Then the newspaper dropped.
“Finished?” said Giles, taking it from his father.
The old man relinquished his paper. He basked. One hand caressing the dog rippled folds of skin towards the collar.
The clock ticked. The house gave little cracks as if it were very brittle, very dry. Isa’s hand on the window felt suddenly cold. Shadow had obliterated the garden. Roses had withdrawn for the night.
Mrs. Swithin folding her letter murmured to Isa: “I looked in and saw the babies, sound asleep, under the paper roses.”
“Left over from the coronation,” Bartholomew muttered, half asleep.
“But we needn’t have been to all that trouble with the decorations,” Lucy added, “for it didn’t rain this year.”
“This year, last year, next year, never,” Isa murmured.
“Tinker, tailor, soldier, sailor,” Bartholomew echoed. He was talking in his sleep.
Lucy slipped her letter into its envelope. It was time to read now, her Outline of History. But she had lost her place. She turned the pages looking at pictures — mammoths, mastodons, prehistoric birds. Then she found the page where she had stopped.
The darkness increased. The breeze swept round the room. With a little shiver Mrs. Swithin drew her sequin shawl about her shoulders. She was too deep in the story to ask for the window to be shut. “England,” she was reading, “was then a swamp. Thick forests covered the land. On the top of their matted branches birds sang . . .”
The great square of the open window showed only sky now. It was drained of light, severe, stone cold. Shadows fell. Shadows crept over Bartholomew’s high forehead; over his great nose. He looked leafless, spectral, and his chair monumental. As a dog shudders its skin, his skin shuddered. He rose, shook himself, glared at nothing, and stalked from the room. They heard the dog’s paws padding on the carpet behind him.
Lucy turned the page, quickly, guiltily, like a child who will be told to go to bed before the end of the chapter.
“Prehistoric man,” she read, “half-human, half-ape, roused himself from his semi-crouching position and raised great stones.”
She slipped the letter from Scarborough between the pages to mark the end of the chapter, rose, smiled, and tiptoed silently out of the room.
The old people had gone up to bed. Giles crumpled the newspaper and turned out the light. Left alone together for the first time that day, they were silent. Alone, enmity was bared; also love. Before they slept, they must fight; after they had fought, they would embrace. From that embrace another life might be born. But first they must fight, as the dog fox fights with the vixen, in the heart of darkness, in the fields of night.
Isa let her sewing drop. The great hooded chairs had become enormous. And Giles too. And Isa too against the window. The window was all sky without colour. The house had lost its shelter. It was night before roads were made, or houses. It was the night that dwellers in caves had watched from some high place among rocks.
Then the curtain rose. They spoke.
THE END
The Short Stories
Woolf attended King’s College London
LIST OF SHORT STORIES IN CHRONOLOGICAL ORDER
PHYLLIS AND ROSAMOND
THE MYSTERIOUS CASE OF MISS V.
THE JOURNAL OF MISTRESS JOAN MARTYN
MEMOIRS OF A NOVELIST
KEW GARDENS
THE MARK ON THE WALL
SYMPATHY
THE EVENING PARTY
SOLID OBJECTS
AN UNWRITTEN NOVEL
A SOCIETY
A HAUNTED HOUSE
MONDAY OR TUESDAY
THE STRING QUARTET
BLUE & GREEN
IN THE ORCHARD
MRS DALLOWAY IN BOND STREET
A WOMAN’S COLLEGE FROM OUTSIDE
NURSE LUGTON’S CURTAIN
THE WIDOW AND THE PARROT
THE NEW DRESS
HAPPINESS
ANCESTORS
TOGETHER AND APART
THE INTRODUCTION
THE MAN WHO LOVED HIS KIND
A SIMPLE MELODY
A SUMMING UP
MOMENTS OF BEING
THE FASCINATION OF THE POOL
THE LADY IN THE LOOKING-GLASS
THREE PICTURES
SCENES FROM THE LIFE OF A BRITISH NAVAL OFFICER
MISS PRYME
ODE WRITTEN PARTLY IN PROSE ON SEEING THE NAME OF CUTBUSH ABOVE A BUTCHER’S SHOP IN PENTONVILLE
PORTRAITS
UNCLE VANYA
THE DUCHESS AND THE JEWELLER
LAPPIN AND LAPPINOVA
THE SHOOTING PARTY
THE SEARCHLIGHT
THE LEGACY
GIPSY, THE MONGREL
THE SYMBOL
THE WATERING PLACE
LIST OF SHORT STORIES IN ALPHABETICAL ORDER
A HAUNTED HOUSE
A SIMPLE MELODY
A SOCIETY
A SUMMING UP
A WOMAN’S COLLEGE FROM OUTSIDE
AN UNWRITTEN NOVEL
ANCESTORS
BLUE & GREEN
GIPSY, THE MONGREL
HAPPINESS
IN THE ORCHARD
KEW GARDENS
LAPPIN AND LAPPINOVA
MEMOIRS OF A NOVELIST
MISS PRYME
MOMENTS OF BEING
MONDAY OR TUESDAY
MRS DALLOWAY IN BOND STREET
NURSE LUGTON’S CURTAIN
ODE WRITTEN PARTLY IN PROSE ON SEEING THE NAME OF CUTBUSH ABOVE A BUTCHER’S SHOP IN PENTONVILLE
PHYLLIS AND ROSAMOND
PORTRAITS
SCENES FROM THE LIFE OF A BRITISH NAVAL OFFICER
SOLID OBJECTS
SYMPATHY
THE DUCHESS AND THE JEWELLER
THE EVENING PARTY
THE FASCINATION OF THE POOL
THE INTRODUCTION
THE JOURNAL OF MISTRESS JOAN MARTYN
THE LADY IN THE LOOKING-GLASS
THE LEGACY
THE MAN WHO LOVED HIS KIND
THE MARK ON THE WALL
THE MYSTERIOUS CASE OF MISS V.
THE NEW DRESS
THE SEARCHLIGHT
THE SHOOTING PARTY
THE STRING QUARTET
THE SYMBOL
THE WATERING PLACE
THE WIDOW AND THE PARROT
THREE PICTURES
TOGETHER AND APART
UNCLE VANYA
PHYLLIS AND ROSAMOND
In this very curious age, when we are beginning to require pictures of people, their minds and their coats, a faithful outline, drawn with no skill but veracity, may possibly have some value.
Let each man, I heard it said the other day, write down the details of a day’s work; posterity will be as glad of the catalogue as we should be if we had such a record of how the door keeper at the Globe, and the man who kept the Park gates passed Saturday March 18th in the year of our Lord 1568.
And as such portraits as we have are almost invariably of the male sex, who strut more prominently across the stage, it seems worth while to take as model one of those many women who cluster in the shade. For a study of history and biography convinces any right minded person that these obscure figures occupy a place not unlike that of the showman’s hand in the dance of the marionettes; and the finger is laid upon the heart. It is true that our simple eyes believed for many ages that the figures danced of their own accord, and cut what steps they chose; and the partial light which novelists and historians have begun to cast upon that dark and crowded place behind the scenes has done little as yet but show us how many wires there are, held in obscure hands, upon whose jerk or twist the whole figure of the dance depends. This preface leads us then to the point at which we began; we intend to look as steadily as we can at a little group, which lives at this moment (the 20th June, 1906); and seems for some reasons which we will give, to epitomise the qualities of many. It is a common case, because after all there are many young women, born
of well-to-do, respectable, official parents; and they must all meet much the same problems, and there can be, unfortunately, but little variety in the answers they make.
There are five of them, all daughters they will ruefully explain to you: regretting this initial mistake it seems all through their lives on their parents’ behalf. Further, they are divided into camps: two sisters oppose themselves to two sisters; the fifth vacillates equally between them. Nature has decreed that two shall inherit a stalwart pugnacious frame of mind, which applies itself to political economy and social problems successfully and not unhappily; while the other two she has made frivolous, domestic, of lighter and more sensitive temperaments. These two then are condemned to be what in the slang of the century is called ‘the daughters at home’. Their sisters deciding to cultivate their brains, go to College, do well there, and marry Professors. Their careers have so much likeness to those of men themselves that it is scarcely worth while to make them the subject of special enquiry. The fifth sister is less marked in character than any of the others; but she marries when she is twenty-two so that she scarcely has time to develop the individual features of young ladydom which we set out to describe. In the two ‘daughters at home’ Phyllis and Rosamond, we will call them, we find excellent material for our enquiry.
A few facts will help us to set them in their places, before we begin to investigate. Phyllis is twenty-eight, Rosamond is twenty-four. In person they are pretty, pink cheeked, vivacious; a curious eye will not find any regular beauty of feature; but their dress and demeanour give them the effect of beauty without its substance. They seem indigenous to the drawing-room, as though, born in silk evening robes, they had never trod a rougher earth than the Turkey carpet, or reclined on harsher ground than the arm chair or the sofa. To see them in a drawing-room full of well dressed men and women, is to see the merchant in the Stock Exchange, or the barrister in the Temple. This, every motion and word proclaims, is their native air; their place of business, their professional arena. Here, clearly, they practise the arts in which they have been instructed since childhood. Here, perhaps, they win their victories and earn their bread. But it would be as unjust as it would be easy to press this metaphor till it suggested that the comparison was appropriate and complete in all its parts. It fails; but where it fails and why it fails it will take some time and attention to discover.
You must be in a position to follow these young ladies home, and to hear their comments over the bedroom candle. You must be by them when they wake next morning; and you must attend their progress throughout the day. When you have done this, not for one day but for many days then you will be able to calculate the values of those impressions which are to be received by night in the drawing-room.
This much may be retained of the metaphor already used; that the drawing-room scene represents work to them and not play. So much is made quite clear by the scene in the carriage going home. Lady Hibbert is a severe critic of such performances; she has noted whether her daughters looked well, spoke well[,] behaved well; whether they attracted the right people and repelled the wrong; whether on the whole the impression they left was favourable. From the multiplicity and minuteness of her comments it is easy to see that two hours entertainment is, for artists of this kind, a very delicate and complicated piece of work. Much it seems, depends upon the way they acquit themselves. The daughters answer submissively and then keep silence, whether their mother praises or blames: and her censure is severe. When they are alone at last, and they share a modest sized bedroom at the top of a great ugly house; they stretch their arms and begin to sigh with relief. Their talk is not very edifying; it is the ‘shop’ of business men; they calculate their profits and their losses and have clearly no interest at heart except their own. And yet you may have heard them chatter of books and plays and pictures as though these were the things they most cared about; to discuss them was the only motive of a ‘party’.
Yet you will observe also in this hour of unlovely candour something which is also very sincere, but by no means ugly. The sisters were frankly fond of each other. Their affection has taken the form for the most part of a free masonship which is anything but sentimental; all their hopes and fears are in common; but it is a genuine feeling, profound in spite of its prosaic exterior. They are strictly honourable in all their dealings together; and there is even something chivalrous in the attitude of the younger sister to the elder. She, as the weaker by reason of her greater age, must always have the best of things. There is some pathos also in the gratitude with which Phyllis accepts the advantage. But it grows late, and in respect for their complexions, these business-like young women remind each other that it is time to put out the light.
In spite of this forethought they are fain to sleep on after they are called in the morning. But Rosamond jumps up, and shakes Phyllis.
‘Phyllis we shall be late for breakfast.’
There must have been some force in this argument, for Phyllis got out of bed and began silently to dress. But their haste allowed them to put on their clothes with great care and dexterity, and the result was scrupulously surveyed by each sister in turn before they went down. The clock struck nine as they came into the breakfast room: their father was already there, kissed each daughter perfunctorily, passed his cup for coffee, read his paper and disappeared. It was a silent meal. Lady Hibbert breakfasted in her room; but after breakfast they had to visit her, to receive her orders for the day, and while one wrote notes for her the other went to arrange lunch and dinner with the cook. By eleven they were free, for the time, and met in the schoolroom where Doris the youngest sister, aged sixteen, was writing an essay upon the Magna Charter in French. Her complaints at the interruption - for she was dreaming of a first class already - met with no honour. ‘We must sit here, because there’s nowhere else to sit,’ remarked Rosamond. ‘You needn’t think we want your company,’ added Phyllis. But these remarks were spoken without bitterness, as the mere commonplaces of daily life.
In deference to their sister, however, Phyllis took up a volume of Anatole France, and Rosamond opened the ‘Greek Studies’ of Walter Pater. They read for some minutes in silence; then a maid knocked, breathless, with a message that ‘Her Ladyship wanted the young ladies in the drawing-room.’ They groaned; Rosamond offered to go alone; Phyllis said no, they were both victims; and wondering what the errand was they went sulkily downstairs. Lady Hibbert was impatiently waiting them.
‘O there you are at last,’ she exclaimed. ‘Your father has sent round to say he’s asked Mr Middleton and Sir Thomas Carew to lunch. Isn’t that troublesome of him! I can’t think what drove him to ask them, and there’s no lunch — and I see you haven’t arranged the flowers, Phyllis; and Rosamond I want you to put a clean tucker in my maroon gown. O dear, how thoughtless men are.’
The daughters were used to these insinuations against their father: on the whole they took his side, but they never said so.
They silently departed now on their separate errands: Phyllis had to go out and buy flowers and an extra dish for lunch; and Rosamond sat down to her sewing.
Their tasks were hardly done in time for them to change for lunch; but at 1.30 they came pink and smiling into the pompous great drawing-room. Mr Middleton was Sir William Hibbert’s secretary; a young man of some position and prospects, as Lady Hibbert defined him; who might be encouraged. Sir Thomas was an official in the same office, solid and gouty, a handsome piece on the board, but of no individual importance.
At lunch then there was some sprightly conversation between Mr Middleton and Phyllis, while their elders talked platitudes, in sonorous deep voices. Rosamond sat rather silent, as was her wont; speculating keenly upon the character of the secretary, who might be her brother-in-law; and checking certain theories she had made by every fresh word he spoke. By open consent, Mr Middleton was her sister’s game; she did not trespass. If one could have read her thoughts, while she listened to Sir Thomas’s stories of India in the Sixties, one would have found that sh
e was busied in somewhat abstruse calculations; Little Middleton, as she called him, was not half a bad sort; he had brains; he was, she knew, a good son, and he would make a good husband. He was well to do also, and would make his way in the service. On the other hand her psychological acuteness told her that he was narrow minded, without a trace of imagination or intellect, in the sense she understood it; and she knew enough of her sister to know that she would never love this efficient active little man, although she would respect him. The question was should she marry him? This was the point she had reached when Lord Mayo was assassinated; and while her lips murmured ohs and ahs of horror, her eyes were telegraphing across the table, ‘I am doubtful.’ If she had nodded her sister would have begun to practise those arts by which many proposals had been secured already. Rosamond, however, did not yet know enough to make up her mind. She telegraphed merely ‘Keep him in play.’
The gentlemen left soon after lunch, and Lady Hibbert prepared to go and lie down. But before she went she called Phyllis to her.
‘Well my dear,’ she said, with more affection than she had shown yet, ‘did you have a pleasant lunch? Was Mr Middleton agreeable?’ She patted her daughter’s cheek, and looked keenly into her eyes.
Some petulancy came across Phyllis, and she answered listlessly. ‘O he’s not a bad little man; but he doesn’t excite me.’
Lady Hibbert’s face changed at once: if she had seemed a benevolent cat playing with a mouse from philanthropic motives before, she was the real animal now in sober earnest.
‘Remember,’ she snapped, ‘this can’t go on for ever. Try and be a little less selfish, my dear.’ If she had sworn openly, her words could not have been less pleasant to hear.
She swept off, and the two girls looked at each other, with expressive contortions of the lips.
‘I couldn’t help it,’ said Phyllis, laughing weakly. ‘Now let’s have a respite. Her Ladyship won’t want us till four.’
Complete Works of Virginia Woolf Page 257