“That’s Kitty Lasswade,” said Peggy. As she stood in the door, they could not pass.
“I’m afraid I’m dreadfully late,” they heard her saying in her clear, authoritative tones. “But I’ve been to the ballet.”
That’s Kitty, is it? North said to himself, looking at her. She was one of those well-set-up rather masculine old ladies who repelled him slightly. He thought he remembered that she was the wife of one of our governors; or was it the Viceroy of India? He could see her, as she stood there, doing the honours of Government House. “Sit here. Sit there. And you, young man, I hope you take plenty of exercise?” He knew the type. She had a short straight nose and blue eyes very wide apart. She might have looked very dashing in the eighties, he thought; in a tight riding-habit; worn a small hat, with a cock’s feather in it; perhaps had an affair with an aide-de-camp; and then settled down, become dictatorial, and told stories about her past. He listened.
“Ah, but he’s not a patch on Nijinsky!” she was saying.
The sort of thing she would say, he thought. He examined the books in the bookcase. He took one out and held it upside down. One little book, and then another little book — Peggy’s taunt returned to him. The words had stung him out of all proportion to their surface meaning. She had turned on him with such violence, as if she despised him; she had looked as if she were going to burst into tears. He opened the little book. Latin, was it? He broke off a sentence and let it swim in his mind. There the words lay, beautiful, yet meaningless, yet composed in a pattern — nox est perpetua una dormienda. He remembered his master saying, Mark the long word at the end of the sentence. There the words floated; but just as they were about to give out their meaning, there was a movement at the door. Old Patrick had come ambling up, had given his arm gallantly to the widow of the Governor-General, and they were proceeding with a curious air of antiquated ceremony down the stairs. The others began to follow them. The younger generation following in the wake of the old, North said to himself as he put the book back on the shelf and followed. Only, he observed, they were not so very young; Peggy — there were white hairs on Peggy’s head — she must be thirty-seven, thirty-eight?
“Enjoying yourself, Peg?” he said as they hung back behind the others. He had a vague feeling of hostility towards her. She seemed to him bitter, disillusioned, and very critical of everyone, especially of himself.
“You go first, Patrick,” they heard Lady Lasswade boom out in her genial loud voice. “These staircases are not adapted . . .” she paused, as she advanced what was probably a rheumatic leg, “for old people who. . .” there was another pause as she descended another step, “‘ve been kneeling on damp grass killing slugs.”
North looked at Peggy and laughed. He had not expected the sentence to end like that, but the widows of viceroys, he thought, always have gardens, always kill slugs. Peggy smiled too. But he felt uncomfortable with her. She had attacked him. There they stood, however, side by side.
“Did you see old William Whatney?” she said, turning to him.
“No!” he exclaimed. “He still alive? That old white walrus with the whiskers?”
“Yes — that’s him,” she said. There was an old man in a white waistcoat standing in the door.
“The old Mock Turtle,” he said. They had to fall back on childish slang, on childish memories, to cover their distance, their hostility.
“D’you remember . . .” he began.
“The night of the row?” she said. “The night I let myself out of the window by a rope.”
“And we picnicked in the Roman camp,” he said.
“We should never have been found out if that horrid little scamp hadn’t told on us,” she said, descending a step.
“A little beast with pink eyes,” said North.
They could think of nothing else to say, as they stood blocked, waiting for the others to move on, side by side. And he used to read her his poetry in the apple-loft, he remembered, and as they walked up and down by the rose bushes. And now they had nothing to say to each other.
“Perry,” he said, descending another step, suddenly remembering the name of the pink-eyed boy who had seen them coming home that morning and had told on them.
“Alfred,” she added.
She still knew certain things about him, he thought; they still had something very profound in common. That was why, he thought, she had hurt him by what she had said, before the others, about his “writing little books.” It was their past condemning his present. He glanced at her.
Damn women, he thought, they’re so hard; so unimaginative. Curse their little inquisitive minds. What did their “education” amount to? It only made her critical, censorious. Old Eleanor, with all her rambling and stumbling, was worth a dozen of Peggy any day. She was neither one thing nor the other, he thought, glancing at her; neither in the fashion nor out of it.
She felt him look at her and look away. He was finding fault with something about her, she knew. Her hands? Her dress? No, it was because she criticised him, she thought. Yes, she thought as she descended another step, now I’m going to be trounced; now I’m going to be paid back for telling him he’d write “little books.” It takes from ten to fifteen minutes, she thought, to get an answer; and then it’ll be something off the point but disagreeable — very, she thought. The vanity of men was immeasurable. She waited. He looked at her again. And now he’s comparing me with the girl I saw him talking to, she thought, and saw again the lovely, hard face. He’ll tie himself up with a red-lipped girl, and become a drudge. He must, and I can’t, she thought. No, I’ve a sense of guilt always. I shall pay for it, I shall pay for it, I kept saying to myself even in the Roman camp, she thought. She would have no children, and he would produce little Gibbses, more little Gibbses, she thought, looking in at the door of a solicitor’s office, unless she leaves him at the end of the year for some other man. . . . The solicitor’s name was Alridge, she noted. But I will take no more notes; I will enjoy myself, she thought suddenly. She put her hand on his arm.
“Met anybody amusing tonight?” she said.
He guessed that she had seen him with the girl.
“One girl,” he said briefly.
“So I saw,” she said.
She looked away.
“I thought her lovely,” she said, carefully observing a tinted picture of a bird with a long beak that hung on the stairs.
“Shall I bring her to see you?” he asked.
So he cared for her opinion, did he? Her hand was still on his arm; she felt something hard and taut beneath the sleeve, and the touch of his flesh, bringing back to her the nearness of human beings and their distance, so that if one meant to help one hurt, yet they depended on each other, produced in her such a tumult of sensation that she could scarcely keep herself from crying out, North! North! North! But I mustn’t make a fool of myself again, she said to herself.
“Any evening after six,” she said aloud, carefully descending another step, and they reached the bottom of the stairs.
A roar of voices sounded from behind the door of the supper room. She withdrew her hand from his arm. The door burst open.
“Spoons! spoons! spoons!” cried Delia, brandishing her arms in a rhetorical manner as if she were still declaiming to someone inside. She caught sight of her nephew and niece. “Be an angel, North, and fetch spoons!” she cried, throwing her hands out towards him.
“Spoons for the widow of the Governor-General!” North cried, catching her manner, imitating her dramatic gesture.
“In the kitchen, in the basement!” Delia cried, waving her arm at the kitchen stairs. “Come, Peggy, come,” she said, catching Peggy’s hand in hers, “we’re all sitting down to supper.” She burst into the room where they were having supper. It was crowded. People were sitting on the floor, on chairs, on office stools. Long office tables, little typewriting tables, had been pressed into use. They were strewn with flowers, frilled with flowers. Carnations, roses, daisies, were flung down higgledy-piggl
edy. “Sit on the floor, sit anywhere,” Delia commanded, waving her hand promiscuously.
“Spoons are coming,” she said to Lady Lasswade, who was drinking her soup out of a mug.
“But I don’t want a spoon,” said Kitty. She tilted the mug and drank.
“No, you wouldn’t,” said Delia, “but other people do.”
North brought in a bunch of spoons and she took them from him.
“Now who wants a spoon and who doesn’t?” she said, brandishing the bunch of spoons in front of her. Some people do and some don’t, she thought.
Her sort of people, she thought, did not want spoons; the others — the English — did. She had been making that distinction between people all her life.
“A spoon? A spoon?” she said, looking round her at the crowded room with some complacency. All sorts of people were there, she noted. That had always been her aim; to mix people; to do away with the absurd conventions of English life. And she had done it tonight, she thought. There were nobles and commoners; people dressed and people not dressed; people drinking out of mugs, and people waiting with their soup getting cold for a spoon to be brought to them.
“A spoon for me,” said her husband, looking up at her.
She wrinkled her nose. For the thousandth time he had dashed her dream. Thinking to marry a wild rebel, she had married the most King-respecting, Empire-admiring of country gentlemen, and for that very reason partly — because he was, even now, such a magnificent figure of a man. “A spoon for your Uncle,” she said dryly, and sent North off with the bunch. Then she sat down beside Kitty, who was gulping her soup like a child at a school treat. She set down her mug empty, among the flowers.
“Poor flowers,” she said, taking up a carnation that lay on the table-cloth and putting it to her lips. “They’ll die, Delia — they want water.”
“Roses are cheap today,” said Delia. “Twopence a bunch off a barrow in Oxford Street,” she said. She took up a red rose and held it under the light, so that it shone, veined, semi-transparent.
“What a rich country England is!” she said, laying it down again. She took up her mug.
“What I’m always telling you,” said Patrick, wiping his mouth. “The only civilised country in the whole world,” he added.
“I thought we were on the verge of a smash,” said Kitty. “Not that it looked much like it at Covent Garden tonight,” she added.
“Ah, but it’s true,” he sighed, going on with his own thoughts. “I’m sorry to say it — but we’re savages compared with you.”
“He won’t be happy till he’s got Dublin Castle back again,” Delia twitted him.
“You don’t enjoy your freedom?” said Kitty, looking at the queer old man whose face always made her think of a hairy gooseberry. But his body was magnificent.
“It seems to me that our new freedom is a good deal worse than our old slavery,” said Patrick, fumbling with his toothpick.
Politics as usual, money and politics, North thought, overhearing them, as he went round with the last of his spoons.
“You’re not going to tell me that all that struggle has been in vain, Patrick?” said Kitty.
“Come to Ireland and see for yourself, m’lady,” he said grimly.
“It’s too early — too early to tell,” said Delia.
Her husband looked past her with the sad innocent eyes of an old sporting dog whose hunting days are over. But they could not keep their fixity for long. “Who’s this chap with the spoons?” he said, resting his eyes on North, who stood just behind them, waiting.
“North,” said Delia. “Come and sit by us, North.”
“Good-evening to you, Sir,” said Patrick. They had met already, but he had already forgotten.
“What, Morris’s son?” said Kitty, turning round abruptly. She shook hands cordially. He sat down and took a gulp of soup.
“He’s just back from Africa. He’s been on a farm there,” said Delia.
“And how does the old country strike you?” said Patrick, leaning towards him genially.
“Very crowded,” he said, looking round the room. “And you all talk,” he added, “about money and politics.” That was his stock phrase. He had said it twenty times already.
“You were in Africa?” said Lady Lasswade. “And what made you give up your farm?” she demanded. She looked him in the eyes and spoke just as he expected she would speak; too imperiously for his liking. What business is that of yours, old lady? he asked himself.
“I’d had about enough of it,” he said aloud.
“And I’d have given anything to be a farmer!” she exclaimed. That was a little out of the picture, North thought. So were her eyes; she ought to have worn a pince-nez; but she did not.
“But in my youth,” she said, rather fiercely — her hands were rather stubby, and the skin was rough, but she gardened, he remembered— “that wasn’t allowed.”
“No,” said Patrick. “And it’s my belief,” he continued, drumming on the table with a fork, “that we should all be very glad, very glad, to go back to things as they were. What’s the War done for us, eh? Ruined me for one.” He wagged his head with melancholy tolerance from side to side.
“I’m sorry to hear that,” said Kitty. “But speaking for myself, the old days were bad days, wicked days, cruel days. . . .” Her eyes turned blue with passion.
What about the aide-de-camp, and the hat with a cock’s feather in it? North asked himself.
“Don’t you agree with me, Delia?” said Kitty, turning to her.
But Delia was talking across her, using her rather exaggerated Irish sing-song to someone at the next table. Don’t I remember this room, Kitty thought; a meeting; an argument. But what was it about? Force . . .
“My dear Kitty,” Patrick interrupted, patting her hand with his great paw. “That’s another instance of what I’m telling you. Now these ladies have got the vote,” he said, turning to North, “are they any better off?”
Kitty looked fierce for a moment; then she smiled.
“We won’t argue, my old friend,” she said, giving him a little pat on the hand.
“And it’s just the same with the Irish,” he went on. North saw that he was bent on treading out the round of his familiar thoughts like an old broken-winded horse. “They’d be glad enough to join the Empire again, I assure you. I come of a family,” he said to North, “that has served its king and country for three hundred—”
“English settlers,” said Delia, rather shortly, returning to her soup. That’s what they quarrel about when they’re alone, North thought.
“We’ve been three hundred years in the country,” old Patrick continued, padding out his round — he laid a hand on North’s arm, “and what strikes an old fellow like me, an old fogy like me—”
“Nonsense, Patrick,” Delia struck in, “I’ve never seen you look younger. Might be fifty, mightn’t he, North?”
But Patrick shook his head.
“I shan’t see seventy again,” he said simply. “. . . But what strikes an old fellow like me,” he continued, patting North’s arm, “is with such a lot of good feeling about,” he nodded rather vaguely at a placard that was pinned to the wall— “and nice things too,” — he referred perhaps to the flowers, but his head jerked involuntarily as he talked— “what do these fellows want to be shooting each other for? I don’t join any societies; I don’t sign any of these” — he pointed to the placard— “what d’you call ‘em? manifestoes — I just go to my friend Mike, or it may be Pat — they’re all good friends of mine, and we—”
He stooped and pinched his foot.
“Lord, these shoes!” he complained.
“Tight, are they?” said Kitty. “Kick ’em off.”
Why had the poor old boy been brought over here, North wondered, and stuck into those tight shoes? He was clearly talking to his dogs. There was a look in his eyes now when he raised them again and tried to recover the drift of what he had been saying that was like the look of a sports
man who saw the birds rising in a semicircle over the wide green bog. But they were out of shot. He could not remember where he had got to. “. . . We talk things over,” he said, “round a table.” His eyes became mild and vacant as if the engine were cut off, and his mind glided on silently.
“The English talk too,” said North perfunctorily. Patrick nodded, and looked vaguely at a group of young people. But he was not interested in what other people were saying. His mind could no longer stretch beyond its beat. His body was still beautifully proportioned; it was his mind that was old. He would say the same thing all over again, and when he had said it he would pick his teeth and sit gazing in front of him. There he sat now, holding a flower between his finger and thumb, loosely, without looking at it, as if his mind were gliding on — But Delia interrupted.
“North must go and talk to his friends,” she said. Like so many wives, she saw when her husband was becoming a bore, North thought, as he got up.
“Don’t wait to be introduced,” said Delia, waving her hand. “Do just what you like — just what you like,” her husband echoed her, beating on the table with his flower.
North was glad to go; but where was he to go now? He was an outsider, he felt again, as he glanced round the room. All these people knew each other. They called each other — he stood on the outskirts of a little group of young men and women — by their Christian names, by their nicknames. Each was already part of a little group, he felt as he listened, keeping on the outskirts. He wanted to hear what they were saying; but not to be drawn in himself. He listened. They were arguing. Politics and money, he said to himself; money and politics. That phrase came in handy. But he could not understand the argument, which was already heated. Never have I felt so lonely, he thought. The old platitude about solitude in a crowd was true; for hills and trees accept one; human beings reject one. He turned his back and pretended to read the particulars of a desirable property at Bexhill which Patrick had called for some reason “a manifesto.” “Running water in all the bedrooms,” he read. He overheard scraps of talk. That’s Oxford, that’s Harrow, he continued, recognising the tricks of speech that were caught at school and college. It seemed to him that they were still cutting little private jokes about Jones minor winning the long jump; and old Foxy, or whatever the headmaster’s name was. It was like hearing small boys at a private school, hearing these young men talk politics. “I’m right . . . you’re wrong.” At their age, he thought, he had been in the trenches; he had seen men killed. But was that a good education? He shifted from one foot to another. At their age, he thought, he had been alone on a farm sixty miles from a white man, in control of a herd of sheep. But was that a good education? Anyhow it seemed to him, half hearing their argument, looking at their gestures, catching their slang, that they were all the same sort. Public school and university, he sized them up as he looked over his shoulder. But where are the Sweeps and the Sewer-men, the Seamstresses and the Stevedores? he thought, making a list of trades that began with the letter S. For all Delia’s pride in her promiscuity, he thought, glancing at the people, there were only Dons and Duchesses, and what other words begin with D? he asked himself, as he scrutinised the placard again — Drabs and Drones?
Complete Works of Virginia Woolf Page 239