glass with a red lip; then there was the straight line of the mantelpiece with little black-and-white squares on it; and then three rods ending in soft yellow plumes. She ran her eye from thing to thing. In and out it went, collecting, gathering, summing up into one whole, when, just as she was about to complete the pattern, Renny exclaimed:

  “We must — we must!”

  He had got up. He had pushed away his glass of whisky. He stood there like somebody commanding a troop, North thought; so emphatic was his voice, so commanding his gesture. Yet it was only a question of going round to an old woman’s party. Or was there always, he thought, as he too rose and looked for his hat, something that came to the surface, inappropriately, unexpectedly, from the depths of people, and made ordinary actions, ordinary words, expressive of the whole being, so that he felt, as he turned to follow Renny to Delia’s party, as if he were riding to the relief of a besieged garrison across a desert?

  He stopped with his hand on the door. Sara had come in from the bedroom. She had changed; she was in evening dress; there was something odd about her — perhaps it was the effect of the evening dress estranging her?

  “I am ready,” she said, looking at them.

  She stooped and picked up the book that North had let fall.

  “We must go—” she said, turning to her sister.