“No, that’s Paul,” he said. “My brother Paul.” He was tart about it. What did he do, then, that made him superior in his own esteem to Paul?
“You live in London?” she said.
He nodded.
“You write?” she hazarded. But why, because he was a writer — she remembered now seeing his name in the papers — throw your head back when you say “Yes”? She preferred Paul; he looked healthy; this one had a queer face; knit up; nerve-drawn; fixed.
“Poetry?” she said.
“Yes.” But why bite off that word as if it were a cherry on the end of a stalk? she thought. There was nobody coming; they were bound to sit down side by side, on chairs by the wall.
“How do you manage, if you’re in an office?” she said. Apparently in his spare time.
“My uncle,” he began. “. . . You’ve met him?”
Yes, a nice commonplace man; he had been very kind to her about a passport once. This boy, of course, though she only half listened, sneered at him. Then why go into his office? she asked herself. My people, he was saying . . . hunted. Her attention wandered. She had heard it all before. I, I, I — he went on. It was like a vulture’s beak pecking, or a vacuum-cleaner sucking, or a telephone bell ringing. I, I, I. But he couldn’t help it, not with that nerve-drawn egotist’s face, she thought, glancing at him. He could not free himself, could not detach himself. He was bound on the wheel with tight iron hoops. He had to expose, had to exhibit. But why let him? she thought, as he went on talking. For what do I care about his “I, I, I”? Or his poetry? Let me shake him off then, she said to herself, feeling like a person whose blood has been sucked, leaving all the nerve-centres pale. She paused. He noted her lack of sympathy. He thought her stupid, she supposed.
“I’m tired,” she apologised. “I’ve been up all night,” she explained. “I’m a doctor—”
The fire went out of his face when she said “I.” That’s done it — now he’ll go, she thought. He can’t be “you” — he must be “I.” She smiled. For up he got and off he went.
She turned round and stood at the window. Poor little wretch, she thought; atrophied, withered; cold as steel; hard as steel; bald as steel. And I too, she thought, looking at the sky. The stars seemed pricked haphazard in the sky, except that there, to the right over the chimney-pots, hung that phantom wheel-barrow — what did they call it? The name escaped her. I will count them, she thought, returning to her notebook, and had begun one, two, three, four . . . when a voice exclaimed behind her: “Peggy! Aren’t your ears tingling?” She turned. It was Delia of course, with her genial ways, her imitation Irish flattery: “ — because they ought to be,” said Delia, laying a hand on her shoulder, “considering what he’s been saying” — she pointed to a grey-haired man— “what praises he’s been singing of you.”
Peggy looked where she pointed. There was her teacher over there, her master. Yes, she knew he thought her clever. She was, she supposed. They all said so. Very clever.
“He’s been telling me—” Delia began. But she broke off.
“Just help me open this window,” she said. “It’s getting hot.”
“Let me,” said Peggy. She gave the window a jerk, but it stuck, for it was old and the frames did not fit.
“Here, Peggy,” said somebody, coming behind her. It was her father. His hand was on the window, his hand with the scar. He pushed; the window went up.
“Thanks, Morris, that’s better,” said Delia. “I was telling Peggy her ears ought to be tingling,” she began again: “‘My most brilliant pupil!’ That’s what he said,” Delia went on. “I assure you I felt quite proud. ‘But she’s my niece,’ I said. He hadn’t known it—”
There, said Peggy, that’s pleasure. The nerve down her spine seemed to tingle as the praise reached her father. Each emotion touched a different nerve. A sneer rasped the thigh; pleasure thrilled the spine; and also affected the sight. The stars had softened; they quivered. Her father brushed her shoulder as he dropped his hand; but neither of them spoke.
“D’you want it open at the bottom too?” he said.
“No, that’ll do,” said Delia. “The room’s getting hot,” she said. “People are beginning to come. They must use the rooms downstairs,” she said. “But who’s that out there?” she pointed. Opposite the house against the railings of the square was a group in evening dress.
“I think I recognise one of them,” said Morris, looking out. “That’s North, isn’t it?”
“Yes, that’s North,” said Peggy, looking out.
“Then why don’t they come in?” said Delia, tapping on the window.
“But you must come and see it for yourselves,” North was saying. They had asked him to describe Africa. He had said that there were mountains and plains; it was silent, he had said, and birds sang. He stopped; it was difficult to describe a place to people who had not seen it. Then curtains in the house opposite parted, and three heads appeared at the window. They looked at the heads outlined on the window opposite them. They were standing with their backs to the railings of the square. The trees hung dark showers of leaves over them. The trees had become part of the sky. Now and then they seemed to shift and shuffle slightly as a breeze went through them. A star shone among the leaves. It was silent too; the murmur of the traffic was run together into one far hum. A cat slunk past; for a second they saw the luminous green of the eyes; then it was extinguished. The cat crossed the lighted space and vanished. Someone tapped again on the window and cried, “Come in!”
“Come!” said Renny, and threw his cigar into the bushes behind him. “Come, we must.”
They went upstairs, past the doors of offices, past long windows that opened on to back gardens that lay behind houses. Trees in full leaf stretched their branches across at different levels; the leaves, here bright green in the artificial light, here dark in shadow, moved up and down in the little breeze. Then they came to the private part of the house, where the red carpet was laid; and a roar of voices sounded from behind a door as if a flock of sheep were penned there. Then music, a dance, swung out.
“Now,” said Maggie, pausing for a moment, outside the door. She gave their names to the servant.
“And you, sir?” said the maid to North, who hung behind.
“Captain Pargiter,” said North, touching his tie.
“And Captain Pargiter!” the maid called out.
Delia was upon them instantly. “And Captain Pargiter!” she exclaimed, as she came hurrying across the room. “How very nice of you to come!” she exclaimed. She took their hands at random, here a left hand, there a right hand, in her left hand, in her right hand.
“I thought it was you,” she exclaimed, “standing in the square. I thought I could recognise Renny — but I wasn’t sure about North. Captain Pargiter!” she wrung his hand, “you’re quite a stranger — but a very welcome one! Now who d’you know? Who don’t you know?”
She glanced round, twitching her shawl rather nervously.
“Let me see, there’s all your uncles and aunts; and your cousins; and your sons and daughters — yes, Maggie, I saw your lovely couple not long ago. They’re somewhere. . . . Only all the generations in our family are so mixed; cousins and aunts, uncles and brothers — but perhaps it’s a good thing.”
She stopped rather suddenly as if she had used up that vein. She twitched her shawl.
“They’re going to dance,” she said, pointing at the young man who was putting another record on the gramophone. “It’s all right for dancing,” she added, referring to the gramophone. “Not for music.” She became simple for a moment. “I can’t bear music on the gramophone. But dance music — that’s another thing. And young people — don’t you find that? — must dance. It’s right they should. Dance or not — just as you like.” She waved her hand.
“Yes, just as you like,” her husband echoed her. He stood beside her, dangling his hands in front of him like a bear on which coats are hung in a hotel.
“Just as you
like,” he repeated, shaking his paws.
“Help me to move the tables, North,” said Delia. “If they’re going to dance, they’ll want everything out of the way — and the rugs rolled up.” She pushed a table out of the way. Then she ran across the room to whisk a chair against the wall.
Now one of the vases was upset, and a stream of water flowed across the carpet.
“Don’t mind it, don’t mind it — it doesn’t matter at all!” Delia exclaimed, assuming the manner of a harum-scarum Irish hostess. But North stooped and swabbed up the water.
“And what are you going to do with that pocket handkerchief?” Eleanor asked him; she had joined them in her flowing red cloak.
“Hang it on a chair to dry,” said North, walking off.
“And you, Sally?” said Eleanor, drawing back against the wall since they were going to dance. “Going to dance?” she asked, sitting down.
“I?” said Sara, yawning. “I want to sleep.” She sank down on a cushion beside Eleanor.
“But you don’t come to parties,” Eleanor laughed, looking down at her, “to sleep, do you?” Again she saw the little picture she had seen at the end of the telephone. But she could not see her face; only the top of her head.
“Dining with you, wasn’t he?” she said, as North passed them with his handkerchief.
“And what did you talk about?” she asked. She saw her, sitting on the edge of a chair, swinging her foot up and down, with a smudge on her nose.
“Talk about?” said Sara. “You, Eleanor.” People were passing them all the time; they were brushing against their knees; they were beginning to dance. It made one feel a little dizzy, Eleanor thought, sinking back in her chair.
“Me?” she said. “What about me?”
“Your life,” said Sara.
“My life?” Eleanor repeated. Couples began to twist and turn slowly past them. It was a fox-trot that they were dancing, she supposed.
My life, she said to herself. That was odd, it was the second time that evening that somebody had talked about her life. And I haven’t got one, she thought. Oughtn’t a life to be something you could handle and produce? — a life of seventy odd years. But I’ve only the present moment, she thought. Here she was alive, now, listening to the fox-trot. Then she looked round. There was Morris; Rose; Edward with his head thrown back talking to a man she did not know. I’m the only person here, she thought, who remembers how he sat on the edge of my bed that night, crying — the night Kitty’s engagement was announced. Yes, things came back to her. A long strip of life lay behind her. Edward crying, Mrs. Levy talking; snow falling; a sunflower with a crack in it; the yellow omnibus trotting along the Bayswater Road. And I thought to myself, I’m the youngest person in this omnibus; now I’m the oldest. . . . Millions of things came back to her. Atoms danced apart and massed themselves. But how did they compose what people called a life? She clenched her hands and felt the hard little coins she was holding. Perhaps there’s “I” at the middle of it, she thought; a knot; a centre; and again she saw herself sitting at her table drawing on the blotting-paper, digging little holes from which spokes radiated. Out and out they went; thing followed thing, scene obliterated scene. And then they say, she thought, “We’ve been talking about you!”
“My life . . .” she said aloud, but half to herself.
“Yes?” said Sara, looking up.
Eleanor stopped. She had forgotten her. But there was somebody listening. Then she must put her thoughts into order; then she must find words. But no, she thought, I can’t find words; I can’t tell anybody.
“Isn’t that Nicholas?” she said, looking at a rather large man who stood in the doorway.
“Where?” said Sara. But she looked in the wrong direction. He had disappeared. Perhaps she had been mistaken. My life’s been other people’s lives, Eleanor thought — my father’s; Morris’s; my friends’ lives; Nicholas’s. . . . Fragments of a conversation with him came back to her. Either I’d been lunching with him or dining with him, she thought. It was in a restaurant. There was a parrot with a pink feather in a cage on the counter. And they had sat there talking — it was after the war — about the future; about education. And he wouldn’t let me pay for the wine, she suddenly remembered, though it was I who ordered it. . . .
Here somebody stopped in front of her. She looked up. “Just as I was thinking of you!” she exclaimed.
It was Nicholas.
“Good-evening, madame!” he said, bending over her in his foreign way.
“Just as I was thinking of you!” she repeated. Indeed it was like a part of her, a sunk part of her, coming to the surface. “Come and sit beside me,” she said, and pulled up a chair.
“D’you know who that chap is, sitting by my aunt?” said North to the girl he was dancing with. She looked round; but vaguely.
“I don’t know your aunt,” she said. “I don’t know anybody here.”
The dance was over and they began walking towards the door.
“I don’t even know my hostess,” she said. “I wish you’d point her out to me.”
“There — over there,” he said. He pointed to Delia in her black dress with the gold spangles.
“Oh, that,” she said, looking at her. “That’s my hostess, is it?” He had not caught the girl’s name, and she knew none of them either. He was glad of it. It made him seem different to himself — it stimulated him. He shepherded her towards the door. He wanted to avoid his relations. In particular he wanted to avoid his sister Peggy; but there she was, standing alone by the door. He looked the other way; he conveyed his partner out of the door. There must be a garden or a roof somewhere, he thought, where they could sit, alone. She was extraordinarily pretty and young.
“Come along,” he said, “downstairs.”
“And what were you thinking about me?” said Nicholas, sitting down beside Eleanor.
She smiled. There he was in his rather ill-assorted dress-clothes, with the seal engraved with the arms of his mother the princess, and his swarthy wrinkled face that always made her think of some loose-skinned, furry animal, savage to others but kind to herself. But what was she thinking about him? She was thinking of him in the lump; she could not break off little fragments. The restaurant had been smoky she remembered.
“How we dined together once in Soho,” she said. “. . . d’you remember?”
“All the evenings with you I remember, Eleanor,” he said. But his glance was a little vague. His attention was distracted. He was looking at a lady who had just come in; a well-dressed lady, who stood with her back to the bookcase equipped for every emergency. If I can’t describe my own life, Eleanor thought, how can I describe him? For what he was she did not know; only that it gave her pleasure when he came in; relieved her of the need of thinking; and gave her mind a little jog. He was looking at the lady. She seemed upheld by their gaze; vibrating under it. And suddenly it seemed to Eleanor that it had all happened before. So a girl had come in that night in the restaurant: had stood, vibrating, in the door. She knew exactly what he was going to say. He had said it before, in the restaurant. He is going to say, She is like a ball on the top of a fishmonger’s fountain. As she thought it, he said it. Does everything then come over again a little differently? she thought. If so, is there a pattern; a theme, recurring, like music; half remembered, half foreseen? . . . a gigantic pattern, momentarily perceptible? The thought gave her extreme pleasure: that there was a pattern. But who makes it? Who thinks it? Her mind slipped. She could not finish her thought.
“Nicholas . . .” she said. She wanted him to finish it; to take her thought and carry it out into the open unbroken; to make it whole, beautiful, entire.
“Tell me, Nicholas . . .” she began; but she had no notion how she was going to finish her sentence, or what it was that she wanted to ask him. He was talking to Sara. She listened. He was laughing at her. He was pointing at her feet.
“. . . coming to a party,” he was saying, “with one stocking that is white, and
one stocking that is blue.”
“The Queen of England asked me to tea;” Sara hummed in time to the music; “and which shall it be; the gold or the rose; for all are in holes, my stockings, said she.” This is their love-making, Eleanor thought, half listening to their laughter, to their bickering. Another inch of the pattern, she thought, still using her half-formulated idea to stamp the immediate scene. And if this love-making differs from the old, still it has its charm; it was “love,” different from the old love, perhaps, but worse, was it? Anyhow, she thought, they are aware of each other; they live in each other; what else is love, she asked, listening to their laughter.
“. . . Can you never act for yourself?” he was saying. “Can you never even choose stockings for yourself?”
“Never! Never!” Sara was laughing.
“. . . Because you have no life of your own,” he said. “She lives in dreams,” he added, turning to Eleanor, “alone.”
“The professor preaching his little sermon,” Sara sneered, laying her hand on his knee.
“Sara singing her little song,” Nicholas laughed, pressing her hand.
But they are very happy, Eleanor thought: they laugh at each other.
“Tell me, Nicholas . . .” she began again. But another dance was beginning. Couples came flocking back into the room. Slowly, intently, with serious faces, as if they were taking part in some mystic rite which gave them immunity from other feelings, the dancers began circling past them, brushing against their knees, almost treading on their toes. And then someone stopped in front of them.
“Oh, here’s North,” said Eleanor, looking up.
“North!” Nicholas exclaimed. “North! We met this evening,” he stretched out his hand to North, “ — at Eleanor’s.”
“We did,” said North warmly. Nicholas crushed his fingers; he felt them separate again when the hand was removed. It was effusive; but he liked it. He was feeling effusive himself. His eyes shone. He had lost his puzzled look completely. His adventure had turned out well. The girl had written her name in his pocket-book. “Come and see me tomorrow at six,” she had said.
Complete Works of Virginia Woolf Page 236