“Oh, but there is some good—” Kitty began.
She still wanted something — some finish, some fillip — what she did not know. And it was getting late. She must go.
“Tell me, privately, what you were going to have said, Mr — ?” she asked him.
“What I was going to have said? I was going to have said—” he paused and stretched his hand out; he touched each finger separately.
“First I was going to have thanked our host and hostess. Then I was going to have thanked this house—” he waved his hand round the room hung with the placards of the house agent, “ — which has sheltered the lovers, the creators, the men and women of goodwill. And finally—” he took his glass in his hand, “I was going to drink to the human race. The human race,” he continued, raising his glass to his lips, “which is now in its infancy, may it grow to maturity! Ladies and gentlemen!” he exclaimed, half rising and expanding his waistcoat, “I drink to that!”
He brought his glass down with a thump on the table. It broke.
“That’s the thirteenth glass broken tonight!” said Delia, coming up and stopping in front of them. “But don’t mind — don’t mind. They’re very cheap — glasses.”
“What’s very cheap?” Eleanor murmured. She half opened her eyes. But where was she? In what room? In which of the innumerable rooms? Always there were rooms; always there were people. Always from the beginning of time. . . . She shut her hands on the coins she was holding, and again she was suffused with a feeling of happiness. Was it because this had survived — this keen sensation (she was waking up) and the other thing, the solid object — she saw an ink-corroded walrus — had vanished? She opened her eyes wide. Here she was; alive; in this room, with living people. She saw all the heads in a circle. At first they were without identity. Then she recognised them. That was Rose; that was Martin; that was Morris. He had hardly any hair on the top of his head. There was a curious pallor on his face.
There was a curious pallor on all their faces as she looked round. The brightness had gone out of the electric lights; the table-cloths looked whiter. North’s head — he was sitting on the floor at her feet — was rimmed with whiteness. His shirt-front was a little crumpled.
He was sitting on the floor at Edward’s feet with his hands bound round his knees, and he gave little jerks and looked up at him as if he appealed to him about something.
“Uncle Edward,” she heard him say, “tell me this . . .”
He was like a child asking to be told a story.
“Tell me this,” he repeated, giving another little jerk. “You’re a scholar. About the classics now. Aeschylus. Sophocles. Pindar.”
Edward bent towards him.
“And the chorus,” North jerked on again. She leant towards them. “The chorus—” North repeated.
“My dear boy,” she heard Edward say as he smiled benignly down at him, “don’t ask me. I was never a great hand at that. No, if I’d had my way” — he paused and passed his hand over his forehead— “I should have been . . .” A burst of laughter drowned his words. She could not catch the end of the sentence. What had he said — what had he wished to be? She had lost his words.
There must be another life, she thought, sinking back into her chair, exasperated. Not in dreams; but here and now, in this room, with living people. She felt as if she were standing on the edge of a precipice with her hair blown back; she was about to grasp something that just evaded her. There must be another life, here and now, she repeated. This is too short, too broken. We know nothing, even about ourselves. We’re only just beginning, she thought, to understand, here and there. She hollowed her hands in her lap, just as Rose had hollowed hers round her ears. She held her hands hollowed; she felt that she wanted to enclose the present moment; to make it stay; to fill it fuller and fuller, with the past, the present and the future, until it shone, whole, bright, deep with understanding.
“Edward,” she began, trying to attract his attention. But he was not listening to her; he was telling North some old college story. It’s useless, she thought, opening her hands. It must drop. It must fall. And then? she thought. For her too there would be the endless night; the endless dark. She looked ahead of her as though she saw opening in front of her a very long dark tunnel. But, thinking of the dark, something baffled her; in fact it was growing light. The blinds were white.
There was a stir in the room.
Edward turned to her.
“Who are they?” he asked her, pointing to the door.
She looked. Two children stood in the door. Delia had her hands on their shoulders as if to encourage them. She was leading them over to the table in order to give them something to eat. They looked awkward and clumsy.
Eleanor glanced at their hands, at their clothes, at the shape of their ears. “The children of the caretaker, I should think,” she said. Yes, Delia was cutting slices of cake for them, and they were larger slices of cake than she would have cut had they been the children of her own friends. The children took the slices and stared at them with a curious fixed stare as if they were fierce. But perhaps they were frightened, because she had brought them up from the basement into the drawing-room.
“Eat it!” said Delia, giving them a little pat.
They began to munch slowly, gazing solemnly round them.
“Hullo, children!” cried Martin, beckoning to them. They stared at him solemnly.
“Haven’t you got a name?” he said. They went on eating in silence. He began to fumble in his pocket.
“Speak!” he said. “Speak!”
“The younger generation,” said Peggy, “don’t mean to speak.”
They turned their eyes on her now; but they went on munching. “No school tomorrow?” she said. They shook their heads from side to side.
“Hurrah!” said Martin. He held the coins in his hand; pressed between his thumb and finger. “Now — sing a song for sixpence!” he said.
“Yes. Weren’t you taught something at school?” Peggy asked.
They stared at her but remained silent. They had stopped eating. They were a centre of a little group. They swept their eyes over the grown-up people for a moment, then, each giving the other a little nudge, they burst into song:
Etho passo tanno hai,
Fai donk to tu do,
Mai to, kai to, lai to see
Toh dom to tuh do —
That was what it sounded like. Not a word was recognisable. The distorted sounds rose and sank as if they followed a tune. They stopped.
They stood with their hands behind their backs. Then with one impulse they attacked the next verse:
Fanno to par, etto to mar,
Timin tudo, tido,
Foll to gar in, mitno to par,
Eido, teido, meido —
They sang the second verse more fiercely than the first. The rhythm seemed to rock and the unintelligible words ran themselves together almost into a shriek. The grown-up people did not know whether to laugh or to cry. Their voices were so harsh; the accent was so hideous.
They burst out again:
Chree to gay ei, Geeray didax. . . .
Then they stopped. It seemed to be in the middle of a verse. They stood there grinning, silent, looking at the floor. Nobody knew what to say. There was something horrible in the noise they made. It was so shrill, so discordant, and so meaningless. Then old Patrick ambled up.
“Ah, that’s very nice, that’s very nice. Thank you, my dears,” he said in his genial way, fiddling with his toothpick. The children grinned at him. Then they began to make off. As they sidled past Martin, he slipped coins into their hands. Then they made a dash for the door.
“But what the devil were they singing?” said Hugh Gibbs. “I couldn’t understand a word of it, I must confess.” He held his hands to the sides of his large white waistcoat.
“Cockney accent, I suppose,” said Patrick. “What they teach ’em at school, you know.”
“But it was . . .” Eleanor began. She stopped.
What was it? As they stood there they had looked so dignified; yet they had made this hideous noise. The contrast between their faces and their voices was astonishing; it was impossible to find one word for the whole. “Beautiful?” she said, with a note of interrogation, turning to Maggie.
“Extraordinarily,” said Maggie.
But Eleanor was not sure that they were thinking of the same thing.
She gathered together her gloves, her bag and two or three coppers, and got up. The room was full of a queer pale light. Objects seemed to be rising out of their sleep, out of their disguise, and to be assuming the sobriety of daily life. The room was making ready for its use as an estate agent’s office. The tables were becoming office tables; their legs were the legs of office tables, and yet they were still strewn with plates and glasses, with roses, lilies and carnations.
“It’s time to go,” she said, crossing the room. Delia had gone to the window. Now she jerked the curtains open.
“The dawn!” she exclaimed rather melodramatically.
The shapes of houses appeared across the square. Their blinds were all drawn; they seemed fast asleep still in the morning pallor.
“The dawn!” said Nicholas, getting up and stretching himself. He too walked across to the window. Renny followed him.
“Now for the peroration,” he said, standing with him in the window. “The dawn — the new day—”
He pointed at the trees, at the roofs, at the sky.
“No,” said Nicholas, holding back the curtain. “There you are mistaken. There is going to be no peroration — no peroration!” he exclaimed, throwing his arm out, “because there was no speech.”
“But the dawn has risen,” said Renny, pointing at the sky.
It was a fact. The sun had risen. The sky between the chimneys looked extraordinarily blue.
“And I am going to bed,” said Nicholas after a pause. He turned away.
“Where is Sara?” he said, looking round him. There she was curled up in a corner with her head against a table asleep apparently.
“Wake your sister, Magdalena,” he said, turning to Maggie. Maggie looked at her. Then she took a flower from the table and tossed it at her. She half-opened her eyes. “It’s time,” said Maggie, touching her on the shoulder. “Time, is it?” she sighed. She yawned and stretched herself. She fixed her eyes on Nicholas as if she were bringing him back to the field of vision. Then she laughed.
“Nicholas!” she exclaimed.
“Sara!” he replied. They smiled at each other. Then he helped her up and she balanced herself uncertainly against her sister, and rubbed her eyes.
“How strange,” she murmured, looking round heir, “. . . how strange. . . .”
There were the smeared plates, and the empty wine-glasses; the petals and the bread crumbs. In the mixture of lights they looked prosaic but unreal; cadaverous but brilliant. And there against the window, gathered in a group, were the old brothers and sisters.
“Look, Maggie,” she whispered, turning to her sister, “Look!” She pointed at the Pargiters, standing in the window.
The group in the window, the men in their black-and-white evening dress, the women in their crimsons, golds and silvers, wore a statuesque air for a moment, as if they were carved in stone. Their dresses fell in stiff sculptured folds. Then they moved; they changed their attitudes; they began to talk.
“Can’t I give you a lift back, Nell?” Kitty Lasswade was saying. “I’ve a car waiting.”
Eleanor did not answer. She was looking at the curtained houses across the square. The windows were spotted with gold. Everything looked clean swept, fresh and virginal. The pigeons were shuffling on the tree tops.
“I’ve a car . . .” Kitty repeated.
“Listen . . .” said Eleanor, raising her hand. Upstairs they were playing “God save the King” on the gramophone; but it was the pigeons she meant; they were crooning.
“That’s wood pigeons, isn’t it?” said Kitty. She put her head on one side to listen. Take two coos, Taffy, take two coos . . . tak . . . they were crooning.
“Wood pigeons?” said Edward, putting his hand to his ear.
“There on the tree tops,” said Kitty. The green-blue birds were shuffling about on the branches, pecking and crooning to themselves.
Morris brushed the crumbs off his waistcoat.
“What an hour for us old fogies to be out of bed!” he said. “I haven’t seen the sun rise since . . . since. . . .”
“Ah, but when we were young,” said old Patrick, slapping him on the shoulder, “we thought nothing of making a night of it! I remember going to Covent Garden and buying roses for a certain lady. . .”
Delia smiled as if some romance, her own or another’s, had been recalled to her.
“And I . . .” Eleanor began. She stopped. She saw an empty milk jug and leaves falling. Then it had been autumn. Now it was summer. The sky was a faint blue; the roofs were tinged purple against the blue; the chimneys were a pure brick red. An air of ethereal calm and simplicity lay over everything.
“And all the tubes have stopped, and all the omnibuses,” she said turning round. “How are we going to get home?”
“We can walk,” said Rose. “Walking won’t do us any harm.”
“Not on a fine summer morning,” said Martin.
A breeze went through the square. In the stillness they could hear the branches rustle as they rose slightly, and fell, and shook a wave of green light through the air.
Then the door burst open. Couple after couple came flocking in, dishevelled, gay, to look for their cloaks and their hats, to say good-night.
“It’s been so good of you to come!” Delia exclaimed, turning towards them with her hands outstretched.
“Thank you — thank you for coming!” she cried.
“And look at Maggie’s bunch!” she said, taking a bunch of many coloured flowers that Maggie held out to her.
“How beautifully you’ve arranged them!” she said. “Look, Eleanor!” She turned to her sister.
But Eleanor was standing with her back to them. She was watching a taxi that was gliding slowly round the square. It stopped in front of a house two doors down.
“Aren’t they lovely?” said Delia, holding out the flowers.
Eleanor started.
“The roses? Yes . . .” she said. But she was watching the cab. A young man had got out; he paid the driver. Then a girl in a tweed travelling suit followed him. He fitted his latch-key to the door. “There,” Eleanor murmured, as he opened the door and they stood for a moment on the threshold. “There!” she repeated, as the door shut with a little thud behind them.
Then she turned round into the room. “And now?” she said, looking at Morris, who was drinking the last drops of a glass of wine. “And now?” she asked, holding out her hands to him.
The sun had risen, and the sky above the houses wore an air of extraordinary beauty, simplicity and peace.
THE END
BETWEEN THE ACTS
Woolf’s last novel, Between the Acts, was published in 1941 by Hogarth Press, shortly after the author’s suicide. The tale is set at Pointz Hill, a large, old English country home and the events in the text occur over one day in June 1939. The threat of war looms in the background as the possibility of aerial bombardment disturbs the tranquil setting. The plot revolves around a pageant staged every year, showcasing the history of England through literature. As Hudson Strode wrote in a contemporary review of the novel for The New York Times: ‘In its unity of time Between the Acts recalls Mrs Dalloway’ and ‘through implications of the scenes touching on the whole history of England and the mutations of English Literature it suggests Orlando’. The novel focuses not only on preparations for the pageant and the event itself, but also on the spectators or audience attending the display.
The pageant consists of five sections: the prologue, a Shakespearean scene, followed by a parody of a restoration comedy, a scene of Victorian triumphalism and finally the participants p
lacing a mirror in front of the audience for collective self- reflection. The country house is owned by a widowed former Indian Army officer, whose sympathetic sister, Lucy, lives with him while his son, Giles and daughter-in-law Isa are also staying with him. Isa has a keen interest in poetry and has lost any romantic feelings towards her husband. She is instead drawn to a local gentleman farmer, although this never becomes a sexual relationship.
One of the most striking and vibrant characters is Mrs. Manresa, who arrives at the house uninvited and openly flirts with both the old officer and his son. She adorns herself with jewels plundered from Africa and is unashamedly ostentatious and provocative in her behaviour. There are no developments in the characters during the day, which Strode argues reveals the belief that ‘Fashions change, days are wet or fine, but the essential heart of man remains much the same’. However, there is also the contrast between the ‘durability of land and sky’ and the finite, transient nature of human relations that are far outlasted by the world surrounding them.
Please note: Between the Acts was originally published with no chapter divisions as one continual text, emphasising the stream of consciousness technique to full effect. The text appears in this edition as the author originally intended, with no table of contents or divisions in the text.
The first edition
BETWEEN THE ACTS
It was a summer’s night and they were talking, in the big room with the windows open to the garden, about the cesspool. The county council had promised to bring water to the village, but they hadn’t.
Mrs. Haines, the wife of the gentleman farmer, a goosefaced woman with eyes protruding as if they saw something to gobble in the gutter, said affectedly: “What a subject to talk about on a night like this!”
Complete Works of Virginia Woolf Page 242