“There — work it out on that,” she said. Maggie took the paper and drew a few lines with the pencil as if to test it. North glanced over her shoulder. Was she solving the problem before her — was she considering his life, his needs? No. She was drawing, apparently a caricature — he looked — of a big man opposite in a white waistcoat. It was a farce. It made him feel slightly ridiculous.
“Don’t be so silly,” he said.
“That’s my brother,” she said, nodding at the man in the white waistcoat. “He used to take us for rides on an elephant. . . .” She added a flourish to the waistcoat.
“And we’re being very sensible,” Eleanor protested.
“If you want to live in England, North — if you want—”
He cut her short.
“I don’t know what I want,” he said.
“Oh, I see!” she said. She laughed. Her feeling of happiness returned to her, her unreasonable exaltation. It seemed to her that they were all young, with the future before them. Nothing was fixed; nothing was known; life was open and free before them.
“Isn’t that odd?” she exclaimed. “Isn’t that queer? Isn’t that why life’s a perpetual — what shall I call it? — miracle? . . . I mean,” she tried to explain, for he looked puzzled, “old age they say is like this; but it isn’t. It’s different; quite different. So when I was a child; so when I was a girl; it’s been a perpetual discovery, my life. A miracle.” She stopped. She was rambling on again. She felt rather light-headed, after her dream.
“There’s Peggy!” she exclaimed, glad to attach herself to something solid. “Look at her! Reading a book!”
Peggy, marooned when the dance started, over by the bookcase, stood as close to it as she could. In order to cover her loneliness she took down a book. It was bound in green leather; and had, she noted as she turned it in her hands, little gilt stars tooled upon it. Which is all to the good, she thought, turning it over, because then it’ll seem as if I were admiring the binding. . . . But I can’t stand here admiring the binding, she thought. She opened it. He’ll say what I’m thinking, she thought as she did so. Books opened at random always did.
“La médiocrité de l’univers m’étonne et me révolte” she read. That was it. Precisely. She read on. “. . . la petitesse de toutes choses m’emplit de dégoût . . .” She lifted her eyes. They were treading on her toes. “. . . la pauvreté des êtres humains m’anéantit.” She shut the book and put it back on the shelf.
Precisely, she said.
She turned her watch on her wrist and looked at it surreptitiously. Time was getting on. An hour is sixty minutes, she said to herself; two hours are one hundred and twenty minutes. How many have I still to stay here? Could she go yet? She saw Eleanor beckoning. She put the book back on the shelf. She went towards them.
“Come, Peggy, come and talk to us,” Eleanor called out, beckoning.
“D’you know what time it is, Eleanor?” said Peggy, coming up to them. She pointed to her watch. “Don’t you think it’s time to be going?” she said.
“I’d forgotten the time,” said Eleanor.
“But you’ll be so tired tomorrow,” Peggy protested, standing beside her.
“How like a doctor!” North twitted her. “Health, health, health!” he exclaimed. “But health’s not an end in itself,” he said, looking up at her.
She ignored him.
“D’you mean to stay to the end?” she said to Eleanor. “This’ll go on all night.” She looked at the twisting couples gyrating in time to the tune on the gramophone, as if some animal were dying in a slow but exquisite anguish.
“But we’re enjoying ourselves,” said Eleanor. “Come and enjoy yourself too.”
She pointed to the floor at her side. Peggy let herself down onto the floor at her side. Give up brooding, thinking, analysing, Eleanor meant she knew. Enjoy the moment — but could one? she asked, pulling her skirts round her feet as she sat down. Eleanor bent over and tapped her on the shoulder.
“I want you to tell me,” she said, drawing her into the conversation, since she looked so glum, “you’re a doctor — you know these things — what do dreams mean?”
Peggy laughed. Another of Eleanor’s questions. Does two and two make four — and what is the nature of the universe?
“I don’t mean dreams exactly,” Eleanor went on. “Feelings — feelings that come when one’s asleep?”
“My dear Nell,” said Peggy, glancing up at her, “how often have I told you? Doctors know very little about the body; absolutely nothing about the mind.” She looked down again.
“I always said they were humbugs!” North exclaimed.
“What a pity!” said Eleanor. “I was hoping you’d be able to explain to me—” She was bending down. There was a flush on her cheek, Peggy noted; she was excited; but what was there to be excited about?
“Explain — what?” she asked.
“Oh, nothing,” said Eleanor. Now I’ve snubbed her, Peggy thought.
She looked at her again. Her eyes were bright; her cheeks were flushed, or was it only the tan from her voyage to India? And a little vein stood out on her forehead. But what was there to be excited about? She leant back against the wall. From her seat on the floor she had a queer view of people’s feet; feet pointing this way, feet pointing that way; patent leather pumps; satin slippers; silk stockings and socks. They were dancing rhythmically, insistently, to the tune of the fox-trot. And what about the cocktail and the tea, said he to me, said he to me — the tune seemed to repeat over and over again. And voices went on over her head. Odd little gusts of inconsecutive conversations reached her . . . down in Norfolk where my brother-in-law has a boat . . . Oh, a complete washout, yes I agree. . . . People talked nonsense at parties. And beside her Maggie was talking; North was talking; Eleanor was talking. Suddenly Eleanor swept her hand out.
“There’s Renny!” she was saying. “Renny, whom I never see. Renny whom I love. . . . Come and talk to us, Renny.” And a pair of pumps crossed Peggy’s field of vision and stopped in front of her. He sat down beside Eleanor. She could just see the line of his profile; the big nose; the thin cheek. And what about the cocktails and the tea, said he to me, said he to me, the music ground out; the couples danced past. But the little group on the chairs above her were talking; they were laughing.
“I know you’ll agree with me . . .” Eleanor was saying. Through her half-shut eyes Peggy could see Renny turn towards her. She saw his thin cheek; his big nose; his nails, she noticed, were very close cut.
“Depends what you were saying . . .” he said.
“What were we saying?” Eleanor pondered. She’s forgotten already, Peggy suspected.
“. . . That things have changed for the better,” she heard Eleanor’s voice.
“Since you were a girl?” That she thought was Maggie’s voice.
Then a voice from a skirt with a pink bow on the hem interrupted. “. . . I don’t know how it is but the heat doesn’t affect me as much as it used to do. . . .” She looked up. There were fifteen pink bows on the dress, accurately stitched, and wasn’t that Miriam Parrish’s little saint-like, sheep-like head on top?
“What I mean is, we’ve changed in ourselves,” Eleanor was saying. “We’re happier — we’re freer—”
What does she mean by “happiness,” by “freedom”? Peggy asked herself, lapsing against the wall again.
“Take Renny and Maggie,” she heard Eleanor saying. And then she stopped. And then she went on again:
“D’you remember, Renny, the night of the raid? When I met Nicholas for the first time . . . when we sat in the cellar? . . . Going downstairs I said to myself, That’s a happy marriage—” There was another pause. “I said to myself,” she continued, and Peggy saw her hand laid on Renny’s knee, “If I’d known Renny when I was young. . . .” She stopped. Does she mean she would have fallen in love with him? Peggy wondered. Again the music interrupted . . . said he to me, said he to me. . . .
“No, never
. . .” she heard Eleanor say. “No, never. . . .” Was she saying she had never been in love, never wanted to marry? Peggy wondered. They were laughing.
“Why, you look like a girl of eighteen!” she heard North say.
“And I feel like one!” Eleanor exclaimed. But you’ll be a wreck tomorrow morning Peggy thought, looking at her. She was flushed, the veins stood out on her forehead.
“I feel . . .” she stopped. She put her hand to her head: “as if I’d been in another world! So happy!” she exclaimed.
“Tosh, Eleanor, tosh,” said Renny.
I thought he’d say that, Peggy said to herself with some queer satisfaction. She could see his profile as he sat on the other side of her aunt’s knee. The French are logical; they are sensible, she thought. Still, she added, why not let Eleanor have her little flutter if she enjoys it?
“Tosh? What d’you mean by ‘tosh’?” Eleanor was asking. She was leaning forward; she held her hand up as if she wanted him to speak.
“Always talking of the other world,” he said. “Why not this one?”
“But I meant this world!” she said. “I meant, happy in this world — happy with living people.” She waved her hand as if to embrace the miscellaneous company, the young, the old, the dancers, the talkers; Miriam with her pink bows, and the Indian in his turban. Peggy sank back against the wall. Happy in this world, she thought, happy with living people!
The music stopped. The young man who had been putting records on the gramophone had walked off. The couples broke apart and began to push their way through the door. They were going to eat perhaps; they were going to stream out into the back garden and sit on hard sooty chairs. The music which had been cutting grooves in her mind had ceased. There was a lull — a silence. Far away she heard the sounds of the London night; a horn hooted; a siren wailed on the river. The far-away sounds, the suggestion they brought in of other worlds, indifferent to this world, of people toiling, grinding, in the heart of darkness, in the depths of night, made her say over Eleanor’s words, Happy in this world, happy with living people. But how can one be “happy”? she asked herself, in a world bursting with misery. On every placard at every street corner was Death; or worse — tyranny; brutality; torture; the fall of civilisation; the end of freedom. We here, she thought, are only sheltering under a leaf, which will be destroyed. And then Eleanor says the world is better, because two people out of all those millions are “happy.” Her eyes had fixed themselves on the floor; it was empty now save for a wisp of muslin torn from some skirt. But why do I notice everything? she thought. She shifted her position. Why must I think? She did not want to think. She wished that there were blinds like those in railway carriages that came down over the light and hooded the mind. The blue blind that one pulls down on a night journey, she thought. Thinking was torment; why not give up thinking, and drift and dream? But the misery of the world, she thought, forces me to think. Or was that a pose? Was she not seeing herself in the becoming attitude of one who points to his bleeding heart? to whom the miseries of the world are misery, when in fact, she thought, I do not love my kind. Again she saw the ruby-splashed pavement, and faces mobbed at the door of a picture palace; apathetic, passive faces; the faces of people drugged with cheap pleasures; who had not even the courage to be themselves, but must dress up, imitate, pretend. And here, in this room, she thought, fixing her eyes on a couple. . . . But I will not think, she repeated; she would force her mind to become a blank and lie back, and accept quietly, tolerantly, whatever came.
She listened. Scraps reached her from above. “. . . flats in Highgate have bathrooms,” they were saying. “. . . Your mother . . . Digby. . . . Yes, Crosby’s still alive—” It was family gossip, and they were enjoying it. But how can I enjoy it? she said to herself. She was too tired; the skin round her eyes felt taut; a hoop was bound tight over her head; she tried to think herself away into the darkness of the country. But it was impossible; they were laughing. She opened her eyes, exacerbated by their laughter.
That was Renny laughing. He held a sheet of paper in his hand; his head was flung back; his mouth was wide open. From it came a sound like Ha! Ha! Ha! That is laughter, she said to herself. That is the sound people make when they are amused.
She watched him. Her muscles began to twitch involuntarily. She could not help laughing too. She stretched out her hand and Renny gave her the paper. It was folded; they had been playing a game. Each of them had drawn a different part of a picture. On top there was a woman’s head like Queen Alexandra, with a fuzz of little curls; then a bird’s neck; the body of a tiger; and stout elephant’s legs dressed in child’s drawers completed the picture.
“I drew that — I drew that!” said Renny pointing to the legs from which a long trail of ribbon depended. She laughed, laughed, laughed; she could not help laughing.
“The face that launched a thousand ships!” said North, pointing to another part of the monster’s person. They all laughed again. She stopped laughing; her lips smoothed themselves out. But her laughter had had some strange effect on her. It had relaxed her, enlarged her. She felt, or rather she saw, not a place, but a state of being, in which there was real laughter, real happiness, and this fractured world was whole; whole, and free. But how could she say it?
“Look here . . .” she began. She wanted to express something that she felt to be very important; about a world in which people were whole, in which people were free . . . But they were laughing; she was serious. “Look here . . .” she began again.
Eleanor stopped laughing.
“Peggy wants to say something,” she said. The others stopped talking, but they had stopped at the wrong moment. She had nothing to say when it came to the point, and yet she had to speak.
“Here,” she began again, “here you all are — talking about North—” He looked up at her in surprise. It was not what she had meant to say, but she must go on now that she had begun. Their faces gaped at her like birds with their mouths open. “. . . How he’s to live, where he’s to live,” she went on. “. . . But what’s the use, what’s the point of saying that?”
She looked at her brother. A feeling of animosity possessed her. He was still smiling, but his smile smoothed itself out as she looked at him.
“What’s the use?” she said, facing him. “You’ll marry. You’ll have children. What’ll you do then? Make money. Write little books to make money. . . .”
She had got it wrong. She had meant to say something impersonal, but she was being personal. It was done now however; she must flounder on now.
“You’ll write one little book, and then another little book,” she said viciously, “instead of living . . . living differently, differently.”
She stopped. There was the vision still, but she had not grasped it. She had broken off only a little fragment of what she meant to say, and she had made her brother angry. Yet there it hung before her, the thing she had seen, the thing she had not said. But as she fell back with a jerk against the wall, she felt relieved of some oppression; her heart thumped; the veins on her forehead stood out. She had not said it, but she had tried to say it. Now she could rest; now she could think herself away under the shadow of their ridicule, which had no power to hurt her, into the country. Her eyes half shut; it seemed to her that she was on a terrace, in the evening; an owl went up and down, up and down; its white wing showed on the dark of the hedge; and she heard country people singing and the rattle of wheels on a road.
Then gradually the blur became distinct; she saw the line of the bookcase opposite; the wisp of muslin on the floor; and two large feet, in tight shoes, so that the bunions showed, stopped in front of her.
For a moment nobody moved; nobody spoke. Peggy sat still. She did not want to move, or to speak. She wanted to rest, to lean, to dream. She felt very tired. Then more feet stopped, and the hem of a black skirt.
“Aren’t you people coming down to supper?” said a chuckling little voice. She looked up. It was her aunt Milly, with her husband
by her side.
“Supper’s downstairs,” said Hugh. “Supper’s downstairs.” And they passed on.
“How prosperous they’ve grown!” said North’s voice, laughing at them.
“Ah, but they’re so good to people . . .” Eleanor protested. The sense of the family again, Peggy noted.
Then the knee against which she was sheltering herself moved.
“We must go,” said Eleanor. Wait, wait, Peggy wanted to implore her. There was something she wanted to ask her; something she wanted to add to her outburst, since nobody had attacked her, and nobody had laughed at her. But it was useless; the knees straightened themselves; the red cloak elongated itself; Eleanor had risen. She was hunting for her bag or her handkerchief; she was ferreting in the cushions of her chair. As usual, she had lost something.
“I’m sorry to be such an old muddler,” she apologised. She shook a cushion; coins rolled out onto the floor. A sixpenny bit spun on its edge across the carpet, reached a pair of silver shoes on the floor and fell flat.
“There!” Eleanor exclaimed. “There! . . . But that’s Kitty! isn’t it?” she exclaimed.
Peggy looked up. A handsome elderly woman, with curled white hair and something shining in her hair was standing in the doorway looking round her, as if she had just come in and were looking for her hostess, who was not there. It was at her feet that the sixpence had fallen.
“Kitty!” Eleanor repeated. She went towards her with her hands stretched out. They all got up. Peggy got up. Yes, it was over; it was destroyed she felt. Directly something got together, it broke. She had a feeling of desolation. And then you have to pick up the pieces, and make something new, something different, she thought, and crossed the room, and joined the foreigner, the man she called Brown, whose real name was Nicholas Pomjalovsky.
“Who is that lady,” Nicholas asked her, “who appears to come into a room as if the whole world belonged to her?”
Complete Works of Virginia Woolf Page 238